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Singer Aaron Neville’s Rough Road to Salvation

Mother Jones

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Jacob Blickenstaff

The distinct beauty of Aaron Neville’s voice has been a constant through a recording career that covers regional soul of New Orleans, his integral work with his siblings in the Neville Brothers, his crossover pop success with Linda Ronstadt in the ’80s, and his more recent tributes to his old doo-wop and gospel influences.

Now 75, Neville’s latest album, Apache (a nickname from his youth), reconnects him with the sounds of 1960s and ’70s New Orleans soul, courtesy of producer Eric Krasno of the bands Soulive and Lettuce. Apache also serves as Neville’s reclamation of a youth fraught with challenges. He served a six-month stint in Orleans Parish Prison for car theft at the age of 19, and was later sentenced for burglary (the result of his falling in with a bad manager, the 1950s R&B singer and pimp Larry Williams). He also struggled with addiction into the early ’80s.

Neville’s poems—candid statements on love, awareness of the world, and his memories—are the lyrical source for the majority of the album, a first for a singer whose work is typically more interpretive. But his original songs have been signposts in a long career, starting with the 1960’s “Everyday” on the flip side of his first single, the Neville Brothers staple “Yellow Moon,” and “To Make Me Who I Am,” from the 1997 album of the same title.

Apache presents an opportunity to get to know an honest, humble soul who happens to be one of our greatest living voices. I photographed and spoke with Neville at his farm in Duchess County, New York, where he lives with his wife, Sarah; their peekapoo, Apache Jr.; and a whole bunch of chickens.

Mother Jones: You were 19 when you first set foot in a New Orleans recording studio. Tell me about the experience.

Aaron Neville: I just wanted to sing. I’d been wanting to record, like Ernie K-Doe and Irma Thomas, and I got a chance to be on the same label, Minit Records. Larry Williams got me the first recording session, he and Larry McKinley, who was a disc jockey. I would learn the song right then, because most of the stuff Allen Toussaint wrote. I wrote my first song, “Everyday” and he wrote the B-side, “Over You.” It’s not like today where they can fix things. Whatever you did was what you had—there wasn’t no 10 and 12 takes. If you did harmonies, it was everyone around the same microphone. To hear my voice coming back on the tape, that was amazing: “Oh wow, that’s me.” Then when it started playing on the radio, that was a big thing there.

MJ: I heard a story that Toussaint pushed you to sing more straight-ahead on that first session. Was there much creative tension in that relationship?

AN: No, I just sang that the way he wanted me to, and he was satisfied. After he did the music on “Everyday,” he started modeling everything else he wrote for me behind that—sort of like a doo-wop thing.

MJ: Tell me about your relationship with Larry Williams.

AN: Larry came to New Orleans around ’56 and took the Hawkettes out on the road with him, but he told me, “I’ll be back for you.” When I got out of jail, he got me in the studio to record and took me on the road. He got tired of being misused, so he says he’s going to be a pimp—he went to California and started pimping. When I went out there, he was going to manage me, but I had a contract with Minit records, so I did a few gigs with him and Etta James and Johnny Watson at the 5-4 Ballroom.

I had to do something to earn my keep. Since I didn’t want to pimp, he said we’ve got this guy who will book some burglaries. We’d go and clean the place out, and we had rooms in a hotel out on the highway and we’d fill it up with clothes and suits and whatever. The whole time I’m saying to myself, “Lord, get me out of this, send me back home, please.” So when I did get busted, I said, “Thank you, Jesus.” I ended up doing time in ’63 and part of ’64 fighting forest fires. It was dangerous. That’s when I first got into the weights. I was looking like the Hulk up in there. I was 22 years old.

MJ: The success of 1966’s “Tell It Like It Is”—another local New Orleans production—caused problems in that the label, Parlo, couldn’t keep up with the demand. Was that frustrating for you?

AN: They were trying to make it look like they knew what they were doing, but they didn’t. They had to declare bankruptcy, so hey. I was fresh out on the streets with a hit record. I didn’t have time to really think about that. I had people coming at me to manage me—they didn’t have nothing to offer, they were just telling me crazy stuff. They were going to send me on the road with no music, no stage clothes, no nothing. This guy Joe Jones, who was managing the Dixie Cups and Alvin “Shine” Robinson, was a shyster, but he kinda saved the day because he came in and made sure that I had music, clothes, and pictures and stuff. He was a professional but, like I said, a shyster—he was looking out for his interests. At the time, Frank Sinatra wanted to do something with me but Joe didn’t let me know about it, and messed it up.

I never really got paid for “Tell It Like Is,” but I look back at it and say God knew what he was doing; he probably figured that if I had got money back in them days I wouldn’t be here now. That’s okay. I’m here. And I’m still singing the song.

MJ: So, Apache marks the first time in your career you’ve written the lyrics for an entire album.

AN: I write poetry on my iPhone. I’ve got about 100 poems on there. So I wanted to do some of my stuff and that’s how I got hooked up with Eric Krasno and Dave Gutter. We started talking on the phone, or texting, and they’d send me some ideas, and then we got in the studio.

MJ: So these songs start purely as poems? Expressions of feeling that you later set to music?

AN: I write when there’s something happening in my life and it helps me to get through whatever. I have to be inspired. I can’t just sit down and plan to write. “Yellow Moon” was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel—she’s dead now—it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I’m home with the kids and looking up and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.

MJ: A few songs on Apache speak of your love for your second wife, Sarah, whom you married in 2010, three years after Joel passed. How did you navigate your grief and open yourself up to a new relationship?

AN: I buried Joel on our 48th anniversary. I had been with her since I was 16. I think Joel might have sent Sarah into my life. It was God-sent. That first year after she passed, I can’t even explain it. I would cry, and people would come and tell me, “I know what you’re going through.” I’d think, “You don’t know what I’m going through.” They had no idea! It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Before that, the lowest part was when Joel had left with the kids and went to be near her momma in ’72. That’s when I did “Hercules.” When Sarah came in, she let me talk about Joel, because it was heavy on me. I’d cry and it was a healing thing, you know?

MJ: Anyone who writes about you points out how distinctive your voice is. Even when you account for your influences—cowboy yodels, early gospel, doo-wop, and soul—there’s something in it that is undeniably unique, improvisational, and in the moment.

AN: There’s a saying, “He who sings prays twice.” It’s like somebody is telling me how to do it. I can’t explain it, and sometimes I’ll be singing and I just want to close my eyes, and I wish I could just hit a note that could cure cancer. That’s how I feel when I’m singing. This lady told me about an autistic boy in Las Vegas, he was about six years old, they couldn’t do nothing with him; he’d flail around and they had to keep him constrained. The only thing that would calm him down: They’d put the headset on and I was singing. It gave me chills to hear that. I said it must have been the God in me touching the God in him. I ain’t gonna take credit for that.

MJ: It’s worth mentioning this beautiful farm that we’re looking out at.

AN: It’s paradise. Going to the city, I’m always in a hurry to get back here. Peace and calm. Sometimes I just sit out there and look at the trees, the harmony in the trees. They just lay together. There are no problems, nobody arguing with each other, except the chickens maybe.

Jacob Blickenstaff

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Singer Aaron Neville’s Rough Road to Salvation

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Don’t Underestimate “Jane the Virgin,” the Soap Spinoff With a Social Conscience

Mother Jones

Jennie Synder Urman Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Perhaps because Jane the Virgin has such a silly premise—a 23-year-old virgin is accidentally inseminated at a routine gynecological appointment—and perhaps because it’s aired on CW, a network best known for its searing teen dramas, the show tends to get lost in the assumption that it should be judged by the company it keeps. But Jane the Virgin accomplishes quite a lot in each 43-minute episode. Inspired by a Venezuelan telenovela, the show balances a slightly satirical soap-opera style with heartfelt storylines and the comedy that stems inevitably from Jane’s predicament.

Jane the Virgin makes some unusual calls for a mainstream TV show: Its heroine is a virgin by choice, her abuela is undocumented and speaks only Spanish, and the writers give us an unvarnished look at the travails of new motherhood—some are mothers themselves—as well as issues such as postpartum depression and the difficulties faced by immigrants in America. With the season three premiere due for delivery on October 17, I caught up with Jennie Synder Urman, Jane‘s creator and showrunner, for a little chat.

Mother Jones: Tell us more about the show’s origins.

JSU: Ben Silverman brought me the original Venezuelan telenovela. He told me the log line—a virgin gets accidentally artificially inseminated. From there, I came up with the show. The original is very different, and I didn’t want to just remake what they made successfully. I started to think about an older character whose virginity was more of a choice, less than circumstance—when you’re younger, half the people are virgins, half aren’t. And I wanted it to be a multigenerational story between a daughter, her mother, and her grandmother, because those are the relationships that I love: strong women and matriarchies. We have a character who loves telenovelas and the characters, and how her life starts to become like one of the telenovelas she loves to watch. That’s what I ultimately pitched to the studio.

MJ: You and head writers Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin are white. How do you keep things real when it comes to Latina culture?

JSU: Well, we also have nonwhite women in our writing room, and I have a cast of Latina women. We’re all very close, and we talk and they tell me what feels real. But I’m trying to create characters, not represent an entire culture. If you try to do that, you fall into a trap of stereotypes and clichés. I’m writing Jane, the daughter of Xo, who’s the daughter of Alba. I’ve created those characters, so I’m loading them up with specific things. They’re a Catholic family and I’m not Catholic, but I also have Catholic writers. I feel like race and ethnicity is really important, but also socioeconomic class and religion, and I’m baking it all into these characters. We’re all humans, we all want the same thing: love and respect and success and family and happiness.

MJ: Your writers and directors are mostly women. Was that a conscious choice?

JSU: Yeah, I think so. Conscious in that I don’t have the unconscious bias that women are not able to do all of these jobs and do them well. To me, the heart of the show is the Villanueva women. So it was very important to get female views early on, because without women, maybe those little moments that you don’t think about would be defaulted to men. We want you to think about everything, so you’re not just assuming this person is a man because you have a “contractor.” Why can’t the contractor be a woman? Being surrounded by women helps to further that particular agenda. We have wonderful male writers and directors, too, but predominantly the people who have stuck and lasted on Jane have been women. They’ve done a great job. I brought ’em back.

MJ: It seems pretty special to have a mostly female space in television.

JSU: Most of my actors have told me they worked with more female directors on one season of Jane than they have in their whole career! I like that we have a space where a female director can succeed. She can take 10 minutes if she needs to pump because she has a new baby. Last year, I think 15 of 22 writers and directors were women. This year, I don’t know what our makeup is, but it’s gotta be that or more. I’ve got a son and a daughter and I want them to see women leading things in general.

MJ: In one interview, Jessica O’Toole said the writer’s room has “one token straight white male.”

JSU: We do! We’ll turn to him and be like, “Well, what do you think about this?” Laughs.

MJ: I’ve been impressed by your attention to the flaws in America’s immigration policies. Were you worried about blowback?

JSU: I was really moved and inspired early on when I met Diane Guerrero, who is Lina on our show and who is in Orange Is the New Black. She told me this story about when she was 14 and her parents were deported. Just stunning how no one checked up on her afterward! Her parents weren’t criminals; they just were undocumented. They tried to get their papers and because of circumstance, because of people who misled them, they didn’t, and they sent these parents of this 14-year-old girl away.

I remember feeling like we have to use this platform to dramatize that in some way. I cast the three women—Jane, Xo and Alba—as Venezuelan, partly as an homage to the telenovela and partly because I wanted to have Alba be undocumented, so we could play that fear and victory when she gets her green card. The cast would be so excited when we put a hashtag “immigration reform.” Our feeling was like, we’re gonna make everybody fall in love with Alba, because she’s this great grandmother. Then suddenly you’re like, “Wait, why are we trying to get her to leave the country?” It would affect people by personalizing the political.

MJ: The show’s realistic, unglamorous look at new motherhood isn’t something we typically see on TV. The scene where Jane’s milk comes in while she’s out on her front lawn comes to mind—or when she forgets her breast pump on a writer’s retreat.

JSU: I was very committed to that. I’ve got two very young kids and I was stunned at how hard it was. I had a lot of people at the beginning who were saying, “Well, what happens once she has the baby? Where does the story go from there?” The implication is that her life stops because she has a baby. How can a mother be interesting? Who cares about that love life or that career agenda? As a writer, you spend your whole life sort of thinking about yourself and forming your identity and where you want to be in the world and then you have a baby and you’re like, “Oh my god, I work for you now?” It’s a real earthquake.

I was writing at the same time I was having my kids, who now are five and six, but when I was doing Jane at the beginning they were probably three and four. The balance was hard. Nursing was really hard—I was shocked! I felt like someone had taken over my body for the first six months. I remember after the first day we had our son, my husband and I looked at each other in the morning and we were like, “That was one day? What the fuck? How are we going to do 18 years?” I hadn’t seen that on TV. We knew Jane had this baby, and I didn’t want the baby to just disappear. You’re always looking for drama and conflict and difficulties for your character, and having a new baby is a really difficult thing, especially for a character like Jane who plans everything.

MJ: So, what can we look forward to in season three?

JSU: We’re going to try to continue to balance our comedy and drama and social responsibility. Our family is Venezuelan, and Venezuela is in a really difficult situation right now. I want the show to at least be aware of that reality. Food shortages and no medicine—I think the more we pull from specifics, the more texture it gets, and the more real it becomes. We want to always balance the fantastical telenovela twists and turns with the more grounded, emotional, dramatic and comedic moments.

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Don’t Underestimate “Jane the Virgin,” the Soap Spinoff With a Social Conscience

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New Tapes Reveal Trump Lewdly Discussing his Daughter, Black Women, Threesomes, and More

Mother Jones

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On Saturday afternoon, CNN published several audio clips from the Howard Stern show, of conversations between Donald Trump and Howard Stern. In the freshly rediscovered clips, Trump makes lewd comments about his daughter, Ivanka, and discusses his thoughts on sex with women who are menstruating, sex with black women, threesomes, sex addiction, sex with Miss USA contestants… and more.

Several of the clips feature Trump discussing Ivanka’s physique. In a September 2004 interview, Stern asks Trump if he can refer to Ivanka as “a piece of ass.” Trump says yes. “My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka,” says Trump, and after a bit of back and forth, Stern asks: “Can I say this? A piece of ass,” to which Trump responds with “Yeah.” In an October 2006 interview, when Stern made a comment about Ivanka’s breasts and asked if she had gotten implants, Trump responded with, “She’s actually always been very voluptuous. She’s tall, she’s almost 6 feet tall and she’s been, she’s an amazing beauty.”

Mother Jones and other outlets have previously published clips of Trump making crude comments about women on Stern’s show, including one where he calls Jennifer Lopez’s butt “too fat.” In another, Trump responds to a question from Stern about whether he’d stay with Melania if she was disfigured in a car accident by asking, “How do the breasts look?”

In a 1997 interview clip unearthed by CNN, Stern asks Trump if he’s ever had sex with a menstruating woman. “Donald, seriously, you would not, right, am I correct?” Stern says.

“Well, I’ve been there. I have been there, Howard, as we all have,” Trump answers.

Later in the same interview, Stern asks Trump if he’s “ever had a black woman in bed.” Trump responds by asking Stern what his “definition of black” is. “Interesting, his bed is a rainbow. I like this discussion,” Stern says. “The rainbow coalition, as Rev. Jesse would say,” responds Trump.

In additional interviews published by CNN, Trump calls age 35 “check-out time” when it comes to leaving women, and responds to a question about whether he’s had a threesome: “Haven’t we all? Are we babies?” In another interview, he implies that he’s had sex with Miss Universe or Miss USA contestants, saying: “It could be a conflict of interest. But, you know, it’s the kind of thing you worry about later, you tend to think about the conflict a little bit later on.”

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New Tapes Reveal Trump Lewdly Discussing his Daughter, Black Women, Threesomes, and More

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Donald Trump’s Newest Adviser Says Global Warming Is a Huge Threat to National Security

Mother Jones

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Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has signed on as a senior adviser to Donald Trump—even though the two men’s views are oceans apart on an issue very close to Woolsey’s heart: climate change.

For years, the former CIA director has been an advocate for cleaner energy and has called for addressing global warming from a national security perspective. He argues that our current energy sources put us at “the whims of OPEC’s despots” and make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. He wants the United States to shift from its reliance on coal and oil to renewables and natural gas. “There’s enough consensus that human-generated global warming gas emissions are beginning to have an effect,” he said in an interview in 2010. “Next year might be cooler than this year but that doesn’t mean the trend isn’t there.” (Indeed, the world keeps getting warmer.)

In 2013, Woolsey was one of dozens of national security experts who signed a statement declaring that climate change represents a “serious threat to American national security interests.” The “potential consequences are undeniable, and the cost of inaction, paid for in lives and valuable US resources, will be staggering,” read the statement. “Washington must lead on this issue now.”

Trump, on the other hand, doesn’t believe in global warming, having called it a Chinese hoax. He’s even pointed to cold winter weather in an attempt to debunk this “GLOBAL WARMING bullshit.” Trump wants to scrap President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and back out of the Paris climate accord. Rather than move toward renewable energy, he wants to make the United States energy independent by resuscitating the coal industry.

Mother Jones reached out to Woolsey to ask how he feels about Trump’s climate change denialism. He did not immediately respond. In a statement distributed by the Trump campaign, Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, criticized Hillary Clinton for how she ran the State Department. Trump, Woolsey insisted, “understands the magnitude of the threats we face and is holding his cards close to the vest.” So does he think Trump is a secret believer in climate change after all?

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Donald Trump’s Newest Adviser Says Global Warming Is a Huge Threat to National Security

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Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates

Mother Jones

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To call Joyce Carol Oates merely prolific would be a towering understatement. Her debut novel, With Shuddering Fall, appeared back in 1964, and Oates, now 78, has been a prodigious presence in American literature ever since, pumping out novels, short stories, poetry, plays, nonfiction works, and even children’s books—more than 100 titles in all. There’s no shortage of accolades either. She’s won a National Humanities Medal, a National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, two O Henry Awards, and the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, to name just a handful.

Soul at the White Heat, an essay collection out on September 20, is Oates’ third book this year and perhaps one of her more meditative. Drawing on an array of canonical authors past and contemporary, she investigates what motivates some of the most prominent literary voices in the English language to do what they do. The author, whose dedication to the craft is beyond question, also scrutinizes her own relationship with the written word. I reached out to Oates via email to inquire about her process, her myriad voices, and how she maintains this literary stamina.

Mother Jones: In the opening essay of Soul at the White Heat, you stake out the different approaches of famous writers pertaining to the place of politics (or social justice) in their writing. On one side we have the likes of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair, Charles Dickens. On the other there are Oscar Wilde and Vladimir Nabokov, who dismissed this type of writing roundly (“mediocrity thrives on ideas”). What place do politics hold in your writing?

Joyce Carol Oates: The greatest works of literature seem to embody both “art” and “morality” (of some sort). We come away from the tragedies of Shakespeare with a profound sense of having encountered reality in its most pristine form—yet the art-work is elaborately artificial, the very genre of tragedy in poetry an anti-naturalist perspective. Of course, both Wilde & Nabokov believe in many things, and these things emerge in their writing clearly—for Wilde, the folly of humankind and the (romantic) grandeur of the heroic, lone individual (not unlike Wilde himself); for Nabokov, the possibility of a kind of transcendence through a great, prevailing, superior sort of love (especially in Ada, the most self-congratulatory of novels.) There is a greater art in Dickens than in either Wilde or Nabokov, but it isn’t at the expense of Dickens’ social conscience. It would be difficult for a writer of realism to avoid suggesting a political/moral perspective in his or her fiction. “Politics” per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.

Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal. I feel akin to Shakespeare in the sense that, as I see it, he lived to dramatize the unfailingly exciting, unfathomably strange interplay among human beings that constitutes “scenes” in his plays, and constitutes “story” in prose fiction. There is something thrilling in the mimesis of life’s surprising unfolding. Long ago I’d said that I am “fascinated by the phantasmagoria of human personality”—this is perhaps even truer now than years ago.

MJ: Fiction writers in particular, it seems, often have an almost filial closeness with their characters. Do you share this?

JCO: Yes, the characters’ voices are sometimes (to me) so absorbing, I feel a terrible loss when I (eventually must) complete a work of fiction. Sometimes I stumble upon a wonderfully irresistible (to me) voice, unexpectedly; the young narrator of Expensive People, for instance, which was my first extended experience of writing in a voice distinctly not my own. Another, the narrator of Zombie. Still another, the narrator of My Sister, My Love. These novels are so special to me. (I don’t expect that they will have nearly the same significance to anyone else.) They represent a kind of fiction I would love to pursue more or less constantly, but dare not. (Why not? Not sure.)

MJ: I’m curious whether you approach reading with the same ferocity you apply to your writing?

JCO: Well, I am more or less reading all the time. My first love was reading, which inspired me to write. Reading yields a wish to write, I think, except if the reading is dull and uninspiring. It’s impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James—and many more—without wanting to write, however entirely different one’s writing will be. That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

MJ: So much of your personal life goes into your writing. Is there anything off limits?

JCO: I tend to think in dramatic terms. In life, there may be an actual drama, but it would be the fictionalized, imagined drama that engaged me. Whenever I write about something that is (if remotely) real, it is imbued with the surreal and invented, as in most of my “real” settings like Detroit (them, and Do With Me What You Will), Syracuse (I’ll Take You There), Princeton (American Appetites, The Accursed). Nabokov said, “Ordinary reality begins to rot and stink if the imagination does not transform it.” For me, ordinary reality is a starting point. (Of course there is nothing “ordinary” about reality. Look what Joyce did with Dublin.)

MJ: I’m wondering what drives you to write so much, and what you hope to convey at this point in your career.

JCO: I don’t really seem, to myself, to write “so much”—nor do I write quickly. You would be surprised, perhaps stunned, to see how much revising I do in a typical morning. Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite process. Writing allows for fictitious voices—the voices of persons unlike myself—that might otherwise be muted.

MJ: As someone whose first name is Joyce, who has taught James Joyce extensively, whose writing seems influenced by Joyce, do you ever feel like your literary life was a product of predestination?

JCO: I don’t believe in predestination—except for genetic predilections. Much in our lives is chance. I did not consider that I would lead a literary life. I’d thought initially, as a young girl, that I would be a teacher, since I so admired many of my teachers. And though I loved writing, I did not ever think of myself as a writer.

MJ: Soul and the White Heat contains reviews and literary analyses that have withstood the test of time. Are there works of literature about which you’ve had a radical change of opinion?

JCO: Nothing really comes to mind. I did not appreciate D.H. Lawrence so much as a younger writer as I did some years later, and I have not ever quite appreciated Virginia Woolf as so many others do, though I admire her diary enormously—it is one of the great diaries. Each time I undertake to reread Woolf, I am somewhat baffled by the signature breathlessness and relentlessly “poetic” tone, the shimmering impressionism, so very different from the vivid, precise, magisterial (and often very funny) prose of her contemporary James Joyce.

MJ: Tell me a bit more about your own writing process.

JCO: One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of material: how to structure it, what sort of sentences (direct, elliptical, simple or compound, syntactically elaborate), what tone (in art, “tone” is everything), pacing. Paragraphing is a way of dramatization, as the look of a poem on a page is dramatic; where to break lines, where to end sentences. It’s always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole. All these elements are particularly intriguing when a collection of short stories is assembled, for each story relates to the others thematically, and first stories and last stories should be related. It is important for me to discover the ideal title, for without this title the story or novel isn’t quite in focus.

All of these processes are constantly undergoing change, of course. “The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence has been written.” Only when you have completed a novel, or a story, can you return to the beginning and revise or rewrite. Though I revise constantly as I write, I will usually revise much of the work again after I’ve reached the ending. We have not discussed genres, but each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of “form” to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

I should stress that, for me, voice is predominant. I rarely write in my own voice except in book reviews and memoirs; otherwise, I am writing in mediated voices, modulated in terms of the characters whom the voices express. To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration. If Shakespeare’s great plays are variants of stories, even novels, you can see how each character is telling his story from his perspective; each is vying with the others for dominance, but in the end, in tragedy, most of these voices will die, to be replaced by the yet more vigorous voice of a younger generation. Shakespeare would seem to have been a person for whom the human voice/personality in all its splendid idiosyncrasy was absolutely enthralling.

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Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates

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This Former Killer Whale Trainer Is Taking on SeaWorld

Mother Jones

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SeaWorld has been a lightning rod for controversy in recent years, and no one knows that better than John Hargrove. On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, Hargrove—a former SeaWorld animal trainer—recounts his experiences working with orcas in captivity. From heavily medicated killer whales to the tragic death of his colleague, Hargrove paints a picture of an entertainment company in crisis.

SeaWorld, a nationwide chain of parks well known for its displays of marine animals, purports to blend “imagination with nature” and enable visitors to “explore, inspire and act.” It’s perhaps most famous for its orcas. Also known as killer whales, orcas are actually the largest member of the dolphin family. They weigh thousands of pounds and are, in the words of National Geographic, “one of the world’s most powerful predators.” SeaWorld’s treatment of orcas has come under intense scrutiny; the 2013 film Blackfish recounted the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau and showed the dangers (for both whales and humans) of keeping orcas in captivity. Hargrove appeared in the film.

Hargrove spent most of his time at SeaWorld as an orca trainer. Since he left, he has repeatedly accused the company of mistreating animals and endangering employees. Representatives of SeaWorld have denied these allegations, telling NPR in 2015, “We don’t put any animal in any stressful situation” and calling conditions depicted in Blackfish “a bit of exaggeration.” (You can read the company’s point-by-point rebuttal to Blackfish here.) When Hargrove came out with a book criticizing the company, SeaWorld denied many of his claims and said that he had quit the company “‘after being disciplined for a severe safety violation involving the park’s killer whales’ that resulted in his transfer from the orca stadium,” according to the Orlando Sentinel. (Hargrove denied that he was responsible for the safety violation, according to the paper.) SeaWorld also released a video showing Hargrove repeatedly using the n-word while intoxicated several years earlier. (“We do a lot of things we shouldn’t do when we drink,” Hargrove told the Sentinel. He went on television to apologize for the video.)

On Inquiring Minds, Hargrove tells co-host Indre Viskontas that it wasn’t just his colleagues who were in danger. Hargrove says he had multiple encounters with aggressive killer whales over the course of his career. In one incident, which took place when Hargrove was working at a different park not owned by SeaWorld, he describes escaping a close call with an orca named Freya, who he says had pulled him underwater before. When she wasn’t responding to his signals, Hargrove made a decision that he believes may have saved his life. Rather than swimming like mad for dry land, he moved to the center of the pool and waited for Freya to approach. Trying to outswim an orca is impossible, says Hargrove—it just makes it more fun for the giant predator to hunt you. If he had tried to make an escape, he says, “that would have equaled almost certain death for me.” In the end, Freya’s behavior changed. She followed Hargrove’s instructions and even helped push him out of the pool. (You can listen to the interview below.)

But two other trainers, Brancheau and Alexis Martinez, weren’t so lucky. Both died after being viciously attacked by orcas owned by SeaWorld. Martinez, who worked at a non-SeaWorld park, was killed in December 2009 by a whale on loan from SeaWorld. Brancheau died two months later at SeaWorld’s Orlando park after being violently attacked by a whale named Tilikum. “It was not a shock to me that he had done that to her,” recalls Hargrove. “I know he was capable of it. All the whales are capable of it.”

For Hargrove, SeaWorld was a childhood fantasy gone terribly wrong. While he had dreams of working at the park as a child, he soon discovered that the relationship between man and whale wasn’t what he had envisioned. Hargrove claims he and his colleagues were frequently hurt on the job. And he says he often worked while sick or injured—diving deep into cold water and sometimes emerging spewing bloody sinus tissue.

SeaWorld declined to respond to detailed questions about Hargrove’s allegations on Inquiring Minds, but the company did say in an email that many of Hargrove’s claims are “false.”

Since leaving SeaWorld, Hargrove has become an activist and has written a book called Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish. He’s now a central figure in the campaign to alter the way SeaWorld does business. And that campaign seems to be having an impact. Earlier this year, the company agreed to end its orca breeding program and to change the way it exhibits its orcas.

“Society has changed and we’ve changed with it,” SeaWorld said in an email. “We’re focusing our resources on real issues that help far more animals, like working with the Humane Society of the United States to fight commercial whaling, shark finning, and continuing our efforts to rescue, rehabilitate and release injured and sick animals to the wild.”

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This Former Killer Whale Trainer Is Taking on SeaWorld

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The Leaking Wars Have Begun Over Hillary Clinton’s FBI File

Mother Jones

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From the New York Times on Thursday:

Pressed by the F.B.I. about her email practices at the State Department, Hillary Clinton told investigators that former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had advised her to use a personal email account. The account is included in the notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation handed over to Congress on Tuesday, relaying in detail the three-and-a-half-hour interview with Mrs. Clinton in early July that led to the decision by James B. Comey, the bureau’s director, not to pursue criminal charges against her.

Well, that didn’t take long. Should we assume that basically everything in the FBI file is going to be steadily leaked to the press? Magic 8-Ball says “Signs point to yes.”

And I don’t even know which side leaked this. Democrats who figured it justified Hillary’s behavior? Republicans trying to make it look like Hillary is passing the buck? Hard to say. At this point, though, Congress might as well just release the entire package. Whatever’s in it, we’re better off getting the whole thing instead of periodic leaks strategically taken out of context to make Hillary look either good or bad.

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The Leaking Wars Have Begun Over Hillary Clinton’s FBI File

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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Stop Zika Cold

Mother Jones

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Mosquitoes may be small, but they pack a mean punch. Weighing in at a measly 2.5 milligrams, these buzzing arthropods are responsible for more deaths than snake bites, shark attacks, and murders combined. A whopping 725,000 people die each year from diseases transmitted by this common pest. Researchers have spent decades and millions of dollars fighting dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya—dangerous viruses that female mosquitoes can spread in a single bite. Now—as scientists rev up efforts to tackle the worsening mosquito-borne Zika epidemic that’s rocked the Americas—some scientists are tapping into Earth’s oldest organic armies as they seek to wipe out these diseases.

In this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, journalist and author Ed Yong explores the emerging science of the microbiome—the trillions of tiny organisms that inhabit the bodies of humans and other animals. Along the way, he tells host Kishore Hari about Wolbachia—one of nature’s most successful land-based bacteria—and its potential to aid the fight against Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses. Wolbachia, says Yong, has “tremendous promise in bringing tropical diseases to heal.”

Wolbachia is extremely versatile; it can infect more than 40 percent of all arthropod species, including spiders, insects, and mites. Research has shown that female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with the bacteria are unable to transmit common viruses, including Zika and dengue. And because Wolbachia passes from a female mosquito to her offspring, it could spread easily through a wild population. That means releasing a small batch of mosquitoes infected with the bacteria could help eradicate mosquito-borne diseases in a potentially short amount of time, says Yong. For a mosquito whose global range spans six continents—and includes a large chunk of the United States, the impact on global public health could be substantial. You can listen to the full interview below:

Despite years of research, treatments for many mosquito-borne illnesses is limited. Clinical trials for a Zika vaccine are underway, but researchers don’t expect one to be available to the public for at least 18 months. “There are no vaccines,” Yong says. “There are no good treatments for dengue. We need better ways of controlling these diseases.” Field trials of Wolbachia-carrying mosquitos have been underway in Australia since 2011, and in Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam since 2014. The results have shown great promise, with no ill effect on people or the environment.

Yong argues that Wolbachia is safer and more cost-effective than traditional vector control methods, such as spraying with insecticides. And unlike insecticides, bacteria are self-perpetuating. And Wolbachia doesn’t appear to affect mosquito populations, so other insects and animals that feed on these pests won’t miss a meal. “It’s not about killing mosquitos,” Yong says, “it’s about turning them into dead ends for viruses.”

To learn more about the incredible world of the microbiome, you can check out Yong’s new book, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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Scientists May Have Found a Way to Stop Zika Cold

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This Woman Accused Trump of Sexual Assault. She Finally Broke Her Silence.

Mother Jones

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Just a day after Donald Trump officially became the Republican presidential nominee, a woman broke her silence on allegations that he sexually assaulted her. In an interview with the Guardian published today, Jill Harth detailed how Trump made numerous sexual advances toward her in 1993, culminating when she says he cornered and groped her in a bedroom. Harth attempted to press charges in 1997 but withdrew her lawsuit and has since remained quiet about the case. She says that since her allegations resurfaced in a May New York Times article about Trump’s treatment of women, the Trump campaign has continuously pressured her to recant her account.

Harth says she first met Trump in 1992 during a business presentation, when she was working with the American Dream beauty pageant festival. Harth was with her romantic partner, George Houraney, at the time, but Harth says that did not deter Trump from sexually pursuing her. Trump “stared at her” throughout her meeting, according to Harth, and then asked Houraney: “Are you sleeping with her or what?” When Houraney said yes, Trump asked if it was “for the weekend or what?”

In Harth’s 1997 lawsuit, she describes several instances in which Trump allegedly harassed her. In one instance, Harth says Trump groped her under the table during a dinner with beauty pageant contestants. Then in 1993, Harth says, Trump cornered her in a bedroom in his Florida mansion during a business visit, an incident described in the lawsuit as an “attempted ‘rape’.” Harth tells the Guardian:

“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” Harth recalled, “and I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’ It was a shocking thing to have him do this because he knew I was with George, he knew they were in the next room. And how could he be doing this when I’m there for business?”

Jill Harth’s 1997 lawsuit via the Guardian

Though Harth did not use the word “rape” in her interview with the Guardian, she says, “If I hadn’t pushed him away, I’m sure he would have just went for it. He was aggressive.”

In a response to the Guardian, Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, said in a statement, “It is disheartening that one has to dignify a response to the below absurd query. Mr Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms Harth as these 24-year-old allegations lack any merit or veracity.”

Harth says she had resolved to not discuss the claims for years, but that after attempts by the Trump campaign to discredit her following the New York Times story, she is opening up now to demand an apology.

“His office—and I have it on my voicemails that he called, that they called—they asked me to recant everything when the New York Times article came out,” Harth tells the Guardian. “They were trying to get me to say it never happened and I made it up. And I said I’m not doing that.”

“Nobody was defending me, that’s why I’m talking,” Harth said. “You can believe it or not, but I went through hell and I still have to relive this again. And I just, I’m horrified that I have to think about this again.”

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This Woman Accused Trump of Sexual Assault. She Finally Broke Her Silence.

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The Dallas Police Shooter Bought an AK-47 Via Facebook

Mother Jones

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In 2014, Micah Johnson, who killed five police officers and injured seven in an ambush in Dallas last week, purchased an AK-47 rifle in a deal arranged through Facebook and finalized in a Target parking lot, according to the New York Daily News. In an interview with the Daily News, the seller, 26-year-old Colton Crews, said that Johnson “didn’t stand out as a nut job. He didn’t stand out as a crazy person at all.” In fact, because Johnson had been a US military service member, Crews said that “he was like your first pick when you’re selling a gun to somebody.”

The AK-47 was apparently not used in the Dallas attack. Citing an unnamed law enforcement official, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Johnson used an Izhmash-Saiga 5.45mm rifle, an AK-style variant, in the shooting. But news of the sale highlights just how easy it is to acquire a gun through Facebook. The social media giant has come under fire from activists who say the company isn’t doing enough to make sure the site isn’t used as an online weapons bazaar. In Texas, where Johnson purchased the AK-47 from Crews, background checks are not required in private sales, and Facebook pages dedicated to selling firearms are ubiquitous.

In the wake of the Orlando massacre last month, a disparate collection of individuals began taking to Facebook to report pages and individuals advertising gun sales in an attempt to get them kicked off the site for violating its user rules. In January, Facebook banned users from coordinating unregulated gun sales, but it has left the enforcement of the ban entirely to users who report violators.

In his interview with the Daily News, Crews said, “First off, it was my belief Johnson would have passed a background check. He didn’t seem weird in any way, just a normal guy.” At the Target parking lot where the deal was finalized, they made small talk. They checked out the AK-47, making sure it was in working condition, and Crews’ stepdad thanked Johnson for his service. Johson made a comment about how he missed the rifle’s firepower since returning home from Afghanistan. “He seems like he’s 100 percent on the up and up.”

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The Dallas Police Shooter Bought an AK-47 Via Facebook

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