rest of life so hard you know I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore
Graceland’s iconic cover, a 15th century Ethiopian harag depicting St George, taken from a 1978 Peabody Essex Museum exhibition
From You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon (in the Album, Graceland, 1986).
In a recent interview on NPR, A Martinez spoke with Ashley Kahn, author of “Days of Miracle and Wonder,” a look back at the 40 year history of the Paul Simon album, Graceland.
Mr. Martinez asked “How did “Graceland” change the way Paul Simon composed music?”
Mr. Kahn responded, “Well, “Graceland” was pretty much a kind of a 90-degree shift for him as far as how he approached songwriting, building songs up, starting with a rhythm track, as opposed to starting with a lyric.
One of the best examples has to be “You Can Call Me Al,” a tune that was written about an old dinner party.
And Paul was mistakenly referred to throughout the evening by one of the celebs at the party as Al.”
You are Paul Simon.
You are the Paul Simon.
You are the Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel.
You are Paul Simon and it’s been 20 years since “The Sound of Silence” was released in 1965.
And someone at a dinner party calls you Al all throughout the evening.
Not even Art, confusing you with the other guy, but Al.
bureau services free to all desiring to become citizens
It was a different time.
Today we have ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 1926 there was the Bureau of Naturalization.
The Ford Motor Company set the American Citizenship Bureau of Highland Park to work with Bureau of Naturalization.
This item ran in the Ford News, the weekly Newspaper for the Ford Motor Company, October 1, 1926.
Headlined, Give Instruction in Citizenship. the item stated:
Classes in American citizenship for men who are not American citizens and wish to become naturalized were begun September 20 under the auspices of the American Citizenship Bureau of Highland Park.
The bureau furnishes its services free to all desiring to become American citizens, cooperating with the naturalization courts and the office of the District Director of Naturalization.
Besides the knowledge necessary to naturalization, the prospective citizen may learn reading, writing, and other subjects through free classes taught under the direction of the Highland Park Board of Education.
Full information is available at the offices of the American Citizenship Bureau, Highland Park City Hall, 20 Gerald Avenue.
This book is in the Smithsonian Institution where it has the legend, “Though a key requirement of citizenship is learning English, many guides are still available in the native languages of new immigrants. The Foreign Language Information Service provided translations of these guides in thirteen European languages.”
Different times.
This must be one of the display targeted for removal.
time to rid ourselves notion leisure for workmen a class privilege
Based on the article, The weekend is 100 years old – but have ‘skiveday Fridays’ and hybrid working ruined it for everyone? by Jess Cartner-Morley.
Ms. Cartner-Morley writes, “In 1926, Henry Ford gave his employees both Saturdays and Sundays off – and the two-day chunk of time to party, pray or simply do nothing was born. Now it’s changed beyond recognition.”
“It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege,” Ford wrote in his company’s Ford News in October 1926. Ford’s innovation was in part a response to his earlier invention: the assembly line, which had increased productivity but exhausted workers, with absenteeism up to 10% in factories; in his article he did not disguise that there was self-interest involved. “People who have more leisure require more transportation in vehicles,” he continued. The new fashion for day trips was an effective marketing device to sell cars. Meanwhile, his factories maintained a steady level of productivity despite the reduced hours. In 1938, faced with rising unemployment levels in the Great Depression, the five-day week was officially adopted across the US.
And it got me to thinking about the term Weekend … or Week End as it floated around in my brain.
I came up with a scene from the show Downton Abby where new heir to the title said he might be able to come out from the city to Downton … for the Week End.
Ms. Cartner-Morley remembered the same scene and commented, “The late, great Maggie Smith had, as she so often did, the best line. “What is a weekend?” she asked, in Downton Abbey, with the entitled bewilderment of a dowager countess for whom income is spoonfed in silver from birth, not doled out in a brown envelope on a Friday night.”
The problem is that scene in the TV show took place in the first season, the year the Titanic sank, 1912.
don’t dare start thinking in the morning … if I thought thoughts would bust my head
Blues at Dawn
I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head – So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.
I don’t dare remember in the morning Don’t dare remember in the morning. If I recall the day before, I wouldn’t get up no more – So I don’t dare remember in the morning.
As published in The Collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (New York: Knopf, 1994).
I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.
I don’t dare remember in the morning
If I thought thoughts in bed, them thoughts would bust my head.
If I recall the day before, I wouldn’t get up no more.
Just get me a cup of coffee and go away for about 20 minutes.
everywhere nowhere jactatively away like the falling tide
Adapted from the poem, Words in a Certain Appropriate Mode” by Hayden Carruth as published in Collected Shorter Poems, 1946–1991 (Copper Canyon Press: Port Townsend, Wash, 1992).
Aside from the many moods captured in the poem that match many of my current moods,
Nor not alone, where cognition seeps Jactatively away like the falling tide
If there were a tide, and what is left Is nothing, or is the everything that keeps Its undifferentiated unreality, all
It was that word there, Jactatively.
Was it made up?
Is it really a word?
Was gratified to find it is indeed a word.
And what a word!
According to the Online Merriam-Webster, Jactatively is an adverb derived from the rare word jactative (pertaining to boasting or the restless tossing of the body), meaning in a manner characterized by bragging, ostentatious false claims, or restless physical agitation.
In the 17th century, lawyers began tossing around the word jactitation, which can be traced back to the Latin verb jactare, meaning “to throw.” Originally, jactitation was used as a word for a false claim or assertion being publicly thrown about to the detriment of another person. Run-of-the-mill slander and false claims of being married to someone were two common types of jactitation brought to court. Before long, jactitation had jumped over to the medical profession, where it continues to serve as a word for restless, jerky, or twitchy body movements. In 1761, British writer Laurence Sterne threw jactitation into his novel Tristram Shandy as a substitute for discussion, but that meaning never caught on.
Restless physical agitation.
BOY HOWDY!
All I have to do is turn off the light and lay down yet my mind jactatively refuses to release me to sleep.
Here is the poem.
It is not music, though one has tried music. It is not nature, though one has tried The rose, the bluebird, and the bear. It is not death, though one has often died.
None of these things is there.
In the everywhere that is nowhere Neither the inside nor the outside Neither east nor west nor down nor up Where the loving smile vanishes, vanishes In the evanescence from a coffee cup Where the song crumbles in monotone Neither harmonious nor inharmonious Where one is neither alone Nor not alone, where cognition seeps Jactatively away like the falling tide If there were a tide, and what is left Is nothing, or is the everything that keeps Its undifferentiated unreality, all Being neither given nor bereft Where there is neither breath nor air The place without locality, the locality
With neither extension nor intention But there in the weightless fall Between all opposites to the ground That is not a ground, surrounding All unities, without grief, without care Without leaf or star or water or stone Without light, without sound anywhere, anywhere . . .
