Great Books Are Essential

I wrote this entry in December 2012 and kept it as an unfinished draft until today. My thoughts and feelings about the importance of including the great works of the great authors, even if we have to read Faust in translation, have not changed. If anything, I value literature more as time goes by, and I see the strength it has given me to draw on through times of sorrow and challenge and sickness as I near my own back pages.

The Telegraph's story  December 7, 2012

The UK's Telegraph is reporting that there is to be a major change in the curricula of American schools. Books like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird are to be replaced by nonfiction books that will help prepare students for jobs. The Telegraph reports that at least 70% of the reading material must be nonfiction greats such as a manual for installing insulation or an inventory of plants. Apparently Great Books are now reserved for the 1%, the 99% being worker bees who don't need to clutter their heads with Miss Havisham or the great Achilles or Oedipus Rex or Don Quixote or a hundred thousand others, not all of which I've gotten to myself because there are so many. And the biggest shock of all to me is that this plan is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I learned to understand mortality from Homer's Iliad. I saw for a brief moment of flashing insight what immortality stole from the Greek gods. They squandered time on their feuds, their petty jealousies, but it didn't matter. No one was going to die. They could always make up tomorrow. But for us time is precious, people are precious, because we are mortal. I learned about the code of honor, the sacred respect for a body whose soul has passed and what a crime desecration is. I learned from Achilles the danger of unrestrained anger. I came away from Homer actually glad to be mortal. I am blessed to be mortal because I can love in a way that the Greek gods never could. And I need to appreciate the people in my life because all things must pass.

In the late 1970's I taught King Lear to a class of high school seniors who cried over how Lear was treated by his children. I was so touched that the young people felt such compassion for old Lear despite his foolishness and mistakes. There is much about madness and betrayal, but there is also the true and pure love that Cordelia feels for her father, the King. And more, always more.

These texts makes us fully human. The enhance our humanity, bring it to maturity. They teach us how others have faced the problems we face so that we know we can live through whatever we are going through. They imbue us with hope, wisdom, courage, morality, love.

And like To Kill a Mockingbird, they teach us about justice and injustice, about what other people feel, people whose shoes we will never be able to walk in, like the poor black man wrongly charged with raping a white woman and like Boo Radley, one of life's different ones. I loved Scout, her spirit, her courage, her intelligence, her gentleness. And Atticus, oh wouldn't we all want to have his courage?

And they want to replace all this with insulation manuals and plant taxonomies? And Bill and Melinda Gates are in on this. God help us all.

Making fun of my own flaws Part I

I have a lovely friend on Twitter who is a New York Times best-selling author and a very sweet person. On Thursday, the 6th, she posed this question to anybody and everybody:

"How do you confess a terrible mistake? Do you get straight to the point, or go round and round what you want to say?"


My answer:

"I do both repeatedly until they block me, literally and metaphorically, and it cannot be repaired."

I do not think I have been doing this very long. I think this is a brand new weed in the garden. There is nothing to do but pull it out by the roots right now.

Making fun of my own flaws Part II

Monty Python's I'm So Worried

I'm So Worried, Lyrics by Terry Jones

I'm so worried about what's happenin' today, in the middle east, you know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about the fashions today, I don't think they're good for your feet.
And I'm so worried about the shows on TV that sometimes they want to repeat.

I'm so worried about what's happenin' today, you know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about my hair falling out and the state of the world today.
And I'm so worried about bein' so full of doubt about everything, anyway.

I'm so worried about modern technology.
I'm so worried about all the things that they dump in the sea.
I'm so worried about it, worried about it, worried, worried, worried.

I'm so worried about everything that can go wrong.
I'm so worried about whether people like this song.
I'm so worried about this very next verse, it isn't the best that I've got.
And I'm so worried about whether I should go on, or whether I should just stop.

(pause)

I'm worried about whether I ought to have stopped.
And I'm worried, because it's the sort of thing I ought to know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

(longer pause)

I'm so worried about whether I should have stopped then.
I'm so worried that I'm driving everyone 'round the bend.
I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." Bob Marley

After Winter by Sterling Allen Brown

In honor of Black History, I offer a poem by my most beloved African-American poet, Sterling Allen Brown, called After Winter. I love Brown so much because of his reverence for folk life and authentic language despite his privileged upbringing and education at Williams College and Harvard. He taught the first course in Afro-American literature in the United States in the English Department at Howard University in Washington, DC, where Toni Morrison was among his students. The greatest privilege of my life was my time teaching in that department at that esteemed and wonderful university.

After Winter

He snug­gles his fin­gers
In the blacker loam
The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.

His eyes are set
On a brushwood-fire
But his heart is soar­ing
Higher and higher.

Though he stands ragged
An old scare­crow,
This is the way
His swift thoughts go,

“But­ter beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn fo’Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

“Radishes and let­tuce
Egg­plants and beets
Turnips fo’ de win­ter
An’ can­died sweets.

“Home­spun tobacco
Apples in de bin
Fo’ smok­ing’ an’ fo’ cider
When de folks draps in.”

He thinks with the win­ter
His trou­bles are gone;
Ten acres unplanted
To raise dreams on.

The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.
His hopes, win­ter wan­der­ers,
Has­ten home.

“But­ter­beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn for Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

Thank you God for poetry.

Bob Dylan broke my heart

My friend L. is an attorney who grew up in Greensboro. She's now retired, living on a lake outside of New York, where she had practiced. It was she who explained to me the why of Bob Dylan's appearances in TV commercials when I was distraught over his Super Bowl commercial Sunday. This participation, which is a horror to me, began 10 years ago when he let Victoria's Secret use a song and his image for a spot on American Idol. I never saw it because I never once watched American Idol. I don't apologize for that. I'm bragging about it. And he's dabbled in selling himself for other product commercials since then.

But there is something vastly different about Super Bowl commercials from all other commercials. That is not dabbling. That is the Big Time for commercials. I was broken-hearted by Dylan's Super Bowl ad, whether you interpret it as urging us to Buy American or Buy Chrysler or Keep Outsourcing. I saw countless articles about his fall from "counterculture hero" to what I would call a carnival barker. Why? He can't need the money that badly. Was he always a fraud or did he just finally sell out? I guess I feel as some did when he first went electric, but I won't tear anything up. I just dedicated "Positively 4th Street" to him."

L. says it's all best explained by the song for which he won the Academy Award in 2001 from the film "Wonder Boys:" 

"I used to care, but things have changed."

That 'bout says it.

Ya know, it's a damn fine song.

Good movie, too.







Lyrics:

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m in love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

Copyright © 1999 by Special Rider Music

Robert Plant in Tears at Kennedy Center Honors, 2012

Ann and Nancy Wilson, Heart, do what everyone thought could not be done. They did an excellent job performing "Stairway to Heaven" when the Kennedy Center Honors paid tribute to Led Zeppelin in late 2012. The Washington Post commented that at the after-party, the "grizzled Englishmen were the friendliest rock gods the event has seen in years." The website antimusic.com noted that Robert Plant was "humbled" by the honors.

Watch his face. Watch his eyes. Watch his hand at his face. At the same time, Jimmy Page seems totally happy and content, and John Paul Jones is smiling.

The choir in the black bowler hats is quite marvelous, and Ann Wilson succeeds.

Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger 1919-2014

I chose this photo of a very old Pete Seeger, who died during the night last night, for a reason: it reveals the absolute beauty of age. The smile in his eyes, the happiness in his eyes, is captured by the camera just as clearly as the smile on his lips. He was a handsome young man, but this is true beauty.

My writing about the great and indispensable Pete Seeger will have to wait. I feel his loss too greatly to write now. God bless him. God bless and comfort the family and friends he's left behind. But he will never really leave us in such an important way. The legacy he leaves is tremendous, important, staggering!

There's a big folk festival going on in the skies tonight with Pete, Woody, Doc Watson, Merle, Mary Travers, and so many others. It's making pieces of the ceiling fall down here like snow, (it is snowing here) they are having such a party. Play it, folks. We are listening. Much love.

Pete Seeger before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee
1952

Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger and Doc Watson

You got to walk that lonesome valley

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen

This Land is Your Land

Pete Seeger and grandson at Wolftrap

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

Pete Seeger and the Weavers

Goodnight Irene

(around 1950)