Her blog is pretty fantastic (so subscribe!), and I might be biased but I think the interview is an interesting read too.  Check it out here!

Our Western tradition of name structure is simply that, a tradition.  As with any tradition it is unique to a certain culture and a certain time and it’s really fascinating to dig deeper into how other cultures deal with names.  Some put the surname first.  Most pass down a patrilineal surname but some cultures are matrilineal including many Native American cultures.  In Iceland they don’t even use family names.

When it comes down to it, a name is just a name right?  Sharing heritage and membership within a family group happens regardless of name.

And following the dominant cultural tradition simply for traditions-sake is LAME.  Especially when our Western tradition is inextricably linked to the subjugation of women and to gender inequality.

In the scope of history, it wasn’t all that long ago that our nation had just finished a systematic genocide and was still enslaving an entire race, not to speak of addressing women’s rights.  My point is that tradition is far from infallible and a poor excuse for any defenseless action.

Going as far back as medieval Europe, English Common Law and the Salic Law provided that all property held by the wife at the time of marriage became a possession of her husband and males alone were eligible to inherit land.

Moving forward to the 19th century, this legal doctrine was referred to as coverture.  Coverture basically provided for two status of women: “single” woman and ”covered” woman.  Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) explains coverture:

“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs everything; and is therefore called in our law -french a feme-covert; is said to be covert-baron, or under the protection and influence of her husband, her baron, or lord; and her condition during her marriage is called her coverture.”

In “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn points out a mind-numbing quotation of 1600s English law while writing about the oppression of women in his chapter entitled The Intimately Oppressed:

But all women were burdened with ideas carried over from England with the colonists, influenced by Christian teachings. English law was summarized in a document of 1632 entitled “The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights”:

In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife are one person, but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name…. A woman as soon as she is married, is called covert . . . that is, “veiled”; as it were,clouded and overshadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master. . . “

How disturbingly abhorrent and disgusting is that??

In the next few paragraphs of the book, Zinn then detailed how men in those times had such power over the women in a legal situation that they had the right to

‘punish and chastise the wife but not inflict permanent injury or death.’

Also, that

‘besides absolute possession of his wife’s personal property and a life estate in her lands, the husband took any other income that might be hers.  He collected wages earned by her labor. . .’

He even discussed how it was a crime for a woman to have a child out of wedlock while the men took no punishment at all for their role in that.  Ridiculous!

Even if you try to justify and drum up a reason for changing names upon marriage based on spiritual roots, Christianity or the Bible, the argument just falls completely flat.  I mean in the Bible women were viewed as property and men could take multiple wives!  Plus, when looking at all of these historical English laws, it wouldn’t be too much of  jump to conclude that they had been taking the Bible’s metaphor of “one flesh” a little bit too literally.

After all of my research, the issue of a woman taking the man’s name upon marriage just seemed to be a leftover remnant of a completely backwards way of thinking regarding gender equality.  To me, it represents a history of subjection and marginalization and I was not okay with that.  I mean, call me extreme but I shudder every time I see a letter addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Mans-Full-Name.  It bothers me.

To give my wife credit, she was the first to bring the subject up after engagement and in the end it was her decision and not mine to make. (Although, I might have been advocating pretty hard to influence her final decision, and I was supporting her 100%.)

Michelle and I were married on Saturday, August 28th in Holland, Michigan.  Why Holland and not Grand Rapids?  Well, we love our city and we really have no attachment whatsoever to Holland, we just happened to find a great deal on a perfect place for a reception in Holland and just went with it.   We had originally wanted a beach wedding/tent reception but we scrapped that idea because it turned out to be way more difficult than we wanted and then we ended up in Holland.  It was kind of random, but it all turned out okay.  Because we had the wedding and reception in Holland we really wanted to be sure to get some photos at some of our favorite spots in Grand Rapids.  So, we started our day early and took all of our photos around the city before heading to Holland.

It was a pretty hot day with no clouds in the sky, so there was lots of squinting and maybe some sweating.

Groomsmen from left:  my older brother Clint, and then my good friends Craig, Sky, and Matt.  Matt also lives in GR, but the rest of the guys had to make it into town from as far away as Colorado and Tennessee.  They all made it at least a day in advance, and it was just really really great to spend the amount of time with them that I was able to in the week leading up to the wedding.  Having all of my favorite people in one place was a blessing and happiness that I hadn’t prepared myself for in all of the hustle and bustle of preparing for the wedding, but it was SO GOOD.

We didn’t try to avoid every cliche and we weren’t trying to do certain things just for the sake of non-conformity, but one thing we did do was ask a lot of “why” questions while we were planning our wedding.  Why this?  Why that?  And if the answer to the why question had little meaning to us or little utility outside of tradition, then we tried to avoid it.

For example, do I have to wear a tux or a suit?  Why?  I’m not the biggest fan of tuxedos and I have never liked the way I look in a suit.  Something about being really tall with super long orangutan arms, I don’t know.  So I decided to value my comfort over the risk of looking too casual.

Bridesmaids clockwise from bottom-left:  Michelle’s older sister Julie, friends Elise and Christy, and Michelle’s younger sister Sandy.

Leading up to engagement and later with a wedding band, we wanted to be really careful and purposeful about finding the right rings.  Because, you know, blood diamonds and everything.  But seriously it’s an incredibly important issue.  Diamonds pass through so many hands before making it to market that there is literally no way to know where they originated.  And yet if you ask any jewelry dealer if their diamonds are conflict free they will assure you that without a doubt their diamonds are conflict free.  But they are liars.  There is just no way to know for sure.

We wanted to completely remove ourselves from the demand side of the diamond equation and recycle instead, so we searched high and low before finding the perfect ring at an antique store in Toledo, Ohio.  It’s an incredible and delicate old ring, we’re both really happy with it.  I think it was less than $300 but yet it’s more unique than any ring we saw in any jewerly shop and we value it just as much.  Michelle’s wedding band is from Turtle Love Co.,  an online “artisan, indie, eco” jewerly shop.  You can’t see exactly from the picture but my ring has Michelle’s fingerprint on the outside of the ring.  It was made by Brent and Jessica Williams of the unique and amazing Etsy store Fabuluster.  We seriously can’t recommend those two sources enough.

After pictures, we rolled on down to Holland for the late afternoon ceremony.  The ceremony was held in a beautiful, windowed room at Holland Theological Seminary.  My friend Matt who had been pastoring the Jr. High students to which I had been volunteering my time the last 2 years, officiated our ceremony.  That last sentence was pretty awful, but I’m just going to keep moving along.

My cousin Matt from Montreal took care of all of the music for the ceremony and did a great job.  I was so glad he could make it down to Michigan and be a part of our weekend.

We wanted the ceremony to be quick and very simple.  So we stripped it down to only its essential parts without making it seem irreverently short.  No ring-bearers.  No unity candles or first communions.  No special music or special readings.  Just, uh, the good stuff I guess.

This is one of my favorite pictures.  I think it shows how simple, yet how beautiful it was in the room.  The funny thing is, Holland Theological Seminary is on the campus of Hope College and it was their “Welcome Weekend” for the new school year.  Bad planning, I know!  So out on that lawn (that you thankfully cannot see) were tons of students, parents, activities, and most annoyingly a huge utility truck of some sort parked right out there on the lawn.  We were kind of pissed about that, but what can you do?  It was almost as if we were in some corny movie scene when we were waved at by the Hope mascot who was riding a golf cart down the road as we made our grand exit.  It was hilarious.

Next, obv was the reception at the Holland Area Arts Council.  This was the place we were so excited about that I mentioned earlier.  We spent a lot of time and energy on the planning and set up and everything else needed to get this place looking like this, but it was totally worth it, and it was such a cool space to have a party.  The side room in the back had all of the food, desserts and coffee while appetizers were in the front lobby.

Michelle spent many hours hand-crafting all of the centerpieces.  I thought they were fun and unique.  Apparently the green-fuzzy-ball look is all the rage.  On each plate was our wedding favor that were prepared by Michelle’s mom and sister.  It was a small decorative bag of vegan mexican wedding cookies with the recipe attached as a bonus.

Planning the food we would serve was the part of the planning that got me the most excited.  Our alcohol was provided by Martha’s Vineyard of Grand Rapids.  All of our food was catered by our friends at Brick Road Pizza in Grand Rapids.  I cannot even tell you how excited we were to be able to eat our favorite vegan foods from our favorite restaurant on our wedding day.

We had an assembler guy putting together ciabatta flat bread sandwiches using a choice of 3 fillings.  Tempeh reuben, barbecue shredded jackfruit, and buffalo tofu.  Michelle is partial to their barbecue pulled “pork” (jackfruit).  I love their buffalo tofu and tempeh reuben.  There was also a walnut beet salad, a pesto potato salad and the appetizers were a fruit spread and garlic bread with bruschetta.

A lot of people were skeptical and nervous to try new things, but most gave it a shot and we are still getting some pretty rave reviews.

Our wedding cake was a cupcake tower of (special order) vegan cupcakes from Second Floor Bakery in Holland.  Carrot cake, chocolate, and vanilla.

My mom also made some vegan peanut butter balls aka ‘buckeyes’ and oreo balls that went with the organic, fair trade coffee from Higher Grounds Trading Company of Traverse City.

The aftermath of the cupcake battle.  I think I got the worst of it.  But only because I held back like the gentleman I am.

Our first dance was to the song “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová.

In a room off the front lobby there was a photo booth set up for guests to use props and goof around.  It was such a great idea and provided lots of laughs.

Overall, there was a ton of stuff that went wrong, including a couple pretty huge issues to overcome on the day of the wedding.  But in the end it all came it together in it’s own quirky way.

I was really happy that almost my entire group of now-freshman students made it to the ceremony and a few stuck around for the reception too.  In the end, Michelle and I were both really happy to share our wedding day with so many of our friends and family.  We really had a great time and I’m pretty sure they all did too.

Ultimately we wanted to be frugal, but mostly we simply wanted things to be simple, and to represent who are, our love for each other, and what we care about, love, and value.  In my mind, I think we accomplished that goal.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?” “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people,” they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church — the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate — leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor — both black and white — through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years — especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath –
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be — are — are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954 ; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954 — in 1945 rather — after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China — for whom the Vietnamese have no great love — but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States’ influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing — in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon, the only solid — solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call “VC” or “communists”? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred — rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the — for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do [immediately] to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing — Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile — Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality…and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala — Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing — embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate — ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says:

Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message — of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong
Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

PEACH+RASPBERRY CRISP

12 medium firm peaches (it’s ok if they’re just-not-quite-ripe-yet)
6 oz. container raspberries
3/4 C. Sugar
1T. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

2 C. brown sugar
1 3/4 C. quick oats
1 2/3 C. all-purpose flour
1 C. chopped pecans
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/3 C. Earth Balance

[I know the first thing you are thinking is "Dannng that's a lot of veg butter."  But remind and convince yourself that this is a dessert comprised of fruit and nuts to balance out those fats -- it's basically breakfast food!  At least that's what I tell myself.  But seriously go ahead and cut back on the Earth Balance at your own peril, just know that the crisp might not be as crispy and crunchy.]

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Blanch the peaches for about 45-60 sec. to aid in peeling.  Take peeled peaches and slice them straight into a 13×9 pan.  Also dump in the raspberries and give it a quick, gentle mix to combine.  Combine the dry ingredients from the first group, sugar through nutmeg, and then sprinkle evenly over the fruit.  Then sprinkle between 1/4 C. and 1/2 C. water over the fruit (use less water for ripe peaches).

Combine dry ingredients from second group, brown sugar through cinnamon, and then cut in the vegan butter.  I let my Earth Balance come close to room temperature because I’m lazy.  However you do it, if the topping is getting sort of clumpy, that’s a good sign.  Dump over the top of the fruit and spread it out to make sure it is even.  You should have a very full 13×9.

Bake 40-45 min.  Remove from the oven and let it cool on the counter for a while.  The first helpings while it is still hot will be semi-runny, but don’t worry, you’ll need the juice as it cools and comes together.

[As I said, I used firm peaches were "just-not-quite-ripe-yet." This helps in my opinion because the peaches behave a bit more like apples when they are more firm and it also adds a bit of tartness to balance out the sweet crisp topping.  However, if you are using riper, softer peaches there are a few small tweaks that might be necessary.  First, cut the peaches into larger chunks so they don't turn to mush.  Also, depending on how sweet they are, you might want to cut the sugar down towards 1/2 C and you'll want to add less water.]

Top with your favorite vegan ice cream and ENJOY!

*Stuff you probably didn’t care to know:  Most people don’t think of peaches in relation to Michigan, but especially the southwest part of the state produces a lot peaches.  Overall Michigan usually ranks 7th in the country in peach production behind the usual suspects (CA, GA, SC, etc.).

These whoopie pies by the way are absolutely perfect, they are the ultimate whoopies.  If you have any sort of emotional attachment to whoopie pies as I do, then you must make these.  You will not regret it.

I combined two recipes with my own slight variations to each.  The cookie/cake recipe is from Ashley Skabar at about.com and can be found in its original version here.  The frosting recipe is slightly modified from Hannah Kaminsky’s whoopie pie recipe in her My Sweet Vegan cookbook.

Whatcha need:

Cake:

1 C. unsweetened almond milk
1 T. apple cider vinegar
1 1/3 C. flour
2/3 C. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 C. Earth Balance @ room temperature (or other non-dairy butter/maragarine)
1 C. sugar
2 T. egg-replacer powder mixed with 4 T. hot water

Frosting:

2 C. confectioners sugar
1/3 C. vegetable shortening
4 T. unsweetened almond milk (or plain soymilk)
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Prep:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. In a small bowl, whisk together the almond milk and apple cider vinegar, and let it sit for 5 minutes allowing it to thicken and slightly curdled. Set it aside for later.

[I don't prefer air-bake baking sheets for most cookies, but I'm convinced that Air-bake made a world of difference for these whoopie pies.  So definitely use Air-bake if you have them.]

2. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set it aside for later also.

3. In a small bowl, mix egg-replacer powder and hot water until fluffy- about 30-45 sec.

4. In a large mixing bowl using an electric hand mixer, cream together the Earth Balance and sugar. Add the egg-replacer and beat until the mixture is creamy and well combined. Add the dry mixture in several additions, alternating with the almond milk mixture, until all ingredients have been added and the mixture is smooth.

5. Using an ice cream scoop or large spoon, scoop the batter onto the prepared sheets, making about 1 1/2 inch rounds and leaving 1 1/2 to 2″ between cakes. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the cakes spring back when pressed. Carefully transfer the cakes to a wire cooling rack (or just slide the entire sheet of wax paper onto a cool table) to cool completely before filling.

6. Wash hand-mixer to use again for frosting.

7. To make the filling, begin with the mixer on low and beat together the confectioner’s sugar and shortening. Add 3 T. almond milk and continue beating until the frosting starts to take shape.  It will still be a bit stiff, so add the final 1 T. almond milk and the vanilla extract.  Beat on high for a few minutes until it is lighter and fluffier.

8. Assemble using as much filling as your conscience allows!

Should make 10-12 pies (20-24 ind. cakes).

Happy Easter!

The Revolution does not begin
over coffee at the Epicurean,
does not begin over gravy and grits,
in the first joint, the last hit,
the Morning Chron, your morning shit.
The Revolution does not begin
pulling greenchain on the graveyard shift,
or making the welfare line by nine.
The Revolution doesn’t begin
in your mind, your heart, your liver,
your prick, doesn’t begin
when you clench your fist,
The Revolution doesn’t begin in 1776,
1917, the depression, the dawn,
doesn’t begin with gurus, Cinques,
the news from L.A. Havana, manana.
The Revolution does not begin,
with both barrels, at the bottom of bottles,
on the pages of bibles, with the blues.
The Revolution does not begin,
The Revolution has no beginning.
The Revolution is unending.
The Revolution is not a faucet-
you can’t turn it on and off.
The Revolution leaks all the time-
you can’t call a plumber to fix it.

Among many other things, he talked about the role that the U.S. media plays in the drug war and their pattern of skewing news coverage to ‘bash Mexico.’  And how the drug war is a tool used by the United States government to bully Mexico into agreements and concessions (ex. NAFTA) and also a leveraging tool to infiltrate and gain influence over Mexican politics.  And the dynamics of cooperation and corruption in regards to government, cartels, trafficking, and drug lords.  And how the drug war will never ultimately be ‘won’ because it is a major supporting pillar of the Mexican economy.  And how legalization would play into alleviating some of the ills currently present.

But aside from all that, I just came away feeling that it’s near impossible not to be inspired by John Ross.  I mean, this is a guy who at age 64 traveled to Iraq to volunteer to be a human shield in the lead up to the Iraq War.   A guy who at 72 recites poetry with a bounce on his toes and a fire in his spirit.  Traveling the country, the embodiment of revolution – revolution that he reminds, is not like a faucet.

Photo: Marcia Perskie courtesy of Nation Books

Whatcha need:

1 package firm tofu – drained (I typically use Nasoya Organic Firm)
1/3 C. dill pickle relish – or about 2 dill spears minced
1/3 C. vegenaise or nayonaise
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 to 3/4 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp. sea salt (to taste)
1/8 tsp. cumin

Mash the tofu with a serving fork until it is to your preferred level of ‘egg salad’ chunkiness.  Mix in vegenaise or nayonaise and then dump in the rest of the ingredients and stir together with said fork.

Like I said, so easy it’s ready to eat in just a few minutes.  It’s also really versatile.  Enjoy pepper?  Throw some in there.  Like onions?  Throw some in there.  Like celery instead of pickles?  Knock yourself out.

But the flavor I made this week has been my favorite so far.  It started with a really strong vanilla base and then I added some flake coconut.  Then I made my own gooey cinnamon and brown sugar flavored sugar stripe to mix throughout.  It had a lot of different flavors going on with the cinnamon+coconut+vanilla, but overall it was my best effort so far.

13. One eskimo – One eskimO

Frontman Kristian Leontiou’s stated vision was that “I wanted to create a sound of my own: magical, ambient, filmic, acoustic, beautiful and meaningful.  I wanted to write about how I felt about life, love, losses and failures, highs and lows, even heartbreaks. But also about how amazing human life is and how mind-blowing our very existence is.”

I don’t know if he achieved all that or just produced a decent, down-tempo, acoustic chill-out album with a sideshow of Gorillaz’-styled animations to run along side it and ligthen the mood.  Whatever, I liked One eskimO.

Review:  “Buoyed by acoustic picking and shimmering orchestral flourishes, Leontiou sings sweetly and nostalgically about love and distance. Strong stomachs may find it too sugary, but sweet teeth will enjoy the taste.”  — Pacific Northwest Inlander

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12. k-os – Yes!

I’ve been listening to more hip-hop lately and this was one of my favorites of ’09. K-os aka ‘chaos’ aka Kheaven is a Canadian rapper who put together a perfect blend of rap, funk, rock, and reggae on Yes!.  I especially liked the stretch of tracks 5-8. It starts with sampling Phantom Planet’s California in I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman. On the seventh track, titled Eye Know Something he ingeniously samples Frida’s I Know There’s Something Going On, which just so happens to be one of my all-time fav 80′s songs. Yes! has great variety without being obnoxiously eclectic and the order and flow of the songs is superb. Overall, I really enjoyed the entire album.

Review: “K-os is an artist who is just constantly evolving. His first three albums, each a classic in my mind, showed K-os on a different musical journey. And after where he took his last effort, Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, I couldn’t really imagine what he had left in him. Where could K-os possibly go next? Well, with “Yes!” K-os has proven that his evolution is not yet complete, and that he is incapable of making a less than spectacular album.” –hiphoplinguistics.com

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11. Fanfarlo – Reservoir

Fanfarlo are masters of an English and not-so-folksy brand of indie folk that actually reminded me quite a bit of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible on some tracks, which is definitely a good thing.  The vocals are just so darn great, and the songs are ordered perfectly from start finish without a single throwaway or filler song on the album.

In his own words: Lead singer and main songwriter Simon Balthazar said, “We all bonded over not wanting to be another London band that sounded like it came from Brooklyn.”

Amazon |  Myspace |  Website |  Bio

10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!

Karen O and the YYYs It’s Blitz! racked up tons of critical acclaim in 2009. Heads Will Roll and Hysteric were two of my absolute favorite and most-listened songs of the year. I love the way the album is constructed also, starting off with bang with Zero, and ending softly with Little Shadow.

Review: “These songs contain O’s most expressive singing yet, and the tension between her vocal performances and the band’s playing results in music richer in emotion than anything the trio has done since ‘Maps,’ its breakout hit from 2003.” –Los Angeles Times

“The result is the alternative pop album of the decade–one that imbues the Killers’ “Hot Fuss” and MGMT’s “Oracular Spectacular” with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse.” –Spin

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9. The Sounds – Crossing the Rubicon

This album didn’t really receive great reveiws, but being as I’m hooked on the new wave / ectropop, I just enjoyed it a ton.  So screw those lame critics!  Seriously though, tons of great songs on here, the whole disc just has an epic, in your face sound.  I especially loved Midnight Sun.  Overall their sound keeps on improving with each album they put out and building on the potential of 2006′s Dying To Say This To You, they finally put it all together with Crossing the Rubicon in my opinion.

Review: “Crossing the Rubicon is the sound of a band reaching their potential as artists and it’s very satisfying to see and, more importantly, to hear.” –All Music Guide

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8. The Appleseed Cast – Sagarmatha

These guys have been around and paid their dues and then been around some more, but they’re still so intensely underrated.  I’m really happy that they went in the direction they did with this album.  It’s a dreamy, post-rock inspired step back to an earlier sound that they had slowly been stepping away from with Two Conversations and then Peregrine in 2006 in which they did quite a bit of experimenting.

Anyway, this is the kind of album I can just listen to two or three times in a row and not be bothered in the slightest.  I really love this band, it’s just too bad that more people don’t, including the critics.  For example, this was the best review I could come up with on a quick search:

Review: “The Appleseed Cast have finally managed to get things back on track, which will hopefully influence revisionists to give these guys their proper dues.” –Tiny Mix Tapes

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7. Frankmusik – Complete Me

I’ve been listening to some of these songs since 2008, so I guess Frankmusik had a bit of a head start to being a favorite ’09 release.  For all of Frankmusik’s electronic genius though, the album has some lulls and falls way short of his potential in my opinion.  But overall, his electropop and synth-dance beats were still a favorite.  In Step in all of it’s dance-licious goodness was one of my most-listened songs of the year.

Review: “Complete Me is a clever, well crafted and painstakingly produced pop concoction that was well worth the numerous delays.” –musicOMH.com

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6. Islands – Vapours

I maintain that it’s impossible to listen to this album and not end up in an insanely good mood.  Good enough to skip down the sidewalk during rush-hour traffic or smile at random strangers with such enthusiasm that it creates awkward thoughts in their heads and makes them feel better about their miserable lives which don’t include Islands.  Or something like that.  I suppose it’s because they’re from Montreal, and it’s illegal to form a crummy band in Montreal.  Regardless, I just love Islands and their catchy quirkiness.

Review: “Vapours isn’t just a welcome addition to the band’s collection but it’s a welcoming album filled with tremendously rich highs, blunt and honest lyrics, melodic music and captivating hooks.” –Delusions of Adequacy

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5. Paper Route – Absence

From all accounts I’ve heard, Nashville’s Paper Route puts on an amazing live show.  I wouldn’t know because I’ve never seen them live, but I definitely want to because as the band’s Andy Smith says, “If there ever is a good representation of how we perform live, it’s this record.”  And I really liked this album.  In Absence, Paper Route breaks out a bit from their more subdued EPs to produce what the Dallas Morning News describes as “a heavily synthesized merger of ethereal pop and ambient rock.”  Far and away my favorite track was Gutter.

Review:  “With their heart-wrenching, lush and moody arrangements, Paper Route don’t exactly define the sound of their city: “We tend to be the black sheep in Nashville,” programmer/keyboardist Chad Howat says, “but we love it here.” Sounds like melodic, emotional synth-rock that pulses with an ambient undercurrent reminiscent of vintage Boards of Canada or Aphex Twin.”  –Rolling Stone

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4. Plushgun – Pins and Panzers

Like Frankmusik, I’ve been listening to a lot of the tracks on Pins and Panzers since 2008, when Plushgun — Dan Ingala’s originally solo NYC synth project — was simply a MySpace presence.  Whether ‘walking the line like Johnny Cash’ in Just Impolite, or other favorites such as Dancing In a Minefield, The Dark In You, or How We Roll, Plushgun really did put together an impressive collection of songs for a debut LP.

Review:  “Pins and Panzers nevertheless stands as one of the most guileless and refreshingly unironic entries in the latest batch of retro new wavers.  WIthout a hint of hipster posturing, Ingala’s appropriation of the new wave sound feels completely natural, to the point that it would be impossible to imagine these songs fitting in among any other sonic context.”  –PopMatters

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3. Owen – New Leaves

Mike Kinsella was indeed turning over some new leaves with this album which definitely seemed (a little bit?) more mature and influenced by marriage and fatherhood. Even if I’m twisting his words or his meaning, I always listened to the song Windows and Doorways (from 2006′s album At Home With) as a kind of lament of the state of getting older and being forced to mature while not being ready. And I took the line in that song about things being easier when he “didn’t have a girlfriend” and liberally translated that into songwriting as well. I felt like it was getting harder for him to write forlorn songs about relationships and despair now that he was married and had an awesome woman in his life.

So for me, New Leaves was a logical and not-altogether surprising progression from his earlier albums. While really, it’s not all that different — only that now, as he sings on the fifth track, Amnesia and Me, “Now I know who I am, a house-broken one-woman man.” Even with change and dare I say reflection, he’s still the same old Mike, and that is to say making great music. Disclaimer: Owen is still one of my favorite artists of all time. OF ALL TIME!

Review: “New Leaves may tackle some subtle rites of passage – small in scope but difficult for most men to deal with–but they’re approached with such delicate grace, it’s hard to question that this may be Kinsella’s finest hour yet.” –No Ripcord

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2. K’Naan – Troubadour

Admittedly I was late to hear about and catch on to K’Naan, but after I heard his story and then heard his music, I was hooked.  He was born and raised in Mogadishu, Somali during extremely turbulent times and then exiled to Canada with his mother at age 13.  Needless to say he doesn’t really have to worry about ‘cred’ or posturing, because his music, his poetry, and the essence of his being and existence was formed out of a backdrop of war, heartbreak, horror and profound struggle.  Being true to himself he weaves these themes naturally through witty lyrics into his hip-hop/funk/rap/rock/reggae amalgamation along with a healthy dose of both hope and joy.  It’s beyond refreshing.

Also refreshing are his spot-on observations and diagnoses of complex socio-economic and world issues such as the piracy movement that grew out of his home country.  He, however, denies that he is overly political as both a person and an artist, claiming that he merely sees the state of the world and calls it like it is, which often simply gets labeled ‘political.’

As for Troubadour, the final track, People Like Me refrains on a powerful and emotional question: “Heaven, is there a chance that you could come down and open doors to hurtin’ people like me?”  And my favorite track Take A Minute gets stuck in my head for weeks at a time.  Those unfamiliar with K’Naan should be hearing more and more about him in the near future as his song Wavin’ Flag is “the people’s official anthem” of the upcoming FIFA World Cup.

Review: “K’Naan’s singular take on the parallels between Africa and America is the strongest thread running through this diverse, socially alert and frequently brilliant sophomore disc.” –Billboard

“Whether he’s lamenting immigration hassles or imagining himself a depressed American kid fighting in Iraq, this Muslim fan of Biggie and Bruce Lee has a common touch. He’s a universal soldier, not an exotic novelty.” –Blender

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1. Passion Pit – Manners

Manners was by far my favorite album of 2009.  So many great tracks from Little Secrets to The Reeling to Sleepyhead, I still can’t get enough of this album.  It forces you to try your absolute hardest to resist the urge to get up off your butt and dance — because that is the only appropriate response.

Review: “Manners, the debut album from the Boston-based electro-pop outfit Passion Pit, is a charming combination of danceable synth grooves, falsetto shouts and infectious vocal hooks.” –Billboard

“Refreshed and uplifted. Those are two things that the best pop records leave you feeling, and that’s definitely the end result of listening to Manners, the debut album from Passion Pit.” –Boston Globe

“Passion Pit’s full-length debut proves he isn’t fronting: It’s a shiny bouquet of synth-pop roses, with perfumed Eighties keyboard whooshes and modern stutter beats crooking a finger toward the dance floor.” –Rolling Stone

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