MEDIA

A New Red Scare Threatens American Democracy From Within the White House

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Can factual reporting diligently investigated and brilliantly written still make a difference? – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – A new Red Scare threatens American democracy. This time, it’s not a deranged Senator from Wisconsin making all the noise and ruining lives. It’s the president himself, seemingly serving the interests of the new…

Spider Martin Photography Exhibit Opens on the 60th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

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ON THE RADIO – APR, NPR – “Bloody Sunday” through the lens of Spider Martin By Glynn Wilson – MONTGOMERY, Ala. – As people get ready to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the Selma to Montgomery March and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts just…

What is This ‘Swampers Sound’ and What Musicians Should be Credited on the List as ‘A Swamper?’

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“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers And they’ve been known to pick a song or two (yes, they do) Lord, they get me off so much They pick me up when I’m feelin’ blue, now how ’bout you? “Sweet home Alabama (oh) Where the skies are so blue Sweet home Alabama Lord, I’m comin’…

Wayne Perkins: The Story of a Swamper And a Sideman

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There for the Birth of Southern Rock, he took the Muscle Shoals swampy sound to London and blended that with the Rasta island beat, creating a new sound that transformed Reggae for mainstream audiences in Europe and America. – A Draft Book Proposal in Progress By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. – (Jan.…

From Hey Jude to Southern Rock: When Slide Guitar and a Beat from the Swamps Went Mainstream

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Outline of an Idea Emerges With First Snow of 2025 – “All of a sudden, there was Southern Rock.” – Jimmy Johnson, about the day Wilson Pickett covered the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” with Duane Allman on guitar, 1969. Tales from the MoJo Road – By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – ARGO, Ala. – A rare blanket…

Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’ Remembered From ‘Those Days’

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Tales From the MoJo Road – By Glynn Wilson – ARGO, Ala. – Well, I’ve been out walking some, since I don’t do that much talking or partying anymore, these days. Out back there’s an old native trail through the woods they say was the original road from Trussville to Springville. I don’t know about…

The Year 2024 in Pictures: A Photo Essay

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – News photography is a dying field just like news itself. That started with the invention and release of the iPhone by Apple in 2006. But at least the New York Times still keeps the tradition alive with news pictures from all over the world. The Year in…

Nobody Really Knows Me: A Rock and Roll Journey

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By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Close to 300 friends and followers of Birmingham musician Wayne Perkins, many from the east side of town who came of age in the 1970s listening to the Alabama Power Band play at The Crossroads in Roebuck, nearly filled the Steiner Auditorium at the Birmingham Museum of…

Mark Twain Couldn’t Pull the Trigger: Instead He Wrote About a Jumping Frog

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Editor’s Note – Samuel Langhorne Clemens was once so down and out, broke and desperate in San Francisco that he took a loaded pistol and aimed it at his head. He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger, maybe out of sheer cowardice. He picked up a pen instead and wrote The Celebrated Jumping Frog…

Long Live Web Publishing: Too Bad About the Death of Print

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – Have you ever thought you lost something and then discovered it wasn’t lost after all? That’s how I felt Wednesday night winding down for sleep after watching a show on Netflix. Checking the calendar on the iPhone, it occurred to me it’s coming up on 10 years…

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Take Questions on CNN

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT – CNN’s Dana Bash speaks with Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. Part 1 of Dana Bash’s interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz, their first since the Democratic National Convention. In part 2 of the interview with CNN’s…

Artificial Intelligence, the Power Grid and News Work: Who Will Pay for Covering the Information Falling Through the Cracks?

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The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – To be brutally honest? Or to project an image of success at all times? Are you interested in pretense? Or the unabashed truth? Shakespeare never had any of his characters ask these questions. At least not to the best of my recollection. Of course the very idea…

Welcome to Botville: An Uncertain Computerized Future

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Connecting the Dots –  By Glynn Wilson – Computer hacker-programmers have been creating bots to do various things since the 1990s. Bot is short for robot, although these bots don’t look like the robots from science fiction going back to the 1950s. If you use any search engine to ask “what is a bot?” you…

A Story Told is A Life Lived

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“A story told is a life lived.” – Unknown The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS, Md. – If the story of the 21st century is just going to end up being one hellscape disaster after another, until most of the countries of the world live under tyrannical dictators who ignore all…

Why Can’t We Solve Problems? Because of the People Who Like to Break Things

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Secret Vistas –  By Glynn Wilson –  SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, Va. — You don’t have to travel to some high mountain pass to find insight in this mixed up world. But maybe it helps. It seemed to help Moses, George Mallory and Elisha Mitchell, as I’ve written in the past. Climbing Mountains For Inspiration: What’s…

NPR Rocked by Self-Inflicted Scandal

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The Big Picture –  By Glynn Wilson –  WASHINGTON, D.C. — Another American media outlet is rocked by a self-inflicted scandal. It’s not clear what National Public Radio’s business editor Uri Berliner was thinking when he decided to bash his employer as “liberal” on a Substack newsletter run by a known conservative flame thrower, Bari…

Attorneys General in 41 States Demand that Facebook Take Action Against Scammers

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Staff Report – WASHINGTON, D.C. — Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown joined a bipartisan coalition of 41 Attorneys General around the country to demand that Meta address the recent increase in Facebook and Instagram platform account takeovers by scammers. Account takeovers happen when bad actors break into a user’s account and change passwords, effectively…

Hacking Knocks Out Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Threads on Tuesday

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Cyberattack and ‘Security Breach’ Cited on Day Two – Staff Report – WASHINGTON, D.C. — What will poor people do who have become totally dependent on social media accounts when the accounts go down and don’t work? Maybe get outside and go for a hike? Millions of people were locked out of their Meta accounts…

Global Warming With Crows: How To Survive All Of It

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A Painting and Poem by Janet Mego – Hurt feelings. Cancer. Never knowing What’s the answer. Highway 43: rush hour Politicians: too much power. Record Heat Spoiled meat Tax breaks available to The Elite Severe depression Textbook obsession Making it on time to Your next session Climate change World War III Smog, fear, and pestilence…

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll But I Like It: Wayne Perkins, The Rolling Stones and Lynyrd Skynyrd

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A Deep Dive into when Ronnie Vann Zant asked Wayne Perkins to join the band – Blast From the Past – By Glynn “Cowboy” Wilson – Introduction WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s only Rock ‘n’ Roll, but I like it. Yes I do. One of the gods of rock once wrote that in the early 1970s…