Two Days and 50 Years Ago

The Wednesday just past was the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's great March on Washington. Blogwise I missed the date, but caught quite a lot of the TV and radio coverage, and stirring stuff it (mostly) was. Though I didn't catch any sound of him (only, alas, of Joan Baez warbling We Shall Overcome), Bob Dylan performed at the rally, singing Only a Pawn in Their Game, attracting some controversy for doing so, and feeling uncomfortable as a white man representing the movement for black rights.
  It was also on that date - August 28th, 1963 - that one William Zantzinger appeared in court in Baltimore, Maryland, and was sentence to six months for manslaughter and assault. In a drunken rage, he had beaten to death (in effect) a black waitress called Hattie Carroll for being, in his judgment, too slow in bringing him a drink. Zantzinger went to jail on September 15th. On October 23rd, in New York City, the 22-year-old Dylan recorded The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, one of the first songs to reveal his talent in all its blazing glory.
  Adjusting Zantzinger's name to Zanzinger - a name to be spat out, if ever there was one - Dylan came up with a song that builds the tension from the start, in long verses of contained anger, dense with internal rhyming and pounding repetition. Listen to it again. Listen here if you like...
That - not Joanie's warbling, not preppy Pete's list of potential uses for a hammer - is a protest song. That is the Swiftian saeva indignatio. Listen and marvel.

'Oh, but you who philosophise disgrace
and criticise all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now is the time for your tears.'

S*ria

'We cannot stand idly by.'
Why is that whenever I hear this phrase, I think of the line from Beyond the Fringe, 'We need a futile gesture at this stage.'
Can we not stand idly by? (a) We can and frequently do. (b) What else have you got?
If only it were merely a futile gesture - that might indeed raise the tone. Futile and actually damaging to our interests is a more likely outcome.
All this, I fancy, is an example of the amazingly strong strain of priggishness that pervades our unserious culture - a cost-free claiming of the high moral ground. Cost-free, that is, to the person claiming it. As Marilynne Robinson says in her great essay Puritans and Prigs:
'People who are blind to the consequences of their own behaviour no doubt feel for that reason particularly suited to the work of reforming other people. To them morality seems almost as easy as breathing.' Indeed.

Light on His Feet

As a pendant to last week's excursion into clog-dancing, here's another amazing dancer, of more recent vintage, in a joyous double act with a very fine fiddler, both of them clearly having a great time.

How Middle-Aged Are You?

Thanks to what is I'm sure a most illuminating survey, we now know that middle age begins around 53, rather than the more traditional 41. This report helpfully lists 20 Tell-Tale Signs that you're middle-aged. Although I'm a decade into middle age as now defined, I scored a paltry 8 (partly composed of half marks). There are many things listed that I would never dream of doing - tea in a flask? Dressing for comfort? Booking a cruise? Falling asleep after one glass? On the other hand, several indicators have applied to me from an early age - listening to The Archers (and watching Antiques Road Show), being entirely baffled by technology, hating noisy pubs... But then I always rather fancied the idea of middle age and looked forward to it as a period of life when I would come into my own. I knew I was making a hash of my younger years, and that youth, with its endless possibilities for self-absorption and self-destruction, wasn't the ideal environment for me. Roll on my 40s, I used (at some level) to think - little knowing that it would soon cease to be 'middle age'. I enjoyed my 40s, I enjoyed my 50s, so far I've enjoyed my 60s. I'd be hard put to say I enjoyed my youth.
Another illuminating, and I'm sure authoritative, survey recently 'found' that the 60s are the happiest decade of our lives. That may well be true - at least if you have your health (which I, thank G--, have). Now, where did I put those Werther Originals...?

A Gift

With heartfelt thanks to Arthur Ransome (see below) for the gift, I cannot resist posting Edward Thomas's How At Once -

How at once should I know,
When stretched in the harvest blue
I saw the swift's black bow,
That I would not have that view
Another day
Until next May
Again it is due?

The same year after year -
But with the swift alone.
With other things I but fear
That they will be over and done
Suddenly
And I only see
Them to know them gone. 

This had quite slipped my mind, though I was sure there must be a poem somewhere on the 'last swift' theme. Thomas perfectly expresses the sweet sorrow of the occasion, its unique quality of loss - 'but with the swift alone'. And who but Thomas could get it so right? A perfect meeting of bird and poet.  

Last Swifts?

Yesterday I saw what might well prove to be my last swifts of the summer - a pair, circling lazily over the road I live on, as if summer were just beginning, rather than nearing its end. A late last sighting, though of course I continue to scan the skies in the hope of seeing more.

Icons

Dave Cameron and Bellicose Billy Hague seem to have convinced themselves it would be a capital wheeze to lob a few missiles into Syria and show Assad who's boss. They might be wise to pause and take a look at this graphic created by Egyptian blogger The Big Pharaoh, a perfect image of a hopeless tangle if ever there was one. Unfortunately the UK isn't represented - a fact that speaks volumes - but if it was, a quiverful of green 'Have No Clue' arrows would surely suffice. Meanwhile, it's good to see how quickly the Peruvian Drug Mule look has caught on. Now that's what I call iconic!