Lead Belly at the MLA

A story from Marybeth Hamilton's In Search of the Blues (New York: Basic Books, 2008):

[W]ord of Leadbelly had begun to spread. [John] Lomax's American Ballads and Folk Songs had been published in late October 1934, and it included many of the songs gathered from convicts and credited Leadbelly as an important source. The glowing reviews the book received provoked the head of the Modern Language Association to invite Lomax to unveil his discovery at its annual convention in Philadelphia in late December. Though Lomax claimed to be apprehensive — the idea, he said later, "smacked of sensationalism" — he, Alan [Lomax], and Leadbelly duly took the stage with lecture notes and guitar at the evening smoker in the Crystal Ballroom in the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, billed as "Negro Folksongs and Ballads, presented by John Lomax and Alan Lomax, with the assistance of a Negro minstrel from Louisiana," and sandwiched between a performance of Elizabethan madrigals and a sing-along of sea chanteys.

"[W]ith the assistance of"! The most important person on the stage is thus transformed into a personal assistant and a nameless representative of a type. (Yes, an invisible man.) It's no surprise to learn that John Lomax employed Huddie Ledbetter as a driver and valet.

Edward Sorel could turn this improbable MLA scene into a wonderful First Encounters illustration.

[The name is Lead Belly, not Leadbelly.]

Quimby economics

Ramona Quimby speaks for us all:

"We are scrimping and pinching to make ends meet."

Beverly Cleary, Ramona and Her Mother (1979)

Jim Lehrer's Post-it Notes

Jim Lehrer's Post-it Notes delighted the "supplies"-minded viewer (me).

Barack Obama's authority and intelligence delighted me too.

[Image from MSNBC video.]

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Overheard

In the hallway of an academic building, one student to another:

"Have you had a drink today yet?"

At 11:57 a.m. Ah, colledge.

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Couric and Palin and Orwell

[Welcome, Daily Dish readers.]

Another unanswered question:

Couric: Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend 700 billion dollars helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas, and groceries, allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy rather than helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

Palin: That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have, we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation, this bailout is a part of that.

As George Orwell points out in "Politics and the English Language," one need not take on the responsibility of thinking when composing sentences:

You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

Look at what we have here — ready-made phrases, stray bits of language, as if pulled together from some desperate cramming for an exam: back on the right track, health care reform, job creation, one in five jobs, opportunity, reform that is needed, reducing taxes, reining in spending, shore up our economy, tax reductions, tax relief, the trade sector, the umbrella of job creation.

You know no one's home when we're told that "reducing taxes . . . has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief."

Stop, look, and listen: Katie Couric interviews Sarah Palin (YouTube)

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"Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word."

Review: Brian Wilson

Brian Wilson, That Lucky Old Sun (Capitol, 2008)

That Lucky Old Sun : Morning Beat : Room with a View (narrative) : Good Kind of Love : Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl : Venice Beach (narrative) : Live Let Live / That Lucky Old Sun (reprise) : Mexican Girl : Cinco de Mayo (narrative) : California Role / That Lucky Old Sun (reprise) : Between Pictures (narrative) : Oxygen to the Brain : Can't Wait Too Long : Midnight's Another Day : That Lucky Old Sun (reprise) : Going Home : Southern California

Total time 38:07

Two nights before I bought this album, I watched Brian Wilson on the Tonight Show and got sad. There he was, conspicuously ill at ease, sitting at an unplayed keyboard, silent during group vocal passages, surrounded by musicians whose energy and dedication heightened the pathos of the situation.

When I first listened to That Lucky Old Sun, with that televised performance in mind, a line from "Midnight's Another Day" struck me: "All these people make me feel so alone." And I then remembered a passage from the music critic Derek Jewell's review of a less-than-great late-1973 Duke Ellington concert: "I'm in favour of him, at all seasons, you understand, and if he doesn't merit such warmth of attitude, who does?" That Lucky Old Sun may not be a great album: it's not Orange Crate Art or SMiLE (the twin peaks of Wilson's solo career). But it's good, very good, with several excellent songs and many beautiful instrumental and vocal touches. Most importantly, it's the work of the only Brian Wilson we have.

Musically, That Lucky Old Sun looks back in time: to the 1940s Haven Gillespie–Beasley Smith song that inspired the album, to the Four Seasons, "When I'm Sixty-Four," and Barenaked Ladies' "Brian Wilson," and to many moments of Beach Boys history: "Child Is Father of the Man," "Do It Again," "Don't Worry Baby," "Good Vibrations," "Heroes and Villains," "Passing By," "Sail On Sailor," "Surf's Up," "'Til I Die," "Wind Chimes." There is a tremendously exciting and too brief rendition of the Wild Honey-era "Can't Wait Too Long." Several songs — "Good Kind of Love," "Live Let Live," "Oxygen to the Brain" — evoke the genial and loopy material of the Beach Boys' 15 Big Ones and The Beach Boys Love You. At other points, notably in "Southern California," we're in the lush territory of Sunflower. Even the slighter songs here have wonderful moments: the chord changes in the chorus of "Mexican Girl," the parallel major sevenths in "Going Home."

Lyrically, the album is a very mixed bag. There are occasional bits of the preoccupation with "health" that runs through the Wilson canon, with lyrics that sometimes verge on outsider art:

I laid around this old place
I hardly ever washed my face ("Oxygen to the Brain")

Some of the least effective moments of That Lucky Old Sun present Brian Wilson as a figure of mythic autobiography:

A goddess became my song ("Forever She'll Be My Surfer Girl")

Fell asleep in the band room
Woke up in history ("Southern California")

Yes, it's all true, but it's very difficult to make such material seem anything other than self-regarding (cf. "The Ballad of John and Yoko" or Frank Sinatra's Trilogy). Almost every song here lists bandmember Scott Bennett as co-composer, so it's difficult to know who's responsible for what, but I find it difficult to imagine Brian Wilson writing about himself in these ways.

That Lucky Old Sun is presented as a suite, its songs punctuated by reprises of the title piece and by four spoken interludes ("narratives") with words by Van Dyke Parks. The overall effect is compelling. It's helpful to remember that Brian Wilson has done spoken-word before, in the deeply personal and deeply strange "Mount Vernon and Fairway" (released with the Beach Boys' Holland). He reads Parks' hipster poetry with engagement and wit:

City of Angels
Be all you can be
Be movies
Be A-list
Be seen just to see ("Cinco de Mayo")

The most arresting song here is "Midnight's Another Day," a song of loss and renewal, and a worthy successor to "Surf's Up," "'Til I Die," and "Still I Dream of It." It is beautiful and heartbreaking, and its brief passage for voices and sleighbells is one more shining moment of Brian Wilson's pure and generous genius.

One suggestion: the supporting musicians deserve much more than the near-anonymity they're reduced to here. They are, after all, the musicians who brought us Pet Sounds and SMiLE as note-perfect live performances (I know; I was there for both). Photographs and clearer credits, please.

"Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word."

Katie Couric interviewing Sarah Palin:

Couric: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign-policy experience. What did you mean by that?

Palin: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada. It, it's funny that a comment like that was — kind of made to cari — I don't know. You know. Reporters —

Couric: Mocked?

Palin: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah.

Couric: Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

Palin: Well, it certainly does, because our — our next-door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia —

Couric: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

Palin: We have trade missions back and forth. We, we do. It's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to — to our state.

Katie Couric and Sarah Palin (CBS News)

As my dear friend Aldo Carrasco would have said, literally unbelievable.

Is anyone else beginning to think landslide?

Three questions

From ABC News, an item confirming Neil Postman's point that the question shapes the answer:

Three new poll questions on the government's response to the financial crisis underscore the power of words — not only in how we understand polls, but in how we choose to describe the events of our day. . . .

The first, from the Pew Research Center, asks about the government "potentially investing" (note: not "spending") billions "to try and keep financial institutions and markets secure." Fifty-seven percent like the idea.

Pew: "As you may know, the government is potentially investing billions to try and keep financial institutions and markets secure. Do you think this is the right thing or the wrong thing for the government to be doing?"

Result: Right 57 percent, Wrong 30 percent.

The second, from the new LA Times/Bloomberg poll, asks if the government should "bail out private companies with taxpayers' dollars." Fifty-five percent don't like the idea — almost the exact opposite of the Pew result.

LAT/Bloomberg: "Do you think the government should use taxpayers' dollars to rescue ailing private financial firms whose collapse could have adverse effects on the economy and market, or is it not the government’s responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayers’ dollars?"

Result: Should do 31 percent, Should not 55 percent.

The last, our own ABC/Post question, asks what people think of the steps the Fed and Treasury have taken to try to deal with the situation. Answer: Even split

ABC/Post: "Do you approve or disapprove of the steps the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have taken to try to deal with the current situation involving the stock market and major financial institutions?"

Result: Approve 44 percent, Disapprove 42 percent.

Read it all: Views on the Bailout . . . um, Investment (ABC News)

Plethora

Elaine and I had a nice moment of laughter a few days ago about the word plethora. Why does anyone use it seriously? Because it adds a thin, cheap gloss to the plainest of statements:

Our students can choose from five concentrations in the major.

Our students have a plethora of options for concentration within the major.

[These sample sentences are not drawn from life.]

For those who aim to impress via pomposity, plethora will do.

One might seek a cure though in looking at what the word means. The Oxford English Dictionary spills it:

1. Med. Originally: overabundance of one or more humours, esp. blood; an instance of this. In later use: excessive volume of blood (hypervolaemia or, now rarely, polycythaemia) or excessive fullness of blood vessels (now esp. as seen on X-rays); an instance of this.

2. fig. An unhealthy or damaging plenitude or excess of something; a state of surfeit or glut. Obs.

3. Usu. with of. Originally in pejorative sense: an excessive supply, an overabundance; an undesirably large quantity. Subsequently, and more usually, in neutral or favourable sense: a very large amount, quantity, or variety.

Thinking of bodily humors and bulging vessels might be enough to stop anyone's inclination toward plethora. Another reason to avoid this word: it's reputed to be, along with myriad, a favorite of those who score SAT essays. Reasonable to assume that it's a favorite too of those test-takers who likewise believe that one secret of good writing is farcical, pompous diction. A plethora of test-takers, if you will. (I hope you won't.)

National Punctuation Day

Yes, it's — not its — National Punctuation Day.

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