Buttermilk & Molasses

PUNK OPERA

When relocated Richmonder Bob Massey launched into a new project combining old family video footage with music four-plus years ago, I doubt he imagined it would take on such a life of its own. But Massey's alternative opera, The Nitrate Hymnal, continues to breath with new, creative life. (Follow the link for some background on The Nitrate Hymnal; also visit The Nitrate Hymnal homepage.)

The Washington Post's Richard Harrington has a kick-ass profile of Bob and his experimental work in today's paper:

The key word would be experimental: "The Nitrate Hymnal: A Dying Dream in Four Acts" is not a rock opera. It involves rock musicians, but they were drawn from Washington's underground community and teamed with the New York avant-chamber ensemble Anti-Social Music for the opera. For its world premier at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Auditorium in Alexandria in January 2003, the work was scored for two electric guitars and electronic keyboards, a string section of three violins, viola, two cellos and bass, acoustic percussion, pre-recorded sounds and four singers.

The team gathered to record the album last year and will unite again for Saturday's rare concert performance at the Warehouse Theater. Hai-Ting Chinn, who sang in the original production, will join Daisy Press (Bang on a Can All-Stars) and Massey on vocals, supported by a 12-piece orchestra ...

... "This is a punk rock production and has been from the very beginning," Massey says of the adjustments, adding, "I'd love to say we have the resources to do everything, but we don't" ...

... Massey recalls a number of starts and stops on the way to Alexandria. An initial score, he says, "needed to be tightened up in form because I was not playing to my strength. I was doing something a little more ambitious than I had chops for, and I had to go back and actually write hooks, which is actually what I can do. Hooks in pop songs and arias in operas are kind of the same thing, but I hadn't written any arias, and it was flat sounding, slow and not that dramatic. I had a month of all-nighters to start from scratch."

One benefit: "I know a lot more about Mozart, Verdi and all these dudes than I would ever have had reason to," says Massey, who once described "The Nitrate Hymnal" as "opera for people who hate opera."

TWO LEGS OF THE STOOL

The Executive Branch of the United States -- represented by the administration of George W. Bush -- has made its case, since September 12, 2001, about the nature of executive priviledge and power. The Supreme Court of the United States made the judicial case yesterday in its ruling in Rumsfeld vs. Hamdan. If the balance of power envisioned by the Founding Fathers two centuries ago emerges in this political  -- and eminently consequential -- moment, it will be because the Congress of the United States emerges from its legislative corner to debate, at a minimum, the due rights of detainees.

But this moment -- a moment when the Judicial Branch of our government has significantly slowed the momentum of the Executive Branch -- may ultimately be about the relevance of the Legislative Branch. Paralysed by politics, both the House and the Senate have barely flickered with life since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. If yesterday's judicial ruling is to have any spark, it will be because the Congress wakes up to its responsibilities.

So, what does the Court's ruling provide -- besides an overdue brake on a controlling Executive Branch? Here are a few good guides:

READ: The Rumsfeld vs. Hamdan writ itself is a long, lonely read. Believe me; I tried. There is some compelling writing in this document (download the lovelier PDF version for reading on long bus rides), but nothing beats the footnoted ass-whipping Justice Stevens gives Justice Thomas in his footnotes. (The benefit of the PDF version is that you can read the footnotes as you peruse the opinions; dorky, yes. But much easier to see Stevens' punches land.)

READ: Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and weblogger, took a well-written first stab at the ruling hours after it was announced. Greenwald notes that one of the most significant aspects of this ruling is that the Supreme Court upheld Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. The Court also put the ball into Congress' court -- or created conditions for the administration to seek redress from Congress -- by emphasizing that matters of war involve both the Executive and Legislative branches.

Greenwald has a couple of posts today that are worth reading.

READ: One post speculates on the reaction of one of the key architects of the Bush administration's political power grab, David Addington:

As I read through the opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld today, I couldn't help but picture David Addington sitting in his office, steam pouring out of his ears as he scanned through Justice Stevens' 73 page opus, looking for some evidence that his theories of executive power were taken seriously by the Court. I can only imagine his reaction when he got to page 29 and realized that the Court had dismissed his entire theory in a single, one sentence-long footnote:

Whether or not the President has independent power, absent congressional authorization, to convene military commissions, he may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own war powers, placed on his powers.

But if Addington was vexed by the majority opinion, he probably had an aneurysm when he got to Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion, which seems to have been directed specifically at the David Addingtons and John Yoos of the world...

READ: Greenwald's other post looks at how Hamdan might impact the Bush presidency:

The real significance of yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan is that the Court categorically rejected, and even attacked, the Bush administration's radical theories of unlimited executive power. While it's obviously the case that the decision is far from a silver bullet solution to this administration's abuses of power -- those abuses can be genuinely ended only through political victory, not litigation -- only those attached to the joys of cynicism and defeatism can deny the importance of the Hamdan ruling as a step towards restoring the rule of law in this country.

After all, the Court yesterday did exactly what critics of the administration have long been urging someone -- anyone -- to do: they imposed meaningful checks and limits on the President's powers, and they resoundingly rejected the plainly un-democratic claim that invocations of "national security" vest unchecked power in the President. At least as a legal matter (though admittedly not as a political one), this decision -- for reasons I explained yesterday and A.L. elaborated on this morning -- is a stake in the heart of the authoritarian theories of executive power under which our government has functioned since September 11.

READ: Peter Baker and Michael Abramowitz have an outstanding analysis in this morning's Washington Post:

For five years, President Bush waged war as he saw fit. If intelligence officers needed to eavesdrop on overseas telephone calls without warrants, he authorized it. If the military wanted to hold terrorism suspects without trial, he let it.

Now the Supreme Court has struck at the core of his presidency and dismissed the notion that the president alone can determine how to defend the country. In rejecting Bush's military tribunals for terrorism suspects, the high court ruled that even a wartime commander in chief must govern within constitutional confines significantly tighter than this president has believed appropriate.

For many in Washington, the decision echoed not simply as a matter of law but as a rebuke of a governing philosophy of a leader who at repeated turns has operated on the principle that it is better to act than to ask permission. This ethos is why many supporters find Bush an inspiring leader, and why many critics in this country and abroad react so viscerally against him.

At a political level, the decision carries immediate ramifications. It provides fodder to critics who turned Guantanamo Bay into a metaphor for an administration run amok. Now lawmakers may have to figure out how much due process is enough for suspected terrorists, hardly the sort of issue many would be eager to engage in during the months before an election.

That sort of back-and-forth process is just what Bush has usually tried to avoid as he set about to prosecute an unconventional war against an elusive enemy after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He asserted that in this new era, a president's inherent constitutional authority was all that was needed. Lawmakers and judges largely deferred to him, with occasional exceptions, such as the Supreme Court two years ago when it limited the administration's ability to detain suspects indefinitely.

"There is a strain of legal reasoning in this administration that believes in a time of war the other two branches have a diminished role or no role," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has resisted the administration's philosophy, said in an interview. "It's sincere, it's heartfelt, but after today, it's wrong."

Bruce Fein, an official in the Reagan administration, said the ruling restores balance in government. "What this decision says is, 'No, Mr. President, you can be bound by treaties and statutes,' " he said. " 'If you need to have these changed, you can go to Congress.' This idea of a coronated president instead of an inaugurated president has been dealt a sharp rebuke."

READ: The Washington Post's special section on Guantanamo Bay includes a list of all of the prisoners being held there. Hamdan doesn't mean the administration has to free any of them, but it does mean it has to provide them due process.

READ: David Ignatius' analysis in today's Washington Post:

The Supreme Court demolished a central pillar of that jury-rigged national security edifice yesterday. In rejecting the administration's plans to try a suspected al-Qaeda member named Salim Ahmed Hamdan before a military tribunal, the court majority was emphatic: The administration's arguments were "unpersuasive," "inapposite," "unsound." Even if Hamdan was as dangerous as the administration claimed, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, "the executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law."

Justice Stephen Breyer, in a concurring opinion, spoke to the arrogant claims of presidential power made under the rubric of fighting terrorism. The court's conclusion in Hamdan, he wrote, "ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a 'blank check.' "

The Hamdan ruling should be a cause for celebration, at home and abroad, because it demonstrates that the self-correcting mechanisms of American democracy remain healthy. Governments, as imperfect human institutions, make mistakes -- especially in the pressure cooker the Bush administration faced after Sept. 11. But thanks to checks and balances from the courts, Congress and, yes, the press, this administration's mistakes are being reversed.

We can now see that after Sept. 11 there was a grab for unlimited executive power, led by Vice President Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington. They intimidated or ignored critics within the White House and created a secret system unchecked by the other two branches of government. The best summary I've seen of this power grab is a profile of Addington by Jane Mayer that appears in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine. Cheney and Addington steamrolled dissenters within the executive branch, ridiculing and ostracizing those who dared to question their claims of an unlimited executive. But as career intelligence officials feared at the time, the system they were creating was inherently unstable.

LEMONGRASS

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law have been haning out in Thailand this summer, and are entertaining friends and family with accounts of their experiences at Lemongrass.

TELL WILDER TO STOP BEING A POLITICIAN

It's probably unreasonable to ask a man as politically savvy as Doug Wilder to stop being such a politician. Richmond's charismatic -- and often right-minded -- mayor spends an awful lot of time trying to be smarter than those he perceives to be opponents. His latest move -- waiting until after his budget proposal was nixed to announce what it was for, and how critical he felt it was -- is just one example. The TimesDispatch's David Ress reports on Wilder's latest political play related to his $300 million City of the Future plan:

The card Richmond's mayor kept close to his vest in the latest budget wrangle with City Council was a plan to buy a cement plant and create a riverside park.

Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, on an inspection tour of the city's riverfront yesterday, confirmed he had hoped to buy and tear down the Lehigh Cement Plant on Water Street as the linchpin for a park as part of his $300 million City of the Future plan.

"Now, we'll have to reassess," he said, when asked yesterday whether the park was dead after council on Monday killed $3.5 million of spending he wouldn't detail. The funds, he now says, were for the park, which would be part of the Virginia Capital Trail proposal for a path linking Richmond and Williamsburg.

"The City of the Future is a package. . . . We have to reassess everything," he said. "We'll see what happens."

It was another major hint that Wilder doesn't consider the fight concluded over who controls how the city spends money, especially on City of the Future projects.

In addition to saying more than once that he would be reassessing elements of the City of the Future plan, Wilder noted yesterday that plans and construction bids have to come through his administration.

If the council wants something, he said, "let them build it."

If the mayor is going to continue playing political games, even when he's on the right side of the issue, perhaps its time for City Council to elect some politicians who can level the playing field.

CLEANER BUSES

The TimesDispatch reports, ever so briefly, that GRTC plans switch to biodiesel fuel.

GRTC Transit System plans to begin using biodiesel fuel, hoping to cut pollution and keep its bus engines running better.

The bus company will use a diesel blend that's 20 percent fuel distilled from soybeans and 80 percent from petroleum.

Wikipedia has a nice, comprehensive page of information on biodiesel, which is usually a blend of processed fuel from biological sources -- like soybeans.

STOP. DROP. READ. THEN SHOP.

The ongoing exchange between Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemna) and John Mackey (co-founder of Whole Foods Market) provides amazing insight into the worlds of organic farming, the scale of farming in America, the ethical issues surrounding the consumption and distribution of foods, and the power of conversation to change perspectives. Pollan and Mackey have engaged in a level of thoughtful conversation that is well-worth reading in its entirety.

The conversation began with the publication of The Omnivore's Dilemna, which devoted a somewhat critical chapter on Whole Foods Market, the largest organic and natural food grocer in the United States. Pollan continued that critique online in the NYTimes' TimesSelect section. In May, Whole Food's Mackey published an open letter to Pollan on his weblog at the Whole Foods Market site. The ongoing exchange has continued through the NYTimes and Mackey's weblog. Read excerpts from the echange below, or in their entirety (Whole Foods Market's Mackey's initial letter to Pollan. Pollan's June 14 reply. WHM Mackey's June 28 reply.):

From John Mackey's first letter: I regret that you did not engage in any serious research about how Whole Foods Market actually does business or you would have discovered that we support local and small farm food production all over the United States as well as in other parts of the world. Whole Foods Market, despite its size, does not operate as a typical monolithic corporation such as Wal-Mart (with which you associate Whole Foods Market several times in your book)... Differences in product offerings, suppliers, and seasonal availability result in a significant variation of items on our shelves from region to region and even store to store within the same city ...

Before I provide you with examples of how Whole Foods Market supports local growers of natural and organic products and artisan food producers, I want to emphasize an important point about our company. Whole Foods Market offers a range of food choices to our customers. We screen our offerings by the quality standards I mentioned earlier and try to offer as many natural and organic products as possible, but we don't try to channel our customers into adopting any particular dietary regime. Instead, we provide opportunities for each to make individual choices that satisfy their everyday demands and lifestyle needs.

Some customers prefer to eat primarily from their "foodshed" or they wish to support local growers. Individual Whole Foods Market stores attempt to meet the needs of these customers as far as is practical given the constraints of seasonality and availability of products meeting our quality standards. Other customers want to enjoy particular foods from throughout the world, either because of their ethnic background or because they appreciate expanded choices and novel cuisines. Most of our customers prefer a combination of local, national, and global food choices, and appreciate — even demand — the range of choices Whole Foods Market offers.

We understand the line of reasoning that champions eating locally and in season. Whole Foods Market stores offer as many local, seasonally available foods that meet our quality standards as are available in a particular market area. Our customers, however, regularly desire products that may not be in season in many parts of the United States. Accordingly, due to such market demand, we offer the freshest, most sustainably grown products we can find on a year-round basis while also continuing to develop our relationships with local and regional producers in season. That may mean that a Whole Foods Market customer desiring fresh organic asparagus in January will find only spears with an Argentinean or Chilean origin in our produce department ...

... I find it perplexing that your book provided so little context for the history of the organic movement in the 20th century. The snapshot your book provides on the current state of the organic industry is just one stage in its evolution ...

... In the days when organic co-ops were plentiful, very little product actually came from small-scale, local, progressive farms. The cornerstones of the income statement in the early co-ops were rice, apple cider, peanut butter, cheese, tofu, eggs, some seasonal fresh products, and membership fees. In the 1960s and 70s, agriculture at the local and regional level was already in decline, having been decimated by low producer prices, lack of concern about diet by the American consumer, increasing desire for fast foods, decline in food quality, and an increasing, government-supported focus on chemical practices. Local agriculture hit rock bottom in the mid-1980s. The Greenbelt Alliance along with developing marketplace forces driven by the increasing numbers of "California Cuisine" restaurants and the for-profit natural foods sector supported many of the young growers who created the next generation of family farms. Without that effort in the 1980s, the snapshot that you capture in "Big Organic" would not have the same appearance. The focus on integrated marketing (including direct-to-consumer sales), crop diversification, product differentiation, and the general move toward agricultural sustainability through Integrated Pest Management (including organic) practices preserved and created the current resources that exist in local and regional agriculture. By offering multiple outlets for their products and working tirelessly to educate consumers, Whole Foods Market stores, along with many regional independent stores, are an integral part of saving and supporting regional and local agriculture ...

 

In this first letter, Mackey delves into some of Whole Foods Market's more significant practices, including its support of organic agriculture, organic dairy and natural beef, as well as the future of organic foods. He doesn't shy away from the topic of consumer costs, either:

Finally, with our private label 365 Organic product line, Whole Foods Market offers our customers every day, affordable organic choices from "soup to nuts." Well aware of our moniker "Whole Paycheck," through initiatives like our organic store brands and the purchasing discounts we can now enjoy because of our size, our food prices have decreased in many categories over the last few years. Our prices for the same products are actually lower for many staples than those in conventional grocery stores or competitor natural foods retailers, while our selection continues to include a range of items from staples to higher quality or more exotic choices.

A few weeks later, Pollan replied to Mackey's letter in his NYTimes TimesSelect column:

From Pollan's first reponse: Thank you for your letter, and for the time you spent with me in Austin last month. I was delighted to have a chance to meet and to learn more about Whole Foods. Thank you, too, for the $25 gift certificate, which more than makes up for the $6 I spent on the disappointing Argentine organic asparagus. Though I know you are troubled by some of the critical things I have written and said publicly about Whole Foods, it was clear from our conversation that we agree about a great many things, including our concerns about the future direction of organic agriculture. Since you are in a position to do much to shape that future, that cheers me no end.

I want to take this opportunity to address some of the points you made in your letter, and to pose a few of the questions that it begs. I hope you will take my remarks in the spirit in which they are offered – as constructive criticism of an important institution that can do much to advance what you call the "reformation" of the American food system, something we both want ...

... I confess I am of two minds in deciding how to respond to the substance of your letter: whether I should attempt to cast doubt on your claims that Whole Foods wholeheartedly supports local, artisanal, and grass-based agriculture, or whether to simply applaud and encourage your inclinations in that direction. I take heart in the fact that you feel compelled to defend a commitment to these forms of agriculture, not only because I share it, but because you are in as strong a position as any individual in America today to help rebuild local food chains and build a market for pasture-based livestock farming. I don't need to tell you how important these two things are -- or that the survival of local agriculture is critical to preserving farmland near America's metropolitan areas; to reducing our consumption of fossil fuel (17 percent of U.S. fossil fuel consumption goes to feeding ourselves); and to making the food system better able to withstand threats, whether from pathogens or terrorists (or both) ...

... As we discussed, the company's shift a few years ago from "backdoor sales" to a regional distribution system has made it more difficult, if not impossible, for small local farmers to sell directly to individual Whole Foods stores. For some farmers, this may be a boon as you suggest, but for the many Bay Area farmers I have spoken to, it has shut them out -- they don't grow enough to supply a distribution center, or the centers are too far from their farms. You write that all of your stores are in fact free to buy locally, which I was surprised and delighted to hear. I hope you'll take steps to encourage them in that direction. I have interviewed dozen of organic farmers for whom selling to Whole Foods over the years has been critical to their success; for what it's worth, they feel much less welcome since you moved to the regional distribution model. Which leads me to my next question: is there anyone, at the regional level, charged with the specific mission of locally sourcing as much food as possible? And do Whole Foods buyers have the authority to pay a premium for local produce, in the same way they now routinely pay a premium for organic? Such a commitment by Whole Foods to local sourcing -- not everything, but whatever and whenever possible -- could go a long way toward rebuilding local food systems across America ...

... As you point out several times in your letter, Whole Foods' freedom of action is constrained by the desires of its consumers, who want asparagus in January, fresh berries all year long, convenience foods, etc. I appreciate that you "don't try to channel our customers into adopting any particular dietary regime." And yet your stores -- with their extensive information, signage, and well-informed counter help -- are clearly in the business of educating people. You are selling information and stories as well as food, which is to say, you have set yourself the mission of leading, not just following, the consumer. Any retailer can treat the consumer as a dumb beast that wants what we wants when we wants it -- appealing to the narrowest conception of our self-interest. Such an approach to the consumer has done much to create the debased industrial food chain we now have -- the "pile it high and sell it cheap" philosophy that ramifies up and down the food chain, degrading the land, emiserating the animals, and making us fat and sick. But as Whole Foods recognized before many others did, there is another consumer being born out there, one who takes a broader view of his interests, understands that spending more on higher-quality food is worth it on so many levels, and who treats his food purchases as a kind of vote for a better world. You have helped to create that new consumer, educating him about organics and persuading him to spend more for better food--something we will have to do if the food system is ever to be put on a truly sustainable footing.

In the same way we now need (as you pointed out in our meeting) to raise the bar again on American agriculture, we need to raise it on the American eater too, teaching him about the satisfactions (and nutritional benefits) of eating in season, from his locality, and from a food chain based on grass rather than corn. I think we agree that this is where the "reformation" now is headed; you are in a position to lead rather than to follow it there. To do so is also, I daresay, in your company's self-interest: as competitors like Wal-Mart and Safeway move into selling industrial organic food, Whole Foods can distinguish itself by moving to the next stage, doing things they can't possibly do. "Local" surely is one of those things: and your buyers already know exactly how to do it. All Wal-Mart knows is how to source industrial organic food from China.

After spending time with you and reading your letter, I've wondered if perhaps I did, as you imply in your letter, present a unfair caricature of Whole Foods in "The Omnivore's Dilemma," suggesting a store where organic, local and artisanal food is just window dressing to help sell a much more ordinary industrial product. Indeed, nothing would please me more than to conclude I owe you and the company an apology. I'm not quite there yet. But I sincerely hope you will prove my portrait of Whole Foods wrong, that the company has not thrown its lot in with the industrialization, globalization and dilution of organic agriculture, but rather stands for something better. For my own part, I stand ready to write that apology, and look forward to doing it.

GERMANY VS. ARGENTINA

Tomorrow, Germany and Argentina take the field in the 2006 World Cup and begin to define my fate in the Washington Post's World Cup Fantasy Challenge, where my team (the Mud Toads) currently sits in 8th place among some 1,500 teams.

I'm really banking on Argentina's Crespo and Germany's Klose to play hard tomorrow; on Saturday, I'll be on the road and will miss my other key players -- Vieira of France, Maniche of Portugal, Spain's Torres and Ronaldo of Brasil.

TRYING TO FORGET YOUR GENERATION

William Lind, one of a handful of analysts publicly and seriously exploring the notions of war theory and strategy, has penned an excellent review of "Neither Shall the Sword" by Chet Richards. Lind's review is worthwhile reading even if you have only a passing interest in the strategies that will drive global politics (and conflict) for the next generation.

At the core of Richards' book is something called Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), something that was posited as a theory several years ago and is proving to be a reality. Third Generation Warfare, or blitzkreig warfare, is about massive firepower and maneuverability; it is outdated, at least until China decides to launch a land invasion of North America in fifty years. If 3GW was about mass and velocity, 4GW is about strategic nibbling, playing the corners and working the edges -- terrorism can be a 4GW tool, but it's hardly the only (or most effective) one.

Richards makes additional valuable points. One is that the Bush administration has fundamentally miscast the nature of the conflict we now face. He argues that

war is terrorism, so a “war on terrorism” is a war on war. We are not in a war on “terrorism” or engaged in a “struggle against violent extremism.” Instead, we are faced with an evolutionary development in armed conflict, a “fourth generation” of warfare that is different from and much more serious than “terrorism”…

to see the difference between 4GW and “terrorism,” run this simple thought experiment: suppose bin Laden and al-Qaida were able to enforce their program on the Middle East, but they succeeded without the deliberate killing of one more American civilian. The entire Middle East turns hostile, Israel is destroyed, and gas goes up to $15 per gallon when it is available. Bin Laden’s 4GW campaign succeeds, but without terrorism. Do you feel better?

This applies to situations like Iraq and Afghanistan:

It’s not a war followed by a blown peace. That is conventional war thinking, even if the war is waged and quickly won by 3GW. Instead, it will be an occupation against some degree of resistance, followed by the real, fourth generation war.

Much of Neither Shall the Sword is devoted to considering what kinds of armed forces the U.S. would require for 4GW, which varies depending on the grand strategy we adopt. He recognizes that the current Department of Defense, and the bulk of our forces, are untransformable.

Practitioners of real transformation agree that in such circumstances it is better not to transform but to start over…The sooner these fossils are put to rest, the sooner new enterprises can rise to create innovative business models for satisfying customer desires.

Here is where Richards and I part company. DOD is, as he recognizes, Gosplan. But his alternative, at least for a rollback force, includes privatizing the fighting function. The problem with this is that as the state privatizes security functions, for foreign wars or here at home, it strikes at its own reason for being and thus accelerates its crisis of legitimacy, which lies at the heart of 4GW. Once security is privatized, why have a state at all?

Conveniently, private armies have a long history of overthrowing states. There is good reason why the rising state of the 17th century abolished private armies and forcefully asserted a monopoly on violence.

ONE THOUSAND ACRES CAN'T FILL MY HEAD

The fine folks at Six Apart (makers of Typepad) have launched Vox, yet another of the world's social networking websites designed to keep people from actually having to physically interact and connect. Which means that, in addition to Buttermilk & Molasses and Garden of Words and Floricane (and a few more, unrevealed sites), you can bore yourself to tears at my Voxspace. Of course, I have no idea what -- if anything -- will ultimately end up there.

FOLLOW THE FLORICANE FASHION MONKEY

Now you can get daily email updates from Buttermilk & Molasses. Scroll way down to the bottom of the left column of the page, and Feedblitz swears they won't sell your email address to the Spam Gods.