The Times They Are a-Changin'

Over twenty years ago, as I was starting college, I picked up a stereo set at a yard sale that had an 8-track player. So while my colleagues were building their CD collections, I was plunding Goodwill stores for 8-track cassettes. Today, as the world has moved to MP3 technology to the point of even making CD’s obsolete, I find myself accumulating compact cassettes at an alarming rate, including an eclectic box of about 45 of them that I scored at a flea market last week for the grand total of $1.00.

I’ll keep maybe 6 or 7 of them – I wanted the box more for the cassette racks included therein – but I figured I’d at least listen through them to see if there’s anything worthwhile I might be overlooking.

Working alphabetically (naturally), I come upon two compilations of Joan Baez, including her live set "From Every Stage" produced in 1975. A great voice, certainly, but the lyrics (both hers and the artists she interprets) reflect the pattern of the times, and are what you’d expect from someone in their early 30's with a well-established reputation for social activism. The opening a capella number, for example, contains a reference to "that killer Kissinger" amongst other harmonious diatribes.

Nonetheless, I was struck by her introduction to "Natalia," which is reproduced here verbatim:

[This song is] written about a political prisoner in USSR. And in USSR, when you do something naughty they throw you in the mental hospital and tell you you’re "cuckoo" and try to get everyone else to believe it. The terrible thing is that, eventually, sometimes, you get to believing it, too.

But there is one woman, named Natalia Gorbanevskaja, who never believed it. She was very, very strong. She wrote a poem about the invasion of Czechoslovakia – she thought it was a very poor idea. And when she wrote the poem, the government of the USSR thought she was a very poor idea and they put her in the ol’ bughouse. She was pregnant at the time – she was very strong, and she convinced herself she would be fine, she would have her child, she would go on speaking out – so every time she comes out of the looney bin she writes another poem, and the put her back in. But – it is because of people like Natalia Gorbanevskaja I am convinced that you and I are still alive and walking around on the face of the earth.

>>>>>>READ THE LAST SENTENCE AGAIN!<<<<<<

Ah, for the days when being a liberal meant that you believed in liberty, and not being a syncophant parroting clever bumper-sticker philosophies while blindly following the mass media with sheep-like docility.

Maybe the Dixie Chicks can adapt this idea for their next album and include a song about the human rights violations in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. I mean, when they and their acolytes are finished blaming President Bush for everything...

A footnote -- Joan's Wikipedia biography contains a paragraph about her trip to North Viet Nam with Jane Fonda et al in 1972. Whatever her feelings towards Viet Nam (and every western military action before or since, apparently), Joan at least saw through the charade of the communists. Read the rest of the bio and you'll have no doubt that she was (and is) a firm left-winger, but, to her credit, not a Phoanie.

Better than his Brother

One of my favorite residents of Marion, Massachusetts has passed away. I knew a Ed.D. and a Structural Engineer from that town, but there was only one Professor.

He was also an author -- Real Grass, Real Heroes -- an account of the 1941 baseball season. We could use some of those real heroes right about now. And I do mean real.

Ultimate Ring Toss

This is what can happen in your back yard when the township doesn't pick up the recycling in time and the kids get home from school early...

Have the ADA people seen this?

I have to admit I had worked in this building for over 3 years (3 of those months in a wheelchair) before I was struck by the irony of this sign.

Quarterbacking the Elephants

It was January 1988 and I was a senior in high school, on a Model United Nations trip in Den Haag (The Hague). We shared a youth hostel with a school from Massachusetts. Hanging out with them one night, I asked them -- being the amateur political scientist that I was -- if they were all Dukakis fans. Oh, no, they replied -- they were all Republicans. Then you must all be for Bush, I inferred. This time the objections were even louder -- no, NO, NO! they insisted. They wanted Jack Kemp. All of them -- male, female, black, white -- nodded in agreement.

I can't say I was too familiar with the former AFL quarterback, then a Representative from western New York, or even that I knew he was running for president. A passionate supply-sider and Ronald Reagan's true ideological heir, Kemp never stood a chance against an incumbent Vice President, not to mention an over-confident televangelist who split the conservative vote.

Kemp, ever the good soldier, would go on to serve in the first Bush administration, somewhat miscast as HUD Secretary, then with Bush's defeat in 1992 he formed a conservative group which nearly everyone saw as a stepping stone to another presidential run. Yet he sat out 1996, and was on nobody's short list when Bob Dole tapped him as his running mate.

It was an inspired choice -- or so it seemed -- and for a few heady days that summer following the convention, the symmetrical Dole-Kemp ticket actually led in several polls. Kemp rallied diehard conservatives to the Republican ticket and it actually seemed like the GOP had a shot against the well-oiled, well-managed Clintonista regime. Here was a candidate who appealed to conservatives without offending liberals, who had legitimate deep roots in two bluish states (CA and NY, which, believe it or not, were still considered somewhat in play in 1996), who had genuine credentials with African-Americans, and who was solidly pro-Life without it being a hallmark of his ideology. Too good to be true -- right?

It was not to be, and although Clinton's re-election was almost inevitable, it could have been closer if Kemp hadn't completely disappeared in the last two months of the campaign. His pitiful peformance against the robotic AlGore in the VP debate that year was unforgivable, and was a signal even to the most devoted Republicans that the election was over.

But Quarterback Jack's most productive days had predated his 1988 campaign and subsequent falterings. He had advocated the Reagan economic agenda with more passion than anyone except perhaps Reagan himself, and set the course for a decade of prosperity and the defeat of Communism. The rest is a footnote. He will be missed.

They don't allow SCATES either...

This sign wouldn't be so egregious if it wasn't posted on the door of the local library.

Seriously.