The great online magazine Inertia in its fourth incarnation features Rich Murphy and contributing editor Jesse Glass. Take a look. We featured more than a few Ahadada friends, authors and soon-to-be authors. It was a pleasure to work with Rich–we have a similar sense of humor–and if we’d team up with Lou Rowen we could bring down the house, close the curtains, burn up the aisles, paint the town red and wake up and go to sleep. Click here to see it.

A dynamic new journal in the making. Watch for it! Jess

Including the 4,000 downloads from the old ahadada site we’ve now had over 6,000 volumes of the Witness e-distributed. Jess

I’ve been taking this unscheduled aural side-trip over and over now for the past couple of weeks, and I can say this is improvisational music at its most challenging. With JoaAnne Pow!ers on sax and cornet, Jennifer Pendur on bass, and Paul Baker on drums, we are led by the very stirrup bones through such tracks as Improvised Explosive Device; Explosive Improvised Device; and Three for Malachi. Have I come back an older and a wiser man? Older–yes! Wiser–we shall see! But what about the final, most important question: Was I rocked on my prehensile tail and entertained?–Yes! For information on this and other Unofficial records contact unofficialrecords[at]riseup.net, or www.joannepowers.org Jess

David Schlossman of the University of Maryland includes yet another example of a story that was never associated with Westminster, Maryland until the first week of 1999 when it was purposely “seeded” on various Internet sites. I’m talking, of course, about Crybaby Bridge. Schlossman’s gem is dated (of course!) 2005, and is taken from an anonymous UM student’s version told (of course!) by an anonymous friend with appropriate hand motions noted. The account is even foot-noted using the very same websites where the Maryland Crybaby bridge stories were first hotly debated, c. 2003–2004. (I questioned the stories when they first appeared on the Net in messages to the the Alt. Ghosts Uselist—archived now on Google groups, then later announced my objections to these stories on the Maryland Ghosts website, now called Eastghost.) Why am I opposed to this story and its variants, connected to slavery and the KKK, etc? First, I was actively collecting ghost stories in and around Westminster, Maryland “about 30 years ago” when that so-called ghost is said to have appeared on the bridge in question with a noose around its neck, accoridng to this version of the story. Had it happened right in my back yard, I would have been right there finding out about it, as that was the very time that I was collecting stories for my book Ghosts and Legends of Carroll County, Maryland, published by the Carroll County Public Library system in 1982. I also have to say that there is no oral or written tradition involving any Crybaby Bridge in or around Westminster dating before those Internet “seedings” of 1999. I know, because I have throughly searched the 19th and 20th century newspapers, read the old books, and interviewed many of the old-timers who resided their whole lives in that area of Carroll County, and nothing remotely like this or any version of the Crybaby Bridge story surfaced. In short, if it had been there, I would have found it. The story that your anonymous student says his or her anonymous friend told, is yet another bit of fakelore to add to the pile. As a folklorist you would do better, David Schlossman, than to accept such bouts of creative writing uncritically. Here’s the url. Jesse Glass

Hi all! Am happy to say we’ve just received David Axelrod’s newest title, Deciduous Poems, from the printer! Writes Hugh Seidman of David Axelrod’s latest volume:

These poems movingly explore both the highs and the lows of the family drama and of the down-to-earth variety of everyday experience. Axelrod is tender, angry, playful and vulnerable. As he says in one gentle love poem, ‘So many pieces to the heart’.

Copies of Axelrod’s latest are presently on their way to Small Press Distribution — we’ll give you a heads-up when they are available for purchase.

Until then, feel free to query us for purchase information! More from us all soon!

I’ve been rather under the weather for the past couple of weeks, but today was a break in the gray clouds for me: A well-spent afternoon talking to Danny Snelson at Planet Hollywood about Ahadada projects, and then the arrival of Angel One (for Jesse Glass) from Ralph Lichtensteiger. Take a look at this wonderful object “sufficient unto itself” that Ralph captured — click here. Blake saw them in the trees and Ralph shows us that these days they bless us from the globes of street lamps. Thanks thanks and thanks yet again! Jess

We’re very happy to announce that Lisa Crawley, a director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture informed us that The Witness is now a part of its research library. We’re very pleased to have our book available to the patrons of this great museum! Thanks Ms. Crawley! Jesse

I’m very sad to report that Sarah Estep passed away at the age of 81 this month. Sarah was a wonderful, warm and generous person–in fact, when I first met her back in 1980, she struck me as anyone’s vision of a perfect, cookie-baking grandmother. The only difference was that every morning she would go to her downstairs office, turn on the reel-to-reel tape machine and attempt to hear the voices of the dead. Sarah was a pioneer in the study of EVP–Electronic Voice Phenomena–and I had occasion to join her in a session or two of “close listening.”

Sarah’s electronic whiz husband was a skeptic, but he loved his wife so much that he rigged up her gear and went along with her on investigations.

You might recognize Sarah’s name through her association with the popular horror movie “White Noise.” I’ll have more to say about what brought me into contact with this gentle lady and the whole subject of ghostly voices in a future blog or two. However, I do know that if there is life after death, I’m sure Sarah and her husband–who passed away many years ago–are now busily rigging up some spiritual gadget to capture the voices of the living.

If you can hear me out there, Sarah Wilson Estep, enjoy yourself! Jess

Happy to report that Ed Sanders come through with a great blurb for Mark Spitzer’s The Age of Demon Tools. Now we can proceed to bring the book to the world and to you! Keep your eyes glued to this site, ladies and gentlemen! Be prepared to be astonished! Jesse