More! More! More!

Speaking of Asian American music, one of my all time very favorite groups, who just happen to be a cool indie Asian American hip hop duo, are at #2 on iTunes! HAHA! Take that!

Mad respect and love to Blue Scholars. They're craft is amazing and they bring that social consciousness into their lyrics. If you've never checked them out, check them out. Their EP OOF! is at #2 on the iTunes hip hop album chart. Or, check them out their video for Back Home on youtube.

If you don't know, now you know.

The Fourth Dimension (Or, Time and Music)

As human beings, we move fluidly between the first three dimensions, for the most part. We cross length, width, and depth forwards and backwards. Within time, however, most of us can only conceive moving forward. Or so it was, until the advent of music downloading.

With the advent of music downloading, listeners no longer needed to buy complete albums to get more than the single. We could take whatever song we wanted, download songs out of order, crossing forwards and backwards in the fourth dimension. In our new found freedom, we killed the album.

I'm here in support of the album. Sure, individual songs are nice, but isn't there something about crafting an album as an experience? Not just throwing in interludes, but letting the music rise and fall throughout the album.

Have I got you yet? Then check out DJ Neil Armstrong's mixtape Bittersweet. Its not new, but I've been listening to it the past two days like crazy. He's a pretty cool guy. And this mixtape has a real story arc.

Poor Parvati Patil

A new Harry Potter movie is out. I haven't seen it, but I have been re-reading book number four. At that point, it looked like Harry might have yellow-fever. His first big crush was Cho Chang. Then he took Parvati Patil to the Yule-Tide Ball.

Poor Asian girls didn't make the cut, though. Harry wouldn't even dance with Parvati and eventually married redhead Ginny Weasley. Poor Asian girls. Pretty enough to kiss and date, but not to marry.

JOKING.

Mainly.

In more recent news, the September issue of Marie Claire is also exploring the phenomena of smart, talented (albeit non-magical) young Asian women pairing up with famous white men. Not that Cho Chang or Parvati Patil had much choice. There weren't any Asian boys in Harry Potter, were there?

The Problem with Social Media

I spend so much time with myself that I think I'm normal. But I'm not.

I'm not the most tech savvy person around, but between blogging, and Facebook, and texting, I've started to assume (unconsciously) that everyone else uses social media, too. Recently, however, I've been reminded that this is absolutely untrue.

Young people, below the age of 25 tend to use online communities and networks more than people over 25, but even then, over a third of people under 25 don't even look at blogs and social networks, much less contribute to them.

The point of this post? A really cool breakdown of social media use a friend showed me. Enjoy!

Mount Hope, Part II

I had the opportunity to visit Mount Hope cemetery last week. An incredible sense of history and indebtedness passed over me as a looked at the graves of the men who built the first Chinatown in New England. Someone tells me that the flags by some of the graves represent the veterans buried here. Someone comes to place new flags by the graves every fourth of July.

Without constant care, the farthest of the three plots is still covered in shin-high grass and wildflowers. In conventional terms, this section would be unkempt. Cemeteries become overgrown when no one cuts the grass. Wildflowers replace florist-bought blossoms when no relatives come to replace withered flowers.

I think the wildflowers are beautiful. For these men, many of whom never had relatives to tend their graves, and those who were buried under false names (because they came as illegal immigrants) with no way for their families to find them, the wildflowers are proof that someone still sees them. If these men have no one to set flowers in front of their headstones, they can know that nature has not forgotten, and nature keeps fresh flowers there as long as the growing season allows.

Mount Hope

At Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston, grave stones dating back to the 1800's cover hill after rolling hill. The cemetery is so large that most people drive through the cemetery to find their loved ones.

At a back corner, next to the maintenance shed, are three small plots of small headstones. The gravestones belong to Chinese immigrants, from the 1920's to the 1960's, when burial plots were segregated. Most of the headstones belong to men who immigrated from Toisan in a time when laws shut them out of many jobs, and refused women the right to immigrate. And so, these early settlers of Chinatown died and were buried under small headstones with no family to tend their graves.

The graves crumbled and fell, forgotten even by cemetery care takers for years, until a group of Asian Americans from Chinatown took notice. They raised money to resurrect the headstones over their proper plots and organized volunteers to clean up the site. Today, a new memorial marks the site with space for people to come and pay their respects to many of the founders of Boston's Chinese American community.

... And Now

Earlier I posted some pictures of my neighborhood. Here are the same places now, 8 years later.

Behind Cathedral Catholic Church.

Peter's Park. Notice BB King in the lower right hand corner.

Hmm...

Frank Rich on race in America.