A soft spot for chart toppers. The post ‘Tainted Love’ and other drugs: Exploring PJ Harvey’s unlikely love for 1980s pop first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter: The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday in support of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan in Gaza, and Trump has been named Chairman of the Board of Peace. Former British PM Tony Blair is also serving on the Board of Peace, which has been granted sole rights […]

Prog 165 also features Peter Hammill, John Lodge, Cardiacs, Gazpacho, Steve Morse, Solstice, Atomic Rooster, Crown Lands, The Utopia Strong, Barry Palmer, Cate Le Bon, Amorphis and loads more...

The Decembrists: Russia’s First Revolution James Hoare Fri, 11/21/2025 - 09:01

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Dignity and wellness access for underserved populations Welcome to the fourth week of The Optimist Daily’s Annual Local Changemakers series. This week, we highlight leaders ensuring that basic human needs like hygiene, nourishment, and health are met with creativity and compassion. In San Luis Obispo County, California, Gwen Watkins transformed a simple idea into a mobile movement for dignity. In her seventies, Gwen launched Shower the People, a volunteer-run mobile hygiene nonprofit that’s now delivered more than 25,000 showers and counting. One woman, one idea, and a whole lot of heart It started with a need Gwen Watkins couldn’t ignore. In San Luis Obispo County, many unhoused individuals were unable to access the church-based shower services available in the area. Gwen recognized the gap, and at an age when many would be stepping back from service, she stepped up.  In her seventies, she began fundraising for a mobile shower trailer that could go where people were, not the other way around. After two years of determined effort, Shower the People officially launched in 2017 with a sustainable, completely volunteer-run model that continues to serve the community with compassion, consistency, and genuine human connection. As nominator Alicia put it: “Gwen saw a need… Many folks can’t travel to the churches that provided shower services, and the mobile van brought the showers to areas where folks could access them more easily, providing them with a sense of dignity.” With no blueprint but plenty of resolve, Gwen designed the program to be sustainable, flexible, and centered on the people it served. Her approach was simple but profound: meet people where they are, greet them by name, and make every interaction a moment of respect and care. As the organization’s new General Manager Gary Petersen explained: “Her vision was that the unhoused could find a place to be treated with dignity, called by their own name each time they arrived, and get a shower, supplies, and referrals for local services. She always emphasized, ‘We do showers.’” A growing community care hub What started as a mobile hygiene effort has grown into a robust, wraparound support network. As volunteer coordinator Kevin Dunlap shared with The Optimist Daily: “It is interesting to note that Shower the People is a completely volunteer-driven organization. From the Board, General Manager to the Shower Cleaners, there are no paid positions.” That spirit of service is part of why the organization has grown into a wider care network. At sites like the alley behind the San Luis Obispo Library, Shower the People now offers, among other services: Free monthly health clinics in partnership with Vituity Cares, Access Support Network, and WashMeGo. In 2024 alone, these clinics served 340 guests, providing over 120 medical exams, 70 vaccinations, treatment, testing, and even haircuts and hot meals. No-cook food bags from the SLO Food Bank, tailored to unhoused residents’ nutritional needs and distributed by STP volunteers at Thursday shower shifts. A new healthcare access guide, created by STP, which demystifies local medical and mental health resources for those without stable housing. The resource outlines eligibility, walk-in options, insurance requirements, and more, making healthcare less intimidating and more reachable. Veteran outreach at events like Veterans Stand Down in Santa Maria, where STP has provided showers every year since 2017. Regular hygiene days with community partners that transform shower sites into pop-up wellness hubs. These services are essential to the community, as it is clear that the need continues to grow. Last month alone, more than 700 guests came for showers, supplies, or referrals. Each guest receives a clean T‑shirt, underwear, socks, toiletries, a towel and washcloth, and 15 minutes of private hot water. These seemingly small, simple things really deliver a big impact. At the heart of it all are the volunteers, whom Gwen often called “the backbone of this work.” As one volunteer told KSBY News: “Everybody who’s part of the organization is doing it because they want to be there. The more volunteers we have, the more effective we can be.” A legacy in motion Gwen officially retired at the end of 2024, but her vision lives on through the thriving nonprofit she built. In a resolution honoring her, the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors wrote: “Her compassion, generosity, and humble leadership have guided the efforts of the all-volunteer-run organization since its founding in 2017.” That legacy of seeing a need, showing up, and staying steady continues to ripple outward with every clean towel handed out and every guest reminded of their worth. Support or get involved Visit their website: showerthepeopleslo.org Follow them on Instagram: @showerthepeopleslo Take a look at their volunteer opportunities! “I am not interested in being awarded anything—I’m just incredibly proud of the work Shower the People does for the homeless, and incredibly proud of our volunteers.” -Gwen Watkins The post Shower the People: How Gwen Watkins built a mobile hygiene hub and a legacy of dignity first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Dignity and wellness access for underserved populations Welcome to the fourth installment of The Optimist Daily’s Annual Local Changemakers series. Over five weeks, we’re spotlighting ten extraordinary individuals and organizations transforming their communities with compassion, creativity, and resilience. This week, we highlight changemakers who are restoring dignity through wellness, nourishment, and care for those who need it most. Join us in Black Mountain, North Carolina, where one woman’s life-altering trauma gave rise to a vibrant, community-led wellness movement nourishing thousands. From trauma to transformation: the beginnings of Bounty & Soul Before she founded a nonprofit that now nourishes 850 families a week, Ali Casparian’s dreams were rooted in food. As a young girl, she found joy in the kitchen with her Armenian grandmother and in the garden with her grandfather. She wanted to become a chef, but at the time, her parents didn’t approve of that path. So, she pivoted away from culinary school, earned a degree in human resource management, and built a 25-year career in the food industry. Still, something was missing. Behind her professional success was a deep sense of loneliness and burnout. Then, in 2011, everything changed. Casparian survived a brutal domestic assault that left her hospitalized for months. Forced to start over after this traumatic event, she began to see the world and her purpose in it with new clarity. “All of a sudden, everything seemed different in a good way,” she told Black Mountain News. “The flowers were brighter and the colors were brighter. The sounds were louder. I felt a deeper empathy.” She walked away from her old life, her career, her home, and her city. To recenter, she spent time with family in Raleigh before moving to western North Carolina, where she would begin a revolutionary new chapter. A table, a welcome, and a seed When she arrived in Black Mountain, Casparian was rebuilding her life from scratch. She cleaned houses to make ends meet and searched for connection. That search led her to the Welcome Table at St. James Episcopal Church, a community meal where she eventually began volunteering. One day, she spotted a surplus of fresh fruits and vegetables at a nearby food bank, and it dawned on her that this perfectly good food would be discarded or given to livestock. In a moment of inspiration Casparian arranged for the produce to be brought to Welcome Table, where she set up a small table of her own so people could take what they needed. But for Casparian, it was never just about the food. “I always had to prove that I was poor,” she recalled of past experiences seeking help. “It was awful… So what was important to me was that everybody would feel loved and accepted and included, and they wouldn’t feel any shame.” From that one table grew Bounty & Soul: a nonprofit that, from its inception, has prioritized nourishment not just of the body but of the whole self. Food access with a soul-centered approach Incorporated in 2014, Bounty & Soul offers free, fresh produce and wellness education through weekly drive-thru markets that serve up to 850 families. But the programming goes much deeper than access to food. Every element of Bounty & Soul is designed to foster connection, dignity, and empowerment. Classes are co-created with community input and have ranged from yoga and diabetes prevention to financial literacy and parenting support. Participants are called “friends” instead of clients or recipients, and they are encouraged to volunteer, contribute ideas, and be part of shaping the space. Bounty & Soul Volunteers. Photo courtesy of Bounty & Soul. Bounty & Soul Kid’s Cooking Class. Photo courtesy of Bounty & Soul. The work is intensely personal for Casparian, who often speaks about how the organization’s evolution mirrored her own healing journey. In the early days, she lived in what she called a one-room “chicken coop.” Now, she leads a respected nonprofit that has distributed millions of pounds of produce, formed partnerships with health systems, schools, and farms, and is currently seeking to launch a permanent wellness hub. Expanding impact, deepening roots As Bounty & Soul has grown, so has its reach. Development Director Laila, shared with The Optimist Daily that, as of this month, Bounty & Soul has: Served 251,228 individuals Provided 1,807,786 pounds of produce Invested $930,305 into the local food system through produce purchases Offered (and continue to offer) 10 weekly no-cost community markets Logged approximately 11,000 volunteer hours with 175 volunteer slots each week It’s often in moments of crisis that Bounty & Soul’s work becomes especially vital and most deeply felt. When SNAP benefits were paused during the recent government shutdown, a woman on disability called the team in distress. Unsure of how she would get food that week, she reached out hoping for options. Bounty & Soul connected her to a market happening that same day, where she picked up fresh leafy greens, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, and eggs. Overwhelmed with relief, she burst into tears. Encounters like these are a stark reminder that food insecurity isn’t a distant issue. Food insecurity is something that people in the community, friends, and neighbors are living with right now. Another woman, living with cancer, has been coming to the markets regularly since the spring. Following her doctor’s recommendation to increase fruits and vegetables to support her treatment, she relies on the Produce to the People program to make that possible while living on a fixed income. These are just a few of the quiet, everyday moments that show what “food is medicine” truly looks like, and why access, dignity, and consistency matter so much. Photo courtesy of Bounty & Soul. Growing together: from local farms to fermentation workshops Bounty & Soul also champions the local food economy, partnering with over 70 regional farms and growers. One local farm had a peach surplus at the end of summer. Bounty & Soul quickly arranged to purchase 600 pounds of the harvest, supporting the farmer’s income while delighting the community with ripe, juicy fruit. This type of reciprocal relationship strengthens the bond between people, land, and nourishment. The nonprofit’s holistic approach includes programs like Rooted in Health, which offers culturally relevant, community-designed education and wellness. One popular class, “Cooking for One,” was created to help solo-living individuals prepare fresh, easy meals. This winter, the organization will host a Holiday Fermentation Workshop with Meg Chamberlin, founder of Fermenti, teaching participants how to turn seasonal produce into probiotic-rich, preserved foods. From personal survival to collective thriving Ali Casparian doesn’t sugarcoat the pain that preceded her current path. But she also doesn’t dwell there. Instead, she channels her experience into action, co-creating a space where food is love, wellness is shared, and healing is possible. “If that didn’t happen … I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she said of her past. “And I wouldn’t be loved in the way I am loved or be able to offer and work within the community the way we work together collectively, which has been the greatest gift of my life.” Produce Market staff @ Bi-Lo. Photo courtesy of Bounty & Soul. Want to support Bounty & Soul? Visit their website: bountyandsoul.org Follow them on Instagram: @bounty_and_soul Donate or volunteer locally if you’re in the area The post How Ali Casparian turned food, healing, and heartbreak into a wellness movement first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.

Have you ever struggled to relate to the healing miracles in the Gospels? It may seem like an odd question—after all, these miracles confirm Jesus’s identity as the Messiah and the divine Son of God. His healing reveals both his power and compassion. But what if you’re not the one who experiences the miracle? We lost our precious 11-year-old daughter, Alynnah, four years ago to a rare blood disease called aplastic anemia. In the months after her death, I read John 11 more times than I can count. Though I found comfort in our Savior’s great proclamation, “I am the resurrection and the life,” my heart also ached because we didn’t experience a miracle in the hospital room. While Lazarus’s resurrection is one of the most amazing stories in the Gospels, Don Carson reminds us that Lazarus was raised to a mortal life; he died again. But John tells the story of Lazarus so we may believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and to assure us that Jesus is who he claimed to be (20:31). Let’s consider three aspects of John 11 that comfort those who grieve. ‘He Was Outraged’ The raising of Lazarus is the climax of John’s “Book of Signs” (chap. 1–12) and a foreshadowing of the “Book of Glory” (chap. 13–21) that will culminate in Jesus’s death and resurrection. At the beginning of John 11, Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick. John’s readers are perhaps shocked when Jesus doesn’t immediately travel to Bethany and even says he’s glad he wasn’t there, in order that they’ll believe (v. 15). When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has already been dead for four days. Lazarus’s sisters are in deep distress. Beyond their grief for their brother, they know that Jesus could’ve prevented his death. But Jesus assures Martha he isn’t just a healer. He is, in the truest sense, a grave robber: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (v. 25). What great hope for the Christian! The weeping of Martha and the Jews with her prompts a strong emotional response from Christ in verse 33: outrage. Though often translated as “deeply moved,” many scholars agree that the Greek verb here indicates outrage or anger (e.g., HCSB). Therefore, “he was outraged in his Spirit” may be the better translation. Why was he angry? Some scholars suggest he’s angry at death itself; others suggest his anger is toward the Jews’ unbelief, a major theme in John. Edward Klink suggests both may be in view, while giving more prominence to the first option. Additionally, he argues that Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, embraces the plight of his people and also sees what God sees: the effects of sin and death in the world. Death is unnatural, no matter the person’s age, and Jesus’s disposition toward death is anger, which is wonderful news for us. ‘Jesus Wept’ Many of us proudly memorized John 11:35 in Sunday school—just two words in English. But what does the shortest verse in the Bible teach us about Jesus’s relationship with those who mourn death? Given his outrage in verse 33 and his imminent resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus’s tears aren’t for Lazarus, as George Beasley-Murray observes. Jesus has already said this death is for God’s glory, and in only a few moments, Jesus will be reunited with his friend. Jesus’s disposition toward death is anger, which is wonderful news for us. Instead, Jesus weeps because Martha and Mary weep. Though he knows the end of the story, he doesn’t remain emotionally detached from those whose hearts have been shattered. James Hamilton puts it beautifully: “No one knows better than Jesus what is going to happen in this episode. No one is better at mourning with those who mourn than Jesus.” ‘He Has Been Dead Four Days’ While it’s a great comfort that Jesus hates death and grieves with us, we don’t only need sympathy. We need Jesus to do something about death. When Jesus commands the stone to be rolled away, Martha protests: “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days” (v. 39). While many Jews believed resurrection after four days was both theologically and biologically impossible, four days is no problem for the Creator of the universe. As Jesus approaches the tomb, he’s outraged once more, again at the idea of death itself. In 1 Kings 18:37, Elijah asks God to act so the people around him would know that the Lord is God. Here, Jesus has already been heard by the Father, but he prays so the people around him would believe (John 11:42). He then shouts, “Lazarus, come out” (v. 43). The dead man walks out, still wrapped in burial clothes. Jesus’s simple instructions to unwrap him and let him go implies not only that Lazarus was miraculously brought back from the dead but that Jesus’s glory as the Creator is on display in immediately restoring Lazarus’s decayed body. Lazarus’s resurrection after four days gives us hope for two reasons. First, as Irenaeus wrote long ago, Jesus’s raising of Lazarus prefigures our bodily resurrection. Just as Jesus raises a shout at Lazarus’s tomb, he’ll descend from heaven with a shout, calling all the dead to burst from their graves (1 Thess. 4:16). Just as Jesus raised a shout at the tomb of Lazarus, he will descend from heaven with a shout, calling all the dead to burst from their graves. Second, whether someone has recently died (such as the widow’s son at Nain or the daughter of Jairus) or has been in the grave for four days, four decades, or four thousand years, no length of time is an obstacle for Jesus’s resurrection power. My family will grieve our daughter for the rest of our lives. Grief is messy, and faith is often frail. But we cling to Jesus’s promise that he’s the resurrection and the life and that everyone who believes in him shall never die. Dear reader, I pose the same question Jesus asked Martha in response to this truth: Do you believe this?

Trees are a major character in Train Dreams. They aren’t just beautiful (though they certainly are beautifully shot by cinematographer Adolpho Veloso). They’re meaningful. In the haunting new film from writer-director Clint Bentley (out today on Netflix), trees act almost like avatars of the divine presence—the Creator who gives life and takes it, a God who is our shelter and shade but also a consuming fire. Based on Denis Johnson’s novella—a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction—Train Dreams is about a lot of things. It’s about America: westward expansion, Pacific Northwest frontier grit, rugged individualism. It’s about a man: Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton), an orphaned boy turned railroad worker and woodsman whose lifespan the story narrates. But it’s also about God: little spoken of in the film but palpably present. Johnson is a Hemingwayesque writer who became a Christian in midlife, writing acclaimed essays with titles like “Bikers for Jesus.” His writing is spiritually curious if not explicitly Christian. Train Dreams has a transcendental vibe that feels inspired by Walt Whitman or Henry David Thoreau. The prose is terse and masculine but imbued with an existential wonder. Bentley’s film captures all this well, in a style unmistakably indebted to Terrence Malick (especially Tree of Life). Yet it’d be unjust to write off Train Dreams as a Malick knockoff. Bentley is a formidable talent in his own right (see his 2021 debut Jockey or last year’s Sing Sing, which he cowrote). And Train Dreams announces him as a major American talent. It’s one of the best films of the year. He Gives and Takes Away Train Dreams (rated PG-13) evokes Malick’s style (elliptical editing, ponderous voiceover, golden-hour cinematography) but also his themes—especially Tree of Life’s focus on the parallel tracks of life’s beauty and pain. The Book of Job looms large in Malick’s magnum opus, with one character explicitly referencing Job 1:21 (“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away”) in response to a tragic death. That tension also frames the drama of Train Dreams, the “dreams” of which sometimes look Edenic and sometimes nightmarish. Grainier’s life is full of transcendent beauty and unimaginable tragedy; sublime bursts of joy and heartache haunt him. Life for Grainier is both blessed and cursed. This is our world: jarring contrasts, highs and lows, verdant springtimes and cruel winters. It’s almost like there’s a design to it, a harmony that makes it meaningful. This is our world: jarring contrasts, highs and lows, verdant springtimes and cruel winters. Trees underscore this. The film foregrounds how trees give life. They bless us in their oxygen-producing, shade-providing life. And they bless us in their death. The cutting down of trees provides shelter in the form of houses (Grainier builds his own log cabin twice in the film), fuel for fires that help us survive winter, lumber for industry, and materials for infrastructure—railroads, bridges—that opened up the West. In the death of trees, there is life. But trees are also means of death, something the film notes explicitly several times. A miscalculated felling of a large spruce turns deadly for a handful of unfortunate men crushed in the giant timber’s path. A dead branch falls and happens to hit a man walking underneath at the wrong time. Most fearsomely, trees become agents of death by spreading wildfire—turning an idyllic, enchanted forest into a hellish inferno, beloved homes into ash. “The dead tree is as important as the living one,” one character observes. “There must be something we can learn from that.” Indeed, trees teach us what Grainier comes to see: that all things work together, both the hard things and the good, both in nature and one’s own life. There’s a design we need not understand to acknowledge. In a memorable scene (featured prominently in the trailer), one character says, “Beautiful, ain’t it?” to which Grainier replies, “What is?” The character responds, in one of his last words before death, “All of it. Every bit of it.” The line is the film’s thesis. Life in its anguish, as well as in its bliss, is a beautiful gift to acknowledge and embrace. Even if we can’t control or understand it. Small Life, Big World Bentley’s script—which he cowrote with Sing Sing collaborator Greg Kwedar—does a marvelous job juxtaposing one small, unknown life with a big, mysterious universe. Featuring the distinctive voice of Will Patton as the narrator, the story follows Grainier’s life from his obscure beginnings as an orphaned child sent to Idaho on the Great Northern railroad, from an unknown place and unknown parents. His is a “hidden life” that plays out against the backdrop of a rapidly changing America, from the 19th-century pioneer days to the invention of television and space travel. Occasionally, Grainier feels directly affected by this wider world. The Great War influences his job prospects. The Great Depression takes its toll. The macroeconomic needs of American industry intertwine with Grainier’s microeconomic livelihood. But mostly Grainier just lives quietly in his little acreage near Bonners Ferry, Idaho, in a Thoreauvian cabin in the woods where he’s building a life with a loving wife (Felicity Jones) he met at church. Their baby daughter Kate makes his dangerous work feel more worth it. He wants to provide for her, perhaps giving her joy and opportunities he didn’t have. The American dream. Here’s a man who works hard, his head down and an axe over his shoulder. Simple ambitions: love and protect his family, work with a sturdy hand, help others where he can. When he fails to protect others—as in a pivotal early scene when a Chinese railroad worker is threatened by fellow track laborers—it pricks his conscience and haunts him for years. Malick’s Tree of Life jarringly juxtaposed the micro (nuclear family in 1950s Texas) and the macro (the literal cosmos, from its creation until its death) in a way echoed here. But Train Dreams tackles the contrast in a more modest way. There are no dinosaurs or asteroid impacts, yet there are frequent references to how mind-bogglingly old creation is (“The world’s an old place. Probably nothing it hasn’t seen by now”) and how minuscule our lives are by comparison. The effect is powerful. It’s one life as a lens to contemplate the cosmos. The universe in a Grainier of sand. See Life from a Bigger View Edgerton is an underrated actor and inhabits Grainier’s character with uncanny power. He gives the character a strapping stoicism that’s strong but also quietly vulnerable; he’s a man who speaks little but says a lot with his eyes. It’s rare and refreshing to see such an honoring portrait of a man in contemporary film. Grainier is a husband, a father, a provider, a friend; “a steady man,” as Johnson’s book describes him. Late in the film, he looks in a mirror and sees a reflection of his face for the first time in nearly a decade. He’s not a ruminating overprocessor, even though his trauma and pain are real. He opens up emotionally to friends on occasion. But mostly he works through his pain in his sleep, his haunting dreams excavating layers of unspoken emotion. In waking life, he may be unmistakably world-weary, but he doesn’t complain. He keeps his hand to the proverbial plow. He copes not by laboring to understand what’s ultimately unanswerable but by simply pressing on. It’s not that Grainier isn’t curious about the “why” behind his life’s traumas. It’s just that he knows he has a limited perspective on how it all fits into the broader workings and mysteries of the world. Moments of perspective loom large in the film. Grainier stands with a friend on a forest service lookout tower and sees a larger view of the landscape. At one point in his old age, he takes a $4 single-engine plane flight to “see the world as only the birds do.” In a rare visit to a city in 1962, he pauses by a TV screen in a storefront window to see John Glenn’s first images of Earth, as seen from space. “So is that—?” Grainier asks a woman on the street. She replies, “That’s us.” Here’s a man who works hard, his head down and an axe over his shoulder. Simple ambitions: love and protect his family, work with a sturdy hand, help others where he can. The line has meaning for us viewers too. As we watch Grainier’s particular life, in a specific place in time, we’re invited to reflect on our own lives. We may not be bearded lumberjacks, but like Grainier, we’ve been given breath in a particular place and time. We’ve each been given an unfolding life of twists and turns we can’t control and might never understand. But do we need to understand? The tree in the forest doesn’t know when it’ll be cut down or burned in a fire, or why. It doesn’t need to know. It’s enough to just be a tree while it has the chance to be, putting down roots and breathing out oxygen. So for us. Your life and mine are like the tree whose every ring of age is known by its sovereign Creator even before it was a seed. Every hair is known by God (Matt. 10:30). Every word, every action, and the precise duration of our lives are known before our first cells took shape (Ps. 139). “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it,” David rightly reflects (v. 6). Yet even as we can’t have Godlike knowledge—the forbidden fruit of the tree of Genesis 2:17—we can trust our Maker and marvel at all he made: Our lives. Every tree in every forest. Every snow-capped mountain peak. All of it made with intention. All of it made to glorify God.

In this plenary talk from TGC25, Mark Vroegop teaches from Ephesians 2:11–22. He talks about the compelling need to remember our redemption and its results, to understand how our vertical reconciliation to God affects our horizontal reconciliation with each other. In response to this truth, Vroegop calls for the church to embody the unity and diversity foretold in Revelation 7.