Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Little snow and little rain mean drought — dry and difficult months lie ahead for California - San Francisco Chronicle
California’s wet season is coming to a close without a much-sought “March miracle” storm, setting the stage for a painful escalation of drought in the coming months.
The April 1 snow survey, which measures the peak accumulation of snow in the Sierra and southern Cascades just before it melts, will show only about 60% of average snowpack. California relies on this snow to fill its rivers and streams, to help keep forests and grasslands from burning, and to provide up to a third of the state’s water supply.
The grim survey results expected Thursday, which mark a second straight year of significantly dry conditions, reinforce warnings of a difficult fire season ahead and bolster the expanding calls for water conservation.
Already, much of California’s farm country faces imminent water cutbacks while several communities, including Marin County and parts of Napa, Sonoma and Santa Clara counties, are asking customers for voluntary reductions. A few cities have enacted mandatory cuts, and others are considering similarly stringent measures.
“We’re comparing this year a lot, hydrologically speaking, to 2014-2015, which was the height of the drought,” said Chris Orrock, spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources, which conducts the snow surveys. “Water is a finite resource that we have to be sure we’re using as efficiently and as wisely as we can.”
One of the biggest similarities to last decade’s five-year drought, which triggered unprecedented water rationing, is how low water levels are dropping behind the state’s big dams. Reservoir supplies, which are piped hundreds of miles to consumers across California, provide most of the water for the state’s agricultural industry and a big portion for many cities.
“When I look at reservoir levels, it’s like it’s 2014ish,” said Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and director of the school’s Center for Watershed Sciences.
The state’s largest reservoir, Lake Shasta, on Wednesday contained only 65% of the water it typically holds this time of year while Lake Oroville held 53% and Folsom Lake had 58%.
The snowpack that nourishes these reservoirs, while low, is more than what accumulated during the worst years of the last drought. The April 2015 snow survey, for example, recorded just 5% of average snowpack. Still, many reservoirs, including Shasta, Oroville and Folsom, are coming out of this wet season with less water than they did six years ago, meaning they need more snowmelt to catch up.
Total precipitation in many areas has lagged even what it was during last decade’s drought years. The storms this past winter have generally been colder, which translated to more snow, but they often delivered less rain.
Boaters are using temporary ramps at the Granite Bay Boat Ramp on Folsom Lake on Sunday. The lake is at only 37% percent of capacity.
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
Rock formations are exposed because of low water levels at Folsom Lake’s Beals Point Recreation Area on Sunday.
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
The beach area is closed, so the lifeguard stations sit idle at the Beals Point Recreation Area at Folsom Lake on Sunday. Little precipitation the past two rainy seasons has left the lake at only 37% percent of capacity.
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
Visitors on Sunday walk down to the edge of Folsom Lake, which has only 58% of the water it typically holds this time of year
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
The water level is down at Folsom Lake. Reservoir levels are low, and precipitation has been low. The snowmelt from the Sierra won’t be enough to catch up this year.
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
Fishing along the low waters at the Granite Bay launch area on Folsom Lake on Sunday. The state’s snowmelt won’t contain enough water for the lake to catch up this year.
Michael Macor / Special to The Chronicle
Boaters use temporary boat ramps due to the low water levels at the Granite Bay launch area on Folsom Lake on Sunday.
Michael Macor / Special to The ChronicleIn California’s far north, which sees the state’s most rain and snow and contributes most to statewide water supplies, annual precipitation since October is on track to be the second-lowest in more than a century of state record-keeping. Only the 1976-77 water year was drier. Currently, the second-driest water year was last year.
Similarly dry conditions extend to the Bay Area. San Francisco, if it gets less than 0.6 inches of rain through June 30, would record its third-lowest seasonal precipitation in more than 150 years, according to Golden Gate Weather Services. The 1850-51 season was the driest followed by 1975-76.
The scant precipitation prompted the California Department of Water Resources last week to lower this year’s projected allocation for customers of the State Water Project’s reservoirs to just 5% of what’s requested. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which also manages a network of reservoirs, said last week that many of its customers will get no water until further notice.
The State Water Resources Control Board, meanwhile, has warned the state’s 40,000 water rights holders, basically any person or water agency drawing water from a river or reservoir, that they could face cuts.
The moves mean cities and farms will increasingly have to turn to alternative supplies, such as groundwater and local stormwater runoff, as well as buy water from agencies with greater reserves. Those with less money and fewer backup options face the biggest challenges.
On Thursday, state water officials are scheduled to trek to Phillips Station on Highway 50 south of Lake Tahoe to take snow measurements and officially announce the April 1 snowpack results. The site is one of more than 260 snow courses that factor into the monthly survey.
As of Wednesday, state snowpack was 60% of the historical average for the date. The southern Sierra stood at 42% of average, the central Sierra was at 64% of average, and the north state was at 67% of average.
The dry state of affairs, which has left California’s landscape ripe for burning, also carries the potential for more wildfire.
This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to hire 1,399 additional state firefighters, at a cost of $81 million. The expanded force at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection will work proactively to reduce combustible vegetation in high-risk areas as well as fight wildfires. They’re due by the end of May.
“It wasn’t quite the Miracle March that we were hoping for this spring,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Jon Heggie. “We plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
April 01, 2021 at 05:47AM
https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/climate/article/Little-snow-and-little-rain-mean-drought-dry-16068041.php
Little snow and little rain mean drought — dry and difficult months lie ahead for California - San Francisco Chronicle
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Stock futures are little changed following Biden's infrastructure speech - CNBC
U.S. stock futures were mostly flat on Wednesday evening as Wall Street looked to build on a solid March following the rollout of President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 18 points, or less than 0.1%. Those for the S&P 500 were flat, and futures for the Nasdaq 100 rose about 0.1%.
The quiet move in futures came after Biden introduced his multi-trillion dollar infrastructure proposal. The plan includes spending on roads and bridges as well as green energy and water system upgrades.
This marks the second major spending push of Biden's presidency after he signed a $1.9 trillion relief and stimulus bill on March 11.
"With the American Rescue Plan, we're meeting immediate emergencies. Now it's time to rebuild," Biden said on Wednesday.
Tech stocks outperformed industrial and construction names on Wednesday despite details of plan rolling out, a possible sign that the increased funding has been priced in by the market. Recovery and cyclical stocks have performed well since the start of the year as investors grew more optimistic about government spending and Covid vaccinations.
Bank of America equity strategist Savita Subramanian said on CNBC's "Fast Money" that the market may still need to digest the tax hikes included in the plan, creating a potential headwind for stocks.
"I think the market is pricing in the good news of infrastructure ... I don't think the market has necessarily priced in the negatives, which is how are we going to pay for this," Subramanian said.
Wall Street finished March with a positive day for broader markets. The S&P 500 rose 0.36% on Wednesday, breaking a two-day losing streak, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 1.5%. Those indexes finished the month with gains of 4.2% and 0.4%, respectively.
The 30-stock Dow fell slightly but still finished the month with a gain of more than 6%.
On the earnings front, shares of Micron rose in extended trading after the chipmaker beat expectations on the top and bottom lines for its second quarter report.
Thursday morning is set to bring a heavy dose of economic news, with weekly jobless claims data from the Labor Department and several manufacturing and construction data sets slated for release. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones have penciled in 674,000 initial jobless claims, which would be a slight decline from the prior report.
April 01, 2021 at 05:03AM
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
Stock futures are little changed following Biden's infrastructure speech - CNBC
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
'A Most Remarkable Creature' Introduces The Little-Known, Charismatic Caracara - NPR
A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, by Jonathan Meiburg Knopf
A handful of animals are so woven into the fabric of human existence that they are part of how we think about ourselves.
With these dogs, chickens and giant pandas, we are caretakers, companions, trainers, consumers, oppressors and rescuers.
Rarely, though, do we admit that with some animals, we are students.
In his elegant debut A Most Remarkable Creature, author Jonathan Meiburg writes: "Unless you live south of the Rio Grande, chances are you've never even heard of caracaras." His book introduces readers to this South American bird of prey, aptly described as "one of the strangest and most wonderful animals on Earth." Belonging to the same family as the sleek, swift peregrine falcon, the nine species of caracara are by contrast inquisitive clowns in the raptor world: "curious, social, and brave, with many interests and few skills." Through Meiburg's own inquiring lens, readers will soon find themselves with a new favorite animal.
I may be biased in this regard. The Falkland Islands' population of striated caracaras is one I am personally acquainted with, as they were the focus of my graduate studies. (I met Meiburg briefly during this time.) Throughout his travels to meet these scrappy, adaptable birds, Meiburg captures the same feeling of gratitude I felt for the opportunity to live among wild animals who directed their appraising gazes into my own. The fact that "evolution can fashion a mind like ours from different materials" is the focus of this sweeping exploration of how these extraordinary animals evolved, how they live now, and what may become of them in an increasingly human world.
We both encountered the difficulty of explaining the species to other ornithologists, who are incredulous that such an animal exists. Meiburg describes nearly losing the hat from his head to a wild caracara "playing tag" above him. I once lost a hot cup of cocoa I'd placed on a fence post beside me to a caracara. Charles Barnard, a sailor marooned in the Falklands in 1812, having finally secured himself shelter for the night, awoke to one of the birds "trying to pull the shoes off his feet." This kind of behavior in a wild bird of prey, though adaptive in an environment in which "the ocean reliably coughs up strange new creatures and objects" seems odd, even ridiculous.
But "calling them odd birds of prey," Meiburg contends, "feels like calling the painters of the Italian Renaissance a group of unusually gifted apes." The few naturalists that have had the fortune to observe them largely agree. William Henry Hudson, a 19th century naturalist, is a regular character in A Most Remarkable Creature. Hudson spent an idyllic boyhood in the Pampas region of Argentina, and unlike his contemporary, Charles Darwin, who remained ever the careful, conservative scientist, Hudson carried an almost spiritual adoration of the region throughout his life. He often thought of animals as people — as do many native cultures the world over. The Amerindian people teach of a time long ago when animals were people — not Henry Beston's "other nations," but one and the same.
Meiburg's voice is poetic; where other nature writers are known for the images they paint of landscapes, here are presented impressions, concepts as complex as species' movements over geologic time, in a way that is at once clear and beautiful. The book is divided into five parts, spanning continents and millennia, providing loving characterizations of behavior, and taxonomy told as a kind of descendant, oral history, all with a naturalist's eye and an artist's voice. He describes Antarctica, which sheltered the caracaras' ancestors from South America's mass extinctions, as "a continent that long ago helped save the animal world, then lifted it drawbridges and froze to death."
But perhaps the most important idea provoked by A Most Remarkable Creature is that we have a lot to learn from the caracaras, who share our "uncontrollable urge for discovery." Caracaras are so many of the things that we are as well: inquisitive and adaptable, "obstinate but flexible," constantly seeking the horizon. Therefore, Meiburg enjoins, we can gain from them: "By looking to the nonhuman world, with all the tools of science and art, can we see what we really are — and that we aren't as alone as we feel."
Though their populations are small and confined, caracaras "refuse to behave like a species on the verge of extinction." As evidenced by the appearance in North America of a few adventurous birds over the last decade, some caracaras are advancing through our world, and we should anticipate greeting them with the same fierce curiosity they show us. "We might even have to ask them to live a new kind of wild life — not 'out there' in a vanishing wilderness, but in here, in the world as we've remade it."
If we are to survive the trials of a changing climate, and a crisis of biodiversity, we must acknowledge that "there's far more to learn about the world than we already know," and mimic the caracaras' "ability to learn from others' successes as well as their own."
Anna Morris is an environmental educator and professional bird trainer at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science.
The Link LonkMarch 31, 2021 at 11:49PM
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/31/982631076/-a-most-remarkable-creature
'A Most Remarkable Creature' Introduces The Little-Known, Charismatic Caracara - NPR
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Since the Oscar-Nominated ‘Collective,’ Much and Little Has Changed - The New York Times
The documentary revisits a deadly 2015 fire that brought down the Romanian government and exposed the catastrophic health care system. But not all the troubles are in the past.
BUCHAREST, Romania — On Oct. 30, 2015, a fire ripped through a nightclub in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, leaving 64 people dead. Almost six years later, a documentary about the fire and its tragic aftermath has been nominated for two Oscars.
It would be the first Oscar win for the Eastern European country, but the film’s success is bittersweet for many Romanians, given its painful subject matter — particularly since many believe not enough has changed since 2015.
“Collective,” which has been nominated for best documentary feature and best foreign film, follows a group of investigative journalists from a sports newspaper as they uncover painful truths about the Romanian health care system.
“The situation was so appalling that basically it should have been a big scandal in the whole of Europe,” said Alexander Nanau, the film’s director.
Events on the night of the fire and its immediate aftermath ricocheted across Romania, toppling the government at the time — led by the Social Democratic Party — and mobilizing civil society into large-scale protests.
In the years since, however, there have been further political scandals, and few health care overhauls. The coronavirus pandemic has also put huge new demands on the struggling Romanian health care system. Two fires in Covid-19 wards in the last six months have left at least 20 people dead.
Many Romanians wonder how much has really changed since “Collective.”
While tragic, the nightclub fire is just the film’s starting point. The blaze claimed 27 lives in its immediate aftermath, but 64 people would ultimately die, many victims of a health care system awash with corruption and willing to hide painful truth from the victims and their families.
Standing outside one of Bucharest’s main hospitals, Nanau recalled: “It was basically in front of this hospital where the minister of health always stood flanked by doctors saying ‘We can treat the burn victims at the highest standards.’”
However, as the journalists found out, the burn unit was not even operational at the time, Nanau said. “It’s incredible that they have the guts to lie to all these people that their kids are being given surgery in the most modern burn unit when in fact this was closed.”
The journalists also discovered that the disinfectant used in hospitals across the country was being watered down, to the extent that it was largely ineffectual, probably resulting in many more deaths. The owner of the company involved drove his car into a tree after the truth was brought to light, killing himself.
The documentary shows in real time the reaction of the journalists after a whistle-blower sends them footage from a hospital of maggots crawling in the wound of a burn victim.
The film has been compared to both “Spotlight” and “All the President’s Men,” and in a review for The New York Times late last year, Manohla Dargis described “Collective” as a “staggering documentary” that offered “no moment when you can take an easy breath, assured that the terrible things you’ve been watching onscreen are finally over.”
For people in Romania, however, much of what is shown onscreen is painfully familiar.
Catalin Tolontan, then the editor in chief of the daily newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor, is one of the main protagonists of “Collective.” Before the documentary, “We used to receive 10 or 15 messages per day from the public, with scoops or information,” he said in an interview. “After the movie we received 70 to 80 a day.”
Tedy Ursuleanu, who suffered severe burns across her head and body, and had her fingers amputated as a result of the fire, is one of the strongest characters in the film.
In an interview, she said that it was not a hard decision to let the filmmakers follow her, but that seeing the film was a painful experience. “When I saw some of the scenes, the impact was as if I lived those moments again,” Ursuleanu said. “I started to cry. I needed to go outside to compose myself.”
Ursuleanu said she believed that not enough progress had been made in the years since the documentary was filmed. “Changes have taken place, but they are few compared to the needs we have here,” she said. “Sadly, tragedies like this could easily happen again, because even now measures are not respected.”
Partway through the documentary, “Collective” introduces a young, reform-minded health minister, Vlad Voiculescu, who is brought in as part of a short-lived technocrat government.
Voiculescu and his team face strong resistance as they try to bring greater transparency to the health care system, while having to accept that the system was culpable in many deaths.
In a recent interview, Voiculescu, who was reappointed as health minister late last year, said that what frustrated him most was that on his return he found an institution that was “even more collapsed than before.” Now, Voiculescu is more focused on dealing with the coronavirus than overhauling the Romanian health care system.
“Collective,” which appeared on streaming platforms late last year, has resonated strongly with audiences around the world, especially at a time when the pandemic has made health care a central issue globally.
Nanau, a Romanian director who spent much of his life in Germany before moving back to his home country in 2015, has a track record of producing powerful documentaries. His previous film, “Toto and His Sisters,” followed the lives of three teenagers left to fend largely for themselves in one of the poorest areas of Bucharest, after their mother was sent to prison on drug charges.
But with “Collective,” he seems to have found a subject that hit at a perfect moment.
The film’s impact has also been felt outside Romania. Earlier this year in Mongolia, when a woman with Covid-19 was transferred from the hospital in freezing temperatures just days after giving birth, journalists began asking tough questions of the government, apparently encouraging one another on Facebook by referencing “Collective,” which a local television station had shown days earlier. Protests followed, and the government ultimately resigned.
“If you are a journalist in a small country and saw ‘Spotlight,’ you could say, ‘Well, this is the U.S., they have a lot of resources, they have a strong democracy, they have a bond between the public and government,’” Tolontan, the newspaper editor, said. “But if you are in Mongolia or the Czech Republic, Indonesia, and you saw this movie, you think ‘They’re like us.’”
Romanian movies like “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” “Beyond the Hills” and “Child’s Pose” have received top awards at international festivals over the years, but none has won an Oscar.
Andrei Gorzo, a Romanian film critic, said that it was harder for Romanian viewers to see “Collective” as a morally clear-cut tale of a few good people fighting to change the rotten system.
Instead, he said, it captures a specific moment in Romania, when urban, middle-class voters believed in a new breed of politician, young and unsullied, who could clean up Romanian politics. “It is impossible for me to watch the film without acknowledging that a lot of that romanticism has turned sour since then,” he said.
Others are more optimistic.
“The generation that will change things here is not the generation that is 35-plus,” Nanau said. “It’s the younger generation, and these are the people that write to us, that we have met in the cinemas.”
Tolontan said he saw “Collective” as “a point of no return” for Romanian society.
Whether the film wins at the Oscars ceremony next month, many Romanians still hope that the film’s biggest impact will be at home, and that they can leave its content in the past.
March 31, 2021 at 10:47PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/movies/collective-romania.html
Since the Oscar-Nominated ‘Collective,’ Much and Little Has Changed - The New York Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
This little-known Japanese fruit now has a cult following - CNN
Sumo comes to America
The most pampered fruit in the world
Influencers and New Yorker ads
Getting top billing in the grocery aisle
March 31, 2021 at 08:41PM
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/business/sumo-citrus-fruit/index.html
This little-known Japanese fruit now has a cult following - CNN
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
The Memo: Time for a little spring cleaning - Duluth News Tribune
Now that spring has officially started, (season-wise, not necessarily weather-wise), it might be time for some spring cleaning, too. Here are just a couple of local tips about how you could do some tidying.
Clean your vehicle at Duluth's newest car wash
Tommy's Express Car Wash opened last Thursday at 321 E. Central Entrance in Duluth. The car wash offers a membership package where, once you register online, cameras at the car wash will automatically recognize your license plate.
Membership includes a monthly rate for unlimited washes, plus a fast-pass through the outer lane of the car wash designated for members only. Members can also group multiple cars together on one account. Membership is valid at any Tommy's Express location. Tommy's Express has car washes all over the country, including Minnesota locations in Mounds View, New Hope and Rochester, with a Waite Park location coming soon. Wisconsin has Tommy's Express car washes in Weston and Wausau, with an Eau Claire site opening soon.
Tommy's Express also has free vacuums and various settings for washes and waxes. Single-wash services are available, so you don't have to be a member to use it. Tommy's Express is open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
Keep the city clean as the snow melts away
Although this isn't necessarily a business event, many local businesses have partnered to organize volunteer cleanups around Duluth. And while you should always pick up litter when you see it, Keep Duluth Clean is coordinating a citywide cleanup event next weekend for the whole community to participate in together.
Next Saturday, April 10, the public is invited to pick up litter from wherever they are — whether it's your frontyard or backyard, a park, or anywhere else you see trash — for at least 30 minutes.
The cleanup event is self-directed this year in order to maintain COVID-19 safety restrictions. Participants can register at keepduluthclean.org/event-listings and submit a litter report to be entered to win prizes.
People are encouraged to follow safety precautions during cleanup, including watching for traffic on roadways, wearing proper protection like gloves, staying in easily accessible areas and reporting hazardous or unbaggable items to Keep Duluth Clean through a litter report. A full list of safety guidelines is available on the Keep Duluth Clean website.
Participants are encouraged to be picky and look for litter of all sizes, even cigarette butts or small pieces of plastic. People are also encouraged to share photos of their cleanup efforts by tagging @KeepDuluthClean and #KeepDuluthClean on social media.
Questions and inquiries can be emailed to keepduluthclean@gmail.com
Laura Butterbrodt covers health and business for the Duluth News Tribune. Contact her at 218-723-5320 or lbutterbrodt@duluthnews.com.
March 31, 2021 at 07:00PM
https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/business/6958487-The-Memo-Time-for-a-little-spring-cleaning
The Memo: Time for a little spring cleaning - Duluth News Tribune
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
How Flock of Dimes Found Herself (With a Little Help From Her Friends) - The New York Times
Jenn Wasner has tended to let thoughts rather than feelings guide her songwriting. For her second solo album, “Head of Roses,” she did the opposite.
In 2016, when the wildly prolific multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jenn Wasner released her first solo album as Flock of Dimes, she felt she had something to prove.
“I had internalized a lot of the assumptions that people make about women in music,” said Wasner, then best known as one-half of the indie-rock duo Wye Oak. “I felt a lot of resentment about not getting the benefit of the doubt of my own artistry.” So she doubled down on that time-tested indie ethos of Do It Yourself — writing, producing and playing just about every instrument on “If You See Me, Say Yes.”
“As it turns out,” Wasner, 34, recalled in a recent video chat from her home near Durham, N.C., “that’s not always what makes the best record.”
“If You See Me” is full of dazzling sounds and bright melodic ideas, but it stimulates the mind more frequently than it pierces the heart. “As someone who is very obsessed with language, I think sometimes it can actually be a barrier to feeling,” Wasner added, lounging on a sage-green sofa that — she suddenly realized, catching a glimpse of her digital reflection in the Zoom screen — was the same color as the cozy sweatshirt she was wearing. “I think that record, and pretty much any record you could point to would be better with some form of collaborative expression.”
“Head of Roses,” the second Flock of Dimes full-length, out Friday, is that better record — one of the highlights of Wasner’s long, winding career. It’s also the project that revealed a creative paradox: Sometimes what an artist needs to become even more of herself is a little help from her friends.
“I got the impression she was trying to get out of her head,” said Nick Sanborn, half of the electro-pop band Sylvan Esso, who co-produced “Head of Roses” with Wasner. “Being her friend, it’s obvious that her range is so broad and encompasses so many different things.”
A respected veteran of the underground music scene, Wasner is multifaceted almost to a fault, in a music industry obsessed with elevator pitches and genre-based pigeonholing. “Because I’m drawn to experimenting with so many different kinds of aesthetic choices,” she said, “people are often like, ‘I don’t really know what you do. We don’t know where to put you.’”
“But that’s just a big part of who I am, and not something I want to change about myself,” she added. “It’s a source of joy.”
Even in Wye Oak, formed in 2006, Wasner and her bandmate, Andy Stack, seem allergic to repeating themselves. After garnering acclaim for “Civilian,” a breakout 2011 album full of off-kilter rhythms and Wasner’s inventive guitar playing, they followed it with a record centered around synthesizers, “Shriek,” in 2014. Their most recent EP, “No Horizon” from 2020, prominently featured choral arrangements sung by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus.
Wasner and Stack are both Baltimore natives who met in high school. They were in “one of those bands where everybody writes songs,” Stack recalled over the phone, though when the 16-year-old Wasner brought hers to practice, it was clear her compositions were a cut above the standard battle-of-the-bands fare. “She was a real good songwriter from the beginning,” he said.
Wasner and Stack have now been playing music together for more than half their lives. The key to Wye Oak’s longevity, Stack said, has been allowing each other to pursue other musical projects in their spare time. (They have also been writing new material in quarantine.)
Over the past decade, Wasner has formed multiple side projects and played in the touring bands of artists like Sylvan Esso and Dirty Projectors; in 2019, she joined Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver. “I think the way the industry is set up, in order to release as much music as I would like, I have to kind of trick people into letting me do it by inventing different names for myself,” she said.
But, she reflected, “I had created this world of constant busyness and work that pretty much prevented me from spending any time sitting with myself and examining my inner world.” So “Head of Roses” is the answer to a particular riddle: What happens when one of the hardest-working musicians in indie rock suddenly has to sit still for a year?
Wasner’s most recent romantic relationship ended just before the pandemic began. (When I mention that not every musician was able to stay creatively inspired over the past year, she laughed: “I would recommend to those people to try being completely eviscerated by heartbreak!”) For the first time in her adult life, Wasner found herself without her usual distractions — no tour to embark upon, no new band to join. “There was nothing to do but sit with my pain and myself,” she said. “I was so grateful to be able to turn to making music, because it was one of the last remaining things available, as a source of comfort for me.”
Or, as she sings on a spacious, twangy new song, “Walking,” sounding more contented than aggrieved, “Alone again, alone again, my time it is my own again.”
Over the past year Wasner wrote songs constantly, deepened her yoga practice and taught herself how to cook — something she’d never taken the time to do, in half a life spent on tour. (“No one’s going to be thrilled at a home-cooked meal from me, but it’s certainly better than it was before this whole thing started.”)
In July, she assembled a small pod of trusted collaborators in a nearby studio. Sanborn sometimes joked that she should call the album “The Many Faces of Was.” More than anything she’s released before, “Head of Roses” makes room for the multiplicity of Wasner’s artistic voice. None of the singles sound anything alike — not the springy, off-kilter pop of “Two” nor the slow-burning, psych-rock of “Price of Blue” — and none of them quite prepare the listener for the gorgeously subdued second half of the album, which features several of the most stirring ballads Wasner has ever recorded. The common element holding all of these disparate parts together is her luminous, jewel-toned voice.
“I feel a lot more secure in myself than I ever have before, which makes it easier to make choices without worrying so much about what I’m trying to prove,” Wasner said. Delegating some technical tasks to Sanborn or the engineer Bella Blasko helped her focus on her larger vision. That all her collaborators were also friends made it easier to tap into her vulnerability in the studio, too: “It was such a joy to feel really held by all the people in my musical community at a time when I was at my most gutted, personally.”
This was a relatively new experience. “For a lot of the music I’ve written in the past, I would reverse-engineer a feeling — I would think about a concept or idea I wanted to expound upon, then I would create that,” Wasner said. “All of a sudden, with this record, it came up from this other place.”
Which is not to say that Wasner has abandoned her avowed penchant for challenging arrangements or nontraditional time signatures. “Watching her do some of these songs solo,” said Wasner’s friend Meg Duffy, a guitarist who played on the album and records as Hand Habits, “I’m like, how do you even do that? It seems like doing algebra while doing ballet.”’
But now, Wasner wants the more cerebral elements of her music to work, first and foremost, in service of a feeling.
“Everything I’ve learned this year about trauma and healing supports the idea that music is important,” Wasner said. “It can subvert a lot of the defenses we enact around the softer parts of ourselves — the parts that may need to be seen and healed the most. Those defenses are very hard to get past. But music might be the art form that is best able to get around those barriers and reach us where we need to be healed.”
March 30, 2021 at 11:24PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/arts/music/flock-of-dimes-head-of-roses.html
How Flock of Dimes Found Herself (With a Little Help From Her Friends) - The New York Times
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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