Thanks to Stefan for the interview on Zooglobble!
February 24, 2010
Hope y'all get a chance to check this out!
Joyfully,
Lil 'ol me
posted by Sara Hickman at 08:44 am
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SAVE CACTUS CAFE rally this Friday, Feb 27 11:30 am-1:45 pm!!!
February 23, 2010
Line up for Cactus Cafe Rally:
11:35: Sara Hickman
11:50: Bill Oliver
12:05 State Rep. Elliott Naishtat
12:10: David Garza
12:30: City Coun. Mem. Laura Morrison
12:35: Austin Music Commissioner Margaret Moser
12:40: Barbara K 1:00: Student Friends
1:05 Elizabeth Wills
1:30 Friends of the Cactus Cafe
1:35 Ricky Stein
COME SAVE THE CACTUS!!!
http://www.savethecactus.org
Love,
Sara
posted by Sara Hickman at 02:25 pm
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Is Texas about to execute another innocent man?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution - DNA tests OK'd for "Columbus Stocking
Strangler" (Carlton Gary case)
- - - - -
http://reason.com/archives/2010/02/22/is-texas-about-to-execute-anot
February 22, 2010
Is Texas About To Execute Another Innocent Man?
State officials would rather kill a prisoner than give him a DNA test.
by Radley Balko
Henry Watkins "Hank" Skinner
supposed to be executed tomorrow, but last Tuesday a Gray County, Texas,
District Court judge pushed the date back one month, to March 24.
Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993,
awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has
maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the
Northwestern University Journalism School's Medill Innocence Project have
shot numerous holes in the prosecution's case. But Texas officials refuse to
conduct a simple DNA test that could point to the condemned man's innocence
or cement his guilt.
Skinner's scheduled lethal injection comes shortly after Texas Gov. Rick
Perry has removed
panelists from the state forensic committee's investigation into the case of
Cameron Todd Willingham and replaced them with panelists critics say are
stymieing the investigation. Willingham was executed in 2003 for murdering
his three daughters by setting fire to his house. Nine arson experts
investigation published in the New Yorker last year have since made a strong
case that Willingham was innocent of the crime.
At the same time, Texas, a notoriously enthusiastic enforcer of the death
penalty, continues to lead the nation
exonerations (one county in Texas has produced more genetic exonerations
than all but three states). Which makes it all the more disturbing that
biological evidence from Skinner's crime scene remains untested, at the
behest of prosecutors and backed up by the courts. You'd think given recent
headlines that Texas might be a bit more reluctant to execute a possibly
innocent man.
Skinner doesn't dispute that he was in the house at the time his girlfriend
was bludgeoned to death and her sons were stabbed to death. But he says he
was unconscious at the time, knocked out by a near-lethal mix of alcohol and
codeine. He was convicted because of his presence at the crime scene,
because he had small spots of blood from two of the three victims on his
shirt, and because of the testimony of a neighbor, Andrea Reed, who happens
to be an ex-girlfriend of Skinner's. Reed says Skinner came to her shortly
after the crime and implicated himself to her. According to court records,
Skinner then told Reed a number of other implausible stories about who
committed the murders.
Skinner's case has been championedby the Medill Innocence
Project,
the team of professors and students that exposed deep flaws in the
Illinois death penalty system (ultimately leading to a moratorium on
executions in the state), and has freed 11 people from prison, including
five who had been condemned to death. After years of investigation, the
project has revealed a number of shortcomings in the state's case against
skinner. Among them:
* Andrea Reed has since recanted her testimony. She now says she was
pressured by police and prosecutors to falsely incriminate Skinner. In an
interview with Medill students, she added that, "I did not then and do not
now feel like he was physically capable of hurting anybody."
* The untested DNA included blood taken from the murder weapons,
skin taken from under the fingernails of Skinner's girlfriend, a rape test
taken from her that included semen, and other blood and hair found at the
scene. Skinner asked his attorney to request the evidence be tested in a
letter written in 1994. The attorney never made the request, stating later
that he feared doing so would implicate his client.
* Skinner's girlfriend had been stalked by an allegedly lecherous
uncle, Robert Donnell. Witnesses say Donnell had approached her at a party
she attended the night of her death. She left frightened, and he appeared to
have followed her. A friend says the uncle had raped her in the past. Days
after the murders, a neighbor reportedly saw the uncle thoroughly cleaning
and repainting his truck.
* Skinner's court-appointed attorney was a former prosecutor who had
actually prosecuted Skinner on a minor assault and car theft charge years
earlier. Skinner's two prior crimes-which his own attorney had
prosecuted-were used as aggravating factors in the death penalty portion of
his trial.
* According to a new report
with the levels of codeine and alcohol Skinner had in his blood would have
been comatose or dead. A heavy drinker may have been rousable, but would
have been "stuporous," unlikely to have the coordination necessary to carry
out three murders involving multiple stabbings and bludgeonings.
It isn't difficult to see why prosecutors don't want the DNA tested. They
have an unsympathetic suspect that they can place at the scene of the crime.
If DNA suggests someone else bled or fought in the house that night, it
doesn't conclusively prove Skinner is innocent, but it does (or at least
ought to) raise enough reasonable doubt to prevent his execution. In 2000
DNA tests were conducted on blood taken from a roll of gauze and a cassette
tape found in the house; that blood didn't match Skinner, his girlfriend, or
her sons.
The first possible outcome of testing the remaining evidence is that the DNA
will match Donnell, the allegedly lecherous, threatening uncle. Donnell has
since died. If tests show Donnell's flesh under the victim's fingernails, or
his blood or semen at the scene, the state is left with the strong
possibility that they let a murderer go free, brought an innocent man within
a week of execution, and no longer have a live body they can try, convict,
and execute.
The second possibility-that the untested evidence came from other, unknown
parties-wouldn't necessarily prove Skinner's innocence, but it would
certainly complicate the state's case against him. But that's still no
reason to refuse the tests. If we're going to execute people for
particularly heinous crimes, we have a moral obligation to ensure that every
reasonable possibility of the suspect's innocence has been explored and
exhausted. Ignoring evidence that complicates things falls well short of
that obligation.
The third possible outcome from testing the remaining biological evidence is
that DNA will come back a match only to Skinner or the victims. That would
go a long way toward affirming Skinner's guilt. All the more reason for
conducting them.
After a conviction, the criminal justice system tends put a premium on
finality, setting a high bar for reopening or retrying old cases. Given the
Willingham case and the spate of exonerations across Texas, perhaps it's
time the state put less emphasis on finality, and more on certainty. DNA
testing in Skinner's case may not bring us closer to closing those 1993
murders, but it will bring us closer to discovering the truth about them. In
a capital case especially, that alone should be reason enough to go through
with the tests.
- - - - -
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine.
posted by Sara Hickman at 07:25 am
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Help me finish “Absence of Blame”, my new adult cd
February 06, 2010
However, to master, press cds, pay for marketing, tour costs, etc, I am going to press up a limited
500 cds which will have individually HAND PAINTED, hand signed and numbered jackets created by me.
This limited run will also have some surprise stuff that won't be on the official release.
Here's the dealie-o:
Buy 1 of these limited cds for only $50 (includes shipping on this and all of the following)
Buy 5 of these limited cds ($250), you get five signed cds PLUS hand signed (to the folks of your choosing) 8x10 photos
Buy 10 of these limited cds ($500), you get the above (10 8x10 photos) PLUS a phone call to one person of your choice, and I'll sing them the song of your choice
Buy 100 of these limited cds ($5000), you get all of the above: 100 signed 8x10 photos, a phone call to the person of your choice, plus... a house concert!
Simply send your order to my address:
Sara Hickman AOB CD, 3005 S. Lamar, D-109, #412, Austin, TX 78704.
Please allow me about six weeks to get these to you.
If you buy 10 or 100, please include your phone number so I can contact you about whom
you'd like me to call and/or to set up a date for a house concert.
Thank you!
Sara
posted by Sara Hickman at 10:24 am
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Brad Buchholz Captures What the Cactus Cafe Is—-The Heart of Austin
Music lovers and musicians go to feel intertwined with the music and each other at intimate club now at center of debate.
THE LATEST FROM AUSTIN360.COM
By Brad Buchholz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 6:42 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010
I've come to understand that saying farewell to beauty is essential to loving Austin, living in Austin. So when last week's big news hit -- the Cactus Cafe, slated for closure in August -- I was not devastated. Hey, I've been saying goodbye for years now. Goodbye to Armadillo World Headquarters and Liberty Lunch. Goodbye to Clifford Antone and Bud Shrake. Goodbye to Las Manitas. Goodbye to those grand Shady Grove pecans on Barton Springs Road.
As much as I love the Cactus, I've been steeling myself for this moment for a long time. I was downright philosophical, in fact, as I shared the breaking news with Austin musicians who think of it as home. Then, on Monday, I drove down to the Cactus, caught a rousing night of jazz and folk and bluegrass by the Houston band Wheatfield, and came face-to-face with the intensity of my own denial.
Truth be told: The Cactus feels like home to me, too and it's not simply a matter of music. The Cactus, at its heart, is about closeness, about intimacy, about sitting so close to the musical campfire that you feel the fire-glow in your bones. The only thing prickly about the place is its name. You go to listen, to feel, to connect.
"When I'm onstage at the Cactus, I'm not a singer-songwriter showing off my craft. I feel like it's a relationship," says Austin's Sara Hickman, who has played the room for decades. "That audience is there to have a relationship with me, and I want to rise to the occasion and to be in relationship with them."
The Cactus devoutly has supported music grounded in lyric and language and story for more than 30 years. Its legacy is formidable. The legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt considered it his home club. Young unknowns named Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen launched their careers here. Yet the allure of the place is bigger than history and legacy, bigger than the physical space. It's about intimacy and community and closeness.
"The Cactus is definitely about family," says acclaimed Austin singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves, who worked sound at the Cactus for a time. "When I'm home, off the road, the first thing I do is look at who's playing there. It's like going over to a friend's house to hear music."
When you walk into the Cactus, you don't merely see a familiar face at the door, you shake hands with a heart-commitment that spans decades. Griff Luneburg, who books and manages the Cactus, began working there as a bartender in 1981. The core staff, Luneberg, Chris Lueck and Susan Svedeman, have invested a combined 73 years in the Cactus.
Between sets on Monday, I couldn't resist reminding Lueck that he has worked more years at the Cactus (27) than the legendary Darrell Royal spent coaching the University of Texas football team (20). Suddenly reflective, Lueck talked passionately about the Cactus family. He recalled how Van Zandt, wild as the wind, gave him "responsibility" pep talks -- successfully insisting that Lueck return to college and complete the few remaining hours toward his degree.
Lueck, a man distinguished by thick forearms and a soft heart, recalled people who have met and married at the Cactus. He expressed gentle gratitude for the members of the Cactus family, doctors, who counseled him a few years ago upon learning he had a heart condition. And he remembered Hickman's first show in the room, how she passed out colored construction paper and invited the audience to create their own art.
"She totally won me over," Lueck says. "Me! A metalhead!"
I knew the Cactus Cafe before it was a music venue. I visited the first time, as a UT student, with my friend Richard Zainfeld, in 1976 or 1977 -- to play, believe it or not, in a UT bridge tournament! (I'm sorry, Townes.) There was little magic in the air that night; the Cactus was just another room in the Union. I can testify, from experience, that 30 years of music have brought magic to those walls.
Hickman now refers to that space as the Carnegie Hall of Austin -- mainly for the way the staff nurtures a house ethic that honors music and craft and listening. At the bar, transactions are conducted in hushed tones, or sometimes with only eye contact. The bartenders know how to muffle the jingle of a cash drawer, how to shake a margarita with minimum intrusion. Everything is secondary to song.
The Cactus is not contrived. It's not about the hottest trend. It's simply a place that fosters intimate connection to song -- whether the artist is Guy Clark or Chris Smither or the Cowboy Junkies or Alejandro Escovedo. You're actually paying for smallness at the Cactus. There are only 150 chairs in the place. The sound is sublime. And if you want: You can sit close enough to the stage to feel a visceral heart-connection to the artist on stage.
James McMurtry likes to tease Cactus aficionados for their respectfulness. "It's OK to breathe between songs, you know," he said on stage not long ago, daring someone in the Cactus audience to break a bottle or misbehave. Yet a few minutes later, McMurtry broke into "Angeline" -- "a song I played for the very first time in this room 20 years ago." When McMurtry's son, Curtis, joined him on stage, we could see and feel in this very small room the tenderness between father and son, with Curtis quoting T.S. Eliot and joking about his dad's grouchiness.
The Cactus is Eliza Gilkyson leading the house outside after a fire alarm and playing an unplugged rendition of her father's tune "Bear Necessities," on the West Mall. It is Tom Russell riffing on Orson Welles and Charles Bukowsky. It's Gatemouth Brown taking a cell phone call on stage -- and asking the house to help him give directions to a friend.
The Cactus is the pretty woman at the table in front of me who has made it very clear her life won't be complete until Loudon Wainwright III plays her favorite tune. "The Swimming Song!" she cries out throughout the night. "The Swimming Song!" Wainwright eventually plays it, of course. And when he's done, his fan rises from her seat, saunters onto the stage, and gives him a big kiss.
"Well, I can see the security is out in force tonight, Griff," Wainwright says from the stage. Everyone in the house cracks up -- vitally aware of the connection between "Cactus" and "closeness."
Ray Wylie Hubbard recalls his experience on "The Dating Game" -- really -- in the 1960s and makes us howl with laughter. Then he talks about Rainer Maria Rilke and brings us to the deepest place of introspection. He demonstrates that Cactus connection is personal, musical, social, intellectual, physical. And in many ways: They mirror the kind of connection associated with "university."
"For a half hour after I heard the news, I kept asking myself, 'Why would the University of Texas close the Cactus?'" Cleaves says. "And then I thought: Isn't it part of their responsibility to integrate college with community, to have an interface with the community? What a perfect way to get nonstudents and nonuniversity people onto the campus. I think they're giving up a very valuable asset of their own, not just an asset to the larger music community."
Gilkyson, who probably has headlined more shows than any woman in Cactus history, agrees that the room is "one of the few places where the university meets the town." Her first thoughts about the closing were very specific: "First and foremost, I'm upset for Griff. He's put his whole life into this." But she saw the big picture as well.
"Griff is important because he helps us understand who we are as a group. Like Jody Denberg (longtime music director for radio station KGSR who left last year), he helps us find out who like-minded people are, and help us have a group identity," Gilkyson says. "The question before us is what can we do as a body to ensure that things we care about continue to have a booth in the marketplace. That's the question. As well as, 'Who are "we"?' anymore.
"Community is going out the window across the board, in all walks of life. I'm sure this is a wake-up call for all of us to attempt to make community wherever else we can. It's something we're going to have to be active about if we want to see the benefits of community continue to manifest in our part of the world."
When I was young — and intermittently broke as a freelance writer — a few of my friends gently challenged my affection for the Cactus. "It's a lot of money, going to those shows," someone told me, in the interest of responsibility. Why not save the cash, and invest in the material things I'd need to support a writing life?
Then and now, I've had a hard time explaining that a night at the Cactus is like a going to the world's coolest library, like going to soul-school. The Cactus is so much about conveying story, attaining intimacy in a quick and compact way, all the while connecting to philosophy, literature, spirituality, whimsy. What more could a budding writer want? So many years ago, I marveled how artists like Gilkyson cut through convention and touched the bone of truth. It changed my life.
The Cactus family remains hopeful. Thirty years ago, a younger generation bemoaned the loss of a funky listening room known as the Alamo Lounge and a few years later found a new home called Cactus. The latest news — that the UT Alumni Center might adopt it in 2011 — demonstrates that those who treasure the place are thinking about compassionate solutions. Still, I worry. As it's hard to imagine Babe Ruth in a "new" Yankee Stadium, would we feel Townes Van Zandt's spirit so vividly in a "new" Cactus Cafe.
After watching Chris and his staff shut down the room Monday night after the Wheatfield show, I took the familiar walk down the Texas Union corridor — passing kiosks marked "Starbucks" and "Quiznos" and "Wendy's" — and wondered about the future of the Cactus. You could see it coming. Really.
Outside, the university was quiet, blanketed in a gentle winter fog. The Barbara Jordan statue gleamed in the cool night air. Dew glistened on the leaves of centuries-old live oaks near Hogg Auditorium. I paused a minute, thought of timeless things, and imagined how nice it would be if we didn't have to say goodbye, at least not yet, to the Cactus Cafe.
posted by Sara Hickman at 07:56 am
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