Cultural List - eracy, Part 2: From Prime Time to Internet

CULTURAL LITERACY
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

"One wonders sometimes where Watt thought he was.
In a culture park?"(77)

from the novel Watt (1953)
by Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

What's one good way to encapsulate the popular culture of an era: write a long list of world events, social conventions, inventions, historical figures, keywords, and so forth; make it rhyme, set it to music, and all systems are "go" for cultural transmission! Last month, I posted "Your're the Top" by Cole Porter (1934), "Do You Remember These?" by the Statler Brothers (1972) and "Reasons to be Cheerful" by Ian Drury (1979) -- and before that "I Am Waiting" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958) -- four long literary lists of cultural highlights.

Here are three more sing - along lists: "Prime Time" by Don McLean (1977), "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel (1989), and "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham (2021) -- storing knowledge, making it accessible, and encouraging us to memorize the words and sing along. Interestingly, Steve Ettinger's point about "We Didn't Start the Fire" applies perfectly to all of these songs:

Billy Joel captured the major images, events, and personalities of this half-century in a three-minute song . . . It was pure information overload, a song that assumed we knew exactly what he was singing about . . . What was truly alarming was the realization that we, the listeners, for the most part understood the references.

Do we remember these? Yes we do!

For a decade or so (circa 1967 - 77) each evening during television's prime time, when the viewing audience was the largest, Americans of all ages (yes, even children such as myself) were stunned by the Viet Nam Era nightly news, as it plunged every few seconds from the truly terrifying to the ridiculous. Don McLean's "Prime Time" (1977) illustrates this jarring juxtaposition of tragedy and inanity.

In a 2019 interview, McLean explains that he was "trying to capture the insanity of America. . . . I’m not a political person in the sense that I’m a believer in any politician — I don’t trust any of them. But I am a believer in America and very interested in America, and so I tried to capture that insanity."

Prime Time

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

I was ridin' on the subway in the afternoon
I saw some kids 'a beatin' out a funky tune
The lady right in front of me was old and brown
The kids began to push her, they knocked her down
I tried to help her out but there was just no way
A life ain't worth a damn on the street today
I passed the ambulance and the camera crews
I saw the instant replay on the evening news

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

Well will you take the car, or will you take the trip?
Remove annoying hair from your upper lip
What's it really worth? Does she really care?
What's the best shampoo that I can use on my hair?
Hey what's the real future of democracy?
How're we gonna streamline the bureaucracy?
Hey, hey, the cost of life has gone sky-high
Does the deodorant I'm using really keep me dry?

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

Well spin the magic wheel and try to break the bank
Think about your life when you fill in the blank
Here's a game that's real if you wanna try
One spot on the wheel that says you must die
American roulette is the game we play
But no-one wants to have to be the one to pay
You get to pass "GO"and you get to pass away
But before we start our show, here's our sponsor to say:
"Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way"

Well down in Mexico, the laundry's on the line
There's where you can go if you land on the nine
Canada is nice if you're fond of ice
If you land on the two then we'll send you there twice
We interrupt this game for a news release:
A man has gone insane and been killed by police!
Now back to the game, that's a dangerous play
'Cause if they see you in C-U-B-A you must pass away

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

My supper's on the stove, the war is on the screen
Pass the bread and butter while I watch the Marine
The shot him in the chest -- Pass the chicken breast!
The general is saying that he's still unimpressed.
"We had to burn the city 'cause they wouldn't agree
That things go better with democracy!"
The weather will be fair, forget the ozone layer,
But strontium showers will be here and there

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

Well livin' in the country watchin' shadows fall
My reception ain't too good in a power stall
Bombers in the air, missiles in the sea
Chemicals in everything, including me
They don't keep their promise in the promised land
It's getting mighty hard to find an honest man
But coming very soon, a show you'll die to see
It's called "The End Of The World" on channel "C"

Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime time
This is livin' in the U. S. A.
Well this is life, this is Prime Time
This is livin' the American way

Don McLean (b 1945)
See also American Pie & Magdalene Lane


In 1989, twelve years after "Prime Time," Billy Joel was bold enough to query: who started the fire? And who tried to fight it? Here's a visual and verbal explanation behind all 119 historical references, ranging from 1949 - 1989, included in the song.

We Didn't Start the Fire

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe
Rosenbergs, H-bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom
Brando, "The King and I" and "The Catcher in the Rye"
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana, goodbye

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron
Dien Bien Phu falls, "Rock Around the Clock"
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Krushchev
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, "Bridge on the River Kwai"
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball
Starkweather homicide, children of thalidomide
Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, mafia
Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go
U2, Syngman Rhee, Payola and Kennedy
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Hemingway, Eichmann, "Stranger in a Strange Land"
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
"Lawrence of Arabia," British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK – blown away, what else do I have to say?

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan
"Wheel of Fortune," Sally Ride, heavy metal suicide
Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz
Hypodermics on the shore, China's under martial law
Rock and roller, cola wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on, and on . . .

Billy Joel (b. 1949)


How did we keep up with "anything and everything" before the internet? Well, as the above songs attest, before the internet, there was Life Magazine, the Top 40 Countdown, and Prime Time Television. Then, along came the 21st Century; and, twenty years in, along came COVID. In 2021, serving as a sinister tour guide of internet craziness, Bo Burnham offered this task list of on-line options for getting through the pandemic:

Welcome to the Internet

Welcome to the internet
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We've got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first

Welcome to the internet
Come and take a seat
Would you like to see the news or any famous women's feet?
There's no need to panic
This isn't a test, haha
Just nod or shake your head and we'll do the rest

Welcome to the internet
What would you prefer?
Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur?
Be happy
Be horny
Be bursting with rage
We got a million different ways to engage

Welcome to the internet
Put your cares aside
Here's a tip for straining pasta
Here's a nine-year-old who died
We got movies, and doctors, and fantasy sports
And a bunch of colored pencil drawings
Of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other

Welcome to the internet
Hold on to your socks
'Cause a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock
They are grainy and off-putting
He just sent you more
Don't act surprised, you know you like it, you whore

See a man beheaded
Get offended, see a shrink
Show us pictures of your children
Tell us every thought you think
Start a rumor, buy a broom
Or send a death threat to a boomer
Or DM a girl and groom her
Do a Zoom or find a tumor in your
Here's a healthy breakfast option
You should kill your mom
Here's why women never fuck you
Here's how you can build a bomb
Which Power Ranger are you?
Take this quirky quiz
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

You know, it wasn't always like this

Not very long ago
Just before your time
Right before the towers fell, circa '99
This was catalogs
Travel blogs
A chat room or two
We set our sights and spent our nights
Waiting
For you, you, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad
You were barely two
And it did all the things
We designed it to do

Now look at you, oh
Look at you, you, you
Unstoppable, watchable
Your time is now
Your inside's out
Honey, how you grew
And if we stick together
Who knows what we'll do
It was always the plan
To put the world in your hand

Hahahahahahaha

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time
A bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom's a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy's a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
And anything and everything
And anything and everything
And all of the time

Bo Burnham (b 1990)


Each of these songs unto itself provides a short course in American history; study all three and you've got a semester's worth of research, worthy of 3 - hours credit. If you looked up all the people, places, and things listed here, the connecting search threads would keep you occupied endlessly. Taken all together -- my last post, this one, and the next -- you will not only be culturally literate; you will have a B.A. in Popular Culture, and be really good on Jeopardy!


Previously:
Tuesday, March, 26th
Everything You've Been Waiting For
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Tuesday, May 28th
Cultural List - eracy, Part 1:
Make Your Own List
E. D. Hirsch, T. S. Eliot,
Cole Porter, The Statler Brothers, Ian Drury,
Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, July 14th
Cultural List-eracy,
Part 3: Master Class
Ted Lasso, Steven Colbert & James Taylor

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com ~ Listing / Listening, Part 2

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Quick Summer Break

NEW OCTOPUS BOOKBAG FROM BEATA
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The family, that dear octopus
from whose tentacles we never quite escape,
nor in our innermost hearts, ever quite wish to.
~ Dodie Smith ~
From her play Dear Octopus

Also lovely: her novel / movie: I Capture the Castle

Taking a couple of weekends off
to visit friends & family.
'Tis the season!

A poem to capture the essence . . .

Family Reunion

Outside in the street I hear
A car door slam; voices coming near;
Incoherent scraps of talk
And high heels clicking up the walk;
The doorbell rends the noonday heat
With copper claws;
A second's pause.
The dull drums of my pulses beat
Against a silence wearing thin.
The door now opens from within.
Oh, hear the clash of people meeting —-
The laughter and the screams of greeting :

Fat always, and out of breath,
A greasy smack on every cheek
From Aunt Elizabeth;
There, that's the pink, pleased squeak
Of Cousin Jane, out spinster with
The faded eyes
And hands like nervous butterflies;
While rough as splintered wood
Across them all
Rasps the jarring baritone of Uncle Paul;
The youngest nephew gives a fretful whine
And drools at the reception line.

Like a diver on a lofty spar of land
Atop the flight of stairs I stand.
A whirlpool leers at me,
I cast off my identity
And make the fatal plunge.

by Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)

Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, June 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ In My Bookbag
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ In My Bookbag
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Facebook Photo

Cultural List - eracy, Part 1: Make Your Own List

CULTURAL LITERACY
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Cultural Literacy:
What Every American Needs to Know

or better yet

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:
What Every American Needs to Know

"Cultural literacy is not about elitism; it is about ensuring that every individual has the tools to navigate and contribute to our complex world. . . . the glue that holds a society together. . . . the only road to genuine equality and opportunity in our society."

Back in 1987, it was practically a party game -- like a round of Jeopardy! -- to thumb through Hirsch's massive alphabetical list, testing what we had learned and retained or what had been sadly omitted from our cultural education. When was Victoria queen (1837 - 1901), what was the span of Shakespeare's life (1564 - 1616), how about a priori and posteriori: that sort of thing.

Hirsch's project reminded me of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), which I had been required to read and analyze as an undergraduate. The assignment (this was way back in pre - Google 1978) was to look up any of these items with which we were not already familiar:

"Culture includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, nineteenth-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. The reader can make his own list."

T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Eliot is skewing British here, but even in Missouri we knew about "Pomp and Circumstance," pickled beets, and boiled cabbage. Some of the others weren't as relevant to North American college kids, but that's okay, because, as Eliot himself concluded: "The reader can make his own list."

Happily, witty American composer Cole Porter had already done just that -- 14 years prior to Eliot's suggestion -- in his song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes. You're the Top is a light - hearted bit of fun, but it is also a short course in cultural literacy:

You're the Top

At words poetic, I'm so pathetic
That I always have found it best
Instead of getting 'em off my chest
To let 'em rest unexpressed
I hate parading my serenading
As I'll probably miss a bar
But if this ditty is not so pretty
At least it'll tell you how great you are

You're the top
You're the Colosseum
You're the top
You're the Louvre Museum
You're a melody from a symphony by Strauss
You're a Bendel bonnet, a Shakespeart sonnet
You're Mickey Mouse

You're the Nile
You're the Tow'r of Pisa
You're the smile
On the Mona Lisa
I'm a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top

You're the top
You're Mahatma Ghandi
You're the top
You're Napolean brandy
You're the purple light of a summer night in Spain
You're the National Gallery, You're Garbo's salary
You're cellophane

You're sublime
You're a turkey dinner
You're the time
Of the Derby winner
I'm a toy balloon that's fated soon to pop
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top

You're the top
You're an Arrow collar
You're the top
You're a Coolidge dollar
You're the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire
You're an O'Neill drama, you're Whistler's mama
You're Camembert

You're a rose, You're Inferno's Dante
You're the nose on the great Durante
I'm just in the way as the French would say
"De trop"
But if, baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top

You're the top
You're a Waldorf salad
You're the top
You're a Berlin ballad
You're a baby grand of a lady and a gent
You're an old dutch master, you're Mrs. Aster
You're Pepsodent

You're romance
You're the steppes of Russia
You're the pants
On a Roxy usher
I'm a lazy lout that's just about to stop
But if baby, I'm the bottom
You're the top

Cole Porter (1891 - 1964)

Almost 40 years after Porter's hit, the classic country Statler Brothers had a 1972 hit with their nostalgic ode to growing up in the 1950s, filled with numerous references to the popular culture of the time:

Do You Remember These?

Saturday morning serials
Chapters one through fifteen
Fly paper, penny loafers, and Lucky Strike Green
Flat tops, sock hops, Studebaker, "Pepsi, please"
Ah, do you remember these?

Cigar bands on your hands
Your daddy's socks rolled down
Sticks, no plugs and aviator caps, with flaps that button down
Movie stars on Dixie cup tops and knickers to your knees
Ah, do you remember these?

The hit parade, grape truaide, the Sadie Hawkins dance
Peddle pushers, duck tail hair, and peggin' your pants
Howdy Doody, Tootie Fruitie, the seam up the back of her hose Ah, do you remember those?

James Dean, he was "keen", Sunday movies were taboo
The senior prom, Judy's mom, rock 'n roll was new
Cracker jack prize
Stars in your eyes
"ask daddy for the keys"
Ah, do you remember these?

The boogie man, lemonade stand and taking your tonsils out
Indian burn and wait your turn and four foul balls You're out!
Cigarette loads and secret codes and saving lucky stars
Can you remember back that far?

To boat neck shirts and fender skirts and crinoline petticoats
Mums the word and dirty bird and double root beer float
Moon hubcaps and loud heel taps and "he's a real gone cat"
Ah, do you remember that?

Dancing close, little moron jokes and "cooties" in her hair
Captain Midnight, ovaltine, and the whip at the county fair
Charles Atlas course, Roy Rogers horse, and "Only the Shadow Knows"
Ah, do you remember those?

Gables charms, "froggin" your arm, loud mufflers, pitching woo Going steady, Veronica and Betty, white bucks and blue suede shoes

Knock, knock jokes
Who's there?
Dewey
Dewey who?
Dewey
Remember these
Yes we do!
Oh do we?
Do we remember these!

Written by Don Reid, Harold Reid, and Larry Lee Favorite

In 1979, seven years after "Do You Remember These," along came "Reasons to Be Cheerful," from British musical artist Ian Drury. Drury's mostly optimistic, slightly sarcastic "shopping list" ranges from landmark achievements to any number of whimsical tidbits that add joy to the day:

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3

Why don't you get back into bed?
Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3, 1, 2, 3

Summer, Buddy Holly, the working folly
Good golly, Miss Molly and boats
Hammersmith Palais, the Bolshoi Ballet
Jump back in the alley and nanny goats
Eighteen wheeler Scammells, Dominica camels
All other mammals plus equal votes
Seeing Piccadilly, Fanny Smith and Willie
Being rather silly and porridge oats

A bit of grin and bear it, a bit of come and share it
You're welcome we can spare it, yellow socks
Too short to be haughty, too nutty to be naughty
Going on forty no electric shocks
The juice of a carrot, the smile of a parrot
A little drop of claret, anything that rocks
Elvis and Scotty, the days when I ain't spotty
Sitting on a potty, curing smallpox

Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three

Health service glasses, gigolos and brasses
Round or skinny bottoms
Take your mum to Paris, lighting up a chalice
Wee Willie Harris
Bantu Steven Biko, listening to Rico
Harpo Groucho Chico
Cheddar cheese and pickle, a Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle

Woody Allen, Dali, Domitrie and Pascale
Balla, balla, balla and Volare
Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying okey-dokey, sing-a-long a Smokie
Coming out of chokie
John Coltrane's soprano, Adie Celentano
Bonar Colleano

Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three
Yes, yes, dear, dear

Perhaps next year
Or maybe even now
In which case

Woody Allan, Dali, Domitrie and Pascale
Balla, balla, balla and Volare
Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying okey-dokey, sing-a-long a Smokie
Coming out a chokie
John Coltrane's soprano, Adie Celentano
Bonar Colleano

Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, part three
Reasons to be cheerful, one, two, three
I don't mind
I don't mind, don't mind, don't mind, don't mind

Sung by Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Written by Charles Jeremy Jankel, David Stanley Payne,
Ian Robins Dury, Stanley Payne David
See also Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

In conclusion, not forgetting the Beat Poets,
with Ginsberg's 1955 compilation of
"the best minds of his generation,"
but even moreso Ferlinghetti's 1958
wishlist: "I Am Waiting."


MORE CULTURAL LISTS
Friday, June 28th
Cultural List- eracy, Part 2:
From Prime Time to Internet
Bo Burnham ~ Welcome to the Internet (2021)
Don McLean ~ Prime Time (1977)
Billy Joel ~ We Didn't Start the Fire (1989)

Sunday, July 14th
Cultural List-eracy, Part 3:
Master Class
Ted Lasso, Steven Colbert & James Taylor
Next Fortnightly Post
Friday, June 14, 2024

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Listing / Listening, Part 1
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Anyplace Away From Here

LEAVING HOME
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Three Little Pigs ~ Slide Show

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. . . . nearly all Americans move away, or want to” (10, emphasis added; 99).

~by John Steinbeck
~from Travels With Charley: In Search of America, 1962

~ Oil Field Girls (1940) ~
Jerry Bywaters
(1906 - 1989)

"Impossible, now, to live your life
in a single place, to call it home."
Del Marie Rogers
(1936 - 2022)

Home-Free

There’s no rhyme for how high the corn should be*
in September, but I can see it, and I’m telling you

it’s up to my chest, maybe even my neck—
it’s hard to tell from the road—and it’s brown,

and judging by the sibilance when the wind
rubs the husks together, it must feel like paper.

I didn’t see myself living among husks. I didn’t
see myself here, not once I’d left my mother

and father’s house. Not Ohio, not round on the ends,
not high in the middle, not where some creeks

are called cricks. I always thought I would leave,
home-free, and go anywhere: land of silver

mesquite branches, land of dry riverbeds
with stones a horse could spark its hooves on.

Not here, not knee-high by July, not in the heart
of it all, not where some cricks are creeks:

Alum, Big Darby, Blacklick. I didn’t see myself
raising children here, raising as if they could

levitate if we focused our attention. I didn’t
see myself dying in my hometown, not a few

miles from where I was born, not surrounded
by my children, their feet planted on the ground.

I can see them. They’ll say they always knew
where to find me. They’ll say I was always here.

~by Maggie Smith
~from Good Bones, 2017

*Actually there IS a rhyme for this:
"The corn is as high / as an elephant's eye"

Last month I was comparing John Steinbeck with novelist Ann Patchett, so alike in their vision of a picture - perfect landscape. This month, I'm contrasting Steinbeck and poet Maggie Smith, so different in their views of leaving home or staying put. Steinbeck is convinced that searching far afield is the one true path, while Smith presents the magic charm of blooming where planted, "a few miles from where I was born."

For Steinbeck, the urge for new vistas is irresistible. His heart aches for the little neighbor boy who sees him getting ready to drive for weeks across the country, and begs: "take me with you." Steinbeck writes: "Unfortunately, I knew his longing. . . . He had the dream I've had all my life, and there is no cure." Or the young man he meets later on who reads The New Yorker and dreams of going there on his own one day: "'One likes to see for one's self,' he said. I swear he said it" (Travels With Charley, 10 - 11; 172)).

For Smith, on the other hand, a familiar circumference is ultimately a gift to her children:
" . . . They’ll say they always knew
where to find me. They’ll say I was always here."
Remember, even Yeats (see blog header way up above) hoped for his daughter to be "Rooted in one dear perpetual place. . . . accustomed, ceremonious."

Is it, or is it not "supposed to be any way"? Is one life choice significantly better than or preferable to the other? Or is it 6 of one, 5 of the other -- as in, yes, there is a difference, but just not much, and not always clear which is which. I can't really imagine my life if my parents had abided perpetually close at hand, or if I had, or if Gerry had. The literary connecions suggest many options: staying forever, going away but returning, striking out on your own and learning something new, leaving and never looking back . . .

1. Shakespeare

ROMEO [upon learning of his banishment]:
"There is no world without Verona walls."

FRIAR LAWRENCE:
"Be patient, for the world is broad and wide."

2. Charlotte Bronte

" . . . my experience had been of [the world's] rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils."(Jane Eyre, Chapter 10)

3. John Denver

" On the eve of his twentyfirst birthday
he set out on his own
He was thirty years and running
when he found his way back home
Riding a storm across the mountains
and an aching in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages
and to make a brand new start . . .

There was something in the city
that he said he couldn't breathe
And there was something in the country
that he said he couldn't leave . . . "

4. Alan Parsons

"The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he's taken isn't leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware . . .

The traveler awaits the morning tide
He doesn't know what's on the other side
But something deep inside of him
Keeps telling him to go
He hasn't found a reason to say no . . . "

5. David Wagoner

" . . . not from the hustings or the barricades
Or the rickety stage . . .
But from another way out . . . Get out of town."

6. Josephine Tey

"It was typical that Robert's ambition was to go back to the little country town and continue life as it was; while Kevin's was to alter everything that was alterable in the Law and to make as much noise as possible in the doing of it" (The Franchise Affair, 93)

7. Walt Whitman

“Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are
call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you."
("Song of the Open Road” #11)

Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, May 28th
Previous Fortnightly ~ More Steinbeck

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

A Kind of Dream Farm

VINTAGE EGGS & SAMPLERS
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Long ago at Easter I had a looking-egg. Peering in a little porthole at the end, I saw a lovely little farm, a kind of dream farm, and on the farmhouse chimney a stork sitting on a nest. I regarded this as a fairy-tale farm as surely imagined as gnomes sitting under toadstools. And then in Denmark I saw that farm or its brother, and it was true, just as it had been in the looking-egg. And in Salinas, California, where I grew up, although we had some frost the climate was cool and foggy. When we saw colored pictures of a Vermont autumn forest it was another fairy thing and we frankly didn't believe it. In school we memorized "Snowbound" and little poems about Old Jack Frost and his paintbrush, but the only thing Jack Frost did for us was put a thin skin of ice on the watering trough, and that rarely. To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I wondered whether constant association could cause inattention, and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. "It is a glory," she said, "and can't be remembered, so that it always comes as a surprise."

~by John Steinbeck
~from Travels With Charley (36 - 37, emphasis added)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rutted drive was filled with rainwater. Every leaf and blade of grass was shining. Once we turned we quieted down. The towering woods to our left, the white clapboard house with blue shutters up ahead, the gentle hills of fruit trees to the right that spread out behind the house past where we could see -- it looked like a sampler stitched by an eighteenth-century girl. . . .

It wasn't as if I'd grown up in Los Angeles. I'd seen plenty of farms in my day, but never had I seen a place that made the tightness in my chest relax. The order in the rows of trees and the dark green of the lush grass beneath them soothed me like a hand brushing across my forehead.

. . . So often my mind went back to that day at the Nelsons' farm . . . "Maybe we can all go back to the Nelsons' farm," I said, thinking I could get another chance. We could live the entire day again!

[Just as in Our Town when Emily says:
"Oh, I want the whole day."]
. . . Generations of Nelsons had cleared the trees and planed the boards and pulled out the roots and the enormous rocks and planted the orchard. They looked after the cherries and the apples, the peaches and pears.

~by Ann Patchett
~from Tom Lake (160, 246-47, 305-06, emphasis added)

Notice how Patchett hints at the idea that the farm hasn't taken on this dreamy appearance spontaneously. The soothing sense of order derives not in accordance with the mysterious workings of Nature but from generations of clearing, weeding, planting, and planing -- as in "to make smooth or even" -- weeding out what is already there naturally, planting something deemed more desirable by humankind. Left to its own devices, Nature would most likely have taken another direction altogether.

Episcopal priest, author, and anthropologist Miranda K. Hassett refers to this human intervention as putting the land under disclipine. A few weeks ago, she wrote:

"My Lenten discipline this year is to spend a little time outdoors, with attention and intention, every day, if possible. Today it was just a short walk in our neighborhood with the dog. I started out thinking faintly sulky thoughts about how our immediate neighborhood isn't very interesting, nature-wise, and it's a very unprepossessing time of year -- all gray snow and mud. Then I started thinking about how this land is under discipline - flattened and cleared for a neighborhood, sculpted for water runoff, managed to mostly grow only grass where it's not paved or built on. Then I walked past the place where a freak August flood took a life in 2018, less than a block from our house, and thought about that for a while. I've never quite been able to figure out how to integrate that into my relationship with my neighborhood. THEN I noticed that the weird old apple tree in the neighborhood park has half-fallen, probably in that very heavy snow a few weeks back. The city will probably take it down this year, and I'll miss its witchy, unruly presence. Our dog would sometimes eat its wormy green apples off the ground.

"This is, I suppose, lesson one: Tuning in to the land, to the non-human created world around me, is not about going outside to 'enjoy' or 'appreciate' nature. Nature does not owe me beauty or enjoyment. Paying attention to the land can bring all kinds of uncomfortable feelings - grief, confusion, curiosity - not just 'look how pretty the trees are against the sky.'" (emphasis added)

Next Fortnightly Post ~ More Steinbeck
Tuesday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

To the Literary Battle Fronts

INSTILLING DIGNITY, CHANGING STORIES
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Mural by
The Graffiti Girls Kenya

Journalist Elizabeth Okwach: "In Kenya, a group of fearless women are finding ways to express themselves by painting graffiti. In the process, these women are challenging stereotypes by visualizing civic issues that are impacting their community.

"Working in Kenya’s capital Nairobi — and major surrounding cities — Graffiti Girls Kenya are painting murals that are gracing the walls of creative hubs and community centers. Even though the murals are bright with color, the themes of these works cover a wide range of societal ills."

Graffiti Girls "sees public art as a crucial venue to address"
the problem of Gender Based Violence.

Artist Nelly Bradbury: “Our messaging through graffiti is bold and clear. When people are passing by they are able to see it and even guide them . . . I believe that public art is changing the social conditions of our community and instilling a deep sense of dignity. It is also changing peoples’ stories that have been ignored or overlooked.

~from OkayAfrica, June 2, 2022

While the artists' collective raises awareness visually, the AMKA writers' collective takes a verbal approach. Director Lydia W. Gaitirira expresss concern that while "written works form a good basis for analyzing perceptions on important social, political, economic and other issues . . . a lot of the creative literature available to young women . . . is designed primarily to entertain . . . [and] often ignores the pertinent issues."

The Fresh Paint literature project offers a corrective to fill that gap. Through prose and poetry, numerous serious writers are telling their stories of personal and political revolution from "the literary battle fronts."

Featured recently on
Kitti's Book List and The Quotidian Kit

~ Volume 1 available on amazon ~
~ Title story available on wordpress ~

This post will focus on a few more selections
from the Fresh Paint collections.
In the following poems, a trio of poets
raise their voices and our consciousness.

1.
The first is a saga of birth, suffering, and as yet unrealized potential, somewhat reminiscent of Walt Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, except -- instead of bird, boy, and sea -- the dominant motifs are mother, child, and earth (see also Yeats's "The Second Coming"). This is a long poem; here are the first five stanzas:

The Day the Cradle Gave Birth
~ by Kingwa Kamenchu (in volume 1, 108 - 112)

I know the story of how
She had once been
The cradle of all mankind,
The genesis of all living and breathing,
The birth ground of all empire.
But then in time,
Things had fallen apart

But I've been watching and waiting
And reading the signs
And they all tell me
That the cradle is once again pregnant
Heavy.
Ready to deliver
Any time soon

I see it in the way
Those children inside her stir,
Move, foment, and seethe,
With the pain of being inside
In that watery dark for far too long
A watery dark they have been stuck into
Pegged in, enclosed around, hemmed into,
Trapped down in, shoved upon, condemned to,
Misled, misinformed, and
Hoodwinked is their destiny
For far too long.

They know they must get out now,
Get away from the suffocation and bleakness inside.
These days, you see,
They have their learning; they have seen other worlds
Sniffed the tangy possibility of new vistas
They know who they are
What they want
And they will take no less

I see it in the way
Those children kick,
Jerk about, lash out, and thrust against,
Refuse, demur, dissent
To the condemnation; hit against the inner
enemies as well,
Refuse to be stifled,
After all these years
After numerous struggles
From the war trenches to the academies,
To the literary battle fronts,
They have never given up . . .


The sixth stanza describes Mother Africa's 50 - year pregnancy: "abnormal, surreal, absurd." While the other six continents "Dance, sashay and flourish" and "rule the world," she is restricted by her so - called "condition." In the seventh and eighth stanzas, "Her body has been one big war zone . . . Such a torturous existence" of labor pains, birth pangs, loss of blood.

Then for a brief moment, seven short stanzas, the poet is graced with a vision of hope. Africa has delivered the "home grown . . . fruit of her womb":


Fat, gurgling, cherub-cheeked babies,
Round and luscious, black skins satedly gleaming.
Long gone were the pathetic skin and bone wasted tots
Staring out of wide vacant eyes, flies nibbling at their corners
BBC, CNN, long packd up and trotted off to the
wildebeest great migration
in search of the new exotic; Real African picture. . . .

But I blinked
And when I opened my eyes,
She was still pregnant
Flailing her arms and legs
Rolling her neck from side to side
Moaning in pain and anguish
Like before

And it made me sit and wonder,
What will it take?
For this glorious, blessed cradle,
To give birth once again?


2.
The second poem, like the first, is rich in literary allusion and geography -- the Nile, the streets of Harlem, the "belly of the Sahara . . . a thousand lands." Jallow writes with hope that the world is wide and scorn may be supplanted by song. However, many wrongs remain to redress:

From Shame and Fantasy I Rise
~ by Maimouna Jallow (in Volume 2, 26 - 27)

I too, I dance and I rise
With diamonds at the meeting between my thighs,
Reclaimed the names that you gave me,
And found in them some things that might surprise.

Too many details remained buried under the cloak of the past,
Even if slavery never did lay its hands on my brown skin.
Shame and fantasy reduced my tribe to just half of a caste
Only the walls murmuring whispers of the original sin.

You called me Zero Point Five,
Mathematically drawing a decimal into my existence,
As though in those numbers did not lie
Thousands of years of resistance.

You called me IN-FER-TILE,
Supported by false tales of scientific evolution.
But I flow through man-made boundaries, a child of the NILE,
And my name is written in stone, engraved in the memory of revolution.

Now, just like then, Mule-atta dances off your tongue,
Insult camouflaged by exoticism,
An eroticism splattered on big screens uncensored.
Darwinism dons past colonialism and has just met commercialism.

But under the glow of Harlem streetlights, I too was reborn.
Invoked my sisters of the cowrie crowns,
We rose and danced away your scorn.
Cleaned away the bruises and beneath found mud brown.

And from the belly of the Sahara, we prayed to Orishas.
Baptised ourselves: half of a yellow sun, half of a full moon.
Journeyed a thousand lands learning the wisdom of philosophers
And found that God put a prayer and song in our mouths too.


3.
The third poem personifies and addresses Nairobi directly. The poet calls on the city to account for an unfair history and provide for an equitable future. All three poems share themes of revolution and rebirth. All three ask the reader to question the power of location and the significance of placenames. What will it take? Are you that place?

Are you that place?
~ by Nebila Abdulmelik (in Volume 2, 7)

Are you that concrete jungle
Crumbling under the weight of
Manoeuvring, manipulative matatus
Where passengers are shuka'd at whim?
Are you where darkness whispers sweet lullabies
Or where lights play dirty tricks
Where money is mobile
And glass ceilings tower as high as KICC?
Where freedom is plastered on bus stops
And injustice deeply rooted
Into territorial boundaries
Where few attest their tribe is indeed Kenyan
Where Tusker runs like maji
Where unga is revolutionised
And revolutions are most definitely not televised
Where radios relentlessly relay well kept secrets
Where the rain commands the city
And payday drives traffic
Where the likes of Kibera & Sinai make way
For the likes of Karen & Spring Valley?
Are you the capital of thieves and robbers
Or a megapolis of IT geeks, business gurus and self-made men
Where every pocket is packed with dreams
But not every dream packs pockets
Tell me, Nairobi, are you that place?

Tumutumu Mission Station,
Kenya, ca.1910-1930,
about 2 hours north of Nairobi

***************

Tumutumu Presbytery,
a few decades later.
My friend Mumbi says:
"This is not what it looked like
when I was baptized there at age 12."

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, April 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com