Join the conversation You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada Create an account or sign in to keep reading Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience Don't have an account? Create Account • Style: Two storey home with garage, in-ground pool • Flooring: Ceramic tile, hardwood, laminate • Heating/cooling: Geothermal heat pump, propane. • Exterior finish: Stone, stucco, vinyl siding. transmission or republication strictly prohibited This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy You can manage saved articles in your account Game Recap: Men's Basketball | 1/24/2025 11:49:00 PM | Mount Royal Communications Thanks for visiting ! The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy. We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here. The Lutes Mountain Meeting House and Heritage Museum is a treasure trove of historical documents and artifacts but it is also a community gathering place that now needs the support of the community “The museum is spread over three floors with over 9,000 artifacts we have a genealogy library and a community centre with a licensed kitchen,” board president Gerry Gillcash said during a tour Wednesday “But the biggest challenge is to get younger people involved in what we call a gem of the community.” The Lutes Mountain is anchored in the historic church at 3143 Mountain Road just inside city limits and around the corner from the iconic Magnetic Hill tourist attraction and zoo The Second Baptist Church dates back to 1883 and has had several renovations and expansions While the old church section retains its aged character A clear and concise roundup to start your weekday morning By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc The next issue of Morning Email Times & Transcript will soon be in your inbox Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. The museum is open from May to October, but Gillcash often takes small group through to see the vast collection of artifacts that were everyday items in the past. There are washing maschines, typewriters, bicycles, tools, religious items, military uniforms and gear, dolls, furniture, wedding clothes and hand-made rugs paying tribute to Moncton’s original founding families. The museum also tells the story of how Magnetic Hill became a tourist attraction and a business opportunity for Muriel Lutes Sikorsky, who started a small take-out at the hill which grew into a full-fledged restaurant and visitor centre. Muriel, who was a descendant the Michael Lutz family who came to Moncton in 1766, purchased the church in the 1970s and donated it back to the community. A board of directors was formed to oversee the operation of the not-for-profit organization. Gillcash, who grew up nearby and attended the little school at the top of the hill, said have received help from the three levels of government and private donors, but still need help from the community to keep the operation running. They plan to host more events through the year and eventually build a playground. In past years, the museum hosted visits by school children, but those stopped during the pandemic. In 2017, the facility was expanded to provide more accessibility, washrooms and the kitchen. In 2021, they expanded to include the meeting room, foyer and 3,000-square-foot auditorium. The library has a genealogical database with approximately 104,000 family names. • For information on tours and rentals of the facility, call 506-384-7719. AtlanticNewsNew Brunswick farm offers authentic country experience during summer camp By Alana PickrellPublished: July 24, 2023 at 4:43PM EDT Twitter feed ©2025 BellMedia All Rights Reserved Most readers are likely familiar with the widespread great blue heron which is regular across New Brunswick in marshes and wetlands and is often seen standing statue-like in a pond or a quiet stream watching for a fish or an amphibian lunch The long legs and neck enable the bird to navigate quite deep water if necessary and have a wide reach and the dagger-like beak is an effective spear Great blues also forage in drier areas for small rodents and reptiles when necessary This great blue heron is a lovely example of a spring bird in vivid breeding plumage the head markings are crisp black and white and the dusky grey neck provides a nice contrast We also see long grey plumes on the back and chest that are there to impress Also notice the large foot that must help the bird avoid sinking too deeply in soft mud Jim’s colourful woodpecker is a male yellow-bellied sapsucker a specialist that pecks rows of small holes in the bark of a variety of deciduous trees in order to get sap running from the fresh openings This strategy provides not only a meal of fresh sap but also a potential dinner of insects eventually attracted to the flow The bird will create these holes and monitor them regularly during the warmer months For this reason yellow-bellied sapsuckers are well named This species prefers hardwood forests as its breeding habitat and they are really easy to find in a mature hardwood stand They announce themselves by making a distinctive “rat-a tat-tat-tat” sound by pecking on a resonant hardwood limb and also vocalizing with a descending mewing call that’s also quite distinctive The next issue of Morning Email Telegraph-Journal will soon be in your inbox Marbeth’s black-and-white warbler image was taken a year ago but many of these little striped warblers will be winging their way into the Maritimes during the first two weeks of May We can easily see how this warbler got its name Each member of the warbler family occupies a special foraging niche in the food web and this species creeps along the trunks and branches of mostly deciduous trees probing bark cracks and crevices and small holes with its relatively long beak for insects In its foraging habits it reminds one of a nuthatch but the lengthwise striping of black and white immediately distinguishes it Dorothy was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time She got a photo of the most elusive and secretive of New Brunswick’s four breeding owl species The long-eared owl is crow-sized with mottled brown plumage and orangey facial discs that make it look somewhat like a small great horned owl but they’re largely nocturnal and tend to sleep all day in thick woods where they’re almost impossible to detect They don’t hoot loudly like a barred owl or a great horned so it’s difficult to pin them down by sound They like abandoned or under-used farmland with overgrown fields that offer plenty of mice meals The best time to see one is at dusk in one of these habitats but it might take you several visits as they don’t seem to hunt a particular area every single night The male blue-winged teal is a gorgeous duck when in spring breeding plumage and we have two great examples here Unlike most of our waterfowl that migrate relatively short distances to the U.S the blue-winged teal is a long distance migrant with many travelling as far as South America for the winter Any duck hunter who has bagged a blue-winged teal in early October will have found the bird to be butter-fat much like our shorebirds that also make the long flight to South America in late summer and early fall Two memorable highlights of southern trips my wife and I have made were seeing numbers of blue-winged teal happily paddling about in a lake in the High Andes of Ecuador at an altitude of about 12,000 feet and also seeing a flock in Panama at sea level in mid-March as the birds were migrating north possibly back to New Brunswick (or so we hoped) It’s obvious that Smithtown is a great place for white-tailed deer I always imagine that deer must have a sense of great relief once they get to this point in early spring – the snow is virtually gone and green things are sprouting Steven’s photo presents a visual test – how many deer are in this frame I have the advantage of viewing it on a computer screen as I write this The tiny green-winged teal is our smallest “dabbling” duck meaning a duck that simply tips up to feed in shallow water and does not regularly dive in deeper water It gets its name from the iridescent green area located in the hind part of the spread wing that appears as a square green patch when the wing is folded as we see in Nancy’s photos The green is equally prominent in each wing in flight but can sometimes be partly covered by other feathers when the bird stands or swims Elaine experienced a situation that a number of readers might encounter as the spring goes on – a robin or another bird attempting to build a nest on a light deck or other solid base on or near a house like to locate their first nest of the season somewhere where it won’t be affected by bad weather because the temperatures are cool and there is no foliage out in late April or early May for protection So they will sometimes try to do as Elaine’s bird did strictly prohibits the disturbance of the nest eggs or young of a migratory bird or the adults In this case a coffee cup apparently went in place before a nest actually took shape Game Recap: Men's Basketball | 1/25/2025 10:38:00 PM | Dinos Communications Thanks for visiting The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here New BrunswickNewsExcellence NB helping small businesses navigate tariff uncertainty By Derek HaggettPublished: April 08, 2025 at 4:10PM EDT Photo from a 2018 video by the Brower Youth Awards With increasing evidence of the impending climate crisis there is a growing need in Canada to extricate from the fossil fuel industry Including her activism at the 2016 COP 22 UN climate conference in Marrakech Oh has been a climate justice organizer for many years She describes herself as a first-generation Korean immigrant from a working-class family After spending most of her childhood in Edmonton Oh completed a Bachelors degree at Mount Allison University in Sackville and is currently a graduate student at Dalhousie University in Halifax researching displacement and dispossession as a result of climate change Oh was one of the main organizers of the Divest Mount Allison campaign which like other university divestment campaigns advocates for Mount Allison University to divest its monies from the fossil fuel industry many divestment campaigns have pressured universities to distance themselves from certain investments for political and ethical reasons “From apartheid South Africa and even to tobacco there’s been divestment campaigns on campuses.” Mount Allison University has the largest endowment fund per capita of any university in Canada seven percent of which is invested in fossil fuels While the impact on Mount Allison’s finances would be minimal the systemic impact of the largest university endowment fund going fossil free would be momentous The divestment campaign at Mount Allison was inspired by the one at Unity College in Maine in 2013, from which the fossil fuel divestment movement “spread like wildfire” according to Oh. Divest Mount Allison demanded the university divest from the top 500 publicly-traded fossil fuel companies. A similar campaign began at the University of New Brunswick Oh says the campaign began with a “pleasant” approach trying to foster a positive attitude towards divestment and soliciting support from students and faculty their association passed a motion supporting divestment,” says Oh It failed narrowly the first few times but then passed unanimously.” Oh says the student union was hesitant primarily because the university administration was engaging in fear-mongering “They were telling students that scholarships and bursaries were on the line so of course the student union executive didn’t want to appear to be in favour of that.” Divest Mount Allison consulted about Mount Allison’s financial situation by Genus capital a BC-based firm specializing in helping organizations divest it was determined that divestment would not significantly affect Mount Allison’s ability to provide scholarships and bursaries to its students The university also signed a document created by the administration at the University of British Colombia which presented a number of arguments against divestment One was that divestment violated trust laws “Universities break laws all the time,” Oh says adding that “thousands of teaching contracts are illegally violated annually in this country and universities don’t seem to care about the law then What laws the university is choosing to respect and which they are not is a political statement.” “Divestment is a political statement,” continues Oh “It’s saying to fossil fuel companies: We are removing your social licence the Divest Mount Allison collective started to take more confrontational actions such as die-ins in administrative meetings and setting up a camp outside the university president’s office “The administration became increasingly resistant and we had to ask why it’s so hard to divest in this country,” says Oh “It’s because we live in a country built on resource extraction and we give them a massive social license to do what they want A lot of money for new buildings at Mount Allison came from fossil fuels.” Oh says that Divest Mount Allison submitted several information requests about the university’s fossil fuel connections and a lot of them were hard to understand in a very deliberate way.” Oh says that divestment is an important part of increasing democracy and transparency in university governance, “it’s connected to the corporatization of the university and to the increasing in precarious work on campus — all these struggles are connected.” While protests became more public and dramatic the collective also continued to use research and meetings to advance their goals they found increasingly that the numbers were on their side “The university vice-president admitted to us that if we had divested before the oil crash the university would be in a better financial situation not worse,” says Oh in reference to the 2014 fall in oil prices which damaged many investments in fossil fuels Another oil crash in 2008 also damaged the university’s investments According to the campaign Go Fossil Free universities which have made commitments to divestment in Canada include Laval University Oh feels that more university divestment victories will create a domino effect While Oh has graduated and left Mount Allison she continues to advocate divestment and other policy transformations to combat climate change She was a youth delegate at the COP 24 UN climate conference in Poland and organized the Powershift youth conference in Ottawa Abram Lutes is an environmental action reporter with the RAVEN project summer institute Provincial governments and federal election candidates are falling over each other in a rush to expedite approvals for mining “True peace is not merely the absence of tension it is the presence of justice.” - Martin Luther King Jr... The Town of Riverview plans to buy a pair of new buses Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton says she intends to keep pushing for major reforms to the law that is supposed to.. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page As our country is about to observe Memorial Day I would like to share a story about a recent trip I took to Japan to visit the memorial site of a cousin of mine a veteran who was killed during World War II It’s also a story of the extraordinary lengths the people in a small Japanese village went to as a way of memorializing 34 American servicemen in 1961 and again in 2015 Flying through a fierce blizzard and a hundred miles off course B-29 bombers successively crashed into a mountain called Mount Fubo which is in the Zao Mountain Range in northern Japan They were en route back to Guam after participating that night in the Great Tokyo Air Raid All 34 Army Air Corps men lost their lives He had left school his senior year to join the Army 1945 with the 19th Bomber Group of the 93rd Squadron and was a gunner in the second plane that went down Japanese villagers made an arduous climb to the summit and reverently buried the bodies that were eventually exhumed at the end of the war and returned to the States Don’s now buried in a national cemetery in Grafton received an invitation from Japan to attend a memorial that had been established near the crash site The mayor of the nearby village of Shiroishi-Zao had requested donations from all over Japan (1 million yen was contributed) to place a monument at the summit of Mount Fubo as a way of honoring the American servicemen embedded on a giant rock with an inscription in Japanese calligraphy and English To the memory of the 34 crewmen of the U.S who sacrificed their lives for their country on this mountain on March 10 “In my Father’s house are many mansions” John 14:2 While Don’s parents did not go to Japan The Alpena News published Don’s obituary as well as a copy of the invitation they had received I discovered that those newspaper articles had been saved in my family’s photo albums (my parents were June and Austin Lutes Austin being a nephew of Stanley Lutes Sr.) almost exactly one year after Don’s death Dorr called “Mission to Tokyo: The American Airmen Who Took the War to the Heart of Japan,” I began to dream about visiting Don’s memorial and shared the information I’d learned about her uncle Susan found a website online written by Ken Tokura coordinator of Australian Cowra Japanese war cemetery which gave a detailed explanation of the incident on Mount Fubo who wrote back with additional information providing more of an incentive for me to make the trip I began to make travel plans to be accompanied by my husband She had lived in Japan years ago and had a desire to return for a visit My niece teaches English to Japanese students and in 2015 one of her online students sent her a video of an English newscast in Japan which described the opening ceremony of a Fubo Peace Memorial Park Tokura had also written about the Shiroishi-Zao villagers deciding in 2000 that they wanted to have a replica of the 1961 memorial to be placed at the base of Mount Fubo the villagers went on to develop an entire World Peace Park beginning with cenotaphs for each of the 34 Americans engraved in English and Japanese with the serviceman’s name they also built four huge stone monuments with messages of friendship and peace from both United States and Japan One includes a quote from Caroline Kennedy Another is a long epitaph describing the history and purpose of the park and yet another shows a map where each of the planes crashed on the mountain There are also six stones commemorating the planting of approximately 3,000 Japanese mountain cherry and American dogwood trees at the park To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of WW II Shiroishi-Zao residents dedicated the Fubo Peace Memorial Park in memory of the 34 American servicemen and the 50 million people from around the world American and Japanese officials thanked the villagers for their humanity and stressed the friendship and peace that now exists between the two people who were once enemies I fulfilled my dream of visiting Don’s memorial After spending time in Kyoto and other Japanese cities with my niece my husband and I took a two-hour train ride from Tokyo north to the village of Shiroishi-Zao While we were not able to climb to the summit of Mount Fubo to visit the original memorial because there was still too much snow on the mountain in April we managed to hire a taxi that took us on a 30-mile drive into the remote hillsides we finally arrived at the Fubo Peace Memorial Park Among the 34 memorial cenotaphs in the park I had brought a photo of Don and an American flag both of which my husband and I placed there As I looked at the size and scope of the park it made me realize and marvel at the great respect and brotherhood the Japanese extended to our American servicemen I was able to let Don know that his family has not forgotten him Today's breaking news and more in your inbox According to a MyMichigan Health press release My Michigan Medical Center Alpena received its fourth top “A” .. The regular meeting of the Rogers City Parks and Recreation Commission scheduled for Thursday Copyright © 2025 Alpena News Publishing Company | https://www.thealpenanews.com | 130 Park Place Spending 23 years in the Air Force and serving as a captain until his retirement in 1991 Rodney was given the opportunity to travel and receive an education He attended the University of Washington and the Oklahoma State University PA Program Rodney worked as a physician assistant for 37 years but particularly took joy in horseback riding This passion made him the president of the National Saddle Association Rodney’s greatest passion in life was his family Karen (Hi) Halsey and Linda (Terry) Shephard; 12 grandchildren; 3 great grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews To read the complete obituary and share condolences, click here to visit the Croxford Funeral Home website FOLLOW KRTV: Instagram | TikTok | Twitter Report a typo “I wake up every morning an hour before sunrise to be outside 15 minutes before sunrise with the Sony,” says photographer Jon Levy The “Sony” he’s referring to is the Alpha 1 I find each morning that if I wake up to go do that I gotta get up and go to work,’” says Levy most of that weight owing to the 600mm f4 g master telephoto lens mounted onto the Alpha 1 “Work” is his role as CFO/COO for Rocky Mountain Barrel Company (RMBC) a Wheat Ridge company that imports and sells used whisky his favorite subjects being birds and insects “Hummingbirds are a favorite subject of mine I’ve taken pictures of them [with the Alpha 1] at 4000th of a second shutter speed I like the challenging ones – hard to find But they aren’t afraid to come pretty close I think they know how fast they are and how slow we are.  “There’s something about a nice hummingbird shot especially when they get close.” He says he has more success walking around with the camera and shooting hand-held than setting up behind a blind.  Levy sometimes goes into the field with an Easyrig He explained that an Easyrig is a sort of backpack a shoulder-supported harness with an L-shaped pole that goes over the top of your head; a rope hangs down in front of you at the end of which you can attach a heavy camera “Nine pounds might not sound like very much,” he said “but just try holding it up without shaking for any length of time “What I’ve learned about using a big telephoto lens is that what you exclude is just as important as what you include The lens has such a limited field of view; it’s so narrow that you only get to see exactly what you want it helps to draw the attention to the subject.” He believes that exclusion/inclusion concept applies to other areas of life Photography can be both an art and a craft intentionally using a slow shutter speed to track a bird so you can blur the background where you have to make your settings within a fraction of a second – the whole encounter might only last five seconds.”  Product photography – to take a picture of a barrel I’ve shot lots of product photography for RMBC shooting the owner of our company inside a gigantic barrel I’ve got to go out and create art and not just have fun.’ I struggled with that for a number of years and ultimately decided that I wouldn’t want to do photography full time His previous experience as a business development manager made him the perfect choice to join up with college friend and company owner Skyler Weekes he was promoted to CFO/COO and helped to grow the company to 12 full-time employees.  “Craft beer is the biggest use of our barrels – mainly bourbon barrels – importing from 17 countries,” Levy said as breweries shut down and started producing hand sanitizer instead of beer getting our barrels imported in a timely fashion is not so easy.” COVID-19 presented Levy with the possibility to work from home “I had designed the business to be remote – everything is cloud-based It was nice to sit in the backyard and take pictures.”   Levy is self-taught and belongs to no club or photography organization especially if you’re doing it commercially and if you have a client to please Photography has mainly been a passion and a hobby throughout Levy’s life becoming “hooked” after receiving his first camera when he was 12 but he credits RMBC with getting back into it “Without RMBC getting me to pick the camera back up Publisher’s Note: We know that companies are really only as important as their customers a longtime corporate citizen of our community was quick to acknowledge Jon Levy as a longtime customer the conversation quickly went to the early days of his love of photography and the joy of getting that extra frame or two when clicking through the manual loading of film Ninth-grader Chelsea Craver began drawing when she was six An extended hospital stay in 2017 gave rise to her filling The new year is the perfect time for fresh starts and new goals Monthly West Metro Denver newspapers in Wheat Ridge Two Creeks and West Highland neighborhoods Crafted by Yonder Moon Creative 🌒 He was a Christian and a member of Jock United Baptist Church in Bee Spring KY.  Max was preceded in death by his beloved son Cal and Shellie Meredith Johnson of Bee Spring Ralph King Lutes.  Max is survived by his wife of 42 years Ian and Sarah; along with several great grandchildren.  He is also survived by sisters Beverly Browning and Juanita Sanders; mother-in-law Max spent his life working in the drywall business and was the current owner Washington.  He invented the design tool for custom designed ceilings.  He was the owner of Calvin Ray's Live Music in Leitchfield KY after extensive remodeling of the site for his son.  Calvin Ray Johnson was a singer who appeared on the local and national Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon numerous times.  The building was sold after Calvin's death 2021 at First Baptist Church of Mt Washington with burial to follow in the Mt Washington Cemetery.  Friends may visit from 3 to 8 p.m Thursday at McFarland-Troutman-Proffitt Funeral Home and after 9 a.m Expressions of sympathy may be made to the Muscular Dystrophy Association or First Baptist Church of Mt 2013Ghost images see daylightNewspaper finds undeveloped roll of film from 1980 Mount St HelensTOM VOGT Of The ColumbianReid BlackburnAssociated PressThis 1980 photo shows an image of Mount St Helens by Columbian photographer Reid Blackburn Blackburn took photographs in April 1980 during a flight over the simmering volcano at Mount St Blackburn died in the volcanic blast that obliterated the mountain peak Those unprocessed black-and-white images spent the next three decades coiled inside that film canister recently discovered the roll in a studio storage box and it was finally developed.Associated PressThis undated photo shows a contact sheet of film from The Columbian photographer Reid Blackburn in Vancouver Wash.Associated PressVANCOUVER - They're brand new images of a Northwest icon that disappeared more than 33 years ago - the conical summit of Mount St Reid Blackburn took the photographs in April 1980 during a flight over the simmering volcano 1980 - about five weeks later - Blackburn died in the volcanic blast that obliterated the mountain peak The Columbian's photo assistant Linda Lutes recently discovered the roll in a studio storage box When Fay Blackburn had a chance to see new examples of her husband's work she recalled how he was feeling left out during all that volcano excitement He was on a night rotation," Blackburn The Columbian's editorial page assistant While other staffers were booking flights to photograph Mount St "He was shooting high school sports." "He was excited to get into the air," Fay Blackburn said Columbian microfilm shows Reid Blackburn was credited with aerial photos of Mount St He would have shot that undeveloped roll on one of those assignments Maybe he didn't feel the images were up to his standards Maybe he didn't trust the camera; it was the only roll he shot with that camera on the flight But he would have had more than one camera said former Columbian photographer Jerry Coughlan who worked with Blackburn at the newspaper "We all had two or three cameras," set up for a variety of possibilities "You didn't want to be fumbling for lenses," Coughlan said Former Columbian reporter Bill Dietrich teamed up with Blackburn during one of those early April flights over the volcano with the emphasis on gentle," Dietrich said that's a great thing about working with photographers "The newsroom was so electrified when the volcano first awoke It was an international story in the backyard of a regional newspaper," said Dietrich who now writes historical fiction and Northwest environmental nonfiction "We were all pumped up and fascinated." as well as a huge scientific event: That's why the roll of film was discovered a few weeks ago A photo editor working on a geology book contacted Lutes She'd come across a Columbian photo of a logjam on the Cowlitz River Lutes sorted through a couple of boxes labeled "Mount St Helens" and tried - unsuccessfully - to find that film with Blackburn's negatives spilling out "I thought I'd better put it in a nice envelope so it wouldn't be ruined," Lutes said 'Wouldn't it be cool if we found what was on it?' " "I wasn't sure if anyone even processed black-and-white film anymore," Wayrynen said He took it to a Portland photo supply company which outsources black-and-white film to a freelancer When he got it back and saw the film-sized images "I was astonished to see how well the film showed up," Wayrynen said Blackburn could have photographed anything on that roll Helens - a long-gone landscape - It was beyond my expectations," he said This is the second time people have tried to coax images from film that Blackburn left behind The first occasion was shortly after his death visited the blast zone and recovered some of the personal gear from the car where Blackburn was sitting when the volcano erupted But the film was too damaged to yield anything "I remember thinking that I'll never see a place as depressing as this wasteland," Kern recalled And the keepsake he remembered most was linked to what former reporter Dietrich called Blackburn's "great eye." "Of all of Reid's belongings that we retrieved it was his glasses that affected me the most," Kern said The Phoblographer may receive affiliate compensation for products purchased using links in this article. For more information, please visit our Disclaimers page. When photojournalist Reid Blackburn perished in the volcanic eruption of Mount St 1980 while he was on assignment to document the eruption his camera equipment was so severely damaged that they couldn’t salvage any of his shots from that historic day a photo assistant for The Columbian found a roll that he shot weeks before the fatal blast contained images that he took of the volcano weeks before the eruption the local newspaper that Blackburn was covering the eruption for which had been sitting unprocessed in its canister in a studio storage box for about 33 years now The black-and-white negatives revealed Blackburn’s aerial photos of the volcano before blasted its top off and changed its own landscape forever The Columbian suggested that Blackburn must have shot the roll while on assignment in April but might not have felt the shots good enough to be processed while he had indeed made more remarkable images of the volcano the ones from this lost roll are somehow more meaningful as they were found years after the death of a photographer who was not only revered and loved by his colleagues but also dedicated enough to his craft and his job that he risked his life for it Via PopPhoto he did the obvious thing and drafted Burnett to write and arrange new and traditional material for Allison Krauss Less obvious was Burnett’s simultaneous attempt to transform a bona-fide rock star—White Stripes’ frontman Jack White who contributes five songs to the Cold Mountain soundtrack and has an on-screen role as Renée Zellweger’s love interest—into something like an old-timey roots artist If that transformation succeeds, it’s because Burnett’s agenda feeds beautifully into White’s own musical impulses, which are so fetishistic that his cuts on the soundtrack—the old Appalachian ballad “Wayfaring Stranger” or the Cold Mountain-inspired original, “Never Far Away“—sound less like departures from than distillations of the White Stripes’ overall aesthetic that aesthetic—which turns artists into musical curators repackaging the past—is coming to dominate huge swaths of the musical spectrum the White Stripes’ liner notes sometimes read like gallery text “Even if the goal of achieving beauty from simplicity is aesthetically less exciting it may force the mind to acknowledge the simple components that make the complicated beautiful,” White explained in the liner notes to the White Stripes’ second album (named for the Dutch De Stijl movement associated with Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Rietveld) This philosophy has led the Stripes to perform as a stripped-down two-piece band (White’s ex-wife plays drums); stick to a stripped-down tri-color dress code (which makes them look like they’ve stepped straight out of a Mondrian painting); play stripped-down vintage instruments; and record on stripped-down vintage equipment (“Why don’t the White Stripes go the whole hog and record by candlelight using wooden microphones?” a British critic asked upon hearing the band’s fourth album and not without precedent: Like the Gun Club and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion before them the Stripes have sought to boil American music down to its basic ingredients the Stripes have grown rich and famous in the process and have found themselves spearheading a garage-rock revival that also includes the Black Keys White seems remarkably uncomfortable with his time and place: His best songs look back to other older compositions His sound bites are streaked with nostalgia so much so that no one was surprised when White—a 28-year-old former upholsterer from Detroit—began dressing up like a Kansas City bootlegger complete with white suits and wide-brimmed bowler hats “I wish I could be a blues musician back in the ‘20s and ‘30s just playing jukejoints by myself” he told Entertainment Weekly last year “But I’m white and I was born in Detroit in the ‘70s so I guess I’ll have to settle for this.” The truth is that while the White Stripes might dedicate their records to Son House and Blind Willie McTell and cover Robert Johnson and Leadbelly songs in concert they’re equally indebted to a Michigan garage-band tradition which stretches back to ?and the Mysterians and the Gories—groups that may have started out as cover bands but eventually sought to transcend the limitations of their medium belong to a generation that seems to value taste over transcendence mixing and matching a dizzying array of influences without getting their own experience of the world down on tape These musical curators don’t shock us with the new—they comfort us with the familiar; as the singer for a New York band called the Mooney Suzuki told the Boston Globe “We’re not trying to overcome our source material I intentionally won’t use something I haven’t heard before.” and backward-looking baby boomer magazines like Rolling Stone have been quick to embrace it you can’t help feeling that younger fans—the ones missing a music of their own—sense a good deal of cynicism behind the pose Take, for instance, a random sampling of reviews from the twentysomething critics at Pitchforkmedia.com: The Thrills could have thought a bit harder about finding a bright new sound to go with their suddenly sunny locale And compare these bands’ ambitions—which amount to getting their references straight and playing them straight-facedly—to the Michigan band Jack White never fails to cite as his greatest influence: the recently reunited Stooges began his musical career as a drummer for a series of Detroit-area garage bands Pop was old enough to sit in with his heroes palling around with Howlin’ Wolf sideman Sam Lay and sitting in with a series of black session men “Music was like honey off their fingers,” Pop recalled “Real childlike and charming in its simplicity.” But Pop soon saw that this simplicity was deceptive “I realized that these guys were way over my head and that what they were doing was so natural to them that it was ridiculous for me to make a studious copy of it what you gotta do is play your own simple blues I could describe my experience based on the way those guys are describing theirs … so that’s what I did.” Despite all the lip service paid to old acoustic bluesmen White’s own voice and guitar-playing owe more to Iggy Pop the difference between the White Stripes and the Stooges and Sabbath might have less to do with intervening years than with the shamelessness with which those earlier bands appropriated the same set of influences—a swagger that left room for accident and innovation and consequently pushed the music beyond the limits of those influences Their heirs, on the other hand, seem to be shifting into lower gears and scrambling to regain ground that rock ’n’ roll has ceded to other modes and mediums. In that sense, bands like the White Stripes have more in common with neorepresentational painters like John Currin or neorealist writers like Jonathan Franzen But popular music differs from art or literature in that it involves performance—and if today’s performers have the taste and technique to ape every aspect of their music’s history this curatorial impulse has also led them into a cul-de-sac of empty gestures and shallow White himself has begun to strain against the structures he’s built for his music: “The band is so special and so boxed in and there are so many limitations on us,” he told the OttawaCitizen who also played bluesman Tommy Johnson in the film itself proved to be such a good study that he made a career out of impersonating his elders (most recently Blind Willie Johnson whom he played in Wim Wenders’ flawed but fascinating installment of PBS’The Blues series last fall) But having portrayed an older bluesman on the big screen Chris Thomas King told his fans that “If you really want to be like Tommy Johnson I think you have to live in your time and be true to your experience That’s what he did.” Therein lies the difference between a musician and a museum guard