An interesting find in the Walter Patten Papers: in the “North River” folder, a pencil sketch on the back of a handout from UNC Bull’s Head Bookshop. And when the Bull’s Head was located in Murphey Hall. Walter Patten founded the course of study at UNC that would become the Department of Religion.

2.20.14
Chapel Hill, NC

photos: Jillian Clark

Autumn yoga in North Carolina.

Photography:@adrianhummellyoga

This abandoned little store is in Chapel Hill, Texas.  The sign’s so weathered that we couldn’t tell if the store was Fuller’s, or possibly Fidler’s, Country Grocery.  Chapel Hill’s mostly gone now, but it was a thriving community from the middle 1800′s until the 1940′s when most of the residents left during WWII to join the war effort.  The beautiful church adjacent to the store was closed in the 1990′s; but, there was nothing to indicate when the store was finally closed. 

Local residents sure do keep a close watch on the place.   We had 3 or 4 vehicles come by and really slow down to check us out as we were taking photos.   One even pulled up and stopped, but we exchanged waves and they left after they saw the cameras.  

 2015 Concert Roundup

I hit 115 performances this year somehow surpassing last year’s 103. That’s like a show every 3 days or something. Like last year, numbers in parentheses are date of show and all performances were experienced in Austin unless otherwise stated! Performances in italics were exceptional and/or memorable; worth noting.

January

• The Eastern Sea (3)
• Future Islands (8, New York)
• Robin Schulz (9, New York)
• Kevin Hart

February

• Little Daylight (6)
  
• Jukebox The Ghost (6)
  
• Handsome Ghost (26, Philadelphia)
• BØRNS (26, Philadelphia)
  
• MisterWives (26, Philadelphia)

March

• Cathedrals (17, SXSW)
  
• Amason (17, SXSW)
• San Fermin (17, SXSW)
• Milo Greene (17, SXSW)
• Odesza (17, SXSW)
• Spoon (17, SXSW)
• Geographer (18, SXSW)
• Until The Ribbon Breaks (18, SXSW)
• Urban Cone (18, SXSW)
• Joywave (18, SXSW)
• Tei Shi (18, SXSW)
• Dreamers (18, SXSW)
• Pompeya (18, SXSW)
• Safia (18, SXSW)
• Urban Cone (18, SXSW)
• Ryan Culwell (18, SXSW)
• The Family Crest (18, SXSW)
• Kidnap Kid (18, SXSW)
• Gorgon City (18, SXSW)
• What So Not (18, SXSW)
• On An On (19, SXSW)
• Years & Years (19, SXSW)
• Circa Waves (19, SXSW)
• Pujol (19, SXSW)
• Kopecky (19, SXSW)
• The Family Crest (19, SXSW)
• COIN (19, SXSW)
• CRUISR (19, SXSW)
• Stone Foxes (19, SXSW)
• iZCALLi (19, SXSW)
• San Fermin (19, SXSW)
• BØRNS (19, SXSW)
• Mew (19, SXSW)
• War on Drugs (19, SXSW)
• Knox Hamilton (20, SXSW)
• ELEL (20, SXSW)
• Freedom Fry (20, SXSW)
• Talk in Tongues (20, SXSW)
• Colour Vision (20, SXSW)
• Seinabo Sey (20, SXSW)
• Years & Years (20, SXSW)
• Ex-Cops (21, SXSW)
• Zella Day (21, SXSW)
• Joywave (21, SXSW)
• Mother Falcon (21, SXSW)
• Ivy Levan (21, SXSW)
• Elle King (21, SXSW)
• Clean Bandit (21, SXSW)
• The Ting Tings (21, SXSW)
• Tove Lo (21, SXSW)

April

• Jungle (9)
  
• Sphynx (9)
• Black Joe Lewis (18, Untapped)
• Phosphorescent (18, Untapped)
• Bear Hands (18, Untapped)
• In The Valley Below (18, Untapped)
• Calliope Musicals (18, Untapped)
  
• Manchester Orchestra (18, Untapped)
• Grandtheft (24, New York)
• The Chainsmokers (24, New York)
• Young Rising Sons (28)
• Joywave (28)
• The Kooks (28)
• Priory (30)
• Kaiser Chiefs (30)

May

• The Griswolds (2)
• SPEAK (2, Pecan St Festival)
• The Digital Wild (2, Pecan St Festival )
• Reptar (2)
  
• Of Monsters and Men (5, Washington, D.C.)
• Of Monsters and Men (7, New York)
• Sufjan Stevens (12)
• Dave Matthews Band (13)
• Nick Offerman + Megan Mullally (15, Nashville)

June

• Sinkane (5, Washington, D.C.)
• Hot Chip (5, Washington, D.C.)
• Night Drive (26)

July

• The Family Crest (24)
  
• Goodnight, Texas (24)
  
• Lambda (25)
  
• Moullinex (25)
• Ben Browning (25)
  
• Dan Deacon (26, Chapel Hill)
• Future Islands (26, Chapel Hill)

August

• Glass Animals (5, Washington, D.C.)
  
• T.J. Miller (9, Washington, D.C.)
• Belle & Sebastian (28)

September

• The Eastern Sea (4)
• St. Lucia (19, San Francisco)
• Holy Ghost! (19, San Francisco)
• Empire of the Sun (19, San Francisco)
• Circa Waves (25)
• MS MR (25)

October

• The Decemberists (3)
• Disclosure (21, Washington, D.C.)

November

• Beirut (4, Washington, D.C.)
• Parade of Lights (8, Washington, D.C.)
• The Royal Concept (8, Washington, D.C.)
• Filous (10, Washington, D.C.)
• Big Data (10, Washington, D.C.)
• RAC (10, Washington, D.C.)

December

• Leon Bridges (8)
• George Ezra (8)
• Of Monsters and Men (8)
• Circa Waves (18, New York)
  
• Foals (18, New York)

at chapel hill clay’s pants just fell down so he just took them off lmao - at the end he threw them in the audience and the group who caught them tried to return them but he refused

The race hate we all know
February 16, 2015

The slayings of Razan Abu-Salha, Yusor Abu-Salha and Deah Barakat has convulsed the Muslim-American community as no other event has since September 11, 2001. It is not simply that we see ourselves reflected back in those three beautiful young people. We see our ugliest fears about the United States reflected back—that our college educations and professional degrees cannot keep us safe, that someday, someone will hate us for our faith or our skin color and no amount of American Dream will safeguard us.

Because have no doubt: Whatever the law might find, whatever claims are being bandied about by killers’ wives and North Carolina police departments, Craig Stephen Hicks did not murder Yusor, Deah and Razan merely because of a parking dispute, just as Darren Wilson didn’t kill Mike Brown for walking towards him. We go to such lengths to exculpate white Americans of race-based violence, to spin stories and find excuses, as though we left that era in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. our last casualty. But rub at their races until they turn white, until their headscarves disintegrate under your finger, and you’re staring at young people who still live.

Some have difficulty comprehending this current. For them, the equation falls apart without direct evidence of white hoods, as though racism and xenophobia cannot inform decisions and feelings on a molecular level, sharpen anger, harshen responses. People of color feel it viscerally. We do not cry racism as the boy cried wolf—we call it because it is there, because we face it daily, because it is the bedrock of our everyday interactions. The story is etched in our bones, muscle memory memorialized. The Muslim community cries out that Deah, Yusor and Razan were murdered because of their faith and not a parking dispute because that fear has breathed down our necks. We have watched a petty dispute enflame because of our ethnicity, felt eyes fall on us in a way eyes should fall on no one. If you’ve never felt the air charge electric with menace and fear, it’s easy to reject cries of hate crime as irrational or untrue. Hatred is often invisible to the naked eye even as it vibrates through your body. Because of this ephemerality, the lack of physical evidence hate leaves behind—save for dead brown and black bodies, which are too often excused by tertiary reasons—bigotry-as-cause is tricky to prove by legal standards. Because of that, it is too easily dismissed by the sociopolitical establishment.

But those of us who have never felt that electric fear shiver across our skin should trust communities—Muslim, black, Arab, Asian, LGBTQ, Latino, Native—when they say one of their own was killed because of his race or religion. They know in the way one knows essential truths.

I am done trying to prove to those who cannot see, who refuse to see that the kind of violence being inflicted on people of color today, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Razan, Deah and Yusor is a direct heir of lynchings and the gross violence of our not-so-distant past, of the media game of painting these groups as villains for easy profit. Legal determination that no hate crime occurred does not mean they were not murdered because of their race or religion. Because ultimately, we know. We the people they left behind, who cherish their memories and weep for them as fallen brothers and sisters—we know.

Source

The toxic hate behind the Chapel Hill shooting
February 13, 2014

On the evening of February 10, Craig Stephen Hicks murdered three of his neighbors in Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Yusor’s sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Hicks was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after he turned himself in to police.

Almost immediately, authorities declared that the motive for the killings was a dispute over parking at the condominium complex where they all lived. But it was impossible to ignore the cloud of hate and bigotry hanging over these murders.

Hicks maintained a strident social media presence in which he described himself as an “anti-theist” and expressed a disdain for the religious. Among other things, he denounced “radical Christians and radical Muslims” for causing strife in the world. He wrote:

I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me. There’s nothing complicated about it, and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being–which your religion does with self-righteous gusto…
If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I. But given that it doesn’t, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I’d say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it, as does every rational, thinking person on this planet.

After the tide of racism and Islamophobia that has washed over the U.S. during the “war on terror” years after September 11, it’s impossible to believe that this “anti-theist” rant was directed at all religions equally. Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of the two murdered women, drew the obvious conclusion at a press conference:

It was execution style, a bullet in every head…This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.

According to the Raleigh News-Observer, Abu-Salha said his daughter told her family a week ago that she had “a hateful neighbor.” He added, “Honest to God, she said, ‘He hates us for what we are and how we look.’”

Hicks appeared to have singled out the three college students before. In a heartbreaking post at Fusion.net, Amira Ata, a close friend of Yusor’s, recalled an evening when friends were over at Yusor and Deah’s house, playing a game of Risk, when Hicks showed up at the door holding a rifle and complaining about noise:

I think they were targeted because they were different. He was always so annoyed with them for little things. They are talking about a parking dispute online–that’s definitely not true. There’s plenty of space, and Deah had just gotten off the bus…I wonder what would have happened if we were there? Would he have killed us all, since we were a bunch of hijabis [women who wear the hijab]?

At a press conference, Duke University Islamic leader Imam Abdullah Antepli expressed the fear that many Muslims feel in the wake of the murders:

This incident immediately revealed the vulnerability of the Muslim community and the image and reputation of Islam as a religion and Muslims as people in American society at large. There are several hundred Muslim families in the greater Chapel Hill area, including myself, and we didn’t send our children to school today. We wanted to know what was going on.

On February 11, Hicks’ wife issued a statement saying her husband believed in “equality” and wasn’t prejudiced against Muslims.

But Hicks’ strident beliefs dovetail with the rise of the so-called “New Atheist movement” that has gained attention since 9/11. Figures like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, pundit/comedian Bill Maher and the late Christopher Hitchens have used the cover of criticizing all religious thought to target Islam and Muslims as uniquely intolerant, backward and violent.

It’s an attitude that fits in comfortably with the prevailing attitudes of the American empire during the “war on terror”–despite the fact some of its leaders, like George W. Bush, frequently invoked Christian “values” and “civilization” to justify war and occupation.

Then, of course, there are the right-wing ideologues who heap abuse on Islam without even pretending to challenge other religious beliefs–racists like Pamela Geller, founder of “Stop Islamization of America,” a professed admirer of the fascists of the English Defense League or the dead South African white supremacist Eugene Terreblanche.

All of this has fueled an atmosphere of bigotry and violence toward Muslims. After 9/11, hate crimes against Muslims (or those who were deemed to “look Muslim”) spiked. Mosques were vandalized–others under construction or in the planning stages were prevented from being built. As Michelle Goldberg detailed at TheNation.com:

According to the latest FBI statistics, there were more than 160 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2013. Mosques and Islamic centers have been firebombed and vandalized; seven mosques were attacked during Ramadan alone in 2012. Several Muslims, or people thought to be Muslim, have been murdered or viciously attacked. In 2010, a white college student and self-described patriot tried to slash the throat of Bangladeshi cab driver Ahmed Sharif. The white supremacist who slaughtered six people in a Sikh temple in 2012 may have thought he was targeting Muslims. So, apparently, did Erika Menendez, the homeless New Yorker who pushed a man named Sunando Sen in front of a subway train that same year.

The broader backdrop to this violence is the fact that the U.S. has been at war in the Middle East–for decades on end, but with increasing violence and oppression since the war on terror was declared in 2001. On the day after the Chapel Hill murders, Barack Obama asked Congress for a three-year authorization of military force, including limited ground operations, against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria–the continuation of a disastrous war that has destroyed the country of Iraq, and been accompanied by the demonization of Arabs and Muslims, whether in the Middle East or in the U.S.

As the hate crime statistics cited by Michelle Goldberg show, Muslims are far more likely today to be the targets of violent extremists. Yet all Muslims are expected to condemn acts of terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, no matter how distant from their own lives and beliefs.

A case in point is Fox News, one of the media outlets that immediately concluded the three Chapel Hill students were murdered because of parking.

Fox is one of the main proponents of anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S., with its chairman Rupert Murdoch tweeting in January, “Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.” Fox News has repeatedly peddled false stories about Muslims and Islam–but it isn’t alone, by any means.

As University of North Alabama professor Mohamad Elmasry wrote for Al Jazeera after the Chapel Hill murders:

Western media outlets will likely frame the most recent perpetrator of what some speculate is an anti-Muslim crime in the same way they frame most anti-Muslim criminals–as crazed, misguided bigots who acted alone. If past coverage is any indication, there will likely be very little suggestion that the killer acted on the basis of an ideology or as part of any larger pattern or system.
But what if acts of anti-Muslim violence are consistent with at least some strands of current Western ideology? What if Islamophobia has become so commonplace, so accepted, that it now represents a hegemonic system of thought, at least for relatively large pockets of people in some regions of the West?

Fullarticle

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