Performed by Las Cafeteras in collaboration with The California Endowment, this video embodies our hopes for a brighter future, one which includes #HealthAndJustice4All.
This music video was recorded live in the hills of East LA, and is a remix of the classic folk song, “This Land is Your Land” by Woodie Guthrie.
“This Land is Your Land” Re-Imagined by Las Cafeteras
Lyrics
This Land is your Land
This Land is my Land
From California to the New York Island,
Todo Para Todos
Nada Pa’ Nosotros
This Land was made for You and Me
La Tierra es tuya
La Tierra es mia
Desde California … hasta Nueva York
Todo Para Todos
Nada Pa’ Nosotros
This Land was made for you and me
This Land (This Land)
This Land (Which Land?)
This land was made for you and me
As I was walking … I saw a sign there
And on that sign there … it said “NO CROSSING”
But on the other side … it said nothing
This Land was made for you and me
This Land (This Land)
This Land (Which Land?)
This Land was made for you and me
This Land (This Land)
This Land (Which Land?)
This Land was made for you and me
Mama Tierra
This Land was made or you and me
Todo Para Todos
This Land was made for you and me
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Grammy Award winning bluegrass band the Steep Canyon Rangers, well known for their work with Steve Martin, perform a special version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in honor of the song’s 200th anniversary.
The museum will “Raise It Up!” and celebrate the 200th anniversary by uniting the original manuscript with the flag at the Museum from June 14-July 6, 2014 and holding a special event at the museum on Flag Day (Saturday, June 14, 2014). Join the party: http://anthemforamerica.smithsonian.com/
Special thanks to the team at Wool and Tusk for their hard work and creativity: Scott Mele, Roger Pistole, Derek West, Joe Pisapia, David Bartin, Michael Freeman, Alexis Kaback, Daniel Walker, Jeff Rosen, Harvey Moltz, and Greg and Erin Whiteley.
Christopher Bill, a classically trained trombone player currently studying at the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music in New York City, plays a trombone loop version of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”. His sequencer software of choice is Ableton Live 9.
I can find no identifying information on the photo. It looks, to me, to have been taken in the 1950s, judging by Pete’s hair and no beard.
Pete Seeger at a typewriter, probably in the 1950s.
It’s an electric typewriter, I think, seeing a cord coming out of the back. Probably a Royal (I’m not great at identifying typewriters, you know). Was this taken at Pete’s home in Beacon? Perhaps.
Can you help in identifying the time and place of this photo?
“Pete Seeger and the Lion King,” at OzTypewriter – heckuva story about the original author of “Mbube,” which became “Wimoweh, which became “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and attempts to recover some of the royalties due the family of the composer, Solomon Linda
Somebody put a video collage of Pete together with Tish Hinojosa‘s cut off of a 1998 Pete Seeger tribute album, “Festival of Flowers,” just in the last few days.
Details:
From “Where Have All the Flowers Gone : The Songs of Pete Seeger” 1998
Tish Hinojosa – vocals
Marvin Dykhuis – gitarra de golpe (mariachi guitar)
Chip Dolan – accordion
Amy Ferris Tiven – violin
Glenn Kawamoto – bass
Paul Pearcy – drums
Tish Hinojosa’s voice constantly stuns me with its clarity; I think my first Tish album purchase is 20 years old now.
Pete Seeger at the Beacon Sloop Club in Beacon, N.Y., in 2010. Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times
I love the Andrew Sullivan photo the New York Times used — it reminds me of the best way to hear Pete, in the out-of-doors, near the Hudson, in the summer, with a small audience who could be coerced to sing along.
Pete was an alumnus of Camp Rising Sun (of the L. A. Jonas Foundation) near Rhinebeck, New York, from the very early days. In 1974, between concerts at large venues with Arlo Guthrie, and on his way back home to Beacon, Pete stopped and spent a day with us at the camp. He was , as always, wonderfully gracious, other than outward appearances indistinguishable from the 14- and 15-year boys in excitement to be having fun, exploring nature, and then leading us all in songs.
My unfinished master’s thesis was to explore Pete’s use of different rhetorical devices to get his messages across, and make them popular. (One of my everlasting regrets.)
But despite his down-home-everybody-welcome demeanor, Seeger drove great movements, and pushed the arcs of history in wonderful directions throughout his life.
Having learned from the Lomaxes at the Library of Congress, Pete recorded history in songs, preserving old tunes, making foreign tunes popular, and re-arranging verses here and there. Pete revealed, discovered, or pushed the music of a family domestic (“500 Miles”), Cuban revolutionary poets (“Guantanamera”), his engineer sister (“Going to be an Engineer”), and hymn books.
Pete taught a song to seminar attendees at the Highlands School in Kentucky, people who went on to do great things with that song. The song was “We Shall Overcome,” and photos show that those Pete taught to sing included both Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Blacklisted after refusing to give in to the civil liberties assault by the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Pete created a series of records to teach how to play a guitar, a banjo, and a twelve-string. One of the kids who learned some twelve-string licks included a guy who went on to play strings for the folk group, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and their new tenor, a guy named John Denver. Roger McGuinn electrified that twelve-string, and leading the Byrds, turned some of Pete’s songs into rock and roll hits — like “Turn, Turn, Turn.”
I asked Pete about getting him to Salt Lake City for a concert in the 1970s — he demurred, saying he needed to spend some time locally. He told a story about showing up at a PTA meeting in Beacon to talk on some issue, and some local guy told Pete that Beacon didn’t need outsiders telling them what to do. This hurt Pete, since he’d been living in Beacon at that time for more than 30 years, in the house he built by hand. Pete told me that he realized a world reputation doesn’t count for much if you can’t use it to make things better in your home town.The “local project?” He said he wanted to get an old sloop, and sail the Hudson River signing to get people to clean it up. At the time, the Hudson was very much a sewer from Albany to New York City. A short time later the Sloop Clearwater was refitted, and Pete started music festivals up and down the river. The Hudson, Pete’s local river, runs much cleaner today for his work.
I saw Pete and Arlo in concert at Wolf Trap, the performance park near Washington, D.C., a couple of times; and some other venues — but nothing ever beat that open air concert at Rising Sun.
Bruce Springsteen did us all a favor with his album of Seeger tunes; I chafed at Ronald Reagan’s choices of performers at his inaugurals, and at many other choices over the years. I often thought Pete Seeger’s music, and voice, would be a better choice. Springsteen’s pre-inauguration concert in 2008, from the Lincoln Memorial, had my full attention. The only thing more perfect, I told Kathryn, would be Pete singing his own tunes from those steps (I heard him tell the stories of King’s and Marian Anderson’s performances there more than once). Within a few minutes, Springsteen pulled Pete out onstage, and at the age of 90 he led the crowd singing Woody’s “This Land is Your Land.” A perfect capstone, I thought.
If you would, pull out your collection of Pete Seeger music today, and give it a spin. It will raise your spirits, I guarantee.
What wonderful gifts Pete left us!
So long, Pete, one of the best American citizens we’ll ever know.
First flight of the Wright Flyer I, December 17, 1903, Orville piloting, Wilbur running at wingtip. Photo from Wikipedia
On December 18, Damon Runyon, Jr., got Eddie Rickenbacker to fly over Broadway to scatter the ashes of his father, Damon Runyon.
First Lieutenant E. V. [Eddie] Rickenbacker, 94th Aero Squadron, American ace, standing up in his Spad plane. Near Rembercourt, France. Photo from Wikipedia. This photo dates near World War I; Rickenbacker remained a hero for a couple of decades. In 1946, he flew a DC-3 over New York City, and illegally scattered the ashes of raconteur Damon Runyon over his beloved Broadwary.
Not exactly the next day. 43 years and one day apart. The Wrights first flew in 1903; Runyon died in 1946.
On this day in 1946 Damon Runyon’s ashes were scattered over Broadway by his son, in a plane flown by Eddie Rickenbacker. Runyon was born in Manhattan, Kansas; he arrived at the bigger apple at the age of thirty, to be a sportswriter and to try out at Mindy’s and the Stork Club and any betting window available his crap-shoot worldview: “All of life is six to five against.” Broadway became his special beat, and in story collections like Guys and Dolls he developed the colorful characters — Harry the Horse, the Lemon Drop Kid, Last Card Louie — and the gangster patois that would swept America throughout the thirties and forties.
A lot of history packed in there. Runyon’s early reportorial career included a lot of that history — he wrote the lead story for United Press on the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt, for one example. Runyon found a uniquely American vein of literary ore on Broadway in New York City, and in the ne’er-do-wells, swells, tarts and reformers who flocked to the City that Never Sleeps to seek fame, or fortune, or swindle that fortune from someone else.
As a reporter and essayist, he smoked a lot. Throat cancer robbed him of his voice, then his life at 56.
Yes, of course, “Guys and Dolls.” Frank Loesser created it, but not of whole cloth, but from the stories of Damon Runyon; it is a masterpiece, perhaps in several realms. In homage to Runyon, Adam Gopnik wrote:
Just as Chandler fans must be grateful for Bogart, Runyon fans have to be perpetually happy that the pure idea of Runyon, almost independent of his actual writings, produced the best of all New York musicals: Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls,” which made its début in 1950 and is just now reopening on Broadway in a lavish and energetic new production. But then “Guys and Dolls” is so good that it can triumph over amateur players and high-school longueurs and could probably be a hit put on by a company of trained dolphins in checked suits with a chorus of girl penguins.
Your author here, Dear Reader, was once one of those trained dolphins. It was magnificent.
“Silver Bells,” from “The Lemon Drop Kid,” with William Frawley, Virginia Maxwell and Bob Hope (1951 version):
U.S.S. Reuben James (DD-245) on the Hudson River in April 1939, over two years before she was sunk in the Battle of the Atlantic. Photo from the Ted Stone Collection, Marines Museum, Newport News, Virginia, via Wikipedia
It was a tragedy in 1941, but before the U.S. could develop a serious policy response to Germany’s action, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Within a week after that, our policy towards Germany was set by Germany’s declaration of war on the U.S.
It’s important history for a couple of reasons.
The sinking was part of the massive, years-long Battle of the Atlantic, which the Allies won only by building ships faster than Germany could sink them. Had the Allies lost this battle, the war would have been lost, too.
While the USS Reuben James was a Navy destroyer, the key weapons of the Battle of the Atlantic were Merchant Marine cargo ships, carrying goods and arms to Britain and other Allied nations. “Civilians” played a huge role in World War II, supplying the soldiers, armies, navies and air forces.
Recently, politicians took to making claims that the U.S. declared war on Germany without any hostile action having passed between them, without Germany having perpetrated any hostilities toward the U.S. Look at the dates, it’s not so.
Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the event, giving us a touchstone to remember.
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub covered the event with longer, detailed articles in past years, including these, which you should see especially if you are a student in a history class or a teacher of one:
Europe has changed. The world has changed. The U.S. has changed. War has changed. We should remember, especially those people who died defending the merchants who defended the idea of the Four Freedoms.
I understand there’s a platform hiding beneath the water. When my grandfather, Leo Barrett Stewart, Sr., was a child, about ten miles south of where this film was shot, he said one could paddle a boat out to the middle of Utah Lake, and see the bottom, picking the trout one wished to fish for. That was before the invasive carp was introduced.
It would be wonderful to see Utah Lake restored to the point that you could see the platform holding the piano.
Filming and credit details from devinsupertramp below the fold.
“By Dawn’s Early Light”: Francis Scott Key beholding the still-flying Star-spangled Banner, after the Battle of Baltimore, 1814. 1912 painting by Edgar Percy Moran, Wikipedia image.
CBS News video: Star-Spangled Banner flies again at Fort McHenry – Applying the same techniques used nearly two hundred years ago, a team of quilters created an exact replica of the flag that flew over Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, the same flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen our national anthem. Charles Osgood reports.
This is history that most of my juniors didn’t know. It’s not history we’re supposed to teach, but it’s history they are accountable for on Texas tests. A short video like this one at a key spot can boost scores on the state tests — and, though I’ve not been victimized by them yet, the new end-of-course tests probably assume juniors know this stuff, too.
I hope CBS keeps this piece available for history teachers, especially through 2014 and the 200th anniversary of the battle, and Key’s writing of the poem.
Aerial view of Fort McHenry, at the mouth of Baltimore Harbor, clearly show the star design that made it more defensible from ground attack. During the Battle of Baltimore, British troops were not able to land and get close to the fort. Image from the office of the Governor of Maryland, via the National Park Service
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
But I keep running into people who don’t know about these groups.
I got the schedule for the coming year from the Orchestra of New Spain — you really should go see them, and listen. They’re good, and these events are fun.
Dear friends and subscribers,
The 2013-14 Season of the Orchestra of New Spain begins on October 10 in the City Performance Hall, Dallas Arts District. The season brochure is on its way and will arrive in your mailbox in a few days. While awaiting it’s arrival please peruse our offerings below, or in more detail at:
Thanks to all of you who are already subscribers. If you haven’t made your move you may consider this prime time to subscribe, and enjoy premium seating, even assured seating for some of our intimate events.
To subscribe, or renew your subscription, please visit us online, mail a check, or call the office.
And NOW, the
25th Season of the Orchestra of New Spain
Thur, Oct 10, 8 pm, City Performance Hall
Latino-Barroco Fusion Ensemble
Fri, Nov 8, 6:30 pm, North Dallas Homeof Margo & Jim Keyes
Home and Garden concert
Fri, Nov 22, 7 pm, Christ the King Catholic Church, Preston & Colgate
Requiem for a lost leader
Sun, Dec15, 5 pm, Christ the King Catholic Church, Preston & Colgate
Fri, Feb 14 & Sat, Feb 15, 7:30 pm, City Performance Hall
The Rise of Flamenco: Lorca, Falla, Sorolla
Sat, Mar 29, 7pm, Zion Lutheran Church, Lovers Lane
Villa y Corte – Town and Court
Thur, May 15, 6:30, place TBA
Home and Garden concert
(If you have not received our brochure in the past or suspect you are not on our snail mail list, please request you brochure by mail the moment you read this, and before they are mailed next week!)
From Pete Seeger’s 90th Birthday Concert (Clearwater Concert), Madison Square Garden, 5/3/09. Featuring Billy Bragg, Mike & Ruthy Merenda, Dar Williams, New York City Labor Chorus.
Composer Aaron Copland at his typewriter in California; Aaron Copland Collection, Library of Congress, circa 1939 or 1940. The photos is placed as either San Diego or Palm Springs; I’m leaning towards Palm Springs with those mountains. Anyone know?
Oddly, the Library of Congress photo site is down for the weekend; here’s an image that shows what the photo should look like. Links should work again come Monday.
Details for scholars and history buffs:
ITEM TITLE
Aaron Copland at typewriter, Palm Springs or San Diego, 1939-1940.
SOURCE
Collection:Aaron Copland Collection; Music Division, Library of Congress
Box/Folder:472/1
Original format:1 print: b&w; 2.5 x 2.5 in.
DIGITAL ID
copland phot0077
I don’t think this photo is under any copyright, but the collection contains this general language:
Photographs – used by permission of The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., 254 West 31st Street, 15th floor, New York, NY 10001, phone 461-6956, fax (212) 810-4567. The Fund’s permission is limited to the right to reproduce the image of Aaron Copland. All rights to use individual photographs are controlled by the respective owners of the copyrights in those photographs. For those listed as unidentified, we invite users to contact us with any information they may have with regard to those items.
Is it odd to find a composer working at a typewriter, and not a piano? Especially before 1990, music writers had much occasion to use the machines — for lyrics, for descriptions of their music and how the published version should look, and for correspondence — and, baby, do composers have correspondence! The brand on this machine I have not been able to determine; it’s a portable, I imagine, looking at the case to Copland’s left — the typewriter case.
Was Copland a hunt-and-peck typer? Looks like to me from this photo.
Did you notice the U.S. flag on the pole on the other side of the house?
I wonder what he was working on, in California, at that time.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by Congress on August 7, 1964, as presented to President Lyndon Johnson, and signed by him on August 10. This is the document that authorized U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Image from the National Archives, Our Documents display.
The resolution passed Congress after what appeared to be attacks on two U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. At the time, and now, evidence is weak that such attacks took place.
Quick summary from the National Archives:
On August 4, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced that two days earlier, U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by the North Vietnamese. Johnson dispatched U.S. planes against the attackers and asked Congress to pass a resolution to support his actions. The joint resolution “to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia” passed on August 7, with only two Senators (Wayne Morse and Ernest Gruening) dissenting, and became the subject of great political controversy in the course of the undeclared war that followed.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution stated that “Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repeal any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent any further aggression.” As a result, President Johnson, and later President Nixon, relied on the resolution as the legal basis for their military policies in Vietnam.
As public resistance to the war heightened, the resolution was repealed by Congress in January 1971.
Santayana’s ghost looks on in wonder.
Map of divided Vietnam, during the Vietnam War. History Place map via Mr. Roache’s Place
Considering its powerful effect on American history, the document is very, very brief. Here’s the text [links added]:
Eighty-eighth Congress of the United States of America
AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the seventh day of January, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four
Joint Resolution
To promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.
Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United Stated naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and
Whereas these attackers are part of deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and
Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protest their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these people should be left in peace to work out their destinies in their own way: Now, therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.
Map showing ship movements reported during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, on August 4, 1964; reports that North Vietnamese gunboats attacked and engaged two patrolling U.S. Navy ships pushed Congress to authorize President Johnson to take extensive defensive actions. (image from Echo Two Seven Tooter, replaced with Wikipedia map 8/2017)
Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.
Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress.
[endorsements]
And on that authority, “Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression,” the U.S. spent the next 11 years in all-out warfare in Vietnam, with up to 500,000 military troops in the conflict, and losing the lives of more than 58,000 men and women.
U.S. engagement in Vietnam continued well after the repeal of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1971. In 1973 a peace treaty was signed between the U.S., North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The provisions of the treaty did not hold; a final North Vietnamese military push in April 1975 crumpled the South Vietnamese government and army. The few remaining U.S. forces made an emergency withdrawal as Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon. Vietnam was reunited by force, under a communist government.
Attacks on the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy — if they occurred — took place early on August 4. President Johnson might be excused for having done nothing on the issue at the time. That was the same day that the bodies of three civil rights workers were discovered by the FBI, murdered by a pro-segregation mob with clear ties to the local Ku Klux Klan. Either event, the Gulf of Tonkin, or the Mississippi civil rights murders, could be a major event in any presidency, testing to the utmost the leadership and peace-making abilities of a president. Johnson dealt with both events at the same time.
On a commission from the Dallas Symphony, composer Stephen Stucky composed a piece during the Lyndon Johnson Centennial in 2008; Kathryn and I heard the world premiere of August 4, 1964, on September 18, 2008. Stucky’s piece (with libretto by Gene Scheer) is the only place I know where anyone has seriously considered the nexus between these two, opposite-side-of-the-world tragedies, and how they set the stage for the rest of the 1960s decade. The piece has been recorded by the Dallas Symphony. I highly recommend it.
Here’s a video from the Dallas Symphony on the piece:
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
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