Polka Heartland

Polka Heartland PDF Author: Rick March
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
ISBN: 0870207237
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"Polka Heartland" captures the beat that pulses in the heart of Midwestern culture--the polka--and offers up the fascinating history of how "oompah-pah" came to be the sound of middle America. From the crowded dance tent at Pulaski Polka Days to an off-the-grid Mexican polka dance in small-town Wisconsin, "Polka Heartland" explores the people, places, and history behind the Midwest's favorite music. From polka's surprising origin story as a cutting-edge European fad to an exploration of the modern-day polka scene, author Rick March and photographer Dick Blau take readers on a joyful romp through this beloved, unique, and richly storied genre. "Polka Heartland" describes the artists, venues, instruments, and music-makers who have been pivotal to polka's popularity across the Midwest and offers six full-color photo galleries to immerse readers in today's vibrant polka scene.

Polka Heartland

Polka Heartland PDF Author: Rick March
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society
ISBN: 0870207237
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Polka Heartland" captures the beat that pulses in the heart of Midwestern culture--the polka--and offers up the fascinating history of how "oompah-pah" came to be the sound of middle America. From the crowded dance tent at Pulaski Polka Days to an off-the-grid Mexican polka dance in small-town Wisconsin, "Polka Heartland" explores the people, places, and history behind the Midwest's favorite music. From polka's surprising origin story as a cutting-edge European fad to an exploration of the modern-day polka scene, author Rick March and photographer Dick Blau take readers on a joyful romp through this beloved, unique, and richly storied genre. "Polka Heartland" describes the artists, venues, instruments, and music-makers who have been pivotal to polka's popularity across the Midwest and offers six full-color photo galleries to immerse readers in today's vibrant polka scene.

Polka King

Polka King PDF Author: Jimmy Sturr
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1937856356
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Arguably the most important polka practitioner of his generation, reedist/vocalist Jimmy Sturr has won an eye-popping 18 Grammy Awards, and when you hear his exuberant brand of the music that is his heart and soul, you'll understand why. Blending the timeless elements of traditional polka music with hints of country, Cajun, and rock and roll, Sturr's unique sound has taken polka to new heights of accessibility and popularity, and his modernized renditions of polka standards and renditions of rock classics have captured the imagination (and feet) of listeners throughout the world. In his memoir Polka King, you'll meet the man behind the beer barrel. In his lively, oftentimes hilarious literary debut, Jimmy chronicles how a small-town boy from tiny Florida, N.Y., made good, ultimately becoming a respected bandleader, entrepreneur, and Grammy winner with guest appearances on Saturday Night Live. He'll take you into the recording studio and onto the stage, where he's shared the microphone with the likes of Willie Nelson, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Charlie Daniels. Featuring forewords by Willie Nelson, Bobby Vinton, and “Whispering" Bill Anderson, Polka King will introduce the world to a one-of-a-kind artist who has taken one of the world's most beloved musical genres and made it his own.

Heartland

Heartland PDF Author: Sarah Smarsh
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 1501133101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
*Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.* Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. Beautifully written, in a distinctive voice, Heartland combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, challenging the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. “Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” *(The New York Times Book Review).

Czech Songs in Texas

Czech Songs in Texas PDF Author: Frances Barton
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806178493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
On any weekend in Texas, Czech polka music enlivens dance halls and drinking establishments as well as outdoor church picnics and festivals. The songs heard at these venues are the living music of an ethnic community created by immigrants who started arriving in Central Texas in the mid-nineteenth century from what is now the Czech Republic. Today, the members of this community speak English but their songs are still sung in Czech. Czech Songs in Texas includes sixty-one songs, mostly polkas and waltzes. The songs themselves are beloved heirlooms ranging from ceremonial music with origins in Moravian wedding traditions to exuberant polkas celebrating the pleasures of life. For each song, the book provides music notation and Czech lyrics with English translation. An essay explores the song’s European roots, its American evolution, and the meaning of its lyrics and lists notable performances and recordings. In addition to the songs and essays, Frances Barton provides a chapter on the role of music in the Texas Czech ethnic community, and John K. Novak surveys Czech folk and popular music in its European home. The book both documents a specific musical inheritance and serves as a handbook for learning about a culture through its songs. As folklorist and polka historian James P. Leary writes in his foreword, “Barton and Novak take us on a poetic, historical, and ethnographic excursion deep into a community’s expressive heartland. Their Czech Songs in Texas just might be the finest extant annotated anthology of any American immigrant/ethnic group's regional song tradition.”

How Many Faces Do You Have?

How Many Faces Do You Have? PDF Author: Mike Schneider
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1680031341
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
How Many Faces Do You Have? is a poem sequence that interrogates intimacy, each poem a face the poet discovers, a reflection revealed in response to inner questioning. In a voice of quiet sonority, these lyrics journey from a high-school gym dance to a moonlit beach polka. They linger over sushi in Montreal and an airline meal at 40,000 feet on a flight. They touch joy and pain and celebrate the vicissitudes of love that goes “into the tangled heartland / where there is no trail,” as a gift of being. A face is such a strange thing. Obsessed with distortion, Modigliani loved elongated faces like Tamara’s at a distance, a flattened oval, two black jewels. He painted with a dagger in his teeth, they say, to see the face within the face — grave, cold-eyed as Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt, whom I’ve always loved for her name alone.

Daughter of the Heartland

Daughter of the Heartland PDF Author: Joni Ernst
Publisher: Threshold Editions
ISBN: 1982144866
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Combining the by-the-bootstraps work ethic of Nikki Haley’s Can’t Is Not an Option with the military pluck of MJ Heger’s Shoot Like a Girl, Joni Ernst’s candid memoir details the rise of one of the most inspiring and authentic women in the United States Senate. The daughter of hardworking farmers in the heartland, Joni Ernst has never been afraid to roll up her sleeves and get the job done. Raised in rural Iowa, Joni grew up cleaning stalls, hauling grain, and castrating hogs. Farm life forged her work ethic. She developed grit and tenacity, attributes that would later be put to the test when she faced abuse, sexism, and harassment. First, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and later as an underdog candidate in the US Senate, Joni has proven to be a natural leader who proudly serves her fellow Americans. She had to learn to believe when others didn’t, to raise her own voice for those who couldn’t, and to silence the naysayers (even herself) to become a bold leader and a fierce advocate. In her inspiring memoir, Joni shares her struggles and the invaluable lessons she learned through hardship—on the farm, in the home, and at work. As a woman fighting for position in the boys’ clubs of the military and politics, she found strength in courage and vulnerability, becoming a role model for women everywhere. As a US Senator, Joni is well-known and respected for her fight to hold Washington accountable and her demand for bipartisanship in a time of fierce tribalism. Daughter of the Heartland tells Joni’s incredible story in four parts, defined by the values she’s learned along the way—leadership, service, courage, and gratitude. Written in an honest and compelling voice, Daughter of the Heartland is Joni’s inspirational story of finding her place as a champion for Iowa, a defender of our armed forces, and a voice for women.

Culture Work

Culture Work PDF Author: Tim Frandy
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299338207
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The work folklorists do on the ground and in communities can make a concrete difference in quality of life. While the field is not immune to extractive, racist, colonial, heteronormative, and misogynistic practices, it can counter and combat these same forces in society. Culture Work presents case studies of public-oriented work that define the Wisconsin Idea of folklore in all its complexities, challenges, and potentialities. Thematically arranged chapters represent interconnected aspects of culture work, from amplifying local voices to galvanizing community from within to reflecting on how we might use folklore to build the world we want to live in.

Bad Axe County

Bad Axe County PDF Author: John Galligan
Publisher: Atria Books
ISBN: 1982110716
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Dennis Lehane meets Megan Miranda in this “dark beauty of a novel” (William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author) about the first female sheriff in rural Bad Axe County, Wisconsin, as she searches for a missing girl, battles local drug dealers, and seeks the truth about the death of her parents twenty years ago—all as a winter storm rages in her embattled community. Fifteen years ago, Heidi White’s parents were shot to death on their Bad Axe County farm. The police declared it a murder-suicide and closed the case. But that night, Heidi found the one clue she knew could lead to the truth—if only the investigators would listen. Now Heidi White is Heidi Kick, wife of local baseball legend Harley Kick and mother of three small children. She’s also the interim sheriff in Bad Axe. Half the county wants Heidi elected but the other half will do anything to keep her out of law enforcement. And as a deadly ice storm makes it way to Bad Axe, tensions rise and long-buried secrets climb to the surface. As freezing rain washes out roads and rivers flood their banks, Heidi finds herself on the trail of a missing teenaged girl. Clues lead her down twisted paths to backwoods stag parties, derelict dairy farms, and the local salvage yard—where the body of a different teenage girl has been carefully hidden for a decade. As the storm rages on, Heidi realizes that someone is planting clues for her to find, leading her to some unpleasant truths that point to the local baseball team and a legendary game her husband pitched years ago. With a murder to solve, a missing girl to save, and a monster to bring to justice, Heidi is on the cusp of shaking her community to its core—and finding out what really happened the night her parents died. With “striking prose, engaging characters, and a searing story of crimes rooted in the heartland,” Bad Axe County is a “darkly irresistible thriller” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) that you won’t be able to put down.

Winter's Crossing - James Galway & Phil Coulter Songbook

Winter's Crossing - James Galway & Phil Coulter Songbook PDF Author: James Galway
Publisher: Hal Leonard
ISBN: 1476876436
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 115

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Book Description
(Artist Books). This inspiring collection of seasonal music tells the tale of the men and women who braved a rough ocean crossing to come to America from Northern Ireland, full of hope and strength. Includes a wide range of music from spirited jigs to touching melodies, arranged for flute and piano with a separate pull-out section for the flutist.

Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community

Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community PDF Author: Born This Way Foundation Reporters
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
ISBN: 1250245575
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller For Lady Gaga, kindness is the driving force behind everything she says and does. The quiet power of kindness can change the way we view one another, our communities, and even ourselves. She embodies this mission, and through her work, brings more kindness into our world every single day. Lady Gaga has always believed in the importance of being yourself, being kind to yourself, and being kind to others, no matter who they are or where they come from. With that sentiment in mind, she and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, founded Born This Way Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a kinder and braver place. Through the years, they've collected stories of kindness, bravery and resilience from young people all over the world, proving that kindness truly is the universal language. And now, we invite you to read these stories and follow along as each and every young author finds their voice just as Lady Gaga has found hers. Within these pages, you’ll meet young changemakers who found their inner strength, who prevailed in the face of bullies, who started their own social movements, who decided to break through the mental health stigma and share how they felt, who created safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, and who have embraced kindness with every fiber of their being by helping others without the expectation of anything in return. In one story, you’ll read about a young person with an autoimmune disease, who after being bullied at school, learned how to practice self-love and started an organization with the mission of educating others about the importance of self-love, too; and in another story, you’ll meet a young person who decided to start a movement to help eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health and encouraged others to talk about their feelings openly and honestly, a reminder that kindness and mental wellness go hand in hand. Not only were we moved by these individual acts of kindness, but we were also touched by the many stories of organizations, neighborhoods, and entire communities that fully dedicated themselves to helping those in need and found new, innovative ways to make our world a kinder and braver place. Individually and collectively, these stories prove that kindness not only saves lives but builds community. Kindness is inclusion, it is pride, it is empathy, it is compassion, it is self-respect and it is the guiding light to love. Kindness is always transformational, and its never-ending ripples result in even more kind acts that can change our lives, our communities, and our world.