Ezra and Ernesto on guitars

Ezra Sturm & Ernesto Diaz-Infante — The Escape (Muteant Sounds, 2024)

Ernesto Diaz-Infante was one of my earliest encounters on the Bay Area music scene. I remember receiving his music at KZSU — contemplative solo piano albums like Itz’at initially, then guitar explorations like Wires and Wooden Boxes. (Follow those links to find them on Bandcamp.) He’s worked in groups often enough, but in my mind, his name ties to mostly solo work, especially long-form guitar explorations, sometimes soothing, sometimes rumbling.

Lately he’s performed in a duo with his son, Ezra Sturm. I’ve gotten to enjoy their live performances twice this year, and they’ve collaborated on an album, The Escape, featuring Sturm on electric guitar and Diaz-Infante mostly on acoustic.

A standard mode of conversation for them is for Diaz-Infante to create a percussive field — rapid picking or a hard-clipped strumming — against slower, fuzzed-out blasts from Sturm. They work within a language of sour tones, both electric and acoustic. Their improvisations often build a tangible rhythm, and they are not above riding the occasional groove. “Tears Before Chaos” opens with an electric guitar blare like a slow alarm, backing fodder for Diaz-Infante’s acoustic rustlings that spike into hyperkinetic mode, but it ends with Diaz-Infante strumming a cycle of chords with Sturm’s fuzzed-out electric joining in.

The closing track, “When the Clock Hits Midnight,” is another beast entirely, based on steady synth arpeggios against an atonal electric-guitar chime. Marjorie Sturm’s flute, subtly nestled against the synth sounds, alternates between sublime and ominous. The piece is dark on the surface, but by the end, it’s got a spring in its step.

Ernesto Diaz-Infante and Ezra Sturm, during their Day of Noise sound check

In March, I got to see Sturm and Diaz-Infante play a long-form improvisation at the Luggage Store Gallery, both on electric guitars. They opened a strong program that also included Pet the Tiger and the quartet of Darren Johnston (trumpet), Christina Braun (movement), Ivy Woods (double bass), and Rent Romus (sax).

Before that, Diaz-Infante and Sturm appeared on KZSU’s Day of Noise 2024, again both on electric. They were in an especially exploratory mood, wandering into ethereal territory that showed they continue finding new ground, six months after having recorded The Escape. We streamed Day of Noise to the KZSUlive channel on YouTube, meaning you can experience that performance right now.

Diaz-Infante is having a prolific year. Amor Celestial and For Jim Ryan both feature pairs of long-form works, the latter album having been performed in honor of the late saxophonist Jim Ryan. I’m hoping to write more about Jim (and that tribute album) soon.

Back Pages #10: Jean Derome and the coolest CD I Own

Jean Derome — Le Magasin de Tissu (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2001)

(The Back Pages series is explained here, where you’ll also find links to the other installments.)

I’m long overdue to write about Jean Derome’s Le Magasin de Tissu (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2001). It’s one of the CDs that the French-Canadian label sent to KZSU back in the day, and I loved the concept so much that I bought a copy of my own, so that I could play them both on the air simultaneously.

It made sense to do that because of the cut-up, randomized nature of the album.

Le Magasin de Tissu (“The Fabric Shop”) is a collage of Derome’s solo improvisations, roughly 90-second snippets that he recorded onto three CDs of 23 tracks each. He used a battery of instruments: horns, flutes, percussion, noisemakers, one small keyboard, his voice. Each CD also included 14 tracks of silence.

The final recording consists of all three CDs played on shuffle simultaneously. The result is an unpredictable trio of sounds — and because of those silent tracks, you also get spontaneous spans of duo or solo playing.

I’ve long been fascinated by randomness and random (or pseudorandom) numbers, so this concept was catnip. Certainly, it harkens back to John Cage-ian ideas. A similar process was behind Tania Chen’s recording of Cage’s Electronic Music for Piano.

But Derome adds another dimension.

The CD booklet includes a MAP OF WHAT’S HAPPENING, a schematic telling you which tracks from which of the CDs are playing. You get to see the random duets and trios that emerge. Corresponding charts show the track listings of the three source CDs and an inventory of the instruments used, both in pictorial and text form. How cool is that? (Scroll through the gallery below to see.)

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I know, I know — this all sounds like Homework: The Game (a D&D reference from Gravity Falls), but for me, it hits all the right nerves of geekdom. (See also Harold Budd and Andy Partridge.) On my first listen, I followed dutifully with the map, gleefully cross-referencing the instrument charts. At KZSU, I gave the CD multiple spins, and one time I indulged myself by playing two copies simultaneously, flickering each CD from one track to another, possibly creating unintended quartets, quintets, and sextets.

This album is the kind of thing that works once. The magic comes from having just one permutation codified on disc. Do it a dozen more times, and the beauty fades into scaffolding and plaster. The art of it, and the fun, come from the process more than the result. (I’ve noted similar feelings about albums by Kris Davis and Didier Petit and Alexandre Pierrepont.) Although the result is meaningful: As with improvisation in general, Le Magasin captures one moment in time while reminding us that every moment is unique.

There’s further backstory: The reason KZSU got this CD was because I’d encountered Derome and Joane Hétu, the Ambiances Magnetiques proprietors, during a 1999 trip to Paris. They performed at Les Instants Chavirés as the duo Nous Perçons Les Oreilles — appropriately shrill and piercing stuff, as I recall. (And findable on Bandcamp!) They’re from Quebec, and between my spotty French and their grasp of English, we established contact and started radio servicing.

That was an exciting period for me, when I was still learning about the global scene and making discoveries every month. And when Le Magasin arrived, well, that was one of the best rewards.

Here’s the album on Bandcamp.

Veals & Geeks

Back in June, we breezed through Brussels for one day, where — joy of joys! — I found a record store with an Improv section.

Source: Plattenläden

It’s called Veals & Geeks, and it is split among at least three storefronts clustered in the touristy Grand-Place neighborhood: a CD-focused store that looks like it was their original location; a nook with vinyl bins and some used CDs; and an outlet for audio gear. They don’t do online sales, steadfast in the belief that these stores can be community hubs for music lovers.

The Improv section, located in the first store, wasn’t large — maybe 20 or 30 items, huddled between Jazz and a special row just for Tzadik — but had clearly been curated by someone who knew what they were doing. Familiar names stood out, like Fred Lonberg-Holm and the sadly departed Peter Brötzmann. In a non-purist way, it included albums not purely improvised but appealing to the same listener base. I think that bin is where Dougie Bowne’s One Way Elevator lived, a disc that I’d heard of but never managed to find. (It’s a high-caliber trio: John Medeski, Fred Hopkins, and Bowne, doing Bowne’s compositions. A happy find.)

In hindsight, I wish I’d bought more. But it was early in our week-long trip to Europe, and I was worried about luggage space, and I was trying to budget myself. I decided to focus on names I was less familiar with (sorry, Fred and Peter). Back home, I spent lots of time with two albums in particular.

Delphine Dora, Bruno Duplant, Paulo Chagas — Onion Petals As Candle Light (Wild Silence, 2012).

This was too endearingly DIY to pass up, packaged in a square paper envelope with a swatch of glossy homemade-looking artwork taped to the front and a store-recommendation tag promising “trance improvisation.” Affixed to the back was a small label, the size of a fortune-cookie fortune, naming the artists and album. The CD face is blank white, no words, and the clerk apologized that he couldn’t guarantee it was the right one. I told him I was happy to take a chance. (It was indeed the correct disc, verifiable on Bandcamp.)

The aesthetic is gentle-rain quietude with a subtle edge. Delphine Dora‘s recordings elsewhere are patient mixes of piano (often prepared piano) with voice, field recordings, and loops. Here, she takes the same approach, leaving plenty of contemplative space while poking and stabbing confidently, often favoring melting-ice high registers. Chagas’ clarinet and flute outline the mood with languid lines. Duplant bows the bass delicately amid the fragile “To Cy Twombly” and adds sparse, confident plucking throughout “Mechanics of Dreams.”

Dora has an extensive catalogue of work on Bandcamp.

Move — Hyvinkää (Unisono, 2016)

Move is a working quintet helmed by Finnish saxophonist Harri Sjöström. I wanted to get at least one disc with a medium-sized group on it, as well as at least one long improvisation. Hyvinkää, named for the city it was performed in, fit both bills.

The 39-minute piece launches abruptly into a hovering phase, patient discovery befitting the nighttime colors on the album cover. Bells abound — the cool-spectrum chime of vibraphone (Emilio Gordoa), or small sparse pings (Dag Magnus Narvesen at the drum kit). Sjöström’s soprano sax darts against the unfolding backdrop and eventually feeds energy back into it.

The band is rounded out by Achim Kaufman (piano) and Adam Pultz Melbye (bass), both essential to fleshing out the sound and helping drive the action during the more heated phases. The band’s central mood-maker, though, is Gordoa’s vibraphone and its touch of nighttime charm. His unaccompanied solo is a nice treat.

Back home, I learned that Move had released a second CD. Naturally, I had to buy it in physical form to complete the matching set. Move in Moers feels more like a direct conversation; it dives into the chatter, rather than scene-setting. The atmosphere stays restrained, as on Hyvinkää, building up to a boil more than midway through. The conclusion is a satisfying slow surge, a moment of serendipity where the players agree: It’s time.

Visit Move’s website, and find Hyvinkää and Move in Moers on Bandcamp.

The joys and sorrows of itkuja

Rent Romus and Heikki Koskinen — Itkuja Suite, Invocations on Lament (Edgetone, 2023)

(Rent Romus’ Life’s Blood Ensemble will perform Itkuja Suite on May 27 (8:00 p.m.) and May 28 (4:00 p.m.) at Berkeley Finnish Hall, 1970 Chestnut St., Berkeley.)

Manala, released in 2020, was the second in a trilogy of jazz-centric albums exploring saxophonist Rent Romus’ Finnish heritage. That album retold legends of the underworld and the afterlife. Itkuja Suite, completing the trilogy, brings us back to the struggles of the living world through the jazz-minded Life’s Blood Ensemble and some boldly emotive singing by Heikki Laitinen.

Itkuja is a traditional Finnish music of lamentation, but its singers are hired for weddings as well as for funerals. It’s a dichotomy that I think we all have a sense for. There are glimmers of thankful happiness in times of mourning, and there is a heaviness and longing that accompanies moments of joy.

In that light, Itkuja Suite deftly traverses emotional borders, at once railing against the cruel world while inviting us to dance to big band-inspired jazz. But this isn’t about contrasting two extremes; to me, it’s more an exploration around a multi-dimensional field of conflicting, intertwining senses. Laitinen sings in Finnish and Karelian, in personalities ranging from weepy to a menacing growl. Traditional songs provide much of the lyrical source material, although there is also a song mourning the Soviet Union overrunning the Karelian region (a WWII-era development that parallels Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) and an original itkuja written by Romus, inspired by his own quest to recover his heritage.

The inspiration and some of the words date back centuries, but this is also a jazz project at heart, with most pieces written or arranged by Romus or Koskinen. The band delivering it is Romus’ Bay Area-based Life’s Blood Ensemble, 11 musicians counting Laitinen, Romus, and Koskinen, and they get ample room for soloing: sax, trumpet, flute, vibes and cello all take lead positions.

The songs best exemplifying the itkuja spirit might be those that open with majestic drama and then step into a more energetic, jazzy space. An example is “Runkoterian halla (Rungoteus),” which is based on a fable about a rye farmer and his spirit of perseverance. It’s a little more than a minute before the jazzy segment kicks in, with solos by Koskinen on e-trumpet and Romus on alto sax:

Explore more at Edgetone and Bandcamp.

A Happy Blues Story

Owen Maercks — Kinds of Blue (Feeding Tube, 2019)

I wish I’d noted the DJ’s name, because I know firsthand how gratifying it is to hear you’ve turned someone on to something new. So to whomever was on-air at KALX that evening — the midnight of a Saturday/Sunday transition, just a few weeks ago, I think — thanks.

That show replayed an interview with Owen Maercks that was probably conducted in 2019. Maercks, a guitarist living in the East Bay, had come out of musical retirement to record a blues record with quite a cast: local giants Henry Kaiser, Larry Ochs, Scott Amendola, and Plunderphonics creator John Oswald. Maercks clearly hung out with the right people. He came across as intelligent and engagaing, and the one track I heard (I surrendered to sleep shortly after) was bright, springy excitement. I promptly bought the album.

Until now, Maercks’ sparse discography included only one record as a leader, released in 1978. Much like Duane Kuiper’s lone home run, that isolated album was enough of a story to bring Maercks some notoriety years later. Teenage Sex Therapist was reissued by Feeding Tube Records in 2014, generating some overdue press for Maercks. Here’s an example, if you can tolerate SFGate’s smothering advertising. Even better, that album includes Ochs and Oswald and especially Kaiser, who’s been Maercks’ compatriot for decades — making Kinds of Blue a reunion of sorts.

Whereas that first album was rock, informed by punk and no-wave but sounding like neither, Kinds of Blue is rooted in blues, with Maercks’ low, growly singing invoking hot sunlight on lush Southern riverbanks. It’s a twisted blues, though. The opening instrumental, “Wild Time,” features a time-signature glitch as a hook and a dive-bombing Kaiser solo.

Kaiser’s sonic webspinning appears throughout the album. (Maercks takes solos as well, speaking the same psychedelic language.) And Ochs, on the folky “Beautiful to Me,” revels in retro rock-‘n’-roll blasts crinkled with skronk.

“Beautiful to Me” is also fun for its giddy, absurd lyrics (“I don’t care what the manatees say, you’re beautiful to me.”) “Burnin'” is rich in a different way, telling an epic, vague story about “the burnin'” in Saturn, Alabama (a nod to Sun Ra). As on Therapist, Maercks displays a knack for imaginative lyrical themes and a sense of humor.

Released solely on vinyl, Kinds of Blue‘s two sides are named “Inside” and “Outside,” and the descriptions are accurate. “Inside” has plenty of adventure; in fact, every track mentioned above is on that side. “Outside” rockets immediately to distant orbits with the dissonant, thorny “Iceland Boogie.” That side also includes two of the album’s three covers. One is a Picasso-filter version of “Blue Monk” — big fun. The other is “Wrong,” an obscure song by 1960s bluemsan Robert Pete Williams that starts out spare but ignites into a groove that provokes some of the most heated soloing and singing on the album. It’s not to be missed.

Kinds of Blue is bluesy, noisy, outside-y, and just plain fun. I’m happy that Maercks got back on the map, and I’m also grateful for the DJs out there who keep the spirit of college radio alive.

Feeding Tube is on Bandcamp, but to find Kinds of Blue, you’ll need to visit their website.

Stiff beats in the dry season

I don’t delve much into Japan’s creative-music scene. It’s the distance, the language, the simple inconvenience. But I try to check in occasionally. Otomo Yoshihide was a pretty obvious touchstone. The recently departed Itaru Oki was a nice discovery (thank you, NoBusiness Records) that is still unfolding for me.

And I take random stabs sometimes. Through Squidco, I found the trio sim and their 2009 album with Otomo. Dry steady beats are the foundation of Monte Alta Estate, not necessarily rocking out so much as following a studious rock aesthetic, with squiggles of life in the background: electronic scratches; backwards speaking or singing; a turntable needle running over a blank record to produce those comforting little curls of static. It’s all brightly lit, more treble than bass. The simplicity sometimes overstays its welcome, as on the opener “5.5mm,” but it’s a good time overall.

The “magic” is all in those background sounds, built by Otomo (turntables and synths) and Sim’s laptop noise performer, Ootani Yoshio. That ongoing chatter against the staccato rhythm helps define the personalities for each track.

There’s a enjoyably stumbling feel to “Am” and “Dig” — everyone is marching in tempo but no single instrument is setting the beat. “Dig” even gets a bit frenzied toward the end. “Freska” feels fresh and alive: Sustained keyboard chords in the back alter the color as the guitar and drums — and a hint of a bass pulse — keep driving forward. It’s mechanical but it’s enjoyable.

Here’s a few seconds of cut-up babble leading into that keyboard sheen. Note the little turntable-vinyl pops deep in the mix.

“Oom” loosens the reins for a freer sound, including quietly jazzy drumming against a “solo” of samples and chopped-up keyboard work, in Burroughs-like cut-up technique A stumbling non-beat turns up the intensity near the end.

Guitarist Oshima Teruyuki was Sim’s composer. On Bandcamp, you can find another 2009 effort of his in the same vein — Signal Extraction, with the trio SNO.

Teruyuki’s more recent output includes two long-form noise pieces released on Bandcamp this year. R1 is built from brash synthesizer sounds, including airy bursts and mechanical rattling. R2, about twice as long, includes the same palette while adding ominous voices (in English) and a more gaunt silences.

non-dweller: Scrapes, scribbles, resonance

gabby fluke-mogul, Jacob Felix Heule, & Kanoko Nishi-Smith — non-dweller (Humbler, 2021)

Two sets of strings and a bass drum: The configuration could be purely percussive, but non-dweller is built more around bowing and scraping, an ongoing chatter. The first of two long-form improvisations on this album starts with a choppy, nervous bustle, like beach crabs in full sprint, and later settles into buzzing and rattling vibrations.

It’s sometimes hard to tell which instrument is making which sound. gabby fluke-mogel‘s violin often stands out easily, tending toward squeaking microtones and extra-musical sounds pulled from the strings. Kanoko Nishi-Smith bows the koto for deep-register rumbling or clicks away like a tightly wound rubber band. Jacob Felix Heule‘s bass drum isn’t about dramatic concussions; he creates resonance in high tones or deep swoops. Just as the strings can play percussively, the drum becomes something of a stringed instrument.

Almost like a drone, the sounds blend into a mesmerizing haze. Unlike a drone, this music wiggles and contorts — there is an undercurrent of activity organized into episodes, like the inner workings of a vast, multi-staged machine.

You can preview the album on Bandcamp.

For a glimpse of the processes involved, here’s a snippet of fluke-mogel and Nishi-Smith performing in 2018 at Temescal Arts Center, Oakland:

Craig Taborn would like 60 seconds of your time, 60 times

60 x Sixty arrived in September with minimal explanation. The main thing to know is that it’s Craig Taborn’s experiment, an online set of sixty 60-second pieces played in random order. It exists at https://60xsixty.com.

I think of 60 x Sixty as a museum installation built to be experienced from afar. In addition to the varying moods and textures of the music, each track is illustrated by one color, possibly selected at random, filling the browser window. You’re suffused in color, which can make the musical journey feel more like participating in an immersive film (albeit one where nothing physically happens). The color does not necessarily complement the sounds — and yet, you can’t help but try to marry the two.

The music is mostly electronic (solo piano makes several appearances), sometimes busy, sometimes sparse, but always conveying that placid “museum installation” feeling, even when an individual piece presents jarring rhythms or tumbling layers of motion. The tone of each musical doodle stays level — no sudden shifts within any given 60 seconds.

The pieces never feel long, for obvious reasons, but some pieces do seem to linger and develop, while others feel like they make a quick statement and then bow out. I think this was mostly a function of whether my attention was diverted — but then again, some of the “shortest” songs were the ones closest to a conventional melody and rhythm. Maybe those pieces simply offered less to explore.

It’s tempting here to draw comparisons to The Residents’ Commercial Album, which likewise consisted of 60-second tracks. Some of Taborn’s pure synth creations even feel like they could fit on that album. The Residents, though, were coming from a prankster’s POV, the conceit being that they were reducing pop songs to the essentials, stripping away repeated verses and choruses. 60 x Sixty is a more serious exploration of time and attention.

I don’t think my notes from my first listen are all that instructive, but here’s a sample:

2. Greenish brown. A stagger of drums and a distorted horn. 27. Powder blue. Very slow piano notes over a distant motor rumbling. 31. A darker pink. The white noise of ocean waves. 33. Light purple. 5/4 keyboard riff against a springy EDM beat. 38. Pale green. Jagged and corrupt. 44. Mustard. A fading chime and the rumble of an eternal subway train, almost musique concrète. 45. Pale blue. Piano with a touch of free-jazz energy (other solo piano pieces have been more ambient). 53. Forest green. Cinematic strings but also crunching, latching sounds; very Halloweeny. 54. Pale green again. Ambient piano with a Harold Budd-esque central chord. 56. Olive green. Piano in a chaotic vein, classical off the leash. 60. Royal blue. Glass insects skittering on a table of water.

House band: An improvisation in nine rooms

Phillip Greenlief — Bellingham for David Ireland (Edgetone, 2020)

This is a live recording of a “concert” — or, really, more a site-specific audio installation, a “happening.” In October 2017, saxophonist Phillip Greenlief and eight other musicians spread out among the rooms of 500 Capp Street — former residence of artist David Ireland, and now a nonprofit arts space — for an hour of improvised performance. As musicians read from Greenlief’s map-based graphical score, the audience was free to wander the two-story house, hearing different aspects of the sound depending which musicians were nearby or farther away. Every audience member experienced this show differently.

With the CD, you get yet another experience, one delivered by an omniscient narrator, combining the sounds of the nine rooms into one document. No musician and no attendee experienced the sounds the way they are on this recording. (The part of the narrator is played by engineer Phil Perkins, assisted by Sara Thompson; Greenlief had a hand in the mixing a well.)

What we get is an hour’s worth of spirited, reverent improvising, built up in response to the house itself and to the other musicians. Greenlief, positioned in the entryway at the foot of the stairs, had the most central vantage and could probably hear a little of everything. Other musicians caught glimpses of the whole based on what their neighbors were doing, and this chain of communication is what keeps the overall performance cohesive. “Players speculate and swap rumors,” Sam Lefebvre writes in his rich, immersive liner notes.

The mix preserves a sense of distance. I feel like I sometimes hear instruments that are pushed toward the foreground or background, although it’s also possible they were simply playing loudly or quietly. The performance begins with slow, hovering sounds, almost giving the impression of a haunted house. Many sounds aren’t immediately identifiable, considering the amount of extended playing involved, the two electronics musicians included, and Aurora Josephson’s ghostly wordless vocals. The piece builds up a restless energy, often through percussive rustling and the occasional starburst of electronics. But there are also mindful, meditative passages, like the brief violin soliloquy by Gabby Fluke-Mogul at around the 48-minute mark. These are chances for everyone to breathe and, I would imagine, to drink in the atmosphere of the house itself.

We can’t relive the whole experience of the performance — the physical sense of exploration, the dim nighttime lighting, the wood of the stairways and doors. The CD booklet’s photos, by Pamela Z, drop some compelling hints. Still, I’m glad that a document of this special event exists, so the stragglers like me can imagine walking through that house on that evening.

The album is a spiritual successor to Phillip Greenlief Solo at 500 Capp Street (2019), a limited-edition, vinyl-only release in which Greenlief wandered the house alone, improvising in reaction to the spaces he encountered.

Minus Zero

Bandcamp Friday is coming up, the first-Friday-of-the-month sale where the website becomes a nonprofit for a day, donating its cut of all music sales to the artists. It’s a nice gesture on their part, and a great way to support musicians. (Much better than Spotify. I do use Spotify, but independent musicians and creative-music artists lack the “scale of catalog” to earn even couch-cushion change from the platform.)

Bandcamp Friday is fun to support, and it takes on a different, equally glowing feeling when it comes to a nonprofit label that’s giving away its own proceeds already.

Minus Zero, founded in 2017, is an online label that donates its revenues to Planned Parenthood. “Label” might be the wrong word. Minus Zero is more like a community collective, a never-ending bake sale where artists (a combination of Bay Area folks and New Yorkers) can convert some of their work into money to a good cause. 

The catalog is a trove of current and archival recordings, including some live work: 

• ROVA Saxophone Quartet has contributed an album of graphic scores, and you can also buy the scores themselves.
• Vinny Golia contributed his manic Music for Woodwinds, Strings, Piano, and Percussion, originally released on the pfMentum label and reviewed here.
• The terrific improvised-jazz trio of Ben Goldberg, Vijay Anderson, and Sheldon Brown (clarinet/drums/sax) released a group of studio recordings combining full-length tracks and some miniatures
• As noted previously, improv-metal trio Trigger teamed up with vocalist/violinist Dina Maccabee to create a nice noisy album.

A lot of Minus Zero’s output takes advantage of the lack of a physical format — no LP sides or CDs to fill:

• Live at Temescal Arts, by Josh Marshall and Daniel Pearce, is a 22-minute sax/drums improvisation, energetic and thoughtful.
• Small Cities, by Vinnie Sperrazza and Noa Fort, is an 8-minute handful of percussion miniatures.
• Drummer Jordan Glenn’s group BEAK put forth a clutch of live tracks.

And there’s plenty more to explore from the likes of Beth Custer, Lisa Mezzacappa, Ava Mendoza, Marco Eneidi (!), John Tchicai, and Robert Dick. The label’s newest releases include For Diane, a multi-artist album of piano solos in tribute to the late Diane Moser. Plenty to explore, and this Friday marks a particularly nice moment to lay down a few dollars in support.

Separately, Minus Zero has forwarded around this group of links pertaining to the political assault on healthcare and women’s reproductive rights. If this isn’t the right time for you to support the cause with your wallet, you can support it in spirit by staying educated:

NPR 
www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/08/02/1022860226/long-drives-costly-flights-and-wearying-waits-what-abortion-requires-in-the-sout

Texas Tribune 
www.texastribune.org/2021/05/18/texas-heartbeat-bill-abortions-law/
www.texastribune.org/2021/07/13/texas-heartbeat-bill-lawsuit/

Democracy Now 
www.democracynow.org/2021/7/13/reproductive_rights_roe_v_wade_scotus

AP (Montana) 
apnews.com/article/health-abortion-laws-montana-planned-parenthood-92274e5af2f373b9a1fae952e2c4367c

Guttmacher Institute 
www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/abortion-policy-absence-roe#