Monthly Archives: August 2015

SONG OF THE WEEK – WHAT DID YOU LEARN IN SCHOOL TODAY

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Here it is, the end of August.  Labor Day is just a week away.  All of the local schools started back up over the past week or two.  Pete Seeger singing “What Did You Learn in School Today”  seems a good choice for the Song of the Week.

It is also pretty easy to write about.  The lyrics are satirical, but not very subtle.  Pete Seeger’s story is well known.

As a quick recap, Pete Seeger, who died in 2014, at 94 years of age, was an American treasure.  His ancestors came here on the Mayflower.  He grew up in a liberal and musical household – so liberal and musical that his father, a professor of music, had to leave his teaching job because he was too radical for the University of California at Berkeley (during World War I, anyway).  He was a musician, singer and songwriter; a folklorist, entertainer and labor organizer; an environmentalist, peace activist and humanitarian.

In 1940, Pete and Woody Guthrie helped form the Almanac Singers, which included, from time to time, such folk music luminaries as Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Josh White, Burl Ives, Cisco Houston and Lee Hayes.  Eight years later, he formed another influential folk group, the Weavers.

The Weavers were initially quite successful, with hit songs like “Good Night, Irene”; but they ran into political and contractual problems because Pete and some of the other pacifist members had belonged to the American Communist Party during World War II.  He was “blacklisted” by the entertainment industry in the early 1950s, after which his music received very little airplay and he was not permitted to appear on television until 1968, when he was a very special guest on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.1

Pete Seeger was a prolific songwriter, authoring or co-authoring songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Bells of Rhymney” and many more.  His was a gentle but fiercely idealistic spirit that has influenced nearly every English language – and many musicians speaking other languages – musician for the past eight decades.

Even though, Pete was blacklisted for many years, his contributions to America and its music earned him the National Medal of the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, several Grammy Awards, membership in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and a Kennedy Center Honor.

To balance things out, he also received the Eugene V. Debs Award and the Felix Varela Medal, which is Cuba’s highest artistic recognition.

“What Did You Learn in School Today” is a song that has been associated with Pete Seeger for many years.  It was actually written, though, by Tom Paxton in 1964.  Paxton is another very interesting person, but I will put off writing about him to another day.

I could quit here.  I probably should.  However, I want to say a few words about the Board of Education here in Jefferson County, Colorado.

The Board of Education has five members.  Three of those seats were up for election in 2013, and each of the incumbents was ineligible to run because of term limits.  School board elections are, by law, nonpartisan.  In the weeks before the election, three of the candidates – Ken Witt, John Newkirk and Julie Williams – sent out a barrage of joint campaign material, essentially asking voters to vote for them as a group or a block (as opposed to a party).

If parties could have been mentioned, these candidates would have probably said they were in the Tea Party, or conservative Republican.

It was an off year election, with a mail-in ballot, and about 43% of the eligible voters actually voted.  Something like 55% of them voted for Witt, Newkirk and Williams, so each was elected on the mandate of less than one-quarter of the voters

Trouble began almost immediately.  The long-time superintendent of schools realized she could not work with the new Board majority and resigned.  The new members were not happy with the Board’s attorney, so they hired an additional attorney, at public expense, to represent the three of them.  A large number of teachers and staff expressed their disapproval of the new Board.

Matters became even worse near the beginning of the 2014-15 school year.  The national AP U. S. History curriculum had been changed and the Board majority seemed to think it too subversive for Jefferson County high school students.  A proposed committee was to look into the new curriculum because, according to Ms. Williams, “materials should not encourage or condone civil disorder, social strife or disregard of the law.”  Rather, a curriculum like that which Pete Seeger sings about here is apparently the ideal.

The response to that perceived censorship was overwhelming – giving students a real lesson in civil disobedience.  Many teachers participated in a “sick out.”  Hundreds of students walked out of class several days in a row to protest.  The Board was deluged with angry emails and negative comments at Board meetings.

The Board majority backed off and did not censor anything, but not before enough of the community was so upset that talk of a recall election began.  Petitions were circulated and thousands of signatures obtained.  The petitions were submitted to the County Clerk in mid-August, they have been certified as sufficient and any protests must be filed by the first week in September.

Thus, it appears that the District is rapidly moving toward a recall election.  A group called Jeffco United for Action has recruited three candidates to run in that election, and if you go to its website you will be able to purchase t-shirts, coffee cups, bumper stickers and other campaign materials.  All those materials are nonpartisan, of course.

To quote another of Pete Seeger’s songs (“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”):  “When will they ever learn?”

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SONG OF THE WEEK – HIGHWAYMAN

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“You don’t have a soul.  You are a soul.  You have a body.”

We start with a famous quotation – one that I received in an email just a few days ago1 – which is often attributed to C. S. Lewis.  It appears, though, that Lewis never publicly wrote or said those words.  He probably did not even believe them.2

Here in the 21st Century, a time when what was once considered frivolous New Age thought has subtly infiltrated even traditional religious institutions, the quotation seems a reasonable concept that a spiritually inclined person might believe.  However, it is certainly not the traditional Christian belief.

Christians have long believed that the body – indeed, all the material world – is the loving creation of God.  Humans are seen as “enfleshed spirits,” with the body being much more than a machine that can be cast aside and traded in for a new one when it wears out.  The Apostle’s Creed, which is from the 4th Century, affirms a belief in “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.  Amen.”  That view is still the accepted dogma and is probably the main reason that most Christians reject the idea of reincarnation.

Still, the thought that we are immortal souls with a temporary body has long resonated with some Christians.  A training manual for the YMCA, published in 1900 (the year C. S.  Lewis celebrated his second birthday), states, “Men often say, ‘I have a soul.’  That is not the highest truth.  We must learn to say, ‘I am a soul, and I have a body.'”3

The basic idea is much older.  In fact, one of the basic tenets of the so-called “Gnostic heresy” of the 1st and 2nd Centuries was that the spirit, or soul, is more important than the body.

For those who believe in reincarnation, the idea is even older and very easy to accept.  For example, in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna reminds us that “as a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.”4

Underlying all of these expressions is the belief that there is something eternal within each of us, and probably within every living thing.  It is from that perspective that we finally get to the new Song of the Week, “Highwayman,” by the Highwaymen.

“Highwayman” was originally a reflection on reincarnation by noted songwriter Jimmy Webb.  Webb is the writer of a string of hits beginning in the mid-1960s  – songs like “Up, Up and Away”; “Wichita Lineman”; “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”; and many more, including, of course, “MacArthur Park.”5 Clearly, Webb knows how to pen a popular tune; though most of his songs, to quote Oscar the Grouch, are just “not my cup of mud.”

Webb has discussed the composing of “Highwayman” in several interviews.  It seems that in 1977 he was in London for a recording session and spent a long evening partying with singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson.  When he finally got to sleep, he had a vivid dream in which he was running down a dirt road, carrying a brace of pistols and being pursued by police.  The dream awakened him, so he got up and wrote the first verse of the song.

He wasn’t sure where the song was going, but in thinking about what he had written he realized the highwayman, who had been hanged, had not really died; but had moved on to his next life.  Webb then wrote three more verses describing incarnations as a sailor who died at sea, a workman killed while constructing Hoover Dam and an astronaut who will “fly a starship across the universe divide.”

Webb recorded “Highwayman” for his 1977 album, El Mirage.  I don’t know whether he accepted the idea of reincarnation or was just creating another of his hit songs.  His father was a Baptist minister who worked in rural Oklahoma and Texas, so he certainly did not learn about reincarnation while he was growing up.  Still, with Webb singing each of the verses, the song clearly told of consecutive incarnations of an eternal soul.

Webb then offered the song to other singers – some of whom, like Glen Campbell, recorded it; while others, like Waylon Jennings, chose not to6.

A few years later, Jennings was working on a “country super group” project with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.  It was suggested that “Highwayman” would be good for them because each of the song’s four verses could be sung by a different member of the quartet, and the title “Highwayman” seemed appropriate to their reputations.

They recorded it.  The single became the Number 1 Country song in nation in May, 1985, and remained on the charts for some 20 weeks.  The song fit them so well that they named their “super group” the Highwaymen.

Their recording adds nuances to the song that did not exist in previous versions.  In part, that was because Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings and Cash are all better vocalists than Jimmy Webb.  More importantly, having a separate person sing each verse permits more diverse interpretations.  Do the verses actually recite incarnations of a single soul, or are there four souls who are now together in Eternity?  Are the seemingly separate souls actually one Unity that includes us all?

The video shows us four riders, reminiscent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  The image is reinforced about 35 or 40 seconds into the video, when the highwayman is being hanged at the end of the first verse.  Through a doorway, a rider on a pale horse appears and then moves away.  Does that represent Revelation 6:8, which says:  “And I looked, and behold, a pale horse!  And its rider’s name was death, and Hades followed him”?

I will close with another quotation, this one from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist, and forever will recreate each other.”

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SONG OF THE WEEK – THAT’S ANOTHER STORY

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Earlier this evening a guy named Hugh, who is in his 70s, showed me a pocket watch case that had belonged to his great-grandfather and been passed down to him.  That case was special because there exist no pictures of his great-grandfather, no letters or other writings from him and no other memorabilia.  So all Hugh knows about his ancestor is that the man must have owned a pocket watch.

Thinking about my ancestors, my father came of age during the Great Depression.  He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps.  He joined the Marines and was stationed at Pearl Harbor on that infamous day, December 7, 1941.  He fought at Guadalcanal and elsewhere in the South Pacific before contracting malaria.  He worked for years as a railway postal clerk.  He loved coaching youth baseball, and did that until he was about 80 years old

My mother was valedictorian of her high school class. She was one of the first Women Marines.  She was named Arvada, Colorado’s “Woman of the Year” because of her charitable activities.  She ran several successful businesses after she had pretty much raised her family.

My paternal grandparents came to this country from France, with their children, shortly before World War I.  They eventually settled in Western Illinois, where my grandfather was a railroad mechanic.

My maternal grandparents came West from Mississippi in a covered wagon.  The wagon broke down in East Texas, so they stayed there and spent the rest of their lives farming.

One or more of my great-grandparents may have owned a pocket watch.  I don’t know.  Hugh has more knowledge of one of his great-grandfathers than I do of any any of mine.

My mother passed away five years ago this week.  My father only lived about three months after that.  Back about seven or eight years ago, I asked my parents if they would write down some things they thought were important in their lives; but they said they didn’t want to take the time to write.

Next, I bought them a small digital audio recorder and suggested that they simply talk about those things because someday their grandchildren or great-grandchildren would wonder about them.  They did record for about 15 minutes, but then put the machine in a drawer and never took it out again.

My own life has not been very exciting, but one of the reasons I wrote my 65 Years in 65 Days series of blogs a couple of years ago was to have at least some record that I passed through this world, in case one of my great-grandchildren may want proof somewhere down the road.

I know, of course, that the 50,000+ words that I wrote are just as limited in their ability to convey to some future descendant what my life may have been like as are the 15 minutes of talking my parents recorded or Hugh’s great-grandfather’s watch case.  I can see why my parents were hesitant to try to tell something about their lives.  Except when used by a rare master, words are generally inadequate to describe a life.  What anyone’s life really meant is another story that maybe you don’t need to know right now; another story none of us quite know how to tell.

“That’s Another Story” is also the title of a song from the first album by a group called Lothar and the Hand People.  They only recorded two albums, releasing one in 1968 and the second in 1969.  Although the group did not have much commercial success, they were quite influential in the way they melded rock, or even country and Baroque, with electronic music.

The group formed here in Colorado, and played regularly at such venues as the Exodus in Denver and the Mad Dog in Aspen during the mid-1960s.  In the late 1960s, they moved to New York and were part of the experimental music scene in that city.  The personnel changed a bit over time, but for most of its existence the band members were Paul Conly, John Emelin, Rusty Ford, Tom Flye, Kim King and a Theremin named Lothar.

For those who don’t know, a Theremin is an electronic instrument that is played by moving one’s hands near two vertical metal antennas.  The musician does not actually touch the instrument; but since his or her hand movements are what produce the sounds, it was natural for Lothar, who had no hands, to think of the humans in the band as “hand people.”  The Theremin is the instrument that plays out the “vibrations” in the Beach Boy’s “Good Vibrations.”

Lothar and the Hand People’s music also incorporated Moog synthesizers and more traditional instruments like guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion and harmonica.  I could go on about the group and its music, however I think it is time to move on to another story.

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SONG OF THE WEEK – PUFF THE MAGIC DRAGON

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This week, we are going with just a song and no social commentary.  “Puff the Magic Dragon” has become a classic children’s song – enjoyed by adults, as well – and almost everyone knows the words.  Even my year and a half-old grandson, Ryder, knows the words.

Some evil people will tell you that the song is full of drug references, but that is not true.  It is, as I said, a children’s song – about a dragon.  I remember being at a Peter, Paul and Mary concert back in 1965.  When the group started the introduction to “Puff,” I heard someone nearby say, “This song is about pot.”  By coincidence, at just that moment, the performers quit playing and Peter Yarrow said, “This is a children’s song about a dragon.  It is not about drugs.  When I decide to write a song about drugs, I’ll tell you.”  then they started playing again, and sang the song.

As I understand the genesis of “Puff,” back in 1958 or 1959, Peter Yarrow was attending college at Cornell.  His roommate had a friend named Leonard Lipton who had recently read Ogden Nash’s poem, “The Tale of Custard the Dragon.”  (You can read it by clicking here.)   Inspired by that poem, and while visiting at Yarrow’s residence, Lipton made up his own poem about a dragon named Puff, and typed it out on Yarrow’s typewriter.  When he went home, the poem remained on the typewriter.

Peter Yarrow joined Noel Paul Stookey and Mary Travers to form Peter, Paul and Mary in 1961.  Now, Peter had seen that poem on his typewriter a few years earlier.  He was impressed and modified it to make a song – the one we all know.

In 1962, Peter, Paul and Mary released two popular records, “Lemon Tree” and “If I Had a Hammer.”  They decided to start 1963 (a great year for them, with two hit albums and three Top 10 singles), by releasing “Puff” in January.  Before that happened, Peter did contact Leonard Lipton to tell him about the song, and to give him credit as its co-writer.  Consequently, Lipton has received half of the royalties ever since.

Leonard Lipton seems like an interesting guy.  He has published four books, has produced some 25 independent films and holds about 70 patents, many dealing with processes for 3D film making.  In an interview I read, he says he is not much of a Peter, Paul and May fan.  I assume he appreciates the royalties, nevertheless.

We are not here to talk about Leonard Lipton, though.  This is about Puff.  As I said earlier, everyone already knows the words to Puff, so the version chosen here for Song of the Week is an instrumental – a Hawaiian slack key guitar rendition.

As you know, the song tells us that Puff frolicked in a land called Honnah Lee.  I can’t tell you where to find that on a map, but on the North Shore of the island of Kauai there is a nice little town called Hanalei that sits right next to Hanalei Bay, near the mouth of the Hanalei River.  Cathy and I visited there last September, and it is beautiful.

While there, we attended a concert by a slack key guitar player named Doug McMaster, accompanied by his wife, Sandy, on ukulele.  During the concert’s intermission, we were looking at the McMasters’ CDs, and I noticed one titled In a Land Called Hanalei.  I remarked that this could be Puff’s real home.  Sandy overheard me and asked if I would like to hear Doug play “Puff.”  I said, “Sure.”

At the beginning of the second half of the concert, Sandy told a story about Doug sitting on the beach, playing for passing tourists and locals (and probably chickens since this was Kauai).  Among those listening was a girl about 8 or 9 years old, vacationing with her parents.  She asked Doug to play “Puff”; but he said it was not part of his repertoire.  The girl accepted that excuse and went off to enjoy the beach.  The next year, the same girl, a year older, was again on the North Shore with her family, and Doug was again playing on the beach.  She asked Doug if he had learned “Puff” yet.  He admitted he had not, but told her that if she would come back the next day, he would play it for her.  He worked out his arrangement at home that night, and kept his promise to the girl the very next day.

I wrote a little bit about Doug and Sandy in a comment to a post last year.  You can learn more about them, and purchase some of their excellent music, at their website, mcmasterslackkey.com.

I don’t have a video for this song.  Instead, here is the audio, with a picture of Hanalei Bay:

Hanalei Bay

 

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SONG OF THE WEEK – THE BALLAD OF HIGH NOON (DO NOT FORSAKE ME)

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High Noon (1952), a classic American Western movie, was one of the first films selected for preservation in the United States Film Registry by the Library of Congress.  It tells the story of Will Kane (Gary Cooper), who, as the long-time marshal of Hadleyville in the New Mexico Territory, had cleaned up what was once a wild and lawless town, making it a place where decent people could live and raise a family.  As the film opens, Kane has just married Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a pacifist Quaker, and has turned in his badge so he and Amy can start a new life keeping a store somewhere.

Just at that time, word comes that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a desperate outlaw Kane had brought to justice, had been released from prison on a “legal technicality,” and will arrive on the train in one hour intent on killing Kane for revenge.  Miller will not be alone, though.  His brother and two other members of his gang are already at the station awaiting the train.1

Initially, Kane listens to the pleas of his new wife and leaves town with her.  Before they get too far, though, Kane decides he must go back.  He argues that Miller will keep chasing him until he can seek revenge, and that the people of Hadleyville are in danger because the new marshal will not be in town and on the job until the next day.

Back in town, he begins asking the local citizens for assistance so they can present a united front against Miller and his henchmen.  No one will help him, though.  They all have some excuse:  I’m a coward.  You never came to our church service.  If you leave, Miller will go, too.  I wanted to be the new marshal, but you wouldn’t endorse me for the position.  Any altercation will be bad for the town’s image.  I’m just too old.

Amy is not supportive, either.  She tells Kane that if he does not leave with her immediately, she will leave without him, taking the same train out of town that is bringing Miller in.

Kane must decide what action to take in these most difficult circumstances.  He ultimately chooses to face all four of the outlaws alone.

The plot is pretty straightforward, everything happening in virtually real time over a period of little more than one hour.  The underlying themes of the film are much more complicated, however.

The screenplay was written by Carl Foreman, who had been a member of the Communist Party a decade or so earlier until he became disillusioned and quit.  While he was working on this screenplay, he was summoned before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Senate committee and the House Unamerican Activities Committee, was blacklisted by Hollywood and had to move to England in order to continue writing.  High Noon is seen by some as an allegory of the Communist witch hunt and a criticism of the establishment intellectuals who would not stand up for those who were being persecuted.

The film’s director, Fred Zinnemann, was a Polish Jew who had lived in Germany before immigrating to the United States in the 1930s.  Both of his parents lost their lives in the Holocaust.  With that background, the film is also seen as an allegory of those who were complicit in the violence of the Fascist regimes before and during World War II.

One of the most common adjectives used to describe the movie is “existential.”  Kane is clearly a human being caught up in an existential crisis.  It has been compared to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (or, I might add, the Firesign Theater’s Waiting for the Electrician).  The significant difference is that Godot and the electrician are never going to come.  For Kane, on the other hand, the clock is ticking down for Miller’s entrance.

I chose the theme song from this film as Song of the Week because there has been so much news lately about excessive use of force by police officers.  Within the past few days, two people here in Colorado have died while in police custody, a police officer in Ohio was indicted for murder because of an on-duty shooting, a great deal of attention has focused on a Black woman who died in Texas after being arrested for a minor offense – and the list could go on and on.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with a veteran police officer – an intelligent, brave, perceptive and respected gentleman I will simply call “Pat.”  This was back a few years when I was practicing law and Pat was involved in an Age Discrimination case.  He told me that as a police officer, he faced existential crises every day.  When he arrived at the scene of some incident, he told me, he realized that if he got out of his car he would more than likely have to fight with someone.  If he stayed in his car, he could wait for backup that would make his actions less risky, but could permit the difficult situation to which he had been called to get out of hand, possibly resulting in injury or death to one or more people.  Or, Pat said, he could simply drive away.

I don’t know enough about any of the situations that have recently been in the news to be able to say who is right or wrong.  Certainly, there are some police officers who overreact or are bullies or racists who should not be wearing a badge.  Other times, as Pat or Gary Cooper could tell us, tragedies can result when decent people face decisions that bring the meaning or value of life into question.

Returning to this week’s Song, the music for “The Ballad of High Noon” was written by Dmitri Tiomkin and the lyrics by Ned Washington.  It was an innovative song in several ways.  Before High Noon, it was unusual for Western movies to even have a theme song.  This was not only a good song but a narrative précis of the plot and characters – all in less than two and a half minutes.  It was also a theme, parts of which were repeated throughout the film, to aid in building suspense and moving the action to its exciting conclusion.

The most popular version of the song was done by Frankie Laine; but that was not the original version.  To make it a better popular song, the lyrics in Laine’s adaptation were changed slightly so that they did not refer directly to the characters of High Noon.  The original version from the soundtrack was performed by country music legend, and one of the original “singing cowboys,” Tex Ritter.  Here is how Tex sang the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5an9OuXKxBw

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