John Lewis & Real American Exceptionalism

Former President Barack Obama in his eulogy for John Lewis today called the late Congressman "exceptional" for "redeeming" our "faith in our founding ideals." If our journey towards achieving the "more perfect union" takes another 200 years, Obama said, then Lewis "will be a founding father" of that "fuller, fairer, better America."

Obama once was asked whether he "believed in American Exceptionalism."  His nuanced answer displeased a large swath of the country that thinks "American Exceptionalism" means "We're number one!"  What makes America truly exceptional was one of the ideas that emerged from the celebration of Lewis's life at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Obama put the finish on a theme that had run throughout the service. Opening with remarks about Lewis's suffering violence during peaceful protests, Reverend Rafael Warnock had quoted scripture, "By his wounds we are healed," a phrase about "the suffering servant" in Isaiah, originally identified with the Jewish nation, later identified with Jesus by Christians.  Here, Reverend Warnock suggested that Lewis, with his cohort, by the pain they accepted in standing for truth against the pervasive sin of racism,  pushed forward the process of healing this nation.  Reverend Lawson, a mentor to Lewis, quoted Martin Luther King Jr.'s promise that non-violent Black protesters, taking the pain and death from their enemies, would "transform" America "and the world."

Including Blacks in the Mt. Rushmore version of history, these black theologians turn the national story into one of redemption for the whole world.  In this revised version, the Founding Fathers made the promises of freedom for a new nation that they then built on the backs of forced black labor.  Four score and seven years later, Lincoln used those promises in the middle of a civil war to give America a "new birth of freedom," admitting in his second inaugural address that justice might require white people to suffer to redeem the years they made black people suffer. King's teacher Howard Thurman wrote in the 1940s a powerful analysis of Jesus's approach to redeeming his people, making a case for how black people in the American 20th century needed to play the role of Jesus in American society (read about Jesus and the Disinherited 12/2015). King developed that theme in sermons collected in Strength to Love.

In short, the agency of black people -- exemplified by John Lewis -- risking their lives to stand up for their dignity -- has been a force to make America grow into its promises.  What other nation has struggled so long and so openly with this dissonance between its ideals and its treatment of a minority?  This struggle, not the strength of our military or the influence of our economy, is what makes America exceptional, the best hope for the world.

Let's recognize the inadequacy of Black history month, and the eleven other months when black history is a sub-category. Black history is as much American history as any face on Mt. Rushmore - or Stone Mountain.

Other speakers at the funeral portrayed the man as courageous activist, delightful uncle, devoted husband and father, generous boss, and effective politician. Former President Bill Clinton told us what Lewis carried in that back pack in Selma (fruit, toothbrush, a study of American culture, and a memoir by Catholic monk Thomas Merton) because the young man expected to spend the night in jail. Former President George W. Bush repeated the story about Lewis's preaching to chickens, but added that Lewis refused to eat one that the family cooked, "His first non-violent protest." Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got choked up telling how she visited him one last time and how, after he lay in state, a double rainbow appeared over the Capitol, though no rain had fallen.

Obama looked at the familiar story of Lewis's beating at the bridge in Selma from the unusual perspective of the troopers:  "They thought they had won that day."  But the world had seen the ugly truth that "law and order" here meant degradation and violence, and the world changed. 

Obama told us a story new to me, that Lewis and a buddy named Bernard bought two bus tickets and sat in the front of an interstate bus to test the Court's desegregation order, weeks before the freedom rides organized with protective entourages. "Imagine the courage!" Obama said. "He was all of 20 years old, and he pushed those 20 years to the center of the table" in a gamble for the benefit of others. 

Exceptional man, offering his life to make America exceptional.

[Photos: Lewis, in a very bad spot, has a little smile for the mug shot in Jackson, MS for riding a bus and using a white-only men's room. Top: the Selma march with the backpack.]

"Lightning Men" Dark but not Bleak

With the second book of the Darktown series by Thomas Mullen, Atlanta's first black policemen are caught at the intersection of gang war, police corruption, and a real estate dilemma: what is a fair-minded white homeowner to do when nice black families move onto his street and his dream home's value instantly plummets?

The book's title Lightning Men refers to American fascists who adopted Hitler's lightning insignia in the 1930s. After the war, they're back to intimidate communists, foreigners, and any blacks who dare to buy homes in white neighborhoods. 

 
Mullen writes in third person, but focuses different chapters through different characters. Black officers Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith hold the center of the story, along with their reluctant white ally Officer Dennis "Rake" Rakestraw. But Mullen gives us other characters' points of view: Julie, fiancee to Lucius; Sgt. McGinnis, the ramrod straight white officer fighting on behalf of the black men in his charge; Rake's wife Cassie; and two other characters who steal the show.

First, we meet the young black man Jeremiah as he walks out of prison, hoping to start a new life in Atlanta. He wants to go straight, but, without support, he's soon back in the drug trade that killed his older brother. He's also stymied in his effort to re-connect with his young son and the boy's mother Julie -- because she's engaged to Officer Boggs. When Boggs and Jeremiah meet face-to-face in a diner, Mullen heightens the tension by alternating their points of view. Jeremiah finds a weakness in Lucius. He keeps his thoughts to himself as Lucius talks: "I know what you fear. You fear sin. You are surrounded by it, and you have invited it into your family, so let's see how you like realizing that"(325). 

 
Then, there's Dale, who thinks he can earn respect by donning a ridiculous pointy white hood of the Ku Klux Klan, but he can't even see through the eye holes. When he gets in too deep, which is immediately, he runs for help to his brother-in-law on the force, Officer Rakestraw. Rake compromises himself to help. 

 
As Mullen plays Jeremiah off of Lucius, and Dale off of Rake, he also matches volatile Officer Tommy Smith with his brother-in-law Malcolm, whose secret Tommy feels bound to protect. 

 
Besides chapters where characters vie for dominance with intense, witty dialogue, Mullen writes some that stand out for action and suspense. There's an epic fist fight between Officer Dewey Edwards, the strongest, smallest cop on the force, and Thunder Malloy, biggest baddest drug dealer in town. There's a vigil past midnight by Tommy and his brother-in-law in a darkened house as they watch two, then four, then two or three dozen white neighbors gathering across the street: What will the white people do to keep their neighborhood from "transitioning?" For emotion, and dread, and sympathy, there's a scene in Atlanta's old train terminal where a black family from up north refuses to sit in the fouled "colored" waiting room; Rake tries to respect the family's dignity while an angry white mob forms around him. 

 
Set seventy years ago, the issues in Lightning Men are as up-to-date as our President's recent tweet to housewives about how "they" want to move in next door and destroy the suburbs with sinking property value. In one scene, the fictional Reverend Boggs sits at a table with the real Reverend William Borders (his grandson my classmate in the 1970s) to make a deal with white developers to re-draw the red lines that kept generations of black families from building wealth. The eponymous fascists peddle their version of today's "white genocide" narrative propagated by the young men in Virginia who chanted "Jews will not replace us." 

 
The novel is dark, but not bleak. I've already ordered the latest book in the series.
See my response to the first book, Darktown (06/2020)
.

Monumental Lies

As a white guy, I've never thought about these two monuments. Left in the photo is Edward Ball's 1876 work in Lincoln Park, Washington, the one whose replica in Boston has been removed in this season of increased sensitivity to systemic racism. On the right is James Earle Fraser's 1939 work, removed from New York's Natural History Museum.

If asked, I'd have said these were quaint products of their time, a bit over-the-top. What I've been missing is what makes the monuments so harmful. I've heard accusations that removing a monument is trying to erase history, but monuments can also cover up history.

Two Racial Lies in Two Monuments

While both monuments purport to celebrate freedom and friendship for the races in America, both perpetuate lies that white people in the Americas have told themselves since the time of Columbus:

Lie #1: Black people are built strong, their bodies suitable to hard labor in hot climates; and
Lie #2: Black people are like children, dependent on whites to survive the complexities of white society

All slave owners had to believe these lies to feel good about themselves. The Spanish Queen accepted these lies as good reasons to initiate the African slave trade to her Spanish colonies in the 1500s; confederate states' articles of secession echoed the same "fact" that only black people could do necessary labor in hot summer months. To justify chattel slavery of Christian brothers and sisters, contrary to St. Paul's admonition, English colonial legislatures simply described blacks as less than full human beings. 

In both of these statues we see both lies. The men of color sport physiques that are, well, chiseled. Yet they appear like wide-eyed children; the white men, fully-clothed and elevated, are the grown-ups in control. White people see these and feel good about the way history turned out, how our white leaders were so generous to people who could not have helped themselves.

But the man depicted at Lincoln's feet freed himself. The model Archer "Aleck" Alexander, who defiantly agitated for freedom years before the Civil War, aided Union troops during operations, and escaped himself [see photo]. (See reporting by DeNeen L. Brown in the Washington Post.). Black people funded the monument, but were not consulted on its execution. At the time of its unveiling, Frederick Douglass deplored that the black man is depicted "nude [and] couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal" (Letter published in the National Republican four days after Douglass delivered a sober assessment of Lincoln at the statue's dedication, 1876. See the article about tracking down the letter at Atlas Obscura.com.)

The Roosevelt monument's creator James Earle Fraser called the men of color "guides" for Roosevelt in his work (Andrea Kay Scott, New Yorker, 1 July 2020). But equally buff Teddy, high up on the horse, is the one looking ahead, gesturing onward, while the native American and the black man cleave to him with wide-eyed timorous looks. They carry Roosevelt's firearms. While they wear next-to-nothing, Teddy is resplendant in the uniform of his paramilitary group "the Rough Riders" that he organized to win Cuba from the Spanish in the 1898 war. Fraser intended to show Roosevelt's "friendliness to all races" (Scott) . But the composition of the statue embodies "The White Man's Burden," a poem that Rudyard Kipling actually wrote for young President Roosevelt to help urge Americans to get involved in the 1898 war. Kipling's poem urges young white men to go out into the world to "serve" people of color. For Kipling, non-whites are "half devil and half child," incapable of taking care of themselves through their "Sloth and Folly." (See the whole poem at the Kipling Society

I've heard discussions on NPR with black men and women who told how the Emancipation monument was like a punch in the stomach. On Here and Now two men told identical stories from childhood of being bewildered to see a man "who looked like me" naked and in such a submissive pose. Removing an image that gives such offense may be what our President would belittle as "political correctness," but I bet his mother might have called that "common courtesy."

More than hard feelings, these monumental lies motivate violence. A childlike man with the strength of a beast is someone to be feared, someone likely to steal or sponge off of welfare, someone to be controlled by police or prison guards. (See my blog post about law enforcement and racial fear 07/2016, and "The Privilege is Mine," an account of many ways that whiteness has been my super-power 12/2017)

The lies show up in the videos that have brought Americans into the streets these past several weeks. Three white men with a truck and a gun respond to an unarmed jogger as if he's threatening them. A white woman in Central Park, incensed to have a black man be the grown-up who points out to her the leash law, fakes terror in a 911 call, confident that authorities will believe her performance. Four cops team up to strangle the breath out of a man already handcuffed.

The lie about being "like children" has pervaded public policy for a century. Even during this pandemic, unemployment benefits and eviction moratoria have been limited for the express reason that the people who receive handouts won't return to the workforce without a push. At the inception of unemployment benefits, jobs identified with people of color were excluded from benefits.We add work requirements and restrict health benefits, on the theory that "they" will rely on government and vote Democratic if we don't prod "them" to work.  Reflecting that assumption, the editors of National Review routinely called the Federal government "the Plantation" when I gave up my decades-long subscription.

Confederate Monuments Do Erase History Confederate monuments are easy targets. Caroline Randall Williams writes in the New York Times June 28 that her body is a confederate monument. A black woman, descendant of Confederate leaders, Randall Williams calls her light complexion "the color of rape." To those who would "deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred," she writes,

I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

Confederate monuments do intentionally erase history, every one a repudiation of the Reconstruction era that followed the Civil War. When Federal troops gave up on enforcing blacks' civil rights after 1875, whites repressed blacks with new laws, systematic discrimination, and pervasive intimidation. Those statues said to blacks and whites alike, "Forget about Reconstruction and civil rights; the good ol' days of white supremacy are back." Placed in town squares and on courthouse steps, they were always intended to be stone walls to blacks. Whether they be torn down, or surrounded by context, let them no longer stand unopposed.

Exception for Founding Fathers? Before I read an essay on George Washington by Michele L. Norris, I thought monuments to the founders deserved more credit than those honoring Confederates. One group created the union; the other group would destroy the union rather than give up slavery.

But Norris makes us uncomfortably aware how Washington, champion of independence, kept 300 human beings in abject dependence on him. First, Norris draws our attention to names of some who lived and served most closely to George and Martha: Austin, Moll, Giles, Ona Judge, Paris, Hercules, Joe, Richmond, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee. Did loving parents name these people at birth, or did enslavers tag them? Either way, looking at the names, you've got to sense individual character and personal potential that slavery cutailed.

I've been to Mt. Vernon and toured the spaces where its black population lived and worked. I've read lengthy biographies. But Norris's point is well-taken, that slavery was not just incidental to Washington and his peers, but essential. Their eloquent spokesman Patrick Henry riled up his fellow Virginians for war by casting the British as enslavers: "Give me liberty, or give me death!" They knew that life enslaved wasn't worth living, yet suppressed that knowledge every single day of their lives. I remember reading a note from Henry to a friend, about the irony of his most famous line. Henry wrote that he would free his slaves, if only it weren't so "inconvenient" to do so.

While Washington projected himself as benevolent lord to these people, we can see the shadow of the lies he told himself. When those serving him in Philadelphia came close to earning their freedom under a Pennsylvania law, George and Martha went to extraordinary lengths to swap them for others back at Mt. Vernon. Wanting to believe that their laborers prospered under their care, George and Martha reacted with relentless fury to recapture one who got away, Martha's personal servant Ona Judge. Yes, Washington saved up to free and provide property for those he enslaved, but not those jointly owned by his wife, and not until his death. The creepiest detail in Norris's article is a photograph of Washington's false teeth: Not wood, as schoolchildren are told, but human teeth extracted from nine people of his own plantation. A note in his ledger shows how he got them cheap off his own people, paying them a fraction of what the dentist usually paid to get teeth. The payment must have eased Washington's conscience more than it compensated their pain.

Should statues of Washington come down? The Washington Archives webpage about Washington's teeth acknowledges the probable truth of Norris's story, while reminding us how Washington to set the course for civilian, elected, law-abiding government in the new United States. The hope of this nation and of the world abides in those values: I want Washington's best side to be known. But I'd also like to know more about Austin, Moll, Giles, Ona Judge.... 

[I reached a different conclusion in an essay "Disarming Confederate Memorials" (08/2017). It begins with the anecdote of a mother, rancorously divorced, who chose to display mementos of her married life rather than deny her son reminders of his own past.]
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"The Ladies Who Lunch" 50 Years Later

YouTube suggested I might like a video from 1970 of actress Elaine Stritch singing "The Ladies Who Lunch." The song was from a musical that had just opened on Broadway, Company, book by George Furth, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, who composed the song for her character "Joanne."

YouTube was right. It's a good excuse to reflect on this song, that performer, and how the song holds up 50 years later. (See Elaine Stritch's TV studio performance from 1970.)

Before I'd ever heard of Stephen Sondheim or Company, comedian Carol Burnett shocked America by staging this bitter song in the middle of her beloved, folksy, charming TV variety show.  At age 11, I knew she was singing about my mother and my Aunt Blanche, and it wasn't funny at all. For years after, I'd find others impacted by Burnett's serious turn.

Sondheim writes in his memoir Finishing the Hat that "the character of Joanne was not only written for Elaine Stritch, it was based on her" with her "acerbic delivery of self-assessment" (193).

Until I saw this video artifact from 1970, I thought I knew everything about the song. I've heard and seen dozens of performances of the song, and I've accompanied myself singing it a few dozen more. The music has the mid-60s basso-nova feel, with dark coloration in the harmony, and a fun detail in the melody: whenever Joanne repeats the phrase, "I'll drink to that," the notes slide downward with notes out of the key, in a musical expression of inebriation. The lyric is a toast to different kinds of women that Joanne observes - the ladies who lunch, the ones who stay smart, the ones who play wife. In each verse, Sondheim hides an inner rhyme "to give the lines a tautness." I've italicized the syllables that rhyme to show what he means:

Here's to the girls who play wife --
Aren't they too much?
Keeping house but clutching a copy of Life
just to keep in touch.

He explains, "The 'clutch' is hidden, there's no musical pause there, no way of pointing it up, but it's there to help make the line terse, the way the character is" (quoted in Craig Zadan's book Sondheim and Co. 2nd Edition 1986, p.232).

So I cried to see Stritch, some 15 years younger than I am now, perform the lines in ways that bring tenderness out of this "acerbic" and "taut" song. It was a surprise, though I've seen another video of Stritch from around the same time.  It's in the Pennebaker documentary of the original cast's recording. Stritch fails in multiple takes. Everyone else had gone home hours before, and she's there screaming the song at the microphone, looking harried, insecure, ashamed.

This is different. "I'd like to propose a toast," she says, while an off-screen pianist plays the first chords rubato. Stritch is wearing her own signature outfit - a man's dress shirt, leggings. There's that late-60s eye-liner, but no other noticeable makeup; no accessories, no prop tumbler. Hands folded on her lap, she sings, "Here's to the ladies who lunch" the way I'm used to hearing it, as a clarion call. But then she sings softly, "Everybody laugh."

Already, she's laid out her attitude. These women are ridiculous, but she feels for them. They're "planning a brunch" she sings, scowling as if to say, "really?", then clasps her hands to sing softly, "on their own behalf."

This was taped at New York's Channel 13, a low-budget production, without any fancy camera work. The camera moves in on her sarcastic question, "Does anyone still wear a hat?" Her anger picks up as she rips through the girls who stay smart, giving us sarcastic jazz hands for "a matinee," and an-oh-so-serious scowl as her forefingers touch her thumbs -- we're being intellectual, now -- for "a Pinter play," and then an extravagant gesture for "a piece of Mahler's." (Sondheim reveals that Stritch didn't get the reference. She thought a piece of Mahler's would be some kind of pastry. In the full orchestration, Jonathan Tunick quotes a riff from Mahler's 4th after this line.)

She mocks the "ones who follow the rules, and meet themselves at the schools" before mocking her own kind, "the ones who just watch," who take "another chance to disapprove... another reason not to move," screaming "I - I - I - I'll" drink to that.

In the final verse, Stritch conveys strongly what's implied in the lyrics. Mock them she might, but she's with them, too. The camera moves in close on her eyes as she begins the last verse, when the internal rhymes punch up what these women all face together:

So here's to the girls on the go
Everybody tries.
Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know:
Everybody dies!

We've already had several "Everybody" lines: this is the ultimate. Sondheim tops it with a scary grand finale. Joanne commands an ovation, "Everybody rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise! Rise!" Stritch is uninhibited here, unafraid to sound hoarse, angry, and hurting.

Fifty years later, the song doesn't sound dated. I know these women. Stars keep wringing meaning from it -- Meryl Streep, Audra MacDonald, and Christine Baranski did a Zoom cocktail hour version for Sondheim's 90th birthday. If Mr. Sondheim is reading this, I suppose an update should include a toast to the ladies with jobs.

For now, as for the past 50 years, here's to "The Ladies Who Lunch."

[See my Sondheim Page for much more about the man, his shows, craft, and colleagues. I write about what I learned from interviews with Elaine Stritch and a folk singer, her contemporary Jean Redpath, at Diverse Divas and the Art of Showbiz]

Traveling with Joni Mitchell's "Blue": Lots of Laughs

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be? - Joni Mitchell, "All I Want"

Early on the lonely road of this pandemic, I picked up Joni Mitchell's Blue. It came highly recommended by a younger teacher, Justin Loudermilk, and by not one but two different NPR polls that put Blue as best album by a female artist. With that downer title, the eerie cover, and the obscure title song, I was a little apprehensive. But with this album, Mitchell has made a great traveling companion for me, out on my bike or lying awake at 2 a.m. The surprise is, she's funny.

[My appreciation for Joni Mitchell came decades late. Read about my discovery of her in my blogpost Just Songs: Discovering Joni Mitchell 40 Years Later. I respond to a group biography of Joni, Carole King, and Carly Simon in Carole, Joni, and Carly in Context]

The laughs begin with "All I Want." You expect the title phrase to go with some little thing, as, "All I want is" a poached egg, or maybe world peace. Instead, this song turns into a torrent of rhymed desires, some life-long and some immediate, some about herself, some about her companion: "I want to be strong, I want to laugh along," "to get up and jive... to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive," "to knit you a sweater...to make you feel better" and a rhyme that makes me laugh, "I want to shampoo you, I want to renew you...." She's pushing so hard, she could wear a guy down. She admits, with wise self-awareness, that sometimes "I hate you some, I love you some / Oh I love you when I forget about me." For her song about traveling, Mitchell drives the music with an ostinato on the hammer dulcimer, punctuated with off-beat chords.

Then Mitchell tosses wisdom and self-awareness out the window for a romantic fantasy, "My Old Man." Alluding to dance numbers in MGM musicals, she describes him as a "singer in the park, a walker in the rain, a dancer in the dark." When he comes home, she's there waiting for him to "take [her] in his arms" and "tell [all her] charms." It would be like a 60s sitcom marriage, except they "don't need no piece of paper from the city hall" to keep them together. And it's rated R: He's her "fireworks at night." (Thanks to my friend Susan for the insight that this song is fantasy. We've enjoyed the album together many times since the pandemic started.)

In other songs she see-saws between wanting to get away, and wanting to get back.

One fare-thee-well song, "Carey," with its companion piece "California," pulls us into the middle of a short-term relationship that seems to have been stormy, but a joy. The singer, restless on the Greek island Matalla, tells Carey that she has to leave, because

It's really not my home.
My fingernails are filthy, I got beach tar on my feet
And I miss my clean white linen and my fancy French cologne.

So she invites Carey out for a bottle of wine. "We'll laugh and toast to nothing and smash our empty glasses down." She does propose a toast anyway, to "this bright red devil who keeps me in this tourist town." In "California," she's so excited to be coming home from abroad that she'd "even kiss a Sunset pig" [note to non-boomers: that's 60s slang for L.A.P.D. - another of Susan's glosses], but she remembers fondly a "redneck" she met in Greece

who did the goat dance (prim little pause here) very well
he gave me back my smile
(sudden edge to the voice) but he kept my camera to sell

The "red, red rogue" was a good cook, too, she says, and she would have stayed on except for (rhapsodic swoop into her higher register) "California." A few years ago, NPR aired an interview with the eponymous Carey, who remembers working in a cafe in Greece when the famous Joni Mitchell, on retreat from her fame, presented him a tray she'd stacked with empties that he had failed to pick up from her friends' table. He dumped the tray at her feet. Start of a great friendship. It's fun to hear the details, but Mitchell's lyrics and the sheer joy of her playing and singing imply all that backstory. She sings, "You're a mean old daddy, but I like you," she pauses, "fine." So do we.

Even the down songs raise a rueful smile. In "This Flight Tonight," while the singer's back to traveling and wishing she weren't, she parodies pop music she hears on her headphones. Mitchell plays a mournful variation on "Jingle Bells" for "River," a song of regret at Christmas time: "I wish I had a river I could skate away on / I made my baby cry." The irony runs thick in "The Last Time I Saw Richard," who lectured the singer on romanticism, then "got married to a figure skater, ...bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator," and "drinks alone most nights."

There's another romantic comedy moment in "A Case of You." The man is over-the-top, saying he's "constant as the northern star." She shoots him down: "Constantly in the darkness? Where's that at? If you want me, I'll be in the bar." But then she's obsessing over him. Doodling on a coaster, she sketches his face, twice, inside a map of Canada. Cue a bit of her national anthem, "O Canada."

One song is more sweet than bitter, "Little Green." The singer seems to be instructing person or persons unknown who will be naming the child. "Call her green, and the winter cannot fade her," she sings. When "he," the father, moved to California, she wrote him about the child, "her eyes are blue"; he sent back a poem. There are a lot of epithets for a self-absorbed jerk like that, but she politely observes, "He's a non-conformer." The rest of the song is about hopes for this "child of a child" after the singer signs her away "in the family name." She feels "sad and sorry, but not ashamed" to provide the baby girl a "happy ending," with "icicles and birthday clothes and sometimes" -- she adds for mother and daughter, both -- "there'll be sorrow."

I knew when I started my journey with this album that I'd have to get over my distaste for the title song. I'd complained to my friend Justin how the melody meandered, how the lyrics were obscure, how Mitchell's voice, sustaining high notes, has wobbles so wide you could drive a big yellow taxi through them. He just smiled and said, "Give it time. I think you'll like it."

He's right.

To get it, I first had to discern the unusual form. It's ABBA. No hook. She varies every iteration of the word "Blue," something that bothered me, but now I appreciate how she never settles for mere repetition.

She seems to be calling someone "Blue" as a name, but maybe it's just a description. The lyric isn't so obscure when you appreciate the interlocking images of ocean, tattoo, song, pin/needle. In the first A section, she sings, "Songs are like tattoos." How? "Ink on a pin, an empty space to fill in." With "ink on a pin," the tattoo needle has "an empty space to fill in" on the skin; the songwriter fills in empty space on a page. The singer challenges the other person, "Crown and anchor me, or let me sail away," a call for commitment in a relationship, suggested by a common tattoo image [note to non-Boomers: anchor tattoos were common in the 20th century, at least]. She promises that "there is a song for you."

The "empty space to fill in" touches off the faster-moving B section(s) about spiritual emptiness of people in her time. Still playing with the ocean theme, she sings, "There's so many sinking now" as they try to get "through these waves." They use "Acid, booze and ass / Needles, guns and grass" -- "needles" and such, like the pin, may fill in the empty space. She doesn't seem so sure: "Lots of laughs, (pause) lots of laughs."

In the concluding A section, she comes back to the ideas of song and ocean, offering a shell as "your song from me," explaining, "Inside you'll hear a sigh, a foggy lullaby." I hear it as good-bye.

I found on the internet some bits that give me more to smile about. First, she said in reflection on Blue

"I came to another turning point — the terrible opportunity that people are given in their lives. The day that they discover to the tips of their toes that they're a------s. And you have to work on from there." "Why Joni Mitchell's Blue is the Greatest Relationship Album Ever" The Atlantic, February 2013

She told another interviewer that she was "miscast" when she wrote and sang "Both Sides Now" at a very young age. Hearing her song performed by Mabel Mercer gave her fresh insight on just how good -- and precocious -- the song is. (Mercer's recording of the song as a dramatic art song impressed me, too, around 40 years ago.) Mitchell approached Mercer, grand dame of New York nightclub singers, and told her what a revelation it was to hear her song performed by someone so mature. Mercer, at 70, took umbrage. Mitchell, telling this story at 70, laughed. (CBC, The National, June 11, 2013).

Then, there's the observation about that scary - looking cover. The last laugh is on me: It's a parody of Otis Redding's album Otis Blue.

Thanks to Jason

Thanks to Jason, I've kept a regimen of bike riding since 1992.  Jason was in 8th grade when he repaired my bicycle and got me hooked on riding.  For the past several years. he has made the long drive from Mississippi to the Atlanta area to ride with me during my birthday week, for which, again, I owe thanks.

[Photo:  Jason and me, at Marietta's cafe Douceur de France.]

This year, we rode the Silver Comet Trail west to Rockmart, where Jon Stewart's film Irresistible was filmed in 2019. We did 52 miles - midway between Jason's age and mine. [Photo: On site in Rockmart.]

Cycling America Virtually: NY, PA, OH, IL, MN

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[Updated 03/16/2023] Three months into the pandemic of 2020, I realized that my bike rides since Y2K added up to 25,000 miles, the circumference of the earth (see Around the World on a Bike).

So I set a new goal: to ride the distances between places I've known, lived, or loved. Starting virtually at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in New York City, I transferred miles from my local rides to a map of the US, making selfies at each meaningful stop all the way to LA. I'd left out a lot of places important to me, so I started a new tour, from LA to San Francisco, then east to my home in Georgia.  

Having just retired, I continued my rides.  I went up the coast to Maine, I crossed into Canada and the wider world. As of March 16, 2023, I'm close to 14,000 miles into my second virtual bike trip around the world, more than halfway. In 2022 alone, riding on trails around Atlanta, I cycled 4868 miles, average speed 15.4. Use the arrows at the top and bottom of each page to track the entire tour with pictures at each stop and appreciations for what each place has meant in my life's journey. What follows are pieces I wrote when my tour began in 2020:

I first visited New York City in 1974 with Atlanta's Northside School of Performing Arts to see lots of Broadway shows, but not A Little Night Music, alas. Thanks to Northside's pianist Paul Ford, that show by Stephen Sondheim would shape the rest of my life.  No kidding --  see my Sondheim page. My last trip there, made with my friend Suzanne, was to see Night Music starring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2010. In this photo, I'm at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre. My helmet is off to him!

To Pittsburgh PA was another 320 miles, site of my earliest memories. Dad worked in Pittsburgh's triangle. I remember riding the red funicular car down the steep hill towards the three-river area, ca. 1964. I was among the first little kids ever to enjoy Mister Rogers when he was still a local TV personality.  I write about it at "Mister Rogers was my Neighbor." (06/2018)

To Cincinnati OH was another 258, a ride I finished on July 4th. Every summer of my childhood, I visited my grandmother there. Aunt Blanche and Uncle Jack welcomed me and my siblings to their home, and took us to see fireworks. The photo is taken in Covington, the Kentucky side of the Ohio river, where my grandparents Dewey and Harriet Smoot lived as newlyweds 100 years ago.  The round building is the hotel that my uncle Jack built, with the revolving restaurant.  (Read more about Aunt Blanche (09/2009) and more about childhood memories of how wonderful Cincy was for me (09/2015 and 03/2023).

To Chicago is another 253 miles.  I lived in Chicago from 1966-1969, where I learned to read, write, and ride a bike.  My friends Gordon Walton, Neal Brailov, and I would ride a couple miles to Tracy Herzog's neighborhood to coast down the only hill in town.  A Google search for Neal shows him to be director at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I made a pilgrimage in 2004 to see the iconic painting by French artist Georges Seurat, central character in Sondheim's musical Sunday in the Park with George. (Read how that painting is so important to my life: "Sunday, Art, and Forever" 06/2015). I was in town to see Sondheim's Bounce (later revised to Road Show),   It's fitting that I complete this leg of my journey on July 14, Bastille Day, midpoint for the Tour de France bike race in years without a pandemic.  Here's a picture of me re-visiting Seurat's painting of Le Grand Jatte, an islet park in Paris.

On my 61st birthday, July 15th, I rode 61 miles on the Silver Comet Trail outside of Atlanta, a distance that would take me to Wonder Lake, IL, en route to Minneapolis, my next virtual destination. Here's Wonder Lake, with me at the end of 61 miles.  I took a nap afterwards.

On July 25, my bike and I completed 355 more miles, enough to take me to Chanhassen, a suburb of Minneapolis, where I stayed two weeks in 2005 monitoring my Aunt Harriet's health and enjoying her company.  (My article about Aunt Harriet's 4th of July celebration with me is one of my favorites 07/04/2018) Taking me on a bike tour of Chanhassen, my cousin Ken Bloch showed me Paisley Park, where Prince then lived.   For this virtual tour, I wore a shirt that alludes to Prince's music for Tim Burton's original BATMAN movie, and I pause with my Gatorade to toast this man whose music I sometimes play when I ride.  He never fails to get me moving and smiling: "Ain't gonna let the elevator bring us down / Oh, no, let's go / Crazy!"

|| The Tour continues →

Biking Atlanta's Freedom Trail on July 4th

For years I've made it my July 4th tradition to ride the Freedom Trail bike path from the birth neighborhood of Martin Luther King, Jr. to Stone Mountain, a lovely park with a giant Confederate monument, where the modern Ku Klux Klan was born.  Five years ago, I was riding at the park when a caravan of trucks roared by full of white people toting guns and waving Confederate flags en route to a demonstration against a memorial to King planned for the mountain top. 

So I smiled to see a mirror image today.  Black men and women, in black militia garb milled about Stone Mountain village toting automatic rifles.  My first thought was the irony that the supporters of Georgia's gun-carry law probably didn't foresee that gun rights would be exercised this particular way.

When I blithely rode through their perimeter to get back on the trail, the young man with the rifle who stopped me was very polite and waved me on. (The photo comes from someone's Twitter feed uploaded a few minutes after I passed by this spot.  The police escorted the group on a march through the park.)

In Candler Park, I was again diverted, this time by a crowd gathered to hear a string quartet play "Amazing Grace."

On NPR during my drive home, I heard two wonderful programs on American themes.  Sound Opinions covered Bill Withers's live album from 1972, making me realize the warmth and distinction of that voice, those songs, and that personality.  Nine-year Navy veteran (engineering, non-combat), blue collar worker, great singer-songwriter, he quit show business in 1985 to raise children.  He comes across as real smart, real fun, and just real.  Very American story, too. 

Then The Hidden Brain explored the topic of Thomas Jefferson's internal contradictions over slavery, exactly the subject for an essay that I've been drafting all week.  They had as much trouble reaching a conclusion as I've had. 

As the day winds down, I've just taken Brandy for a walk in the local cemetery.   She had a rough night last night with pre-4th fireworks; tonight should be an ordeal.

Now it's about time to remember Aunt Harriet and one special July 4th.  (See blogpost of 07/04/2018).

The brats, the sauerkraut, and the corn cobs are ready.  Soon, it'll be time to mix the martinis. 

Update:  After my Aunt Harriet tribute dinner, I listened to Bill Withers's Live at Carnegie Hall album on the back porch while Brandy huddled under the roll-top desk to escape sounds of fireworks exploding for blocks around.

His voice and words have been a part of my life since sixth grade, but until now, I've never thought twice about the man behind the recordings.  He seems at ease talking to a rain-soaked audience, singing and talking about his buddies in the band, and telling stories about his grandmother before singing his ode to her, "Grandma's Hands."  He tells the story of a Vietnam vet who's lost his right arm as intro to a strong song, "I Can't Write Left Handed," lines all dictation - tell my lawyer... tell my mother... It's hard to take!  The familiar songs are so acute.  Then at the end he sings vignettes about Harlem, Monday night, too hot, Wednesday night, too cold, Saturday night staying up 'til church Sunday morning.  For minutes at the end, he involves the audience in riffing on that song, giving these sophisticated New Yorkers some instruction in how to sing it right.

[Photo: Withers at Carnegie Hall, 1972, Village Voice, Bob Gruen]