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Ken Kabongo
Max Linley
Jessica Way
FOUNDER AND CO-OWNER
Registered Physiotherapist
Practice No. 0830259
Practice owner, Physiotherapist, and Qualified Pilates Matwork instructor, Ken Mark Kabongo, graduated from the University of Cape Town (UCT). Ken is also a Neuromuscularskeletal Clinical Educator in the Physiotherapy Department of the University of Cape Town.
After completing his community service year in Johannesburg, Ken decided to further his studies and has completed a Master of Science (MSc) in Sports & Exercise Physiotherapy at UCT. Other notable post-graduate courses include Dry needling level 1 & 2, Clinical Pilates level 1 &2, Advanced taping & return to sport, Management of chronic pain, World Rugby Intermediate Care in Rugby Level 3, Tackling concussion head-on 'The role of a physiotherapist' and FIFA Diploma in Football Medicine.
Ken historically has a special interest in exercise and sports physiotherapy and has extensive experience working in a professional sporting environment. Ken has worked for multiple professional teams within South Africa which includes: Springbok 7's (Blitzbokke), SA Schools Rugby, SA U20 Rugby, SA Rugby Academy, Ajax Cape Town, Boland Kavaliers, England Rugby Union, and Singapore Indoor Masters Cricket team. Ken is a proud winner of the prestigious 2020 Top 200 Mail & Guardian Young South African.
Through the years, Ken has made his clients understand that there is a connection between the mind and the body, and for this reason, he treats his patients with a holistic approach to get the best possible results.
Ken enjoys competing in triathlons, living a healthy lifestyle, exploring the outdoors when not on the sports field or in his private practice, and lastly Ken has recently represented South Africa at the World Duathlon Championships as an athlete.
RugbyRocks: Young Sports Physio Making His Mark
Mail&Guardian: Top 200 Mail & Guardian Young South African
SA Rugby: Sendin, Du Plessis To Coach SA Schools Sides in 2020
KES: Old Boy Ken Kabongo
Practice Co-Owner, Max Linley received his BSc Physiotherapy degree from the University of the Western Cape (UWC). On completion of his community service year in Gauteng, Max decided to further his studies and is now a Master of Science (MSc) candidate in Sports and Exercise Physiotherapy at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Max has also completed various other postgraduate courses which include; Dry Needling Level 1 & 2, Advanced Taping and Strapping for Sport, Myofascial Cupping, as well as multiple courses in Neurology.
Max has always been an avid sportsman himself, which naturally drew him towards pursuing a career in Sports Physiotherapy. Max has worked with many professional athletes, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioners, Muay Thai fighters, boxers and trail runners. He is currently working with the competition teams of the highly respected institutions: Pride Fight Academy and the Renzo Gracie Academy. Currently, Max is working with both the Western Province Rugby Academy and Hamilton's Rugby Club. In addition to sports, Max has a keen interest in Neurological conditions, with a special focus on stroke and Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) rehabilitation.
Max strives to provide a holistic approach to treatment, as well as providing the best evidence-based practice methods in order to achieve the best results possible with his patients.
In his off time, Max enjoys keeping himself active through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai, as well as spending quality time with friends and family.
Functional Performance Lab
Unit 006 & Unit 007
Portswood Ridge
Level P3
Portswood Road
V & A Waterfront, 8002
Saturday: 7am - 2pm
Sunday : On request
** Contact for after hours
info@waterfrontphysiotherapyclinic.com
Ken - (+27)79 338 7826
Max - (+27)71 344 7414
Jess - (+27)72 258 3939


It makes you feel good — like you're going to work for a purpose, I believe I can make a difference.
Paul was selling residential windows in Detroit six years ago, but the recession clouded his ability to see a future for himself in that hard-hit city. So, he packed his van with his belongings and moved to Nashville.
"When the housing market went south, so did I," he explained.
But his first five months in the Music City had him singing the blues. Paul applied for job after job with no luck, and his money was running out. His brother, father and grandmother died during the same short period.
"It was a difficult part of my life," he said.
Then, despite never having worked in retail before, he filled out an application at Goodwill.
"It's the best decision I've made in the past 10 years," he said.
customers, more employees were hired and he was promoted to lead processor, overseeing shipping and receiving.
Paul works hard and keeps his employees on track as well. He says it brings him satisfaction to know that his diligence supports Goodwill's mission of providing employment and training opportunities to people with disabilities or who, like he once was, are having trouble finding work for other reasons.
Paul compares his co-workers to family and says he has turned down offers to work elsewhere, including back in Michigan.


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By devron Leave a Comment
Categories: Film Reviews
Maria Bello has one of those familiar faces. If you saw her at an airport, you might stop her and say, "I know you from some television show or some movie, but I can't quite place where." I've seen her in roles here and there – looking at her filmography, I've seen her in Payback, Thank You for Smoking and a few other roles, but admittedly none of them were particularly notable. When it comes to Downloading Nancy, there's no mistaking the fact if she didn't have a signature film, she does now. Despite a great all around cast, this is her film.
Bello is undoubtedly among the most attractive leading women in film today. And while I'm not quite sure exactly what it was that attracted her to this script, one would assume that she must have felt the need to make a statement. This is one of the most visceral, difficult-to-watch-yet-hard-to-turn-away-from while at the same time thought provoking and challenging films I've ever seen. Ever. Gone from Bello is the beautiful smile and naturally attractive features and replacing them are all the physical signs of a person who has no regard for her appearance and appears to be unashamed in her quest to do harm to her body.
To say that Downloading Nancy follows the life of a woman during "a difficult period in her life" would be a gross understatement. The title character has been married to her husband Albert (Rufus Sewell) for fifteen years. The director craftily provides glimpses into the past revealing how the marriage reached this point and we witness some of the worst evidence of neglect. I've always listened to abused women on television declare that "he hits me because he cares about me". While I'm no closer to believing the validity of that statement and that mindset now than I was an hour and a half ago, I must admit that I understand a bit more the spirit of a person making that statement. Albert barely acknowledges that his wife is even in the same room with him. In on scene, he gets up from the dinner table and walks all the way around the table to get the salt and pepper shakers – a trip that could have easily been saved by simply asking his wife to secure them. Rufus Sewell usually fits comfortably in the role of the villain in films and that baggage works to his favor here. It's painful to watch the neglect that he shows his wife.
There's no other way to say it – Nancy likes to hurt herself. She carries a box of razor blades around. She takes advantage of almost any opportunity when she's alone to inflict pain upon herself. This extends beyond self-infliction and we learn that she connects with others online, sharing what she can't share with her husband. I have a pretty strong stomach for on screen violence or graphic content and I have to admit that the mere suggestion of what Nancy is doing – whether I can see where her hands are going or not – made me immensely uncomfortable. This film is to our era what Star 80 was to it's day.
During the film we learn that although a failed marriage contributes heavily to her current state, Nancy has had a history of abuse (including rape by a family member and a bad relationship with her mother). Although Nancy participates in therapeutic sessions, we can see how extreme her case is through the eyes of her psychiatrist. Despite what probably amounts to thousands of dollars in training and schooling and experience, even the doctor seems disturbed by Nancy as she recounts the events of her life.
Director Johan Renck did an incredible job thematically creating a world that is devoid of life. There aren't any reds, greens or deep blues to be found here. The film has a light blue tint and faces are lit to reveal every imperfection. I'm sure the budget for make-up was next to nil. There are no beautiful people here. This is a gritty, lonely, unforgiving world. And although Maria Bello does a phenomenal job here showing her versatility and ability to make the viewer believe that she is completely disconnected from the world and incapable of experiencing any joy, it's difficult to recommend this film. No, it's not that this film is bad. Quite the contrary. This is a film that will make even the most dubious viewers sit up and attest to the effects of neglect and abuse. It's just that this film is such a downer that only viewers who seek the most challenging experience that film can offer will find the value in this joyless exercise. I know a few friends who suffer from depression and a few who only suggest through their behavior that they may be feeling depressed. For either group, I'm going on a mission to secure and hide every copy of Downloading Nancy within a 100-yard radius.
Downloading Nancy is not for weak-hearted viewers. There are strong themes at play here. What's most difficult about viewing this film is discovering that there are no heroes to be found. I watched – all the while looking for someone… any character whose moral values I could hitch my wagon to and sympathize with. The director doesn't give us this luxury. This is a powerful experience that will (sadly) get lost amidst lesser films – even in it's disc release. (Downloading Nancy was released in theaters this past May here in the states.) If there is one uplifting thing I can say in this film's favor is that it's made me more appreciative of the relationships that I have. As the credits roll, you may be compelled to drop the remote, find your significant other… or anybody that you feel may be lacking a little love and hug them into submission. If there's anything that Downloading Nancy teaches us, it's that the awkwardness involved with showing true love and expressing feelings of affection far outweigh that consequences of not doing so.
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I've already posted your bail. Her expression underwent a sudden change. I won't close the door. Obviously in my case it's like this. I have to see a dentist. I cannot howl like a jackal. I'm a goat! It's on the table. Were we really happy together? I wish I could tell you. Sherri put her hands on her hips.
Lawrence probably knows where Willie is. Many survivors were rescued from the wreckage. I think Tuan's grandmother is too old to wear a miniskirt. I have finally reached my limit. You never realize the value of something till you lose it. You had better be ready in case he comes. Let's hope we find something. He is worthy of our praise. Yesterday, we studied English. I wouldn't put it past him to cheat if it served his interests.
The policeman blamed the taxi driver for the accident. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. She heard gunshots every night. Linder is growing a beard again. I don't think that's necessary. I don't think you should marry Marty. I got it for nothing. I know you won't do it. I'm sure you know what's going on. Bradley is definitely up to something.
Florian and Russell aren't the only two who don't understand. If you buy this, I will give you a fifteen percent discount. You should stay here till 2:30. How did we let things get to this point? I'm also a teacher. Douglas said he believed the decision was correct. You have an English test tomorrow, so don't get bogged down in your math homework tonight. I work for an oil company. No one should be surprised. Randal can't hear us.
What gate do I board at? There is a television in my room. Could I just ask you one question? She divorced him last year. She is more gentle than kind. He has left his family. I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers. They called him Little Tuk, but it was not his real name. Edmond is upbeat. He wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.
That we will win the game is certain. The event starts at 3pm. Well, are you going to ask him? You must come in. The reason of the strongest is always the best. My brother is no more a good singer than I am. You need not have a haircut right now. "How did you fit a briefcase into your pocket?!" the woman asked, stunned. Prices will continue as they are. Is it true? Paul kissed Lily on the lips?
Patricia should have no problem doing that. I'd like to see you, please. Somebody left a package here for you. It isn't a problem as long as I come back into the room right after finishing smoking, is it? Gregor means a lot to all of us. I must ask Nick for his new address and telephone number when I see him. A man's worth lies not in what he has but in what he is. I'm not worried about what might happen. You got it right. She named him Charles.
You're wrong, Sean. Want to come with us and try? Reinhard is being silly, isn't he? The child worked for him, going on errands. He locked himself in the bathroom. Man fears disasters such as floods and fires. I brought these reports for you to examine. That hurts. Don't let Hurf into this room. I didn't know what it was.
I want to visit Luxembourg. Your friend is tiresome. Evan gave Vassos two thumbs up. Shaw burns both wood and coal in his stove. That's a waste of my talents. He spoke with a suggestion of sarcasm in his voice. You look fabulous. In order to prevent a further drop of the Japanese currency, the Bank of Japan intervened in the market to support it at around 150 yen to the dollar. There is little tourism in North Dakota. Dan started to attend church again.
She contributed much to the company. I have appealed to him to visit but he didn't come. Do you want to father my children? What prevented her from coming yesterday? He had a very strong impact on the history of art. There was a great lack of rice that year. She can speak Spanish, much more English. Do you know any good places to eat around here? If it rains tomorrow, I won't go. I used to want more than this.


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Leistikow's DVR Monday: The Phil Parker adjustment that lifted Hawkeyes past Iowa State
Chad Leistikow
Hawk Central
The phrase "In Phil We Trust" has become commonly used by devoted Iowa football followers on social media, a reflection of the notion that Iowa defensive coordinator Phil Parker can, well, figure something out no matter the situation.
Parker, the 21st-year Hawkeye assistant, was certainly pressed into all kinds of adversity Saturday night in Ames — unusually high injury totals in the secondary, multiple weather delays and an Iowa State offense that was humming at extreme efficiency.
But, as it played out, Parker did indeed figure something out.
And, as a result, the Hawkeyes beat Iowa State, 18-17.
There are lot of angles to hit in a marathon Cy-Hawk game that became an instant classic. But first things first: The big adjustment.
Once the blitzes began to flow, the Hawkeyes took control.
After Kene Nwangwu ran for 14 yards up the middle in the third quarter — the longest rush play Iowa had allowed all season — Parker had seen enough. The Cyclones, already leading 14-6, were marching again. They had gained 309 yards to this point on 30 offensive snaps, a remarkable 10.3 yards per play. Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy was 16-for-17 passing.
But the rest of the way, Iowa State ran 24 plays and gained 109 yards; an average of 4.5. The difference?
Pressure by Phil.
After blitzing on four of Iowa State's first 30 plays, Parker called blitzes on 12 of the final 24 — a jarring 50% for a Hawkeye team — to rattle Purdy and change the game.
Iowa's linebackers had been struggling in zone coverage against over-the-middle throws, so Parker smartly just sent them into the backfield instead. After that Nwangwu run, Parker sent Kristian Welch on a blitz (resulting in a 2-yard run), then Djimon Colbert (incomplete), then Welch again (incomplete; almost intercepted). Punt. Touchback. Iowa ball at the 20.
As the game wore on, Parker's blitzes became more creative. He sent safety Geno Stone on the first play after Iowa had cut it to 14-9, a gamble that paid off in a 1-yard loss. The next two plays, Purdy was pressured by A.J. Epenesa — who got stronger as the game wore on, despite playing every defensive snap — and Iowa State went 3-and-out for the first time this season.
In the fourth quarter, Iowa sent eight blitzes — usually with a linebacker. Colbert from the left; Nick Niemann from the left or right; Welch up the middle or from the right. Iowa State was forced to pay less attention to Epenesa, and more to the blitzing linebackers.
Not one second-half blitz landed a sack: But they worked.
Purdy hit only 8 of 17 passes after that 16-for-17 start and was increasingly hurried into throws.
Two critical Purdy incompletions were the result of false pressure.
On third-and-8 from Iowa's 9, the Hawkeyes put seven defenders on the line of scrimmage, leaving Iowa State's four wide-receivers in apparent man-to-man coverage. But the Hawkeyes were only faking pressure; they rushed only four and Purdy's quick-release fade pass was well-covered. Iowa State settled for a field goal and a 17-15 lead with 7:46 to play.
Purdy's final incompletion was indicative of Parker's ability to make a quarterback uncomfortable. On fourth-and-13 from Iowa's 39, Parker sent linebackers Niemann and Colbert on a blitz from Purdy's right … but dropped Epenesa (on Purdy's left) into coverage. Perhaps seeing what was coming his way and unsure of Epenesa's location, Purdy unnecessarily hurried a deep throw to Deshaunte Jones and it wasn't even close.
Yards per play is a telling metric. "Bend, don't break" can counter it, though.
Iowa State finished by gaining 7.7 yards per play to Iowa's 4.3.
But as this game showed, where those yards occur is just as important.
The Cyclones entered Hawkeye territory on six different drives Saturday, but only managed four red-zone snaps and got three points on those trips. Iowa State gained only 63 yards on 22 snaps in Iowa territory and committed one turnover. The total drops to 48 net yards on 22 plays (2.2 average) if you count three five-yard penalties, all of which were crucial in what became a field-position battle.
One small example of Iowa's resiliency came in the first quarter. After the Cyclones had already hit a big play for a 7-3 lead, they were driving again on a 17-yard pass to Jones. But defensive end Chauncey Golston, who was terrific against the run in this game, stonewalled Breece Hall for no gain on first-and-10 — a much-needed momentum play for Iowa's defense.
After two short gains, Iowa State faced fourth-and-3 from Iowa's 32 and lined up to go for it. But offensive lineman Trevor Downing committed a false start, and punter Joe Rivera punted the ball into the end zone. As I tweeted in the moment, that was as good as a turnover for Iowa's defense. It doesn't go down as such; but Iowa got the ball back at its own 20, moments after Iowa State was about to run a play from the 32.
Iowa was masterful at gaining hidden yardage all night long.
Before Devonte Young made his game-clinching fumble recovery off a botched punt return, he made another very significant special-teams contribution. After Iowa had scored to cut Iowa State's lead to 14-9 late in the third quarter, he blazed downfield on Caleb Shudak's beautiful, angled kickoff to the goal line. Young reached the 10-yard line at about the same time return man Johnnie Lang did … and with that pressure, Young drew a block-in-the-back penalty that pinned the Cyclones on their own 6-yard line.
The way I see it, that combo play by Shudak and Young was valued at 19 yards of field position you won't find on a stat sheet. (Instead of starting at the 25 on a touchback, Iowa State was on the 6. All because of a Hawkeye hustle play.)
After a three-and-out, Rivera's low punt was caught by Nico Ragaini at the 40, and with a terrific block from Stone and help from Terry Roberts, he ran it all the way Iowa State's 25 – where the Cyclones could've been starting their previous drive had they just taken a touchback.
The flea-flickers and big plays were impressive from Iowa State; but Iowa's 25-yard touchdown drive counted for six points just the same.
And here's a little nugget for the "punting is winning" crowd ...
Iowa's Michael Sleep-Dalton netted 216 yards on his five booming punts. Iowa State netted 102 on four. That's a 114-yard swing in overall field position right there.
The most important play of the game deserves its own analysis.
I'm still amazed at the execution of Nate Stanley's 27-yard strike to Ihmir Smith-Marsette on third-and-22 midway though the third quarter. The flawless pass protection; the precise throw between four defenders; the spectacular sliding catch. It was a game-changing moment, with the Hawkeyes on the ropes — already down, 14-6, and the Jack Trice Stadium faithful roaring.
The design (and challenges): Iowa State dropped eight men into zone coverage, with a three-safety look to protect the first-down line (at the Iowa 41) — a decision that afforded Stanley time to throw and Marsette to run a deep post. Iowa's two receivers to the right, Brandon Smith and Ragaini, ran deeper routes to clear that side for running back Ivory Kelly-Martin, who ran a screen pattern. Tight end Nate Wieting, from the left side of the offensive line, ran a 7-yard underneath route that attracted only cursory linebacker attention. That meant Marsette had to run a perfect route and hope Stanley could find him.
The throw: I mentioned four defenders. 1) Linebacker Jake Hummel kept Wieting in front of him and back-pedaled into the Stanley-to-Marsette passing lane. 2) Cornerback Anthony Johnson protected the outside; so when the speedy Marsette cut his route inside, he became a trailing defender. 3) Strong safety Braxton Lewis had retreated even further at the snap, insurance for a very deep throw. 4) Star player Greg Eisworth had lined up as a third safety in the middle of the field, positioned to take away the very throw Stanley was about to fire. But that was the beauty of the throw — Stanley, a high school baseball pitcher who could top 90 mph on the radar gun, put so much heat on the ball (while still getting it over the top of Hummel's right hand) that Eisworth was one fateful step late.
"That was an absolute laser from Nate Stanley," Fox's Robert Smith marveled. "You can see why NFL scouts are so excited."
The catch and the point: The ball placement was perfect. About hip high, allowing Marsette to make a low-to-the-ground, sliding catch without taking a major impact from Lewis. Upon snatching the ball out of mid-air, Marsette showed some newfound Hawkeye swagger by pointing downfield to signal a first down.
Iowa's No. 3 and 4 running backs deserve praise, too.
Kirk Ferentz said he wanted to push true freshman running back Tyler Goodson during these first three games and see how he responds. Well, safe to stay, Goodson showed he belongs — and based on what we saw Saturday, it wouldn't be a surprise if he's a more pronounced part of the plans after Iowa's bye week.
What Goodson did on a 14-yard counter run in the third quarter (three plays after the Smith-Marsette reception) was significant. The play, going left, was hardly well-blocked. But Goodson's initial shake forced talented linebacker Mike Rose to tackle air, and his speed around the left edge caused cornerback Amechie Walker to helplessly slip to the ground. For good measure, Goodson knocked Eisworth to the ground with his right shoulder as they collided near the boundary.
"You can't coach that type of speed," Smith said. "… Guys just aren't ready when a running back is that much faster than everybody else."
Let's not bury Kelly-Martin in Iowa's backfield, either. After no carries in Iowa's first two games, the junior got five pressure-packed carries in this one. None was bigger than his 3-yard run on third-and-2 early in the fourth quarter, giving Iowa first-and-goal at the Iowa State 1 — setting up the Hawkeyes' lone touchdown. There was no room to run, but Kelly-Martin tip-toed and squirmed for the first down.
Kelly-Martin's value was notable as a blocker, too. He chopped the legs out from under linebacker Marcel Spears Jr. to lead Stanley's 10-yard quarterback draw in the first quarter on third-and-7. He was also integral on Stanley's 14-yard called run on third-and-11 just a few plays before Stanley's touchdown sneak.
Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has covered sports for 24 years with The Des Moines Register, USA TODAY and Iowa City Press-Citizen. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.


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Gāo Jiǒng () (died August 27, 607), courtesy name Zhaoxuan (昭玄), alternative name Min (敏))) known during the Northern Zhou period by the Xianbei name Dugu Jiong (独孤颎/獨孤熲), was a Chinese military general and politician of the Chinese Sui Dynasty.  He was a key advisor to Emperor Wen of Sui and instrumental in the campaign against rival the Chen Dynasty, allowing Sui to destroy Chen in 589 and reunify China.  In 607, he offended Emperor Wen's son Emperor Yang of Sui (Yang Guang) by criticizing Emperor Yang's large rewards to Tujue's submissive Qimin Khan and was executed by Emperor Yang.

Quoting Arthur Wright, author Hengy Chye Kiang calls Gao Jiong "'a man of practical statecraft" recalling the great Legalist statesmen. His influence saw the replacement of Confucians with officials of "Legalist" outlook favouring centralization.

Background
It is not known when Gao Jiong was born.  His father Gao Bin (高宾/高賓) was an official of Eastern Wei who, in 540, fearful of false accusations against him, fled to Western Wei.  Gao Bin served on the staff of the Xianbei general Dugu Xin, and on the orders of Western Wei's paramount general Yuwen Tai in 554, changed his family name to Dugu as well.  Because of this connection, after Dugu Xin was forced to commit suicide in 557 after the founding of Western Wei's successor state Northern Zhou, Dugu Xin's daughter Dugu Qieluo often visited Gao Bin's home.  Gao Bin eventually served as a provincial governor and died during such a posting.

Gao Jiong was himself skilled in history and rhetoric while young.  When he was 16, Yuwen Xian the Prince of Qi made Gao Jiong a member of his staff.  He inherited the title of Count of Wuyang that had been created for his father.  He apparently served under Yuwen Xian when Yuwen Xian was a major general in the campaign of his brother Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou in destroying rival Northern Qi, (Eastern Wei's successor state) and was promoted to a mid-level post in the imperial government.

In 580, after the death of Emperor Wu's son Emperor Xuan, Emperor Xuan's father-in-law Yang Jian (Dugu Qieluo's husband) seized power as regent over Emperor Xuan's son Emperor Jing (by Emperor Xuan's concubine Zhu Manyue).  Yang Jian, knowing that Gao was intelligent and full of strategies, sent his associate Yang Hui the Duke of Yu to request that Gao join his staff.  Gao, seeing that Yang had great ambitions, responded, "I am willing to be driven by him.  Even if the Duke's ambitions could not be carried out, I am willing to have my clan slaughtered over this."  He therefore agreed to serve as Yang's secretary.  When the general Yuchi Jiong, suspicious of Yang's intentions, rebelled at Xiang Province (相州, roughly modern Handan, Hebei), Yang needed someone to oversee the operations against Yuchi, but his associates Cui Zhongfang (崔仲方), Liu Fang (劉昉), and Zheng Yi (鄭譯) each declined.  Gao volunteered, and he not oversaw the operations but also personally defeated Yuchi's son Yuchi Chun (尉遲淳).  After the major general Wei Xiaokuan defeated Yuchi Jiong and forced Yuchi Jiong to commit suicide, Gao Jiong was created the Duke of Yi'ning.  (As Yang soon declared that Yuwen Tai's system of requiring Chinese officials and generals to change their names to Xianbei should be rescinded, Gao after this point did not use the family name Dugu any more.)

During Emperor Wen's reign
In 581, Yang Jian had Emperor Jing yield the throne to him, ending Northern Zhou and establishing Sui Dynasty as its Emperor Wen.  He reorganized his government into five major bureaus, and Gao served as both the head of the examination bureau (門下省, Menxia Sheng) and the co-head of the executive bureau (尚書省, Shangshu Sheng) -- effectively serving as co-prime minister.  He was created the Duke of Bohai, and few officials could rival him in terms of Emperor Wen's trust, shown by Gao's appointment as one of the officials in charge of the  hengy legal reforms enacted in the Kaihuang Code.  Emperor Wen often referred to him honorifically as simply "Mr. Dugu" (using his old Xianbei name) without mentioning his given name.  Gao recommended Su Wei to Emperor Wen, and Emperor Wen trusted Su as well, eventually promoting Su to be co-prime minister.  Whenever other officials made accusations against Gao, Emperor Wen deposed those officials.  He also gave a daughter of his son and crown prince Yang Yong to Gao's son Gao Biaoren (高表仁) in marriage.

In 582, Emperor Wen had Gao oversee an operation against rival Chen Dynasty, but when Emperor Xuan of Chen died in early 582, Gao suggested that it was improper to attack a state that had just lost its emperor, and Emperor Wen agreed and withdrew the troops.  Later in 582, it was after consulting Gao and Su that Emperor Wen, who had felt that the city of Chang'an, his capital, was too small, constructed a new capital nearby named Daxing (大興), where he moved the capital in 583.

In fall 583, Emperor Wen sent Gao and Yu Qingze (虞慶則) to attack Tujue.

In 587, while Sui's vassal Emperor Jing of Western Liang was at Daxing, Emperor Jing's uncle Xiao Yan (蕭巖) and brother Xiao Huan (蕭瓛), in charge of his capital Jiangling, feared that the Sui general Cui Hongdu (崔弘度) was going attack, and therefore took the people of Jiangling and surrendered to the Chen general Chen Huiji (陳慧紀, the cousin of Chen's emperor Chen Shubao).  In response, Emperor Wen abolished Western Liang and took its territory under direct control.  He sent Gao to Jiangling to comfort the people of the region.  Meanwhile, when Emperor Wen asked Gao for tactics in preparing to conquer Chen, Gao suggested harassing Chen's border regions in two ways: sending troops on exercise without actually attacking, to cause Chen's farmers to be on alert and unable to farm and causing Chen's guards to be down when an actual attack would come; and to send spies to burn Chen's border farmlands.  Emperor Wen agreed, and these tactics helped damage Chen's resistance capabilities.

In winter 588, Emperor Wen declared the campaign against Chen.  He made Yang Su and his sons Yang Guang the Prince of Jin and Yang Jun the Prince of Qin the commanders of the three main prongs of the operation, with Yang Guang in overall command.  Gao served as Yang Guang's deputy and was responsible for the strategies used in the campaign.  When Chen's capital Jiankang fell in spring 589 and the emperor Chen Shubao was captured, Yang Guang ordered that Chen Shubao's concubine Consort Zhang Lihua be spared—perhaps because he wanted to take Consort Zhang as his own concubine.  Instead, Gao, comparing Consort Zhang to Daji—the wicked wife of King Zhou of Shang—beheaded her.  Yang Guang thereafter resented Gao greatly, stating sarcastically, "It has been said, 'You should repay every good deed done to you.'  I will repay Duke Gao later."  Gao was responsible for collecting Chen's imperial stores, and was said to be exceedingly scrupulous at it, taking nothing for himself.  For Gao's contributions, Emperor Wen promoted him to the greater title of Duke of Qi and awarded him with much silk.  When Emperor Wen told him and the general Heruo Bi (賀若弼) to compare their contributions, Gao declined, stating that Heruo fought on the battlefield while he was merelyl serving as a civilian, and could not compare himself to Heruo.  Emperor Wen was impressed and honored Gao even more.  However, when Emperor Wen wanted to create the official Li Delin a duke as well for his contributions, as Gao had consulted Li during the campaign, Gao persuaded Emperor Wen not to, apparently out of jealousy for Li.

In 592, Su was removed from his post as co-prime minister, and Yang Su replaced Su.  It was commented by traditional historians that Yang Su was more talented and had more foresight than Gao, but that he was not as fairminded or well-behaved as Gao.

In 598, angry that Ying Province (營州, roughly modern Zhaoyang, Liaoning) had been attacked by Goguryeo, Emperor Wen send his son Yang Liang and the general Wang Shiji (王世積) to attack Goguryeo—a campaign that Gao tried to dissuade Emperor Wen from but Emperor Wen launched anyway, and in fact forced Gao to serve as Yang Liang's deputy.  Due to Yang Liang's young age, Gao was actually in charge of the operation, which ended in failure due to inadequate food supplies due to drought, as well as a storm destroying a large part of the fleet commanded by the former Chen general Zhou Luohou (周羅睺).  Yang Liang, disgruntled at how Gao gave him little actual authority on the campaign and frequently disobeyed him, complained to Empress Dugu that he was fortunate to not have been killed by Gao, and this angered Emperor Wen as well.

Meanwhile, the relationships between Gao and the imperial couple were breaking down for other reasons as well.  Earlier, there had been a confrontation between Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu over Emperor Wen's sexual relationship with Yuchi Jiong's granddaughter (who had become a palace servant) and Empress Dugu's subsequent killing of Lady Yuchi.  Emperor Wen was so angry that he rode away from the palace, requiring Gao and Yang Su to track him down.  At Gao and Yang Su's urging, Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu reconciled over a feast that Gao and Yang Su hosted.  However, while persuading Emperor Wen to return to the palace, Gao referred to Empress Dugu as "a woman," which, when she found out, she was displeased with.  Further, by this point, Yang Yong had lost Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu's favor, over his wastefulness (which displeased Emperor Wen) and having many concubines (which displeased Empress Dugu).  Gao, who had also drawn Empress Dugu's ire for having a favorite concubine, thereafter came under suspicion by Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu of being overly supportive of Yang Yong, as he rejected outright the possibility that Yang Yong should be displaced by Yang Guang.  In 599, when Emperor Wen sent Gao, Yang Su, and Yan Rong (燕榮) against Tujue's Dulan Khan Ashina Yongyulü, Gao, while on the campaign, requested additional troops, leading to suspicion by Emperor Wen that he was planning a rebellion, but Gao soon returned from the campaign, temporary assuaging Emperor Wen's fears.

However, later in 599, after Wang Shiji was executed over suspicions of treason, accusations arose during the investigation of Wang's case that he had heard many palace secrets from Gao.  Thereafter, Gao and two other high level officials, Yuan Min (元旻) and Yuan Zhou (元冑), were accused of accepting bribes from Wang, and Yuan Min and Yuan Zhou were removed from their posts.  When several other officials, including Heruo, Yuwen Bi (宇文弼), Xue Zhou (薛冑), Hulü Xiaoqing (斛律孝卿), and Liu Shu (柳述), tried to speak on Gao's behalf, Emperor Wen was so angry at them that he briefly threw them all into jail.  Soon, Gao was found guilty and removed from his governmental posts, but allowed to keep his title of Duke of Qi.  Soon thereafter, however, Gao was accused of comparing himself to Sima Yi, and was reduced to commoner rank.  He thereafter was powerless to prevent Yang Yong's removal and replacement by Yang Guang in 600.

During Emperor Yang's reign
Gao Jiong's activities for the next several years were not clear.  In 604, Emperor Wen died—a death that most traditional historians, while admitting a lack of direct evidence, believed to be a murder ordered by Yang Guang—and Yang Guang took the throne as Emperor Yang.  Sometime after Emperor Yang took the throne, he made Gao the minister of ceremonies.  When Emperor Yang ordered, in 606, that the former palace musicians from Northern Qi and Northern Zhou be regathered (Emperor Wen, who disfavored music, had disbanded the palace music corps), Gao opposed, without effect.  In 607, when Emperor Yang gave great rewards to Tujue's submissive Qimin Khan Ashina Rangan, Gao again opposed, with no effect.  It was said that Gao made several comments critical of Emperor Yang's policies, including a comment to his secretary Li Yi (李懿), "Zhou's Emperor Tianyuan [i.e., Emperor Xuan] destroyed his dynasty over his favor for dances, music, and crafts.  The example of his spilled wagon is just in the short past, and how is it that it is being repeated?"  He told He Chou (何稠), the minister of palace storage, as to Ashina Rangan, "This barbarian has become knowledgeable about China's strength and geographical features, and I fear that he will become a danger later."  He also spoke to Yang Xiong (楊雄) the Prince of Guan (Emperor Yang's cousin) and said, "Recently, the government's laws are not being enforced."  These comments were reported to Emperor Yang, along with similar comments made by Yuwen Bi and Heruo Bi.  In summer 607, Emperor Yang had Gao, Yuwen, and Heruo all beheaded, and Gao's sons were exiled to the border provinces.  Some traditional historians, however, attribute Gao's death to his earlier killing of Consort Zhang.

The Book of Sui commented, about Gao:

Gao Jiong was talented in both civilian and military matters and highly observant.  Since he received the emperor's confidence, he expended his faithful service and contributed earnestly.  He recommended talented people, and he saw saving the world as his responsibility.  Su Wei, Yang Su, Heruo Bi, and Han Qinhu [(韓擒虎, another general)] were all brought into the government by Gao, and the officials who contributed because of his recommendations were innumerable.  Gao was in power for almost 20 years, and both officials and the people praised and respected him, with no objections.  That the empire could become rich and powerful was due to Gao.  When he was executed, everyone mourned for him.

Notes and references

 Book of Sui, vol. 41.
 History of Northern Dynasties, vol. 72.
 Zizhi Tongjian, vols. 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180.

607 deaths
Northern Zhou Buddhists
Sui dynasty Buddhists
Sui dynasty generals
Sui dynasty politicians
Year of birth unknown

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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California Legislature Passes Mental Health Parity Law
By Yuki Noguchi
Federal and state laws require insurance companies to cover mental health just as they would medical care, but actually getting insurance for mental health treatment can be tricky. In California, the Legislature is trying to make that promise real. Yesterday, it passed one of the country's strictest mental health parity laws, as NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
YUKI NOGUCHI, BYLINE: When Monica Vera-Schubert's (ph) son Bobby injured his knee a decade ago, she monitored his painkiller prescription until it ran out.
MONICA VERA-SCHUBERT: That's where, all of a sudden, his behavior started changing to the point that he was no longer a friendly, happy-go-lucky kid.
NOGUCHI: He raided his grandparents' medicine cabinet and sold off his mother's jewelry to feed his growing addiction. Where Vera-Schubert lives in Burbank, Calif., state and federal law already require insurance companies to cover mental health as they do medical care. But she says she encountered multiple hurdles. Once, her insurance preauthorized her son for inpatient rehab. But when he showed up...
VERA-SCHUBERT: They couldn't get the insurance to coordinate with them, so my son walked. He walked home to his grandparents' house, and he goes, I'm never going back there again.
NOGUCHI: She ran into other roadblocks as well - long waiting periods, requirements he test positive for drugs. Paying out of pocket would've cost nearly $50,000 for a single month.
VERA-SCHUBERT: It felt terrible and overwhelming (crying) - so overwhelming that how many times I'd have to fight for my son and...
NOGUCHI: Bobby eventually received treatment and entered recovery, but only after getting off her private insurance and getting on California's public Medicaid program. Advocates for California's new proposal say it would strengthen existing law and close loopholes insurers use to deny many mental health claims. It would expand coverage for more than 13 million Californians with private insurance. It would increase the list of illnesses covered, most notably addiction. Meanwhile, America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's association, has argued it is already in compliance, and therefore a new law is unnecessary and would add to administrative costs.
Patrick Kennedy is a mental health advocate and former U.S. congressman who co-authored the landmark 2008 federal law requiring equal insurance treatment of mental health. Insurers, he says, haven't complied.
PATRICK KENNEDY: Fact is that they're not covering it, and it's discriminatory to people who are suffering from mental illness and addiction, especially in a time when our country is crying out.
NOGUCHI: Kennedy says the California bill, if signed into law, could become a model for other states and prompt insurance companies to change policies nationally. Meiram Bendat agrees. He's both a lawyer and a psychotherapist in Los Angeles.
MEIRAM BENDAT: The biggest tool that insurers have to deny coverage is by saying that treatment is not medically necessary.
NOGUCHI: Bendat won a national case against United Behavioral Health last year, arguing the insurance giant improperly denied coverage. He says a new California proposal would address one gaping problem - it would no longer allow insurers to write their own rules about what to cover. Many of the patients Bendat represented were denied inpatient addiction treatment.
BENDAT: They couldn't afford the care. They didn't get the care. They overdosed and died. And there is absolutely no ability to get punitive damages.
NOGUCHI: Families couldn't sue for damages under federal law, so Bendat says insurers have little incentive to change. The proposal now heads to California Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk. His office declined comment about whether he intends to sign it.
Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
Yuki Noguchi
Yuki Noguchi is a correspondent on the Science Desk based out of NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. She started covering consumer health in the midst of the pandemic, reporting on everything from vaccination and racial inequities in access to health, to cancer care, obesity and mental health.
See stories by Yuki Noguchi


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Israel Pulse
Novy God holiday enchants Israelis with Soviet new year festivities
READ IN: עברית
Ksenia Svetlova December 23, 2019
After years of misunderstanding and rejection of the Soviet holiday, Novy God has become as Israeli as any other of the beloved traditions brought to the country by waves immigrants.
Mikhail Japaridze\TASS via Getty Images
A performer dressed as Ded Moroz (Father Frost) performs in Moscow, Russia, Dec. 1, 2018.
Fir trees, white flakes that recall the pure snow of the Russian winter and colorful decorations are on full display at the Kinga Sefer book store in the town of Kfar Saba. Figurines of Ded Moroz (Father Frost) dressed in his red coat and his lovely granddaughter Sanguruzka (the Snow Maiden) are at the center, to the wide-eyed delight of the kids. For the last 15 years, the store has held a Novy God fair, where customers could buy fir trees, decorations, calendars and gifts. In Russian, Novy God means New Year, and it seems that at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, the phrase is no longer foreign to any Israeli.
"I hadn't known this holiday until the last few years. It's not a holiday I grew up with or was celebrated in my family. I was exposed to Novy God through my daughters, who got to know it through their friends. They liked the holiday and told me they wanted to celebrate Novy God, to take part in this culture and tradition," Yuval Zipper, a native Israeli who lives in Tel Aviv, told Al-Monitor. He added that he has been celebrating Novy God for a few years now.
The holiday, which observe the end of one year and the start of the next, came to Israel along with a million immigrants who came from the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Many brought their favorite fir tree decorations with them and were surprised to learn that the holiday was unknown and not celebrated there. Tal Reznik, who immigrated with her family from Ukraine, told Al-Monitor that she experienced "a culture shock" when she told her friends at school that she has a decorated fir tree at home and that she wouldn't be in school on Jan. 1. "They said to me: 'What, are you Christian? You're not Jewish? Why do you celebrate St. Sylvester's Day?' I didn't know what they were talking about, who's Sylvester?"
In the secular Soviet Union, people didn't celebrate St. Sylvester's Day — a Christian saint the Soviets hardly heard of — nor did they celebrate Christmas. At the beginning of the 1930s, Soviet leaders borrowed the main symbols of Christmas — a fir tree, gifts and St. Nicholas (Santa Claus), who got a new name — Ded Moroz — for a new holiday without religious significance. Instead of Christmas, Soviet citizens began to celebrate Novy God en masse, along through the years became the most beloved Soviet holiday, the only one without political or Communist Party associations.
With time, various Novy God customs developed, from plays and costumes at preschools to certain foods and favorite films, which will forever be associated with the holiday spirit. While in Europe and the United States people go out to celebrate New Year's Eve, for anyone who grew up in the Soviet Union, Novy God is mainly a family holiday. For this holiday, people drink Soviet champagne, eat caviar sandwiches and Olivier salad with potatoes, mayonnaise and green peas, and watch Soviet cult films like "The Irony of Fate."
All of these customs were easy to replicate in Israel. During the 1990s, for instance, immigrants would buy fir trees in the Old City of Jerusalem and Jaffa, where Christian Arabs who celebrate Christmas shop. In the middle of a regular work and school week there was a magical time around the family table.
Not everyone in Israel was culturally sensitive toward the new holiday. For many years, toward the end of December, newspapers would regularly print attacks on Novy God, especially from politicians and rabbis who used the opportunity to attack immigrants and accuse them of celebrating Christmas and not being Jews. Children of Russian-speaking families related harassment by teachers who purposely scheduled exams very early on Jan. 1.
The situation started to change in the past decade, as a law was passed in 2011 that allows workers to choose Jan. 1 as a vacation day from work. At the same time, Russian-speaking activists and politicians started promoting the holiday through an initiative called "Israeli Novy God." Today, one can see many offices and shops throughout the country decorated for Novy God in December, chain stores holding sales around the holiday and the Ministry of Education allowing students who celebrate to be absent on Jan. 1. Indeed, Novy God has become an Israeli trend.
Vadim Blumin, an educator and the founder of Generation 1.5: Russian Speaking Young Adults, told Al-Monitor about the Israeli Novy God initiative: "We felt that Novy God celebrations are the biggest open secret in Israel. Immigrants from the Soviet Union are already there for 25 years, and they all celebrate this holiday that has nothing to do with religion. I got tired of explaining to people that Jesus wasn't crucified on a fir tree, that it has nothing to do with St. Sylvester, and we decided to do something. We thought that like for the Mimouna holiday [celebrated by Jews of Moroccan origin in April], everyone looks for Moroccan friends to invite them over to celebrate, so it would be nice for native Israelis to be hosted at Russian speakers' homes for the holiday." This year he organized a Novy God event in Ramat Gan, a city to the east of Tel Aviv, that will include a musical performance, crafts, gifts and traditional holiday foods.
Vitali Kabakov, the owner of the Kniga Sefer bookshop and small publishing house, told Al-Monitor that in recent years he has noticed that customers coming to his shop to buy fir trees and decorations are increasingly not Russian speakers. "I see a lot of native Israelis and immigrants from France, Spain and Italy," he said. "In many cases, these are families with kids who saw fir trees at their friends' and they ask mom and dad to celebrate, too. You may ask why they want to celebrate. Because it's a secular, happy and pretty holiday. A few years ago, I still had to defend myself to those who would shout at me 'Sylvester,' 'gentile' or 'Christian.' This year this hasn't happened even once."
He emphasized, "I think today there's more openness to different customs and cultures. Just as Mimouna has become a national holiday, so Novy God has become a holiday for Israelis and not just immigrants from the 1990s."
Even if some criticism is still heard from rabbis this year, it will be drowned out by the holiday cheer, as those who celebrate Novy God greet each other with the traditional greeting, "S'novim godom, s'novim shastyim" ("New year, new luck").
Found in: Cultural heritage
Ksenia Svetlova, a former Knesset member for Hatnua, is currently a fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. She previously worked as a senior analyst and reporter on Middle East affairs for Israel's Channel 9. She covered Gaza and the West Bank and also reported from Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia and other Arab countries. She is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs and is fluent in Arabic, Russian, Hebrew and English.
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Music In Conversation
BRUCE MOLSKY with Stephen Ellis and David Ross
Bruce Molsky is widely considered one of the finest old-time musicians currently performing. His recordings display his mastery of fiddle, banjo, and guitar, as well as his plangent accompanying vocals. Beyond technical virtuosity, Molsky's recordings and performances express his profound and subtle feeling for the music of the Southern Appalachians. His sympathy for this repertoire represents a feat of imagination since Molsky was born (1955) and raised in the Bronx. Now, after some years "away from the fold," as they say in the South, Molsky has recently moved back to the New York area, where he performed most recently at Jalopy Theatre in Red Hook.
Image Courtesy Robert Hakalski.
Although he has always played music outside the strict parameters of Southeastern old-time, in recent years Molsky has increasingly explored the folk traditions of other countries, particularly the fiddle music of the British Isles and Scandinavia, which he often performs in the company of stellar players from those countries.
Molsky is interviewed here for the Rail by Stephen Ellis, an artist and amateur musician who grew up with old-time music in western North Carolina, and David A. Ross, Chair of the MFA Art Practice program at SVA. Ross, also a dedicated amateur musician, is the former director of ICA Boston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Ellis: So how does a kid from the Bronx get interested in old-time music?
Molsky: I started out as a guitar player. I loved Jimi Hendrix, still do. When I was a kid there were folk concerts at the 23rd Street YMCA and The Newport Folk Festival was really active, so a lot of folk groups would play New York on their way there. Then when I was 12 my sister bought me a book of Beatles covers and a Doc Watson record.
Ellis: You had an epiphany about Doc Watson?
Molsky: Yeah, on a lot of levels. In the very beginning I didn't know what old-time music was, I just knew Doc Watson. What really got me was the simplicity, accessibility, and virtuosity—although as a kid I wouldn't have used those three words—of his music. That music was one of the first things that showed me there was a whole rest of the world out there that didn't look like where I lived. It grabbed me and led me by the nose out of the city to the places where that music came from. It's always the music that opens the doors and makes me go somewhere else.
Doc Watson led me to Bill Monroe. That was just the next logical step. The bluegrass Bill Monroe played was so stylized—it had great costumes and a whole hype that went with it. I wanted to be a bluegrass guitar player! To my undeveloped mind, bluegrass and old-time were close enough that I could mix them up. Now I'd say they're so different—but back then it was all just folk music.
Ross: How would you define the basic difference between bluegrass and old-time?
Molsky: Old-time music is what people played in their communities as part of everyday existence. It wasn't meant to be performance music. But when radio came along in the '20s that approach wasn't well–suited to a professional performance medium. For one thing, in old-time music you just start a tune and everybody plays until they're done. There's not enough structural diversity to keep it interesting on the radio—that's my personal theory. But traditional bluegrass is like early jazz. The band plays a theme and then the musicians take turns soloing on the theme or doing some kind of arranged thing.
Ellis: And, like jazz, bluegrass emphasizes virtuosity.
Molsky: Well, there's virtuosity in old-time music too, but the emphasis on soloing in the band is different.
Ellis: Would you compare the virtuosity of old-time bands to the complex group improvisations of New Orleans jazz?
Molsky: That's a really good analogy.
Ross: So if you were going to play a recording as a perfect example of the bluegrass concept and another as a perfect example of the old-time concept, what would you choose?
Molsky: [Whistles.] That's tough. Most anything that The Blue Grass Boys recorded could be an example of traditional bluegrass—the name of the style comes from the name of the band.
Ross: Would you say that's the beginning of the influence of commercialized show business?
Molsky: No, because there was show business before that. What we call old-time music was the ballads your mother sang in the kitchen. It was what people played for square dances or for their own entertainment. It was just as much about the musician as it was about the listener. Old-time music was community music. That's why, when it became popular in the early 1950s, the music immediately became associated with left-wing politics, because it wasn't meant to be owned.
Ellis: After the Grand Ole Opry and the other big radio shows started, there was a pressure to develop styles adapted to fill a quick, punchy spot on a show, but the phonograph was another big factor in the professionalization of country music. People started listening to records a lot, so the whole process of musical evolution was sped up. Suddenly, instead of just listening to the 15 or 20 people around you in the holler, you were listening to hundreds of people from all over the country playing all different kinds of music.
Molsky: The first people I thought of when you mentioned the Grand Ole Opry were Uncle Dave Macon (1870 – 1952) and the McGee brothers (Sam 1894 – 1975 and Kirk 1899 – 1983) because they're the musical links between community music and professional, performance music. Macon took a lot of the minstrel and Tin Pan Alley songs of the era and made them work for radio. He was a stalwart of the Grand Ole Opry, and yet at the same time, at the very beginning, the Opry had musicians like Uncle Jimmy Thompson (1848 – 1931) and DeFord Bailey (1899 – 1982) who were not professionals. Jimmy Thompson would get on stage—I have an archive recording—and ramble on forever, and then he'd play something beautiful. [Laughter.] He was in his 80s by that time. Even Macon didn't start playing professionally until he was 50. Gives us all hope. [Laughter.]
Ross: When did you start playing professionally?
Molsky: When I was 40.
Ellis: What led you to make the break?
Molsky: Well, I'd always played music passionately but I was saving full-time music for my retirement. Then I turned 35, both my parents were gone, and I thought I'd better get around to some of the stuff I'd been saving for later. I've been with my wife, Audrey, for 33 years. She's always been incredibly supportive. After my Dad died I asked her, "What would you think if I took a year off and played music full-time just to see what it's like?" I'd only played nights and weekends, house parties and get-togethers and stuff. Her immediate response was, "I can't believe you didn't do this 10 years ago." [Laughter.] And here I was trying to be a responsible Jewish spouse treading the correct path. I'd been working at an engineering company for 10 years and I was ready to move on. So I took a year off. I never went back and that's the whole story.
I spent a year booking gigs before I even gave my notice, so I'd have something to do. By the time I was ready to make the break, I'd met a lot of people who were well established in the industry. I asked them, "How do I do this?" and they all gave similar answers: "Stay true to the music. Don't become co-opted trying to be something you're not." It was John Hartford that really beat that into me. I've always kept that attitude so I'll continue to like my own work. That's what people see when you walk up on a stage. If you're having a good time, so will the audience. If it's a day at the office for you, they know it.
Ellis: Let's get back to your musical roots. Before we began the interview you mentioned visiting Tommy Jarrell (1901 – 1985).
Ross: That's the way the tradition was learned? You would visit?
Molsky: You'd go visit people, yeah. Or people just lived in communities together. I visited Tommy and a lot of the people in his community. There was a guitar player, Paul Sutphin (1918 – 2004), and a fiddler named Albert Hash (1917 – 1983), whose family Audrey was quite close to.
Ellis: What did you learn from Tommy Jarrell?
Molksy: Tommy was my first fiddle hero, and I visited him a few times. I use a lot of his licks and I learned so much from him, but I also learned from Wade Ward's music, even though I was never able to meet him. Wade lived across the mountain from Jarrell in Grayson County, Virginia. His playing was more metric. Tommy played a fretless banjo, but Wade played a fretted one, an RB-11, a cheap Gibson he made sound incredibly beautiful. You have to have a really light touch to play clawhammer on a bluegrass banjo like that. Wade's playing was really, really rhythm-based and syncopated. He had all these great ways of keeping time around the skeleton of a melody, and that's what my banjo playing is about. But, you know, I wasn't one of these people that went to visit a lot of people in their homes. I was a little shy about that. In retrospect I wish I hadn't been.
Ellis: Did you feel it was intrusive?
Molsky: Yeah. But back then, everybody was doing it.
Ellis: You also play a bunch of tunes by Edden Hammons (1875 – 1955) that you recast in a wonderful way. Your notes are pretty close to his, but transformed in mysterious ways.
Molsky: We visited the Hammonses. Edden died long before I arrived, but his successors, Burl Hammons (1908 – 1993) and his sister Maggie Hammons Parker (1899 – 1987), were great fiddlers. They lived with a third sister in a really small shack in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.
Ellis: So what was it that attracted you to their music?
Molsky: It's a visual thing. If you've ever spent any time in that part of West Virginia, it's dark, it's lonesome. The mountains are really high and steep and block out light half the day and the hollers are kind of dank and it's just got a really strong vibe, and that very lonesome music. That's the kind of image I see when I'm playing.
The picture I see can evoke people, or a story, or a color, or a time and place, even if it never existed—so much of what initially attracted me to this music was my perception of a simple world that probably never was, but the music pointed to that, you know? Simple life and hard labor with good rewards. Peace in your life and spiritual fulfillment. I liked this kind of music because it had a really simple message. Nothing is simple, I learned later. But that's what the music has always meant to me. Even though I'm old enough to know better, I still like feeling that feeling I had when I first heard it.
Ellis: For me, old-time music has two contradictory aspects that are both really strong. At first, it can be delightful and open-hearted. But the more you listen, the more the contradictions of the world it came from reveal themselves, and the less a simple nostalgia for that world seems tenable. But that makes the music interesting on another level, as a kind of agon of American history—of racism and cultural synthesis, of class struggle—all of that is in the music. Greil Marcus writes beautifully about this in his book about Basement Tapes, Invisible Republic [later republished as The Old, Weird America]. But somehow those contradictions never completely blot out the open-heartedness.
Ross: Old-time is primarily white music, isn't it?
Molsky: That's a really hard question.
Ellis: Yes, it's complicated. The old-time musicians chosen by the recording companies were primarily white, but a lot of African-Americans played that kind of music too. Unfortunately, it's hard to know precisely how many because the record companies based on their own preconceptions marketed fiddle music primarily to whites as "Hillbilly" music and blues primarily to blacks as so-called "Race" records. The evidence we have is from the relatively few African-American stringband recordings and from eyewitness accounts.
Ross: Well, the banjo was a black instrument, right?
Molsky: The banjo was an African instrument, probably West African. It was introduced to a white audience in the 1840s through minstrel music. There's a classic academic treatise on the subject: Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy about how the banjo got to this country, the early days of minstrelsy, and Joel Sweeney (Joel Walker Sweeney 1810 – 1860), who popularized the five-string banjo and Minstrel shows.
Ellis: Recently there's been a flurry of interest in minstrel music by contemporary African-American bands who play old-time, like the Carolina Chocolate Drops.
Ross: Let me just stop you for a second. When I asked this question about music and race, you both had the same response: "That's a really hard question to answer." Why is it hard?
Molsky: Because there's so much overlap.
Ross: Is it hard because of the history of American racism, the suppression and appropriation of black culture, or because of segregated communities where musicians of different races couldn't play together?
Ellis: It's hard because of all those things, well, except maybe the last. In fact, black and white musicians did play together quite a bit.
Molsky: I'm with you. Musicians were the ones who cared the least about those boundaries—that's why you hear Jimmie Rodgers singing music that he obviously learned from black people.
Ellis: And inviting Louis Armstrong to record with him.
Molsky: And why Mississippi John Hurt filled in for Sheldon Smith, guitarist for a white Mississippi fiddle band in the '20s, when Smith couldn't make it to dances.
Ellis: And there's Jim Booker, an African-American who played fiddle with Taylor's Kentucky Boys, a white band.
Molsky: The Georgia Yellow Hammers were another integrated band.
Ross: So there were integrated bands in the teens and 20s?
Ellis: Yeah, probably from the 1600s! But publicly it was a problem in terms of marketing, and because of racist concert venues and audiences, especially after Jim Crow. A couple of people sitting around playing informally didn't have those problems. But, really, the music itself is like a gigantic river delta with all these musical currents always flowing back and forth across different channels.
Molsky: Another reason that ultra-conservative, racist people hate folk music—because it moves so freely between black and white. [Laughter.]
Ross: Could you play an example of that kind of dialogue between black and white culture?
Molsky: I can't think of an example of it; it just kind of exists everywhere in there. Think about the things that make American music unique among traditional music all over the world: rhythmic values that combine West African cyclical rhythms and West European meter. Think about blue notes—flatted thirds and flatted sevenths and how they also exist, though used differently, in Irish or Scottish pipe music. If you're hip to those styles, then you start to hear how musical ideas cross over.
[Plays recording, "Fourth of July at the County Fair."]
Molsky: This is the Georgia Yellow Hammers. It's bluesy, it's Anglo, it's Tin Pan Alley, it's everything!
Ellis: Then there's Blind Willie Johnson's total transformation of the 18th-century Anglo hymn "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" into a bottleneck guitar tour de force.
Ross: Well I guess there's something essentially American about all that. Despite the persistence of racism in America there's also this cultural synthesis that's the best part of American cultural tradition.
Molsky: Absolutely.
Ellis: Can we get back to some of your musicological investigations? I've got another question about the music of the Hammons family: Is the irregular meter of some of their tunes—old-time players call them "crooked"—what interests you about them? The way they don't stick to standard musical structures?
Molsky: It is. It's a characteristic of the music of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky because it's solo-style playing, not taking a solo in a band context, as in bluegrass or jazz, but playing alone. Old-time originated as dance music, which would have been played in a more even meter, but when you take the dance away and the accompanying musicians away, the fiddler's free to express any length of phrase. I love that stuff! It's a different way of improvising. When I play solo, I drop parts out, add beats. Why not? I teach old-time fiddle as spoken language where a phrase of music is like a sentence with rises and falls in pitch and punctuation marks and accents.
Ross: Can you play an example?
[Plays "Green River."]
Ross: What part of the country would the kind of phrasing in that tune be associated with?
Molsky: That's a western North Carolina tune. It's typical because of certain things about the gait, the groove of it, the lope, and also because of how major thirds are intermingled with slightly flatted thirds, so the real bluesy thing is expressed a certain way.
Ellis: That's another example of how the flatted third, an element adopted from musical traditions brought by African slaves, is woven into the fabric of all these things.
Molsky: Right. Check these tunes out as an example of that. I'll tell you the story first so you know what to listen for. The fiddler Will Adams was one of the first people Mike Seeger, Pete's half-brother and a very important musician and archivist in old-time, ever recorded. Adams was an old African-American guy who lived in Ken-Gar, a community right next to Kensington, Maryland. Adams played American tunes and Irish jigs for Seeger. If you listen to the recordings, it all sounds so African because of the flatted thirds and other adaptations he made. You were asking about how I create a different interpretation—this tune, I think it's called "Sally Gal," is an example of that. I accentuate the polyrhythmic aspect of the music even more than Adams did. That's where we modern musicians have choices to make. Because as soon as we start to isolate those elements, we're stepping away from tradition a little bit. It's fine with me, but it's not okay with everybody.
[plays "Hold Your Dog, Sally Gal."]
[plays Will Adams's 1951 recording of "Hold Your Dog, Sally Gal."]
Molsky: The three-against-four isn't as strong in Adams's recording, but it's there. [Claps time.]
Ellis: Back to the ethics of transforming the old material: If you don't transform it, doesn't the style just become frozen and dusty? There are musical ideas implicit in the tunes, like the three-against- four you were talking about. When you find those ideas in the formal structure of the music, you find a way to play the tune to highlight them.
Molsky: That's how I see it.
Ellis: The authenticity arguments in old-time music have interesting parallels to the controversy around using period instruments in Early, Baroque, and Classical music. For the last fifty years, people have been playing that music differently, more as a way of hearing it new than as a way of returning to some lost original. That's kind of analogous to your practice: an open-minded, revisionist musician playing Bach is also reimagining the music significantly without completely dissolving the borders of the idiom.
Molsky: Well, I have one advantage that a Bach player doesn't have—I actually got to hear the sources! People who play Bach and Mozart can only guess what it sounded like—
Ellis: That can be liberating too, not knowing, right?
Molsky: Yeah, but it's also the source of a lot of arguments. I've worked with some performers of Early music and they fight about how certain things might've been expressed. I said, "You can fight about it all you want, you're never going to know!"
Ross: But unless you're an academic, or an ethnomusicologist, or a music historian, what does it matter? You bring people pleasure with your music today. Music is always new; it only exists in the present, right?
Ellis: Well, it matters to the extent that it's possible to use historical material in a creative way or in an academic way, to renew the music or to petrify it.
Molsky: There are people in my scene who do it both ways. There are the recreationists, who put the old performances on a pedestal—they think that that's how it goes. That's not me. That's not what I do.
Ross: Is one form more soulful than the other?
Molsky: It's not as soulful for me to try and play just like Tommy Jarrell, 'cause I'm not him. But it is soulful for me to be able to capture whatever I can of the essence of what was beautiful about his playing and express it in my own voice. If I can do that, man, I've succeeded.
Ross: Yet, here you are a Jew from the Bronx playing the music of a lot of guys who did not grow up knowing Jews from the Bronx.
Molsky: There's a great story about Tommy Jarrell. Some Jewish kids from the city came to visit him. He was a really welcoming, nice guy who didn't have any problem with that. One day Tommy's sitting around with three or four guys from New York (I wasn't one of them) and he's showing them all the tunes—they're all having a great time. Suddenly Tommy looks around and realizes who he's sitting with and says, "Don't any of you people have your own music?" [Laughter.] As a result of that, Hank Sapoznik, whose grandfather was a rabbi and who grew up in a culturally very strong Jewish household, went back and got involved in Klezmer music. He now runs a huge Klezmer archive in Madison, Wisconsin. He's a preeminent guy in the field!
Ellis: Andy Statman, a Brooklyn boy, as well as a virtuoso mandolinist and clarinetist, has also moved from old-time and bluegrass to Klezmer. Do you think some similar perception played a role in his evolution? If this folk music is so great, what about looking at folk music a little closer to home?
Molsky: I don't know how Andy got religion, but he's really open-minded. It's unbelievable how he can get inside the middle of any style instantly. Some people have that gift. Andy and Ricky Skaggs recorded a gospel song on Andy's Old Brooklyn CD where Andy's playing Klezmer clarinet. But that speaks to what a lot of people are doing with music right now. All these things we're talking about are separate traditions that existed before radio. After radio and TV everything became the same to everybody, and everything became available to everybody. And then World War II made everybody want to see the rest of the world and know what was there. Now all these students at Berklee College of Music where I teach really dig deep into individual traditions but have no compunction about combining them and presenting them however they like.
Ross: Do you consider yourself somebody making your own stuff?
Molsky: Oh, I totally consider it my own stuff. You can imitate somebody when you're first learning to do something—especially in folk music where it isn't written down. When I was learning to play the fiddle I was Tommy Jarrell for two years and I was Ernest East for a year, then I was Benton Flippen for a couple of years. But you do come to a point where you realize that you have your own voice, and that's a liberating place to arrive. I've been playing this music most of my life at this point—at what point can I declare ownership of some aspect of it? It's my expression, you know?
Ellis: I'm thinking about some of your ventures away from straight old-time. You're friends with Darol Anger, who's an important first generation Newgrass player. When he was in David Grisman's band in the late '70s and early '80s that direction was especially strong, and now, with players like Chris Thile, it seems to be having a resurgence. Anger also has a classical string quartet, doesn't he?
Molsky: The Turtle Island String Quartet, which was a really groundbreaking group that brought other styles into classical music.
Ellis: Sort of like the Kronos Quartet.
Molsky: Exactly. Darol's like my brother. We've known each other for many years and we teach together at Berklee. We had a band together called Fiddlers Four, which got a Grammy nomination in 2003. It all started when Darol came to a music camp in California where I was teaching and we stayed up all night playing music together. Then he invited me to do a track on his CD, Diary of a Fiddler, an album of duets with different fiddlers. He and I play a fucking Jimi Hendrix tune! [Laughs.] "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)." We're totally in each other's musical lives.
Ellis: Given your work with progressive musicians like Anger and with world musicians in the band Mozaik, do you see your musical future in old-time, or do you have different projects you want to pursue?
Molsky: Oh, I've got all kinds of stuff underway. I'm in the middle of editing a CD with Ale Möller and Aly Bain. Möller is Swedish, but his mother is Norwegian and his father was Danish, so he's got all of Scandinavia covered. He plays a mandola of his own invention, which is very cool. Aly Bain is probably the most famous Shetland fiddler, played with the original Boys of the Lough. And I'm in another trio called Nyckelharpa, which is a Swedish key fiddle, with Mikael Marin, who plays five-string viola, the nyckelharpa, and guitar, and Roger Tallroth, a great guitar player. They're also Swedish. They're also really tall. [Laughter.] Then I have a trio with Darol and a cellist named Rushad Eggleston, who's completely reinvented the cello. And a finally there's my quartet, Jumpsteady Boys, which is straight old-time. Mike Compton, the go-to Bill Monroe mandolin guy is in it, and so is Rafe Stefanini, and Joe Newbury, a great banjo player, singer, and songwriter.
Ellis: And do you play fiddle in all these groups?
Molsky: Fiddle, some banjo, and I sing. Whatever needs to be done. I never would have called myself a project person 10 years ago, but that's really what's happened since I've discovered that all these things I do in old-time music can be used as nuts and bolts in other styles!
Stephen Ellis
STEPHEN ELLIS is an artist in New York who writes about visual art and music.
Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings, Remembered Light & Landscape
By Rebecca Brantley
DEC 19-JAN 20 | ArtSeen
Atlanta's High Museum is a meaningful conclusion—the only truly Southern one—for an exhibition that foregrounds the American South. Curators Sarah Greenough and Sarah Kennel grouped Mann's work into five themes: Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains. Almost 50 previously unpublished photographs provide fresh insight.
NOV 2018 | Poetry
Dale Smith is a poet and teacher in Toronto, Ontario. He studied with Tom Clark from 1994-1996 in the New College of California Poetics Program.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden: Hold on, let me take the safety off
By Madeleine Seidel
NOV 2019 | ArtSeen
You are hit first by the contrast. The clinical white of the gallery walls behind the black leather and paint draw in and repel—equal and opposite forces. Within the freeing constraints of the gallery space, we are invited to explore an artistic vision of other types of freeing constraint: physical and psychological kinds, based off leather and trust and, most importantly, balance in pain and pleasure.
Something to Hold Onto
By Erica Getto
JUL-AUG 2018 | Dance
In Constance Rourke's 1931 American Humor: a Study of the National Character, the writer and folklorist presents America as an itinerant nation in search of an identity. Amidst this apparent flux, she identifies three distinct American archetypes: the Yankee peddler, the frontiersman, and the blackface minstrel. Each member of "the trio," she argues, wears a mask for his own protection. He allows his social superior to think he is deferential and submissive; through this masquerade, he gains some degree of freedom and power.
The Brooklyn Mayor
By Williams Cole
BATS Step Up to the Plate
Will James Challenge De Blasio on Atlantic Yards?
By Norman Oder
Seaside Stories
By Saskia Kahn
UrbanGlass Remakes a Brooklyn Landmark
By Michael Randazzo and Chip Brenner
POST-OCCUPIED Art, Free Speech, and the 1%
A Pack of Damn Lies
By Matt Igoe
The Writin' Irish
The Narco Cultura War Next Door: Shaul Schwarz with Williams Cole
Celebrate the New Dark Age
By David Geers
FRANKLIN EVANS with Greg Lindquist
APPLYING PRESSURE CHRIS BURDEN with Jarrett Earnest
NALINI MALANI with Ann McCoy
REMEMBERING Arthur Danto (1924 – 2013)
By Daniel Herwitz and Lydia Goehr
ALEX KATZ Small Paintings 1987–2013
By Robert Berlind
Painting at 56 Bogart
By Ben La Rocco
ANNE TRUITT Threshold: Works from the 1970s
JOHN O'CONNOR The Machine and the Ghost
By Brian Chidester
TONY COX Shapes of Shade
WILLIAM ANASTASI Sound Works, 1963–2013
CHRIS BURDEN Extreme Measures
By Alexander Shulan
DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE Drawing Which Makes Itself
By Matthew Farina
NALINI MALANI In Search of Vanished Blood
Sculpture after Artschwager
By Michael Pepi
JOAN WALTEMATH The Dinwoodies, 2005-08: graphite drawings on mylar
MAGRITTE The Mystery of the Ordinary 1926–1938
New Jersey as Non-Site
By Alana Shilling-Janoff
Street Art Brazil
By Joachim Pissarro and David Carrier
MATTHEW CRAVEN Oblivious Path
By Pac Pobric
By Rupert Goldsworthy
What Richard Pryor Didn't Know
Guest Critic: Amei Wallach
CHRISTO with Jarrett Earnest
Painting Pollock
By Phyllis Tuchman
BREAKING THE FRAME Space, Time, and a Body of Work
By Joyce Beckenstein
KIMSOOJA Works and Process
By David Ebony
With Her Back to the World and Her Face to the Camera
By Nancy Princenthal
THE MET-GETTY PROGRAM FOR ART ON FILM NADINE COVERT with Susan Delson
Getting Away With It
PICASSO'S MYSTERY: Art and Cinema
By Angela Dalle Vacche
You had me at ''Goodbye''
By Leigh Kamping-Carder
The Question of Being Human
By Karissa Chen
Lasting Memory
By Geoffrey Young
DOCTORS DRIVING CABS AMIN (A.X) AHMAD with Charlene Allen
An Unmapped Life
By Abby Margulies
Writing on Writing
AUTOFORENSICS CRIS MAZZA with Kathleen Rooney
EROS AND PLAY ELIZABETH ROBINSON with Tony Leuzzi
Two by Scott McClanahan
By Weston Cutter
A Spider's Mirror
By Larissa Shmailo
Ten Years in the Tub
By Leslie Fierro
By Andrew Cotto
SAM CABOT with Andrew Cotto
NINE NOCTURNES Jandek's The Song of Morgan
By Christopher Nelson
GG Allin Gets Trapped in America, Sends Word to the Empire
By Margarita Shalina
KT TUNSTALL: Travelling Light
Rehearsal Diary
OUT OF THE PRESENT Films of the Berlin School at MoMA
By Jaimey Fisher
JIA ZHANGKE with Zhou Xin
Notes on Daredevils
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A New Resistance: Far From Afghanistan
By Laura Paul
OF NOMADS AND MIGRANTS To Look Awry: Latin and Spanish Filmmakers Far From Home
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Notes from a Star-Struck Fan Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love
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The Past and Future Sunsets of Dominique Morisseau
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BEING THE IMAGINABLE RUTH MALECZECH: A tribute
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Surfing the Coasts: L.A.'s IAMA Theatre Company Hits N.Y.C.
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from Zugzwang
By Eduard Màrquez, translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti
Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun
By Jackie Wang
A diary of mysterious difficulties...
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Salt Lake City Congo
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from The Compleat Memoirrhoids
By Steve Katz, out now on Starcherone Books
the first 3 chapters from Manhattan Tropics
By Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, translated from the Spanish by J. Bret Maney
The Right Thing
Coat Check Room
By Keren Katz
By Marc-Antoine Mathieu
from Jaguar Harmonics [person woven of, of tesserae]
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TIMOTHY MORTON with Greg Lindquist
DAVE HICKEY with Charles Schultz


You're running late for a holiday party and you stop to buy wine, only to realize you have no idea what's for dinner. You text the host. With the answer ("Leg of Lamb. Where r u?!") comes a wave of anxiety: Now you're expected to make a decision based on this information. And you have five minutes.
It's stressful enough trying to pair wine with a never-ending array of holiday fare, but having to do so last minute makes matters worse. Here are a few pointers to help keep your holidays stress free.
First, say goodbye to Napa Cabernet Sauvignon. It's wonderful in the right context, but unless you're having grilled T-bones or nothing but dessert this Christmas, the holidays are not the time for it.
Second, take a chance on lesser known regions. We should all give ourselves a pat on the back: Our holiday meals are rich, nuanced and made with love. Why shouldn't our wines be as well? Look for reds from Sicily and France's Northern Rhône, home to ambitious small producers, whose wines are as versatile and affordable as they are delicious.
Third, fortified wine is your friend. Port, sherry, and madeira have the acidity, sugar, and complexity from years of aging to stand up to any holiday dish, be it fruitcake (madeira), stuffed pork loin (port), or oysters Rockefeller (sherry). As their name suggests, these wines are literally fortified by their high alcohol content, meaning that you open a bottle at the beginning of the holidays and it will be good until the final drop after the new year.
Turkey Frappato from Sicily. Energetic and bright with a punch of cherry, this is cranberry sauce in a bottle. Producer: Arianna Occhipinti.
Salmon Pinot noir rosé. Examples from California's Anderson Valley combine body, acidity, and fruit — a perfect match for salmon's oily, oaky qualities. Producer: Copain.
Lamb or Roast Beef Syrah from the Northern Rhône. Reds from Sub-regions like Côte-Rôtie and Crozes-Hermitage offer spicy and savory notes, dimensions that many California wines forgo in favor of fruitiness. Producer: Domaine Combier.