Archive for November, 2010

Hailing from such disparate locales as Tennessee (Price), Iowa (Kearney), Minneapolis (Olson), and Philadelphia (Calabrese), Lake Street Dive first gathered in a room together when they were students at Boston’s New England Conservatory. “Mr. McDuck assembled the four of us, said we were now Lake Street Dive, and we were a ‘free country’ band,” Bridget Kearney remembers. “He wrote this on a chalkboard in the ensemble room that we had our first rehearsal in. We intended to play country music in an improvised, avant-garde style – like Loretta Lynn meets Ornette Coleman. It sounded terrible!  But the combination of people and personalities actually made a lot of sense and we had a great time being around each other and making music together.” Lake Street Dive makes the most of pop music virtues: solid, evocative song craft; propulsive grooves; and Price’s disarming, forthright vocals. However, it’s a personal strain of pop that is refracted through the band members’ rich backgrounds

Weaving around between graves, on an awkward stumbling trek, Mansoureh showed me to Mrs. Afnan's grave.  She passed away a few years ago, leaving her beautiful big residence to the Baha'i community of Debrecen.  That's where I'm now staying!  So we paused at her grave and prayed for her soul too.  We were surrounded by thousands of candles wearily trying to fight back a chilly dark night, and we realized that both of our prayers mentioned light: her's I think mentioned "light upon light" and mine "plunge into the sea of light, in the world of mysteries."

According to the laws of Sharia in Iran, if a Muslim man is murdered, his family may be compensated according to the price of one hundred camels. If the same crime is committed to a Muslim woman, her family is entitled to the price of fifty camels. If a Baha’i is murdered, no camels apply.

I am of The People With No Camel.

Based on a true story, The People With No Camel weaves two journeys of freedom: a ten-year old girl escapes Iran in 1981 with her family, due to the heavy persecutions they face as Baha’is, carrying nothing but three little handbags, new identities, and faith. The novel then takes a turn. The girl has become a woman and the narrative shifts to a brief parable. Infused with Persian mythical characters, the woman’s quest to save her dying forest turns into her own spiritual journey – the search for ultimate freedom.