THOUGHTS ON WOODSTOCK

 

THOUGHTS ON WOODSTOCK

 

       I didn’t go, though one of my brothers did. There was no sense at the time of it having been an epochal event. I did go to the Highgate Grateful Dead concert, with my 15-year-old son; afterward, we did father and son reports on it for the Valley Voice in Middlebury, with Damon, aka The Cub Reporter, reviewing the music and me talking about the event generally. Wouldn’t trade that one.

 

       The Monterey Pop Festival, which preceded Woodstock, had better music. Rent the video, if only for Otis Redding and Ravi Shankar.

 

When you hear announcements of media retrospectives preceded by someone singing “I’m going up country, baby do you want to go,” remember that in the original, one of the more inaensitive of the old blues songs, the next words are “May take me a high brown, may take one or two more.” “High brown,” like “high yaller,” was code for a woman who had higher status among the black men at the time because she was only fractionally black and showed it in her skin color. Arguably, the lyrics were more of a political statement than anything about women, because it was as close as a black man could come at the time to singing, “I’m just as good as a white man, and I have a white woman who knows it.”

       There’s another blues song, “France Blues,” that edges even closer. It starts as a lament for the death of the singer’s beloved, then veers off, as blues lyrics often did, into other territory. Why the odd title? Because one verse says, “When I die, gonna go by Paris, France…Just want to give those girls a chance.” One of this country’s great milestones in civil rights, though you will never find this in high school history texts, came in World War One, when black soldiers on leave in Paris discovered that the white prostitutes not only didn’t reject them, but sometimes even sought them out. Was Woodstock as important historically as this?

 

       A mystery: I’ve heard supposed recordings of Country Joe and the Fish at Woodstock in which the “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” is proceeded by the “Fish Cheer.” Country Joe steps up to the microphone and yells “Give me an F!” and a hundred thousand minds instantly realize all that comes next, having been to all those high school games where the cheerleaders megaphoned “Give me a T! E! A! M! What’s that spell?” “Team!” “What’s that spell?” “Team!” “What’s that spell?” “Team!” “Go, team, go!” The recent versions continue with I-S-H, and it’s the Fish Cheer.

       But the first vinyl recordings told a different story. Country Joe’s next words are, “Give me a U!” and there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about the rest. “What’s that spell?” You don’t have to have been through the Sixties to imagine, but if you were part of those times, you know. And you realize that, with the media rules we have now, there is not the same freedom of speech. That’s what comes first, children, freedom of speech. Look it up: The Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio at the University of California at Berkeley, signaled the transition from civil rights to The Movement, which was only fractionally the anti-war movement.

       While I was in college, the great Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes came to the literary society, and afterward their magazine carried an interview. He said, in effect, “You have no idea what it is like to be responsible for telling the real history of your people, in your fiction, because the official versions are lies.” Ironically, he said that during an era which has since been distorted and demonized so as to blot and blur and block its insights and experiments and prototypes and deny them to future generations.

 

       When the first vinyl recording came out, I listened to get some idea of what I had missed. I reached the point where Sly and the Family Stone transition into a bass line worthy of Bach’s C Minor Passacaglia, and Sly starts singing “I want to take you higher!” and the crowd shouts back “Higher!” It wasn’t about drugs—well, yes, it was, but it was also about a lot more, of which the drugs were only symbols, and sometimes a gateway. I started crying, thinking to myself, “We gave up this in favor of spending the political capital from World War Two on someone else’s civil war.”

 

       Gone but not entirely, like something waiting to go viral again. I think of the TV ad for the Olympic Games whose soundtrack was Jimi Hendrix starting the National Anthem on his guitar, establishing his mastery in six notes while saying, “Something great is about to happen.”  And saying, in a way that only music could, “In spite of our differences, we are all Americans together.”

        

       

WHY STUDY ENGLISH?

WHY STUDY ENGLISH?

        This morning my wife said, “Yesterday I got two message at work saying  my email-box was full.” After I stopped laughing, she went on to describe some online incidents that were breathtakingly scary.

       After she did not click on either of those messages, later in the day she got one from the Middlebury College Help Desk saying her email address had been used to send spam—click here to find out more about it. She didn’t bite for that one, either. She has seen phishing scam artists produce nearly perfect imitations of supposedly official communications, such as one from the President and Fellows of Middlebury College.

       But—and here is the point—the English usage wasn’t right. Being the President’s receptionist, she knows how such a message would read, and this one smelled, well, phishy.

       So there you are, all you high school kids asking “Why do we have to read this novel?” and “Why is it important for us to know grammar?” (by which they usually mean usage) and so on. A true, deep, fluent knowledge of your native language may be the only barrier between escaping and falling victim to fraud. For you kids who have an advanced understanding of English already, it’s worth pointing out that you will have to evaluate people you meet hundreds, thousands of times in your life, and how they use spoken or written English will tell you worlds about where someone came from and where they’re going.

       If you happen to be a strong Christian believer, this does not exempt you from the task of weighing in the balance the people you encounter, in life or online. Go to the Old Testament and reread the story about using the word “shibboleth” as a way of detecting enemy infiltrators. Same difference when you get an email message saying “This job made just 4U!” or “your email address as indicated was drawn and attached with serial numbers xxxyyyzzzz” to make you a winner or…or go to Scambusters, which also has a section on Urban Legends. It will make you a believer, or it won’t.

       The day may come when subtleties of language use are one of the few remaining ways of determining whether or not your interlocutor is robotic.

       The few of you students with the potential to become contributors to the state and estate of your native or chosen language probably need no convincing. After all, why NOT hone one’s skills at using humanity’s most complex and powerful tool?

 

 

 

REMEMBERING MCNAMARA

REMEMBERING MCNAMARA

        The recent death of Robert McNamara, who was so influential in setting the course of the Vietnam War and regretted it so much so much later, reminded me of his appearance on my college campus in the fall of 1966. At that point I had still not made up my mind about favoring or opposing the war, partly because I had a student deferment, but mainly because I had been briefed on the subject by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So was everyone else at American Legion Boys Nation, thanks to the clout of the veterans’ organization. Not long ago, I bought a set of CDs about Vietnam that proved to be American propaganda films of the era: a peaceful democracy in the south of Vietnam had been invaded by the godless Communist North, and we were there to help those good people defend themselves. As at the Pentagon briefing, films showed the might of American power, especially air power. How could a primitive country like North Vietnam defeat us?

But some of my Harvard classmates—the most perceptive and thoughtful of them, not the slugs—were vehemently opposed to our position in the conflict. I was keeping my eyes and ears open, still trying to make up my mind, when McNamara’s visit was announced. I went to hear him and to see what would happen.

       A crowd surrounded his car as it went near  Quincy House, one of the places where upperclassmen lived and ate and socialiazed.  Protestors blocked his progress, with some yelling “Down in front!”  and others immediately sitting in front of the car with a speed that showed how much the antiwar movement owed to prior experience in the civil rights movement (a connection I have yet to see adequately explored). To his credit, at one point McNamara climbed on top of his car and did his best to conduct a dialogue with the protestors, but the concerns went deeper than any discussion could have addressed.

       From the windows of the multistory building, students had hung sheets painted with slogans, so that the façade had become a gigantic poster. “Stop the War,” “Peace Now,” and so on were the most common, but off in one corner, some irrepressible wag had hung out a sheet saying, with true Harvard skeptical wit, “Black Day for Gordon Linen.”

       The films “Inside North Vietname” and “In the Year of the Pig,” finally swung me to the antiwar side, especially the latter. Independent, financially independent filmmaker Emile de Antonio ferreted out, through interviews, that the Gulf of Tonkin incident upon which American intervention was based had been a complete fabrication—among many other perceptive observations. For anyone wishing to gather a comprehensive view of the domestic front during the Vietnam War, I cannot recommend this film too highly.

       But for me, the turning point came on April 15, 1967, in New York City, during the protest march to the United Nations headquarters called by its organizers “The Bread is Rising.”

       I rode a bus down and joined the marchers, not to protest but to observe. On one side I saw thoughtful, caring people exercising their rights to assembly and free speech; lining both side of the street, I saw the face of Homicidal America, red-faced, screaming obscenities, ready to rush into the street and attack had not the police been there to intervene.

       Back on campus, I told friends, “I may not know all the arguments, but now I know which side I’m on.”

       One more memory: in one of the bookstores around Harvard Square, I believe in 1968, I saw a Folkways record “Vietnam Will Win,” and bought it. The title came from the material: songs from North Vietnam, gathered during the war. It’s still available, through Smithsonian Folkways.

       I expected Communistic marching songs and patriotic anthems, but found instead folk music. A few expressed determination to fight, in a way that presages the later Vietnamese victory (does anyone know what “Eh-way tah! Eh-way tah!” means?)

       But the track that stuck in my mind was a slow, melancholy song that seemed to express how much had been lost, not how much could be won. Even now, a half century, later, the strangeness of the paradox continues: the song that brings back to me that era most strongly is a Vietnamese lament, whose words I do not know, but which I do not need to know.

 

 

LES PAUL

LES PAUL

        Paul gone up to Peter, dead at 94, living on as the man who gave the world electric guitar, He starred in one of the cleverest ads I’ve seen on TV. A teen band wannabe is in an instrument store, trying out an electric guitar. An old guy who happens to be there says, “Could I look at that?” “Sure,” says the kid, and hands it over. The oldster’s fingers go flying up and down the neck as he delivers an astonishing improvised riff, then he hands the guitar back.

       “Wow!” says the kid. “Who are you?”

       Paul says quietly, “The name is on your guitar.”

       Farewell, sweet prince, flights of air guitarists sing thee to thy rest. Up there jamming with Jimi, Janis and Jesus—or maybe discussing with Dharma Raja how to transfer that digital dexterity to some unborn kid who is destined to be a famous surgeon---or maybe even finally persuading crusty old Ecclesiastes that there really can be something new under the sun.

WRAPPING UP JULY

WRAPPING UP JULY

 

     Sorting papers, I found one of Time magazine's pages of quotations, from the April 20, 2009 issue. Among the newsmakers quoted was Gov. Mark Sanford, who had just rejected $700 million in federal stimulus money for South Carolina. He said at the time, "I think the fatal flaw of a lot of people in politics is that they want to be loved."

     You want to tell these men to keep it in their pants. The trouble is, at the times when such advice would matter most, they aren't wearing any.

 

 

     If every little step counts toward reversing global warming, we must include the boys who discover it is possible to ignite their own gaseous expulsions.

 

 

     There is no such thing as love. Love is an active verb.

 

 

     All peaches are freestone if you wait long enough.

 

 

     (advice to young poets) One small tells all.

  

 

     Midnight July 13-14, getting ready for bed, impulse to step outside and see what's happening. No rain on the concrete steps, rain starting to fall. How many times, how many times, this has happened. I used to walk past the woodstove and know without looking inside if there was a flame; now, in a different house, something inside, inside me inside the house, knows when rain has begun outdoors.     

 

 

     Potluck dinners make potgut diners.

 

 

     The Miskito natives of Guatemala's Atlantic Coast, the so-called Mosquito Coast, have declared themselves to be The Communitarian Nation of Miskitia. I think we're part of it.

 

 

     The latest polls show more people strongly opposed to proposed changes in the health care system than strongly in favor. For the sake of science, I'd like to see that correlated with scores on a simple test of factual knowledge about what's proposed. Over the radio, I've heard repeatedly the voices of fearful, misinformed people saying they don't want "a government-run health care system" interfering with their relationship with their personal physician. Northing of the sort is proposed. Run by rule-minded bureaucrats who care more about their jobs than the people they're supposed to be serving? To hear the horror stories about refused payments for essential care and the denial of broadly defined "pre-existing conditions," that's the definition of a private health ins insurance company. How can medical conditions not be related to pre-existing conditions when the body and mind form a single, interactive system? The very term is bad science-and bad policy.

I'm afraid much of this ignorance is due to knowingly false disinformation repeated ad nauseum by right-wing Republicans. The Quakers have a rule of peacemaking to which I'll no doubt refer again: Be able to state your opponents' position in a way that THEY consider acceptably accurate.

 

OCHLOCRACY

OCHLOCRACY

        As a citizen of a state whose town meeting tradition is often cited as one of the nation’s best examples of true democracy, I protest here the use of the term “town meeting” to describe recent meetings in which opponents of health care reform have shouted down the Congressional representatives who organized the forums. Jerry-Springer-style verbal brawls are not town meetings. For that matter, forums in which two people give speeches followed by a question-and-answer period are not town meetings. 

       A town meeting has an agenda (known in Vermont as the warning), ends in voting on the warned articles, and is run by a neutral person, elected to that office, called in Vermont the Moderator. Any Vermont Moderator who saw the meeting breaking into rude, obstructive, or disorderly conduct would order the people involved to keep quiet, and if they did not, would have them removed. Time to get down to business.

Interruption, loud voices and personal accusations may be the rule on some TV shows—I can’t say which because I don’t have TV service now (I’m showing my age by citing Jerry Springer)—but there is no place in representative democracy for such  behavior when important questions of policy are at issue. The same people who urge respect for the Flag, the National Anthem, and the Pledge of Allegiance should be all over such troublemakers, because their actions strike at the root of our political system. Those who say the President deserves respect because he or she occupies a high office regardless of his or her personal shortcomings should remind themselves that there are three co-equal branches of the United States government, and disrespect to a Representative or Senator should equally be rejected.

       Going back to high school history or civics class, there was a strenuous debate at the formation of this country whether democracy would amount to mob rule. The decision of the sainted Founding Fathers was that pure democracy was too risky, that the people could elect the people who would vote on proposals but could not make those decisions themselves. Recently, we have seen what happens in a state where the people can govern by referendum: California is bankrupt, and so is the concept.

       Let me expand your vocabulary by one word, if you do not already know it: ochlocracy. It is the term in the same family as democracy, autocracy, oligarchy, meritocracy, kleptocracy, etc. that means mob rule. Ask yourself whether those highly publicized “town meeting” confrontations around the country were democracy, or whether the word I am commending to your attention here might describe them better.

WRAPPING UP JULY

WRAPPING UP JULY

 

       Sorting papers, I found one of Time magazine’s pages of quotations, from the April 20, 2009 issue. Among the newsmakers quoted was Gov. Mark Sanford, who had just rejected $700 million in federal stimulus money for South Carolina. He said at the time, “I think the fatal flaw of a lot of people in politics is that they want to be loved.”

       You want to tell these men to keep it in their pants. The trouble is, at the times when such advice would matter most, they aren’t wearing any.

 

 

       If every little step counts toward reversing global warming, we must include the boys who discover it is possible to ignite their own gaseous expulsions.

 

 

       There is no such thing as love. Love is an active verb.

 

 

       All peaches are freestone if you wait long enough.

 

 

       (advice to young poets) One small tells all.

 

 

 

 

       Midnight July 13-14, getting ready for bed, impulse to step outside and see what’s happening. No rain on the concrete steps, rain starting to fall. How many times, how many times, this has happened. I used to walk past the woodstove and know without looking inside if there was a flame; now, in a different house, something inside, inside me inside the house, knows when rain has begun outdoors.       

 

 

       Potluck dinners make potgut diners.

 

 

       The Miskito natives of Guatemala’s Atlantic Coast, the so-called Mosquito Coast, have declared themselves to be The Communitarian Nation of Miskitia. I think we’re part of it.

 

 

       The latest polls show more people strongly opposed to proposed changes in the health care system than strongly in favor. For the sake of science, I’d like to see that correlated with scores on a simple test of factual knowledge about what’s proposed. Over the radio, I’ve heard repeatedly the voices of fearful, misinformed people saying they don’t want “a government-run health care system” interfering with their relationship with their personal physician. Northing of the sort is proposed. Run by rule-minded bureaucrats who care more about their jobs than the people they’re supposed to be serving? To hear the horror stories about refused payments for essential care and the denial of broadly defined “pre-existing conditions,” that’s the definition of a private health ins insurance company. How can medical conditions not be related to pre-existing conditions when the body and mind form a single, interactive system? The very term is bad science—and bad policy.

I’m afraid much of this ignorance is due to knowingly false disinformation repeated ad nauseum by right-wing Republicans. The Quakers have a rule of peacemaking to which I’ll no doubt refer again: Be able to state your opponents’ position in a way that THEY consider acceptably accurate.