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a---z · 5 years ago

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TRANSMISSIONS

www.twitch.tv/transmissions2020

Our collective isolation highlights that all forms of community are now more important than ever, and it is vital that we find mechanisms to support each other through this precarious time. In this extraordinary landscape that we have found ourselves in, it is clear that many artists, writers and thinkers are having exhibitions, opportunities and subsequent fees cancelled for the foreseeable future. In response to this, we are establishing a new project called TRANSMISSIONS. This is an online platform which will commission artists to share their work within a classic DIY TV show format.

Episode 1

| 23 April | 9PM GMT

REPLAY | 24 April | 9AM GMT

w/ Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg / Bruce Bickford / CAConrad / Salvador Dali / Brice Dellsperger / Tessa Hughes-Freeland / Juliet Jacques / Sam Keogh / Jiji Kim / Quinn Latimer / Mark Leckey / Kalup Linzy / Sade Mica / Laure Prouvost / Christopher Soto / Patrick Staff / The Cockettes / TV Party / Unarius Academy of Science / Su Hui- Yu – Curated by Anne Duffau, Hana Noorali & Tai Shani Episode 2 | 30 April | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 1 May | 9AM GMT w/ Sophie Jung Episode 3 | 7 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 8 May | 9AM GMT w/ Tarek Lakhrissi – Your world is already ending Episode 4 | 14 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 15 May | 9AM GMT w/ Johanna Hedva – Tom Cruise Studies with expert guests Vivian Ia and Matthew Miller Episode 5 | 21 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 22 May | 9AM GMT w/ STRAWBERRY JAM: A LITERARY HOUR with Mykki Blanco Episode 6 | 28 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 29 May | 9AM GMT w/ CAConrad with invited poets

Season 1 of TRANSMISSIONS will run as six weekly episodes screening every Thursday at 9 pm GMT and repeated on Fridays at 9 am GMT on Twitch. The 1st episode will air on the 23rd of April 2020 which will be curated by Anne Duffau, Tai Shani and Hana Noorali. The subsequent five episodes will be hosted by invited artists. Each artist included in TRANSMISSIONS will be paid a fee in return for their contribution. With a sense of community, all the money used to pay artists in season 1 has been kindly donated by established UK art institutions and commercially stable artists.

Season 1 is funded and supported by, Artquest+DACS, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Studio Oscar Murillo, Somerset House Studios and Wysing Arts Centre.

Episode 1 | 23 April | 9PM GMT

REPLAY | 24 April | 9AM GMT

Episode 2 | 30 April | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 1 May | 9AM GMT w/ Sophie Jung

Sophie Jung, The Bigger Sleep, 2019 courtesy the artist and Kunstmuseum Basel. Photo: Julian Salinas

Working across text, sculpture and performance, Sophie Jung’s work navigates the politics of re/er/re/presentation and challenges the reductive desire to conclude. Her texts unfocus on blurring scripted hegemonies and tap, hop, stammer and stumble over and across languaged powers. She employs humour, shame, the absurd, raw anger, rhythm and rhyme, slapstick, hardship, friendship and a constant stream of slippages. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes and defines itself against the dogma of an Original Idea or a Universal Significance. Instead it stands as a network of abiding incompletion, an ever-changing choir of urgencies and pleasures, traumas and manifestations that communally relay between dominant and minor themes. Sophie Jung is invested in triggering a de-categorising of concepts and a deconceptualisation of categories and understands her approach to “stuff” – both legible utensil and metaphoric apparition – as an uncertain queering slash querying of historical materialism. Sophie Jung (lives and works in Basel and London) received a BFA from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and a MFA from Goldsmiths, London. Recent projects and exhibitions include Sincerity Condition at Casino Luxembourg, Woman Standing at The National Gallery, Prague, Taxpayer’s Money for Frieze LIVE; Dramatis Personaea at JOAN, Los Angeles; The Bigger Sleep at Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart and Block Universe, London; Come Fresh Hell or Fresh High Water at Blain Southern, London; Producing My Credentials at Kunstraum London and Paramount VS Tantamount at Kunsthalle Basel. She is currently working on solo exhibitions at E.A. Shared Space, Istituto Svizzero in Milan and Galerie Joseph Tang in Paris and works as a guest mentor at Institut Kunst, Basel.

Episode 3

| 7 May | 9PM GMT

REPLAY | 8 May | 9AM GMT

w/ Tarek Lakhrissi

– Your world is already ending

Tarek Lakhrissi is a visual artist and a poet based in Paris. His works have been exhibited in Auto Italia South East (London, UK), Hayward Gallery (London, UK), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, AU), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Grand Palais - FIAC (Paris, FR), Lafayette Anticipations (Paris, FR), CRAC Alsace (Altkirch, FR), Artexte (Montreal, CA), Šiuolaikinio meno centras/CAC (Vilnius, LT), Espace Arlaud (Lausanne, CH), among others. He is a featured artist in the 22nd Biennale of Sydney NIRIN (2020).

Episode 4 | 14 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 15 May | 9AM GMT w/ Johanna Hedva – Tom Cruise Studies with expert guests Vivian Ia and Matthew Miller

Tom Cruise Studies is a meander of curiosity. There is no driving inquiry other than the question, "What's, like, up with Tom Cruise?" Hedva considers the various roles Cruise has played onscreen and in public, from religious zealot, to cocky upstart, to a man oppressed by his own masculinity, to couch-jumping love-nut, to an exiled actor who clawed his way back into Hollywood via a maniacal obsession with doing death-certain stunts. Joined by two expert guests, Hedva and Vivian Ia will consider the astrology charts of Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard, while Matthew Miller will share his theory that the Mission Impossible franchise is Cruise's vehicle for making public apologies to his ex-wife, Katie Holmes.

Johanna Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novel, On Hell. Their collection of poems, performances, and essays, Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, will be published in September 2020. Their essay, "Sick Woman Theory," published in Mask in 2016, has been translated into six languages, and their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, and Asian American Literary Review. Their work has been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, Performance Space New York, the LA Architecture and Design Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon, as well as featured in parrhesiades. Their album, The Sun and the Moon, was released in March 2019, and they’re currently touring Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual.

Vivian Ia lives in Berlin. Their poetry is Pushcart-nominated and has appeared or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Tiny Seed, The Gravity of the Thing, Fourteen Hills, and Berkeley Poetry Review.

Matthew Miller is a video director from Sacramento, California. He works in both live-action and animation to create short films and commercial projects. In the last four years, he’s directed a series of short films for The Getty Museum with artists and authors such as Ellsworth Kelly, Yo-Yo Ma, Mary Beard, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Ed Ruscha. He is currently in quarantine with his wife and Snoopy-esque dog, Millie, in Hawaiian Gardens, California, where he has been dividing his time between starting a garden and collecting ideas for a film project.

Episode 5

| 21 May | 9PM GMT

REPLAY | 22 May | 9AM GMT

w/ STRAWBERRY JAM: A LITERARY HOUR with

Mykki Blanco

Join musician Mykki Blanco for an hour of music and poetry readings. Spoken word, lyrical breakdowns, a presentation on two 20th century American literary figures Bob Kaufman & Mina Loy as well as a first time listen to new unreleased musical project.

Episode 6 | 28 May | 9PM GMT REPLAY | 29 May | 9AM GMT w/ CAConrad with invited poets

CAConrad's latest book JUPITER ALIGNMENT: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals, is forthcoming from Ignota Books in 2020. The author of 9 books of poetry and essays, While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books), won the 2018 Lambda Book Award. They also received a 2019 Creative Capital grant as well as a Pew Fellowship, the Believer Magazine Book Award, and the Gil Ott Book Award. They regularly teach at Columbia University in New York City, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please view their books, essays, recordings, and the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films) online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad

"CAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious." ---Tracy K. Smith, New York Times.

Thank you to:

All contributing artists, writers, poets, composers and thinkers; Maxwell Sterling; Adam Sinclair; Lori E. Allen; Artsquest. An artist-run programme that uses research about visual artists’ working conditions to provide support for professional artists; DACS; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; Studio Oscar Murillo; Somerset House Studios; Wysing Arts Centre; Cabinet Gallery; Lisson Gallery & Max Bossier

https://www.twitch.tv/transmissions2020

@transmissions2020

TRANSMISSIONS collective is composed of:

Anne Duffau

is a cultural producer, researcher, and founder of A---Z, an exploratory/nomadic curatorial platform exploring artistic practices and knowledge exchange through collaborations, presentations, soundscapes, screenings and discussions. She has collaborated with a range of projects and organisations including ArtLicks, Southwark Park Galleries, Mimosa House and Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London Please Stand By, or-bits .com, PAF Olomouc Czech Republic & Tenderflix. Anne has previously run the StudioRCA Riverlight, London programme (2016-2018) and is currently the interim curator at Wysing Arts Center, a Tutor at the School of Arts and Humanities, and is the acting Lead in Critical Practice, within the Royal College of Art’s Contemporary Art Practice Programme. She has performed live music under Alpha through a number of projects and collaborations.

Hana Noorali

is an independent curator and writer based in London. In 2019 she was selected (together with Lynton Talbot) to realise an exhibition at The David Roberts Foundation as part of their annual curator’s series. She curated Lisson Presents at Lisson Gallery, London from 2017-2018 and from 2017 -2019, produced and presented the podcast series Lisson ON AIR. In 2018 Hana edited a monograph on the work of artist and Benedictine Monk, Dom Sylvester Houédard. Its release coincided with an exhibition of his work at Lisson Gallery, New York that she co-curated with Matt O’Dell. In 2007, she co-founded a non-profit project space and curatorial collective called RUN active until 2011. In 2020 Hana and her curatorial partner Lynton Talbot will be publishing an anthology that examines the intersection of poetry and film with (p) (prototype).

Tai Shani

is an artist living and working in London. She is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. In 2019 Tai was a Max Mara prize nominee. Her work has been shown at Turner Contemporary, UK (2019); Grazer Kunst Verein, Austria (2019); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy (2019); Glasgow International, UK (2018); Wysing Arts Centre, UK (2017); Serpentine Galleries, London (2016); Tate, London (2016); Yvonne Lambert Gallery, Berlin (2016) and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2016).

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classyfoxdestiny · 4 years ago

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Business news live - The Hindu

2:05 P.M.

China regulator approves establishment of state pension company

China’s banking and insurance regulator said it had approved the establishment of a state pension company to boost funds for its citizens’ retirement as the country faces mounting pressures from an aging population, Reuters reported.

China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) approved on Sept. 2 the plan for 17 bank-affiliated wealth management units, insurers and state institutions to jointly set up the state pension company with registered capital of 11.15 billion yuan ($1.73 billion), according to a statement on the regulator’s website on Wednesday.

1:59 P.M.

Cabinet did not take up proposal for telecoms relief measures

India’s cabinet did not take up proposals on Wednesday for providing financial relief to the country’s cash-strapped telecoms sector, a government source said, according to Reuters.

The cabinet was widely expected to take a decision on a so-called relief package for the telecoms industry, which would have helped all wireless carriers but especially the embattled Vodafone Idea.

1:54 P.M.

JPMorgan to buy major stake in Volkswagen’s payments unit

JPMorgan has struck a deal to buy a majority stake in German car giant Volkswagen’s payments business ahead of a planned rollout of in-car technology that allows drivers to automatically pay for fuel or tolls.

The U.S. bank has agreed to buy close to 75% of Volkswagen Payments S.A. for an undisclosed sum, subject to regulatory approvals, Reuters reported.

1:47 P.M.

Tesla sold 44,264 China-made vehicles in August

U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc in August sold 44,264 China-made vehicles, including 31,379 for export, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said on Wednesday.

CPCA said passenger car sales in August in China totalled 1.5 million, down 14.7% from a year earlier, Reuters reported.

1:45 P.M.

India considering foreign institutional investment of up to 20% in LIC IPO

Indian government is considering allowing foreign institutional investment of up to 20% in Life Insurance Corporation, according to a government source, Reuters reported.

The listing of LIC is set to be India’s biggest ever IPO, with the government aiming to raise up to 900 billion Indian rupees ($12.24 billion) from its stake sale.

1:02 P.M.

India’s economic growth will remain strong in coming quarters: S&P

India’s economic growth will remain strong in the coming quarters while inflation in Asia’s third largest economy is likely to remain at elevated levels, analysts at Standard and Poor’s said on Wednesday.

S&P said the next rating action on India will depend on the pace of recovery over the next 24-month period. S&P has a ‘BBB-‘ rating with a stable outlook on India, Reuters reported.

12:59 P.M.

First Abu Dhabi Bank hires new head of investment banking from HSBC

First Abu Dhabi Bank, the United Arab Emirates’ largest lender, has hired Martin Tricaud as head of investment banking, sources said.

Tricaud was previously chief executive officer for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey region at HSBC, Reuters reported.

12:51 P.M.

Maruti Suzuki reports 8% dip in production in August

The country’s largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki India on Wednesday said its total production in August declined by 8% on a yearly basis to 1,13,937 units as semiconductor shortage impacted its manufacturing schedules.

The company had produced a total of 1,23,769 units in the year-ago period, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) said in a regulatory filing, according to a PTI report.

12:44 P.M.

Sansera Engineering IPO to open on Sep 14; price band set at ₹734-744/share

Auto component maker Sansera Engineering on Wednesday said it has fixed a price band of ₹734-744 a share for its ₹1,283-crore initial share-sale.

The IPO will open for public subscription on September 14 and close on September 16. The bidding for anchor investors will open on September 13, the company said.

The initial public offering (IPO) is entirely an offer for sale (OFS) of 17,244,328 equity shares by promoters and investors, PTI reported.

12:32 P.M.

India to give $3.5 billion in revised clean tech scheme for automakers

India will give about $3.5 billion in incentives to auto companies over a five-year period under a revised scheme to boost the manufacturing and export of clean technology vehicles, Reuters reported, citing two sources familiar with the latest proposal.

The government’s original plan was to give about $8 billion to automakers and part manufacturers but, the scheme was redrawn to focus on companies that build electric and hydrogen fuel-powered vehicles, the report noted.

A government official with direct knowledge of the matter said the initial allocation over the five-year period has been reduced but that up to $8 billion could be made available if the scheme is successful, initial funds are spent, and certain conditions are met.

12:14 P.M.

EV maker Ultraviolette Automotive to invest ₹500 crore to scale up business

Electric two-wheeler maker Ultraviolette Automotive Pvt Ltd will invest ₹500 crore in the next three to five years to scale up business, including setting up of a new manufacturing unit and product development, according to top company officials.

The company, in which TVS Motor Company is an investor, is setting up its manufacturing and assembling facility near Electronics City, Bengaluru, from where it will start producing its high-performance electric motorcycle – the F77 in the first quarter of 2022, a PTI report noted.

In the first year, the company said it will produce 15,000 electric motorcycles and will scale up to an annual capacity of 1.2 lakh units.

11:59 A.M.

Bitcoin nurses losses in wake of El Salvador’s glitched rollout

Bitcoin nursed losses Wednesday after plunging amid El Salvador’s troubled rollout of the largest cryptocurrency as legal tender, according to a Bloomberg report.

The virtual coin was trading at about $45,474, having slid as much as 17% a day earlier before paring some of the losses. The downdraft also swept across tokens such as Ether and Dogecoin, the report noted.

Tuesday’s selloff is the most significant break in a rebound that had lifted Bitcoin almost 75% since late July. Overall cryptocurrency market value fell about $300 billion in the past 24 hours, according to tracker CoinGecko.

11:40 A.M.

Toshiba says detailed talks on buyouts meaningful only after option review

Toshiba Corp said detailed talks on potential take-private deals would make sense only after all strategic options are carefully reviewed, spurning calls from some shareholders to start soliciting buyout bids.

But the latest process is not meant to formally solicit buyout bids for the overall company or some of its assets, puzzling some investors who have questioned why the company has not started an official soliciting process, Reuters reported, citing sources.

11:13 A.M.

SEC threatens to sue Coinbase over crypto lending programme

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has threatened to sue Coinbase Global Inc if the crypto exchange goes ahead with plans to launch a programme allowing users to earn interest by lending crypto assets, according to a Reuters report.

The SEC has issued Coinbase with a Wells notice, an official way it tells a company that it intends to sue the company in court, Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal, said in a blog post. He said Coinbase would delay the launch of its ‘Lend’ product until at least October as a result.

10:54 A.M.

Rupee plunges 23 paise to 73.65 against U.S. dollar in early trade

The Indian rupee plunged 23 paise to 73.65 against the U.S. dollar in opening trade on Wednesday, tracking a strong American currency and muted trend in domestic equities, a PTI report noted.

At the interbank foreign exchange, the rupee opened at 73.48 against the dollar, then fell to 73.65, registering a decline of 23 paise from the last close.

10:45 A.M.

VAHDAM India raises ₹174 crore from IIFL AMC, others

Premium tea and wellness products maker VAHDAM India has raised ₹174 crore from investors, including IIFL AMC’s private equity fund, to expand its business globally and enter new categories, PTI reported.

The series D round of funding also saw participation from existing investors, which include a consortium of Sixth Sense Ventures affiliates, the Mankind Group Family Office, Infosys Founder Kris Gopalkrishnan’s Family Office, Urmin Group and White Whale Ventures.

10:30 A.M.

OYO increases authorised share capital to ₹901 crore

Oravel Stays Pvt Ltd, that operates hospitality firm OYO, has approved an increase in the authorised share capital of the company from ₹1.17 crore to ₹901 crore, according to a regulatory filing by the hospitality firm.

The development comes ahead of proposed initial public offering (IPO) by OYO, for which a draft red herring prospectus is likely to be filed in the next few months, PTI reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

10:22 A.M.

Apple to hold event on Sept 14, new iPhones expected

Apple Inc said on Tuesday it would hold a special event on Sept. 14, which most industry watchers believe will be used to unveil a new line of its flagship iPhones.

10:11 A.M.

Intel to invest up to 80 billion euros in boosting EU chip capacity: CEO

Intel on Tuesday said it could invest as much as 80 billion euros in Europe over the next decade to boost the region’s chip capacity and will open up its semiconductor plant in Ireland for automakers.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, speaking at Munich’s IAA auto show, also said the company would announce the locations of two major new European chip fabrication plants by the end of the year.

10:01 A.M.

Crypto not currency; needs to be regulated as asset: ex-RBI DG Gandhi

Former RBI Deputy Governor R. Gandhi on Tuesday made a case for treating and regulating crypto as a separate asset class with a view to enabling governments around the world to effectively deal with illegal activities associated with virtual currencies.

After quite a lot of debate over the years, he said, people have fully understood that crypto cannot be a currency because the fundamental element of a currency— that it should be a legal tender— is missing in this case.

9:46 A.M.

RBI enhances scope of tokenisation to ensure security of card data

In a bid to ensure security of card data, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has enhanced the scope of tokenisation and permitted card issuers to act as token service providers, PTI reported.

The RBI extended the device-based tokenisation to card-on-file tokenisation services, a move that will bar the merchants from storing actual card data, the report noted.

It said the decision will reinforce the safety and security of card data while continuing the convenience in card transactions.

9:32 A.M.

Govt. mulls allowing SEZ occupants to sell locally

The government is considering a proposal to allow producers in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) to sell their output to the domestic market without treating them as imports. It is also reviewing the exclusion of export-oriented units and SEZs from the recently notified tax refund scheme for exports.

9:19 A.M.

Indian benchmark indices open on flat note

Indian indices opened on a flat note on Wednesday amid tepid cues from global markets. BSE Sensex opened at 58,350.56, up 71.08 points, while Nifty opened at 17,375.75, up 13.65 points.

On Tuesday, the 30-share BSE Sensex settled 17.43 points or 0.03% lower at 58,279.48, while the broader NSE Nifty fell 15.70 points or 0.09% to 17,362.10.

9:09 A.M.

Oil climbs amid slow supply return after Hurricane Ida

Oil prices rose on Wednesday, paring overnight losses, with producers in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico struggling to restart operations nine days after Hurricane Ida swept through, a Reuters report noted.

Brent crude futures inched up 0.2%, to $71.83 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures rose 0.4%, to $68.62 a barrel.

9:00 A.M.

Asian shares on edge in choppy trading

Asian shares hovered just off six-week highs on Wednesday, as a more risk-averse mood spread into the market from the United States overnight due to worries about slowing growth that hurt equities, Reuters reported.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.13% having posted gains, if sometimes small, for 11 of the last 12 sessions.

Japan’s Nikkei reversed early losses and was last 0.82% higher, Australia slipped 0.32%, Chinese blue chips fell 0.04%, and the Hong Kong benchmark gained 0.12%.

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halsaeon · 2 months ago

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here's the wip i mentioned before, please excuse the lack of mixing

(if anyone knows how to get rid of the popping noises in moresampler please let me know ;-;)

voicebank: SALVADOR Auto Recovery by @miodiodavinci

#salvador auto recovery #utau #utauloid #vocaloid #kuusou forest #souzou forest #jin #kagerou project #kagepro #mekakucity actors

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epicdogymoment · 2 months ago

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twisting ft. @miodiodavinci's SALVADOR Auto Recovery

credits under the cut

original, instrumental by They Might Be Giants

UST, tuning, mix, art by @epicdogymoment

#leologisms #leography #utau #ijo Lijo #salvador auto recovery #tmbg #they might be giants #haaaaaahhh. yet another one that had to go through numerous rounds of mixing and re-mixing #so hard to get a sense for keeping vocals and bg vocals and instrumental balanced.....#the audio cover image is a quick redraw/study (?) of a very very cropped version of the flood album cover #what else is there to say. aaahhh right THIS is the thing i was doing the salvador english test (chug jug) for #ill say im definitely happy with how well i got him to articulate. but i also know all of the words to this song by heart so #im definitely biased. i like this song toooo much and doing this cover reminded me how much i like it #this is also my first time getting an utau to scream!! its very difficult to pull off. especially because the vast majority of tutorials ar #specifically for like screamo-style screams? not what im going for #anyway. thank you tmbg for the flood (1990) album and all the short songs and the official (official!!!) instrumental versions #and thank you mio for making this lovely lad. so i could force him to sing in english.#also i figured i should credit myself for ? things ? feels weird because its on my blog #but yeah i make my own usts. just think its easier to build em from scratch so theyre tailored to the vb im using and how i want to tune it #............bows really deeply.

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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Road trip through Middle America reveals resilience, pragmatism, and diversity

Doug Struck, CS Monitor, November 26, 2017

STORM LAKE, IOWA--La Juanita is packed. Under a mural of a farmer in a sombrero, three Asian teenage girls sit in a booth giggling with their white friend. At the next table, an ethnic pea pod of workers ogle overflowing quesadillas, arguing about sports. Spanish, English, and Hmong words slide within sentences and leap between tables.

And this is Iowa.

The presidential election a year ago produced a somber map of the United States, colored red and blue. The blue states were mostly clustered on the East and West Coasts, with a broad brush of red between. President Trump’s volcanic presidency has cemented the image of an urban elite and rural heartland frothing at each other over politics, culture, and heritage.

Mr. Trump’s election was delivered by these “flyover states,” cast as places of angry whites, frustrated at being left out of the economic recovery, besieged demographically, ignored politically, and stuck in shrinking small towns with vanishing jobs.

These problems exist. But they are not etched in inevitability. There are exceptions--exceptional people trying to buck the trends, and exceptional places that are succeeding. More than a few small towns are figuring out ways to stop their economic slide and to grow. More and more, white Middle America is being repeopled with newcomers of color, bringing a workforce to agricultural jobs, a vibrancy to decaying towns, and a mix of welcome--and suspicion--from older residents.

To meander on a 6,712-mile drive across the US on routes mostly painted red is to rediscover a heartland that is often not what the rest of America thinks it is. It is not monolithic. There are places refusing to be an emptying and failing “other” America. They are places of inspiration, optimism, and hope.

Exhibit A might be Storm Lake, Iowa, where half the population is Hispanic, black, or Asian and where schools are stuffed with children speaking 30 languages.

The town of 10,000 (locals say 14,000) is in northwest Iowa--solidly within Trump country. It is the picture of an idyllic Midwest: Dappled trees break the heat in summer and the town hugs a sparkling lake. Avenues are lined by homes with wide porches, and kids wander in blissful confidence about town. Cars stop midstreet as drivers chat with senior citizens in sneakers out on their evening walks.

Midwest towns like Storm Lake are seen as an endangered species. Rural areas cover 72 percent of the nation’s land but host only 14 percent of the population. “Nonmetropolitan” populations began to stagnate in the 1940s and have gradually declined since. Smaller, more rural populations have fallen more precipitously: 1,350 rural counties have lost residents in the past six years, while only 626 showed any gain, according to the research arm of the US Department of Agriculture.

But Storm Lake is different. Across from the town water tower is a Buddhist temple for more than 500 Laotian refugees who came here in the late 1980s. Rust’s Western Shed, the quintessential small-town clothing store, no longer just rents tuxedos for prom night and weddings, but displays quinceañera dresses. The high school valedictorian speech a couple years ago was given by a young woman who had first come from Mexico to Storm Lake speaking no English.

“Just because somebody doesn’t speak English, it doesn’t mean they aren’t bright,” says Carl Turner, superintendent of schools. Eighty percent of his 2,500 students are ethnic minorities, and the first language of 60 percent is not English.

For years, Storm Lake’s workers--almost all white men of European stock--slaughtered pork at the meat plant on the edge of town. It was hard work, but paid $30,000 a year, a solid middle-class income then. In 1981, the plant closed, citing competition, putting 500 people out of work. When it was reopened a year later by Iowa Beef Processors, wages had been slashed to $6 an hour, productivity demands were higher, and fewer than 30 former workers had been rehired, according to Mark Grey, a sociologist at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Instead, the assembly lines were filled with immigrants who came for the jobs and did not complain about the pay.

The first group were Laotians, brought by a single respected patron from an earlier church-sponsored group of resettled Vietnam War refugees, according to Professor Grey. They were followed by waves of Hispanics, Mennonites from Mexico, Micronesians, Burmese, Africans, and others.

The resentments that followed the job upheavals have softened, and Storm Lake officials have stepped up to try to help the newcomers. The influx is now mostly accepted as the pain of necessary change, those officials say.

“It’s a pretty amazing place, for this to be in northwestern Iowa,” Dr. Turner, the school superintendent, says at his office in the center of town. “I tell new teachers they will never work harder and never learn more than they will here.”

The schools weave English as a second language courses throughout each day’s classes and have rigged up a system for high-schoolers to earn a year’s worth of college credits before they officially graduate, in part to help students who lack the legal documents to apply for colleges, loans, or financial aid.

Emilia Marroquin came to Storm Lake 16 years ago. She was born in El Salvador, spent 10 years in Los Angeles, and moved with her husband because they heard there were good jobs in the packing plant, and, she says, “we were looking for a safer place for our kids.”

“It was a shock. I came in November in the middle of a blizzard,” she recalls, now laughing at the memory. “Nobody spoke Spanish, and I didn’t speak English. We were living in a motel and I didn’t know anybody.” She lasted only a couple days on the exhausting, chilled meatpacking line. She quit--her husband stayed at the plant--and she plunged into English classes. She is now finishing a four-year college degree.

She chats while sitting in a tiny school chair at the town’s new Head Start program building, where she works as a community liaison. She just finished enrolling the child of a Sudanese arrival. “They need a person they can trust,” she says of people like the tall, lanky man who had come to her office, clutching a sheaf of official documents for his daughter.

“Those who stay feel they have job security, their kids’ school is safe, and it’s a safe community,” she says. “It’s a place where they can do things that they never thought of before, like owning a house, having a car, having a job that will give them good wages.”

If the newcomers bring problems, they would wash up at the foot of Mark Prosser, Storm Lake’s burly chief of police. But “in 28 years, I can probably count the hate crimes we’ve had on one hand,” he says.

The force makes an ambitious outreach effort to the communities, with mixed success. Their potluck dinner flopped: “We learned that in other cultures you don’t invite someone to a meal and then ask them to bring the food.”

And they don’t round up the town’s citizens to check their papers. Mr. Prosser shrugs at the question of how many are here illegally--he’s heard from one-third to one-half. But “we’re not in the immigration business,” he says. “I honestly have not even had that conversation for two or three years. It’s not an issue.”

Prosser, too, is bullish on the town’s diversity. “Sure, there are problems. But let’s be clear: The pros so outweigh the cons--it’s not comparable. Storm Lake is so young, so colorful, so vibrant compared to other Iowa communities. What kind of problems do you want to have--the problems of dying or growing?”

Other rural towns are seeing a similar influx. Hispanics, blacks, and other races made up 82 percent of what growth there was in rural areas between 2000 and 2010, according to an analysis by Daniel Lichter, a sociologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

But the dagger in the heart of many small towns is the loss of industry. The Department of Agriculture says rural areas lost nearly a quarter of their manufacturing jobs during the 2000s.

There are towns trying to overcome that. Peru, Ind., was born almost two centuries ago, first as a trading post with the Miami Indians and then as a way stop on the Wabash and Erie Canal. It became a railroad hub when the canal was filled in, and thrived as the county seat with an Air Force base and several auto parts manufacturing plants. But the base and the plants were mostly closed by the 1990s, the town’s population shrank to 11,000, and longtime businesses gave way to shops selling electronic cigarettes and fireworks--a familiar death spiral for rural towns.

Gabriel Greer is the mayor. He is only 35 years old and owns a small construction business. He’s also a Democrat. “Donald Trump won hands-down here. I won hands-down here. Hard to square,” he acknowledges, sitting in his office in City Hall.

One reason is townsfolk are buying into his refusal to let Peru wither away. He and a small cohort of mostly young businesspeople are trying to save the town. The trick, he believes, is not the traditional one of courting the odd industrial plant to bring new jobs.

“‘Jobs first’ is not how it works anymore. What we are fighting now is a battle for people,” he says. “People now decide where they want to live, and start looking for a job from there. The jobs will follow.”

Mr. Greer notes there are five medium-sized or larger cities within about an hour’s drive offering employment. “Then the question is, where do you want to live?” Small towns, with cheaper and bigger homes, low crime, kid-friendly streets, and a strong sense of community may persuade many people to put up with a longer commute, he says.

Or eliminate it altogether. “There’s a lot of people working jobs online, and they can live wherever they want,” says Steve Dobbs. He moved with his wife, a lawyer, back to her hometown of Peru six years ago. They set up offices in the old Montgomery Ward store, and Mr. Dobbs started renovating the boarded-up storefronts to put lipstick on an aging downtown.

He sees signs it is working. The plywood is coming down, windows are being repaired, and a few new businesses have opened. In fact, the US Census Bureau says the rate of new start-ups in rural areas nationwide is nearly double that in metropolitan areas.

“We are definitely coming back,” says Sandra Tossou. She left a fast-paced culinary career in five-star restaurants to return to Peru, where she reopened an old bakery and now has a dozen workers. Facing down a towering cake with an icing bag, she says it was the right choice. “We’re part of the revival. It’s the young entrepreneurs who have to have the drive to make a comeback.”

The country looks different from the heartland. Middle America is a seductively vast tableau where people are shaped by natural elements--soil, water, wind, and space. The people in the heartland are more defined by the boundlessness of those characteristics than laws. Rules from Washington often seem an insolent din from afar, naive to the dictates of the land. Parents here raise their kids with an ethos of endurance, not complaint. They labor to overcome problems, not to circumvent them. They see religion, not government, as the only force equal to the power of the land and the weather and the miseries those sometimes bring. They honor consistency, not discord.

To the people of the heartland, the coastal denizens who fly over don’t know what’s below and don’t understand it. They pull down the window shades in their airplane to watch a movie.

But the very vastness of Middle America is drawing new industries. In Nebraska, corn is king. The countryside is a mosaic of huge circles of cornfields--grown around the radius of giant pivoting sprinklers--set within the squares of traditional property lines.

Yet from O’Neill, Neb. (pop. 3,700), you can take roads due east for 10 sections (as square miles are measured on farmland) and then due north for nine sections to find the state’s newest bumper crop--wind turbines.

Berkshire Hathaway Energy planted 200 turbines here at the Grande Prairie Wind Farm, an army of mechanical giants that loom over the landscape like the Martian invaders in H.G. Wells’s “War of the Worlds.” Shawn O’Connor is the senior manager who oversees the wind farm for Vestas, the Danish turbine manufacturer. He is a US Army-trained engineer whose background is in coal. He has run coal plants and helped build them. He says he realized they were industrial dinosaurs.

“I had a lot of career left. I wanted something that would grow,” he says. He calls the turbines “masterful creatures.”

He is right about the growth. Mr. O’Connor’s 200 wind machines will soon seem modest compared with the 1,000 turbines being erected in the massive Wind XI project in next-door Iowa, part of that state’s plans to abandon fossil fuels entirely.

O’Connor walks into his office with a job seeker who is wearing a hard hat and safety harness. Before a person is hired, the candidate must pass a climb test: Scale a ladder 300 feet to the top of the tower and traverse the “nacelle,” the pod at the hub of three 177-foot blades.

“It’s not for everyone,” O’Connor says. When the wind blows, the turbine sways a bit, which can be unnerving at 30 stories high. O’Connor likes to hire local farmhands for his crew of 20 technicians. They respect safety, understand big machinery, and “show up for work every day,” he says. His technicians start at $17 to $22 an hour, not bad in a rural area where jobs off the farm are hard to get and usually pay meager wages.

Not far away, Jared Sanderson and Tim Peter are working at a grain silo set amid cornfields studded by the turbines. In every direction, giant white towers support blades that cut the air. Neither farmer minds the turbines.

“I’d rather have that than the leak from an oil pipe,” says Mr. Sanderson, referring to the ongoing controversy in the state over the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Do the machines mar the aesthetics? “There’s nothing to look at here anyway,” says Mr. Peter, grinning. The men say farmers get about $10,000 a year to put a wind turbine on their land, and the blades are high enough that they can till the soil under them. The cows seem to approve, too: On hot days, they will line up single-file in the slender shade of a turbine tower.

Other new industries are cropping up in Middle America, not all welcome. Pueblo, Colo., made steel for the country’s westward expansion and was known as “the Pittsburgh of the West” until the price collapse of the 1980s. Its bruised economy is now reviving in part because of marijuana. Twenty-nine states have legalized pot use in some form; Colorado was the first to approve recreational use. Pueblo has one of the largest outdoor fields of marijuana--21,000 plants and expanding--in the country.

Pueblo’s citizens continue to argue about the crop--Isn’t it a gateway drug? dangerous to your health?--but the city reaped $3.5 million in taxes and fees from the pot businesses last year. A year ago, Beverly Duran, director of the Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation, selected 30 high school graduates to each receive a $1,000 college scholarship. This year she gave all 210 students who applied for scholarships $2,000 a year for college, thanks to pot taxes. At the school awards ceremony, “the excitement and the look on the faces of the students was incredible,” she says. “It was the look of hope.”

Other towns in Middle America are hoping a change in Washington will bring new vigor to their main streets and monthly incomes. Across the state from Pueblo, in northwest Colorado, lies Craig (pop. 9,500). This is red country--Trump won the county by 82 percent. Ranchers graze cattle on dry, cinnamon-brown land dotted with sagebrush. Historical photos show gunslingers and huge cattle drives. The local museum keeps Native American displays on one side and cowboy displays on the other.

The scene at Craig’s annual Moffat County Fair seems relaxed. Worn boots and cowboy hats are standard uniform. Men and women deftly navigate around the grounds on horseback, willing their animals with gentle nudges and tugs. People wave hello.

Still, “it was a little scary before the election,” says Katrina Springer, president of the fair board, who grew up on a sheep ranch. Passions run deep here: At the center of town is a store dedicated to survivalists. “Prepare for the worst,” the sign in the window says. “Hope for the best.” Yard signs proclaim “Coal Keeps the Lights On,” in defense of the thick seams of the Yampa coal field underlying Craig.

It is impolite to ask ranchers here how many head of cattle they have--it’s like asking how much money they have in their bank account. Nor does one inquire too pointedly about the size of their ranches. Many ranchers graze their cows and horses on federal land, and their relation to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a touchy subject. By that calculation, they saw President Barack Obama as against them and see Trump as for them.

Standing by the auction lot fence at the fair, Shandy Deakins, who grew up in Moffat County, says the Trump election has eased anxieties in the area. “I feel that we have a voice now,” she says.

“Absolutely,” agrees Shane Ridnour, who works with show cattle. “We feel way more secure. In the last eight years, they were really going after coal. People back East don’t understand the benefits of coal and ranching. The BLM was trying to take away land that ranchers had used for years.”

“That’s the thing about this president,” says Mr. Ridnour. “He wants us to succeed.”

A few, quietly, are not so sure. By the craft exhibits, Susan Domer takes a moment from extolling the virtues of knitting--“your kids and husband think you’re busy working, but it’s relaxing”--to contemplate her town.

“Craig needs another industry,” she says. “When I was 18, I put Craig in my rearview mirror. I was going to take the world by storm.” Now more than five decades later, she is back, not out of defeat, but by choice. “It’s home. People here have common sense. They’re raised that way.” But she sees the challenges of living in rural America. “I have one granddaughter who sees what I see,” she reflects. “But she can’t afford to live here because there’s no job that will pay her [enough].”

Still, Craig is just 42 miles away from Steamboat Springs, a thriving tourist hub. The tools of change are there for rural America--a national infrastructure of good highways, a growing system of internet and virtual work, a variety of new professions that can thrive outside cities. The question for many small towns is whether they can overcome the image of isolation that the residents themselves embrace but outsiders are wary of.

#Middle America #Storm Lake Iowa #Craig Colorado #diversity #rural America

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