August 14 carries a lot of weight in history, doesn’t it? Just learned of this August 14, 1951 event:
Most guitar aficionados recognize this icon of rock and roll — the FenderTelecaster. In these drawings on the August 14, 1951, patent grant, it was just a “guitar.”
Take a look at page 2 of the patent: Gretsch? What other names do you recognize?
One of my ex-brothers-in-law was Fender’s tax guy, but years later. I was never successful in dropping the hint that Fender’s tax attorney’s brother-in-law might be real grateful if, you know, a sample or a second might find its way to the tax attorney’s office, and then to the brother-in-law’s home and amplifier . . .
Waiting for the bats in Austin, and I looked up to find I was on Willie Nelson Boulevard!
A star on the sidewalk in Hollywood is nice, I suppose. But how many recording or film artists get streets named after them in the capital city of their home state?
And, can you list that as a good reference on your sentencing report on a possession charge?
Part of Second Street will now bear the honorary name Willie Nelson Boulevard.
The City Council approved the change this morning as a tribute to the singer, who has lived in the Austin area nearly 40 years and sold more than 50 million records.
The city will install Willie Nelson Boulevard signs this summer at every block along Second Street from Trinity Street to San Antonio Street. The formal name, mailing addresses and street signs for Second Street will stay the same, but residents and businesses along the street will be able to receive mail using the Willie Nelson Boulevard address, said Mayor Lee Leffingwell, who proposed the idea.
A nonprofit group, Capital Area Statues, is raising money to put a full-size statue of Nelson on Second Street, in front of the new Austin City Limits studio. That nonprofit commissioned the sculpture and unveiled a smaller version of it earlier this month.
Then there are those happy masses who know him for his historical work, recovering the works of Johann Sebastian Bach’s final and most wayward child, P. D. Q. Bach.
Tip of the old bathtub-hardened conductor’s baton to Eric Koenig.
This is mostly an encore post. It was scheduled to run on time, not sure why it didn’t — problems of being on the road, you know.
Woody Guthrie singing, Smithsonian Folkways image – The sticker on Woody’s guitar reads, “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Woody regarded music as a great tool of democracy and freedom.
July 14, 2012, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie, folksinger, union organizer, chronicler of American values, troubles and change.
We’re already more than halfway through Woody’s centennial year — and what celebration took place at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub? History slips by so fast.
Much celebration remains. Get out your calendar and figure out which events you can join in.
Poster for the 2012 Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Okemah, Oklahoma
How is Pete Seeger doing? He just turned — what? — 93; will he be able to make many of these events? (Book signing in New York, July 18 . . .) (Let’s start the Pete Seeger Centennial a few years early, maybe — like now . . .)
“Anybody who can’t keep his enemies in his head has too many enemies.”
Richard Nixon, had he acknowledged the sentiment, probably could have devised a way to pare his list not exactly in keeping with Gerald Ford’s good-guy intentions. More than one way to pare a list, if you know what I mean.
My mind wandered off to enemies lists when I discovered this week that one of our former administrators had actually kept lists of teachers — and probably other support people — and threatened more than one with “placement on the list.”
What school of school leadership taught that? The Monty Python School of How KnNot to Do It?
1919 D’Oyly Carte Opera Company publicity poster for The Mikado, featuring the character of the Lord High Executioner. Illustration by J. Hassal.
The only appropriate response when learning of such a list is to ask, “Who appointed you Lord High Executioner?”
Do you disagree? Lists of enemies do not denote the great leader. They denote someone who either saw “The Mikado” and missed all the jokes, or didn’t bother to see the thing at all. Who can follow someone who doesn’t know the jokes from “Mikado,” and consequently, falling victim to the trap warned of by Santayana’s Ghost, falls right into the trap?
It’s silly. It’s lampooned well enough in Gilbert and Sullivan‘s masterpiece of bureaucracy farce that any leader, even a Modern Major General, would know better than to do it.
Notice I did NOT say, “know better than to let it be known that the list existed.” I said “know better than to do it.
What’s that? You are unfamiliar with the song of which I speak? Here, watch Opera Australia show how it’s done (at least, how it’s done Down Under where there are, unbelievable as it may be, climate denialists and people who are obnoxious about Facebook and Twitter):
Mitchell Butel of Avenue Q fame sings “I’ve Got a Little List” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. This excerpt is from the cinema/DVD recording of Opera Australia’s 2011 production at the Arts Centre, Melbourne.
Lyrics:
As someday it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list. I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed, who never would be missed.
There’s the idiot denouncing with enthusiastic tone
All football teams but his and every suburb but his own.
The man who sits beside you on the plane and wants to talk,
Whose jabbering inspires you to jab him with your fork.
Your aunty with the moustache who insists on being kissed.
They’d none of them be missed, they’d none of them be missed.
(He’s got them on the list! He’s got them on the list!
And they’d none of them be missed! They’d none of them be missed!)
Those whinging letter writers and those pundits in the press.
That opinion columnist, that bore would not be missed.
That trendy thing in opera if the plot seems like a mess,
That nice surtitlist!
(Surtitles: ‘This song is not on my list. Normal transmission will resume shortly’)
The politician prancing round in speedos tightly packed,
He thought it cool but really it just showed us what he lacked.
And Canberra’s leading red-head who’s afraid of stickybeaks,
Who’d like to keep her fumbles and mistakes off Wikileaks.
Australian Idol singers who pathetically persiiiiiiiiiist.
They’d none of them be missed. They’d none of them be missed.
(He’s got them on the list! He’s got them on the list!
And they’d none of them be missed! They’d none of them be missed!)
And the purists who insist piano music stops at Brahms,
I’ll put them on the list, and make them sit through Liszt.
On Saturday night the mob at Flinder’s Street all singing psalms,
I wish they would desist, and their happy claps resist.
That music theatre sequel that they promised would be good,
“Love never dies” they say, but I confess I wish it would.
That Frenchman and the other one who judge My Kitchen Rules,
Who give new definition to the label ‘Kitchen Tools’.
That morning television host who’s funny as a cyst,
Gold Logies he has kissed, but it’s time to kiss my fist.
(He’s got them on the list! He’s got them on the list!
And they’d none of them be missed! They’d none of them be missed!)
Then the merchant banker wankers and the bonuses they flout,
And the subprimortgagist, I’ve got him on the list!
The governments like lapdogs rushing in to bail them out,
To their mills it’s simply grist, so I’ve got them on the list.
Retirees who migrate to the country to make wine,
And Britney Spears for accidentally showing her ‘vagine’.
Those climate change deniers who don’t like the carbon tax,
Who haven’t read the science and don’t really know the facts.
The women on the tram who at Spring Carnaval got pi– really drunk!
Narelle! Where are my shoes?!
They’d none of them be missed. They’d none of them be missed.
(You may put them on the list. You may put them on the list.
And they’d none of them be missed! They’d none of them be missed!)
There’s the ticket holder next to you who cannot work their phone,
And cannot get the gist. I’ve got her on the list!
Who leaves it on or switches to that dreadful silent drone… Vrrrrrr Vrrrrr Vrrrrr
Facebook fiends and Twitterists are also on the list.
And people who inflict on us full cycles of the Ring,
I’d rather ride a valkyrie than hear Brunhilde sing.
And all commercial managements who want to cast a star,
They couldn’t get one this time, they got me, so there you are.
Or worst of all the actor who’s an extra lyricist,
I don’t think he’d be missed, so I’ve got him on the list.
(You may put them on the list! You may put them on the list!
And they’d none of them be missed! They’d none of them be missed!)
Your shock at Gilbert and Sullivan’s sounding so astonishingly contemporary comes through even the internet. How could they know?
I’m not sure what the original script said, having never done that particular operetta. Somewhere, the practice arose to have someone spice up the lyric to this tune, to the times, to the city in which the operetta is performed, and to thezeitgeist of the audience. Fans of G&S wait to see what and whom the “supplemental lyricist,” or “extra lyricist” poked at.
Even composers of silly operetta tunes understand that what is said, and what is done, needs to be molded to the local circumstances — and that in no case should a bureaucrat keep a list of enemies.
Compare Opera Australia’s version with that of the venerable G&S troupe, D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, about 20 years earlier, 1990 or 1992, on BBC2, in London:
Of course, you may think by my lampooning of list makers that I, myself, should be on some list. Aye, there’s the rub.
Take a look and listen to Eric Idle’s version of the song from th 1987 English National Opera production, with which Opera Australia may wish to take some exception.
In the English speaking world, wherever the works of Gilbert and Sullivan exist in book, on the stage, in oratorio, on record, tape, CD, DVD or Blu-Ray, people know leaders become comic fops instead when they make “a little list” of the names of the people they wish to be rid of.
Educated people know that. Education people should know that, too.
More (not necessarily endorsed by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub):
Why does time-lapse photography fascinate me so? It reveals changes over time we too often miss, or don’t stop to appreciate.
Here’s an excerpt from a 1975 film, set to music recently released. Watch closely, you’ll see the shadows of the World Trade Center passing over New York City.
Described at Youtube:
A music video for the gorgeous track “Exercise #3 (Building) by CFCF (Mike Silver). Song is from his upcoming EP titled “Exercises,” which arrives on April 24th via Paper Bag Records.
Footage is from the 1975 short film “Organism,” by Hilary Harris.
Short Wikipedia listing for Hilary Harris; geography and AP human geography teachers may especially appreciate some of Harris’s work, including Highway from 1958, and the 1962 Academy Award Winner Seaward the Great Ships
I had not realized there were so many versions of this old song. Looking for the Country Gentlemen, I find Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band, featuring Rodney Crowell on guitar and some great steel player (who?). Recorded from a German television broadcast, 1977.
My favorite line: “That’ll be cash on the barrelhead, son. This old grey dog, she gets paid to run.”
I’d forgotten about the birthers’ greatest nightmare — Obama’s got Irish blood in him!
Democratic Underground features a series of photos of President Obama with an Irish cousin at one of my favorite old haunts in Washington, the Dubliner.
President Barack Obama drinks a Guinness with his ancestral cousin from Moneygall Ireland Henry Healy, center, and the owner of the pub in Moneygall Ireland, Ollie Hayes, right, at The Dubliner Restaurant and Pub and Restaurant on St. Patrick’s Day, Saturday, March 17, 2012, in Washington (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Many great memories of the Dubliner.
In 1974, when I interned at the Senate, it was just a small bar on the first floor of the Commodore Hotel. Rocky Johnson of Sen. Mike Gravel‘s office, one of my roommates, introduced me to Guinness. The Dubliner was the most reliable source in D.C. at the time. The bartender was a guy named Paddy. It was never crowded — and they had good fish and chips with a fine, imported malt vinegar. I wasn’t exactly a regular, but I made several visits.
Ironically, for my summer job that year with the Louis August Jonas Foundation, we had a trip to D.C. planned with about 16 “boys from abroad” and the designated hotel was the Commodore — it was cheap and met our needs, being close to the Capitol. I was asked to chaperone, and happily went. So Freddy Jonas, the great benefactor of the foundation and Camp Rising Sun, and I could sneak down to the Dubliner for a nightcap. Michael Greene, the foundation’s executive director, warned me that Freddy would always ask if you wanted a second drink, but Freddy would not take one himself — and so, of course, neither should staffers.
One night while Freddy and I were capping off the evening we ran into a friend from my interning, Avis Ortner, a former rodeo barrel rider who had starred in a Kodak commercial series, and who worked in a Washington law firm. She and Freddy struck it off very nicely. I was surprised at how much Freddy knew about horses, and the questions he had about rodeo riding. At some point in the evening he asked me if I were going to have a second drink, and of course I declined. “Well, you only live once. Avis and I are having a second one, and you should join us.” People who knew Freddy well still don’t believe me when I tell them the story. But it’s true. It’s the magic of the Dubliner. [Is Avis still cleaning up at bridge in D.C.? [Yes!]]
I was back in D.C. in 1975, again with the Jonas Foundation bunch, and again at the Commodore. The Dubliner had a successful year, and had taken over the small cafe/dining room next door to bar.
In 1976 I visited again, and after a very successful year the Dubliner kicked out the gift shop of the hotel and opened a second bar there. It was crowded on weekends.
In 1979 I moved to D.C. Within a couple of years the Dubliner bought out the Commodore. You couldn’t get a seat at the bar most nights. St. Patrick’s Day 1980 the line wrapped around the block, and though the place never had a great stage, the live act was the Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, if I recall correctly.
Reconstruction and massive redecorating made the hotel into a great stop. Eventually the bar company sold the hotel, but kept the location. After Kathryn and I got married, we’d walk over to the Dubliner for lunch at least a couple of times a month, and the fish and chips at the Dubliner got better. I may have done in half the cod from the Grand Banks all by myself.
We’ve been in Texas now since 1987. I miss the Dubliner. Obama’s lucky he could get in, on St. Patrick’s Day. I hope he appreciates his luck.
(Kenny’s in Baltimore tonight — more irony. Girl Talk on Federal Hill (I think it’s an outdoor concert performance). Better than waiting in line at the Dubliner. Go when the crowds aren’t there, and you can savor the place.)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
What happens when you take a 20th century rock song (from U2), contemporary dancers, a church choir, an ancient but beautiful language, battery-powered amps for buskers, and use digital personal communications to mash them all up on Grafton Street in Dublin?
Great stuff: “A Language That Will Never Die” from PBO
Our textbooks and curriculum guides too often fail to make clear the links between the bloody conflicts in the Kansas Territory and the Civil War, between the conflicts engaged in by men like John Brown in Kansas, and later at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and the conflicts of the Civil War.
We might make the history more vivid and clear with the use of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” an epic war song based closely on a folk tune favored by Union troops of the time, conscripted specifically because of that affinity by Howe to serve the greater action of repurposing the war from merely saving the Union to freeing people from bondage. It’s a study in propaganda earlier than we usually think of it.
An early lyric sheet for "Battle Hymn of the Republic," by Julia Ward Howe, Library of Congress via New York Times
Most of my students claim not to know the song, “John Brown’s Body,” and an astonishing number of the students say they don’t know “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It’s a chance to bore them — or instruct them, if the planets and stars align — using a bit of music (a teacher should be able to find a copy of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s version of the “The Battle Hymn” with little difficulty; it appears in the hymnals of most Protestant sects, so you can get a copy of the lyrics; you’ll have to do a search to find a good copy of “John Brown’s Body,” though; I’ve not found one I like to use in class).
It might be a short lesson, an adjunct to a lesson, or a project for a student with some choir training.
Gilpin wrote:
Even if Howe’s song spoke to a different understanding of the war, her efforts to transform “John Brown’s Body” into a national patriotic text meant that, much like Brown’s afterlife, people would end up using and abusing “Battle Hymn” as they saw fit. What Howe observed in that Union camp outside of Washington in 1861 was just the beginning of a war of clashing agendas and endlessly obscured meanings. To be sure, those north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line knew that the developing war was being fought over slavery – its brutal realities, its political volatility and especially its uncertain future – but even in its opening months, commentary about the war was already cloaked in the bland language of preserving the Union or defending states’ rights. Assessing the war itself, Howe later wrote that “its cruel fangs fastened upon the very heart of Boston and took from us our best and bravest.”
For Howe and generations of Americans, the cruelty of war demanded a providential overseer. Despite her urge to celebrate noble-hearted men like Brown, “Battle Hymn” helped to take responsibility for the Civil War out of the brutal and clumsy hands of ordinary mortals. To be sure, Brown his death would help to make his nation holy and especially to make all men free, but his radical extremism was frightening to most Americans. Soon enough, the Civil War would be transformed by songs like Howe’s into a conflict of necessity and destiny – a providential trial by fire. That narrative, of a harrowing but essential national adolescence, would eventually be at the expense of those Brown had died for, and whose fate the war was being fought to settle.
Kathryn and I caught it last night at the renovated, historic Texas Theatre on Jefferson Avenue in Oak Cliff (formerly an independent town, now a sprawling neighborhood of Dallas). The audience enthusiasm didn’t overpower the movie — the audience was much smaller than the film deserves.
Parking is easy and free after 4:00 p.m. on Jefferson Avenue.
The bar has Mothership beer on tap (and a variety of other good libations).
Popcorn is cheaper than at most megaplexes, plus it doesn’t taste as if made from petroleum by-product (which is not to say it is healthy, but that it may be less unhealthy).
History point 1: This is a near-Art Deco theatre built originally by Howard Hughes.
History point 2: This is the theatre in which Lee Harvey Oswald was captured in his flight from the scene of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
It’s a great film.
It’s a great theatre to view great films in.
Punk never made a great impression on me. But at length, years later, I think I understand part of the angst and noise of the punkers, thanks to this film. The description at the YouTube trailer:
THE OTHER F WORD
directed by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins
produced by Cristan Reilly and Andrea Blaugrund Nevins
This revealing and touching film asks what happens when a generation’s ultimate anti-authoritarians — punk rockers — become society’s ultimate authorities — dads. With a large chorus of punk rock’s leading men – Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath – THE OTHER F WORD follows Jim Lindberg, a 20-year veteran of the skate punk band Pennywise, on his hysterical and moving journey from belting his band’s anthem “F–k Authority,” to embracing his ultimately authoritarian role in mid-life: fatherhood.
Other dads featured in the film include skater Tony Hawk, Art Alexakis (Everclear), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Tony Adolescent (The Adolescents), Fat Mike (NOFX), Lars Frederiksen (Rancid), and many others.
These are Tea Partiers with a cause and a brain, and a sense of social responsibility. Lindberg said, near the end of the movie:
That’s what I want to hold on to, is that feeling that we can make a change out there. Maybe the way we change the world is by raising better kids.
Readers of this blog may note the great irony in one of the chief profiles of the film being of Ron Reyes, a member of early West Coast punk band Black Flag, who quit the band in the middle of a set to protest the violence that afflicted the Los Angeles punk scene, and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to raise his kids well.
Heck, it’s probably a great film to see even if you can’t see it at the Texas.
(You know, I’ve got some shots of our tour of the Texas Theatre in August . . . hmm . . . where are those pictures? Other computer?)
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
(This is almost completely an encore post — one that should get more circulation. From four years ago, in 2007. I have not updated years or ages — sharpen your math skills, and do it as you go.)
Some people can’t let go of the past, and like the greedy chimpanzee who grasps the rice in the jar, and then is trapped when he cannot pull out his fist nor will he give up his prize to save his freedom, they trap themselves out of a good life.
Cover of 1996 album of songs, "Pete." Seeger, born May 3, 1919, is 88 years old now.
Make that a cold bath. It hit 107° F here Friday. 15th consecutive 100°-plus day? 17th? 200th?
Birds refuse to bathe in the bird bath — they’re saving it to drink. The sprinkler system misfired yesterday — had to kill the power to fix a kitchen light and the clock on the sprinkler got a few hours off — and we were alerted by dozens of bluejays broadcasting the news. “Water!” they screamed. Dallas isn’t supposed to be home to robins, but there were three of them dancing on the wet sidewalk with the jays, plus assorted other birds — house finches, mourning doves, white-winged doves, cardinals, and that little scamp, the Bewick’s wren. The woodpeckers declined to land on the ground. No room for grackles.
While soaking, and cooling, what do we read? In total chaos, or at least, in no particular order:
Cartoon by Chicago cartoonist John T. McCutcheon, 1909
Reagan’s mythology leading us off a cliff? Paul Rosenberg of Random Lengths, lists the false myths about Ronald Reagan that, he says, poison political discussion today and bring Washington to gridlock. Oddly enough, Rosenberg’s piece got carried on the English Al Jazeera site. Is it true that Bill Clinton was more popular than Reagan? Maybe progressives should get a group up to start naming things after Bill Clinton; or maybe we should just name it the Ronald Reagan National Debt.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman gives a sober assessment of Republican politics these days in his New York Times column: “Getting to Crazy.” Sez Krugman:
A number of commentators seem shocked at how unreasonable Republicans are being. “Has the G.O.P. gone insane?” they ask.
Why, yes, it has. But this isn’t something that just happened, it’s the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Anyone surprised by the extremism and irresponsibility now on display either hasn’t been paying attention, or has been deliberately turning a blind eye.
And may I say to those suddenly agonizing over the mental health of one of our two major parties: People like you bear some responsibility for that party’s current state.
If you’re discussing whether various states execute innocent people, an informed discussion better include Herrera v. Collins 506 U.S. 390, the 1993 case in which Texas won the right to execute an innocent man — innocence being not a good reason to reopen the case, the Supreme Court ruled. If God is punishing the U.S., I think this case may be why.
You voted for Obama, but he’s not given the performance you think he should have? So you’re thinking of voting for a third-party candidate? Read this. It makes Santaya’s Ghost smile.
Planning to join Texas’s candidate for Saul of the Year Rick Perry at his pray-in? Don’t bring your gun. That means you, Mr. NRA!
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
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 