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The image below is from a phrase Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitar. It is very sad that here we are, 75 years later, and we are fighting this fight again. The reality is that it seems to be a struggle that never ends, the clash of humanity’s dark side against its humanistic side.
As my cousin, The Don Quixote of West Texas, said, “This political nightmare is turning into a field day for musicians.”
Normally, I do not put out two postings in one day, but today I could not resist. The video of Bob Dylan at the end of this posting was the coda to Paul Krugman‘s newsletter today.
On the off chance you are not familiar with Krugman, he is a Nobel Laureate in Economics, the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and was a columnist with the New York Times for nearly 30 years until the newspaper made a sharp turn to the right and more or less ran him off. I suppose he is considered a Liberal, I find him to be a little left of center and one of the sanest voices currently in American politics. I used to read him regularly before the newspaper went behind a paywall. A friend recently gifted me a free subscription to his newsletter on SubStack, which is where he went with his heavily factual opinion pieces after his stint at the New York Times.
Listening to Dylan started me thinking of other times. I graduated high school in North Kingstown, RI, in 1970. For many of us of Continue reading “Bob Dylan Say Hello to Paul Krugman”
About the time I have completely written off Oklahoma as hopeless and a no man’s zone, I run across something gives me a glimmer of hope that all is not lost in my native state.
The Red Dirt Rangers are hugely popular in Oklahoma, especially around the Stillwater region. It always amazes that bands like this are not bigger nationally. We heard them perform this song Thursday night at the Woodyfest in Okemah, OK.
Last weekend Robin and I made a pilgrimage to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The reason for this pilgrimage was because Jimmy LaFave was going to be playing there. Jimmy is at the top of my list of favorite musicians. I have been listening to him for 20 years, and if I do not have all of his CDs, I have the vast majority. His music speaks to me on so many levels. The fact that he is not more famous than he is, says more about the music industry Continue reading “We Need Woody Guthrie and Jimmy LaFave”
I’ve had this CD a while, and I have listened to it a couple times. Those times had been when there were other distractions going on, so I was not really paying that much attention to it. I was definitely not paying attention to Bob Childers narration.
I recently took a road trip and listened to both CDs all the way through with out interruption. Most of the music I knew and was familiar to me. Woody’s prose that was narrated was new to me. I came away with a new and deeper appreciation of the music of Woody Guthrie and of Woody Guthrie as a man.
It did get me to wondering how Woody would be received in the Oklahoma of today. Would he have the same iconic stature Continue reading “Ribbon of Highway Endless Skyway: Tribute to Woody Guthrie”
…about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine” ~ Woody Guthrie