This land was made for you and me

-
Woody Guthrie wrote the song "This Land is Your Land" in 1940 as a reaction to the syrupy sentiments of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." We forget now Guthrie's song was not originally just a patriotic camp singalong.

When formerly blacklisted folk icon Pete Seeger sang it on the Washington Mall during the Obama inauguration concert, he sang the whole thing, including what singer Jill Sobule and others have mockingly referred to as the "Commie verses."

An anthem is a song of celebration. For a country as diverse as ours we need more than one National Anthem. "This Land is Your Land" belongs on that list of unofficial anthems, and not just the feel-good verses.

    This Land is Your Land

    by Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

    This land is your land, this land is my land
    From California, to the New York Island
    From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
    This land was made for you and me

    As I was walking a ribbon of highway
    I saw above me an endless skyway
    I saw below me a golden valley
    This land was made for you and me

    Chorus

    I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
    To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
    And all around me a voice was sounding
    This land was made for you and me

    Chorus

    The sun comes shining as I was strolling
    The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
    The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
    This land was made for you and me

    Chorus

    There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
    Sign was painted, it said private property;
    But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
    That side was made for you and me.

    Chorus

    In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
    By the relief office I seen my people;
    As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling
    Is this land made for you and me?

    Chorus

    Nobody living can ever stop me,
    As I go walking that freedom highway;
    Nobody living can ever make me turn back
    This land was made for you and me.



Comments

The Whited Sepulchre said…
I don't know if you own Springsteen's "The Seeger Sessions - Live In Dublin" or not, but it's pretty good.
The folkie jug band versions of the Springsteen canon are fun. Some of the Seeger stuff wears a bit thin halfway through the first listen. Like, how long can anyone stand to listen to Bruce do "This Little Light Of Mine", "We Shall Overcome", and "When The Saints Go Marching In" in full righteous fervor? (I own the complete Sprinsteen recorded output, BTW)
4:53 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Fedex Delivery Dept For Your Package....

-
Dear Customer! We have been waiting for you to contact us for your Confirmed Package that is registered with us for shipping to your residential location. We had thought that your sender gave you our contact details. It may interest you to know that a letter is also added to your package. However, we cannot quote its content to you via email for privacy reasons. We understand that the content of your package itself is a Bank Draft worth of $800,000.00 USD, FedEx do not ship money in CASH or in CHEQUES but Bank Drafts are shippable. The package is registered with us for mailing by your colleague, and your colleague explained that he is from the Country but he is here in Nigeria for a three (3)months Surveying Project as he works with a consultant firm in Nigeria West Africa We are sending you this email because your package is been registered on a Special Order. What you have to do now, is to contact our Delivery Department for immediate dispatch of your package to your re
Read more

Random Thoughts on AI-generated images

-
Image
It's been a while, but I'm back (bitching as usual). Let's start with....Artificial Intelligence generated art! 1. The first thing to remember is this is the new Bright Shiny Object. LIke the camera once was. Upon seeing the first daguerreotype around 1840, the French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), declared: “From today, painting is dead.” He was a little premature. And there will continue to be be more Bright Shiny Objects that will grab everyone’s attention and cause gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. 2. It’s also version .01 of this Bright Shiny Object. What we’re currently seeing is essentially demo reels: “See what I can do!!” Interesting but not *that* interesting. Once the excitement wears off it will be just another tool, used badly by some, used well by others. The camera did not replace painting, but it opened the eyes of artists to the possibilities of other forms. 3. Where Does the Artificial End and the Artist Begin? in my mind this situation is th
Read more

Cloud on the Cheap

-
These days, The Cloud is all the rage in the computer world. Cloud storage is probably as far as most folks want (or need) to go - think Box.com, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive/Docs...the list goes on. You can collect quite a bit of free off-site storage if you're of a mind to.  These are all examples of  SaaS - Software as a Service . PaaS - Platform as a Service - gives you a specific pre-configured platform to build applications or services. Finally there is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which is virtualized hardware: CPUs, hard drives, networking, firewalls and the like. A little background:  at my day job at Sisyphean Corp, I manage hosting for a couple dozen big websites (I lose count sometimes).When I first took this on, we were on physical hardware. Trouble with this is once you make your decisions about the hardware, you're sort of stuck with it for a while. If you've predicted your needs poorly, or they change, well... I migrated one of our d
Read more