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Monday, June 29, 2009

Heading Home, Herbert Hoover


A nice house concert at Dave Hawkins’ house in College Hill, Ohio (Cincinnati) offered an opportunity to play tunes with the host.  As fellow Local 1000 Board Members we’ve roomed together at the Folk Alliance in Memphis, but had never performed together, so it was fun to play on his tunes and have some back-up for a hammered dulcimer version of Paul Desmond’s “Take Five.”....
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Heading west across Indiana and Illinois, I can feel the excitement that comes with fewer vitamins left in my daily compartments.  I was able to talk on the telephone with a few people who missed the concert (one of whom lived only blocks away but had forgotten the earlier email I’d sent out!)....
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Because I had some time, I decided to stop in the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum in eastern Iowa.  For those westerners headed east and vice versa, the brown sign along I-80 offers an oft-over-looked invitation to explore this former president’s boyhood home.  I am glad I finally RVSP-ed with a “yes.”....
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In my undergraduate study of history I did not form a positive opinion of the president between Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  This museum helped me move a considerable direction from negative to just past neutral on the positive side!  (There was a survey which asked this question at the end of the tour.)  I’m following up with a book that is tracing Hoover’s development as a “forgotten progressive” --an engineer who graduated in the first Stanford class, who operated successful mines in Australia and China, made tons of money and then decided that he needed to be involved in something larger that making money.....
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That restlessness led to his organization of an amazing relief effort, during World War I, that prevented thousands of refugees in Belgium from starving, even as both German and British militaries suspected him of being a spy for their enemies.  This, in turn, led to his becoming the Secretary of Commerce and seeking to create numerous efficiencies in production and labor relations that have had long-lasting, positive effects that we still experience.....
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He was able to bring disparate groups together and help them recognize their common interests and even set aside resistance to work together to create massive projects like the Hoover Dam, for example.....
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Despite his faith in the importance of persuasion to move public opinion, his inability to clearly communicate his own ideas and his unwillingness to take  enough decisive moves at the beginning of the fiscal crisis at the fall of Wall Street undercut public opinion which turned to view him as a do-nothing goat, rather than a life-saving hero.....
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As I read I find myself growing more sympathetic to his situation and the pressures he faced—another reminder of why I love to study history and see behind the us-or-them polemic that is often presented as truth.....

Saturday, June 27, 2009

To Cincinnati; the Power of A Song


After a delicious breakfast of some biscuits and gravy with some grits in downtown Bardstown with Cathy & Dave, Linda Lowe Thompson, and Dave Haas I packed up and drove northeast to Cincinnnati (College Hill, to be more specific) where I’ll give a house concert tonight at the home of Dave Hawkins, a fellow Executive Board member of the Local 1000, the non-geographical musician’s union.....
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En route, I was listening to a country station in Kentucky and heard a song for the first time that really demonstrated the power of a well-written song.  The male singer begins by singing about how his dreams of leaving home and going to the coast won’t be fulfilled because his girlfriend is pregnant.  He is about to marry her and sings, “There goes my life…..”....
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Already I’m starting to get nervous that I know exactly where this song is going.  ....
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Next verse:  The little is girl is born and he is proud of her and realizes that in her, “there goes my life…”....
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I’m almost certain of what is coming.....
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Final scene:  The girl has packed the car and Dad is checking under the hood to be sure she’ll be safe.  As she drives off for the coast he sings, “There goes my life…..”....
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I’m driving down the road, gripping the steering wheel, crying like a baby.  How did they do that?  I knew exactly what they were planning to do, they telegraphed it throughout the song and still they got me to come along in the story and mourn, turn grief to pride and then realize that his daughter is going off to fulfill his dreams.  ....
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That’s a powerful song!  Kudos to those songwriters!....

(Turns out--from a little research--it is Kenny Chesney:  Here are the lyrics:

All he could think about was I'm too young for this.
Got my whole life ahead.
Hell I'm just a kid myself.
How'm I gonna raise one.

All he could see were his dreams goin' up in smoke.
So much for ditchin' this town and hangin' out on the coast.
Oh well, those plans are long gone.

[Chorus:]
And he said,
There goes my life.
There goes my future, my everything.
Might as well kiss it all good-bye.
There goes my life.......

A couple years of up all night and a few thousand diapers later.
That mistake he thought he made covers up the refrigerator.
Oh yeah..........he loves that little girl.

Momma's waiting to tuck her in,
As she fumbles up those stairs.
She smiles back at him dragging that teddy bear.
Sleep tight, blue eyes and bouncin' curls.

[Chorus:]
He smiles.....
There goes my life.
There goes my future, my everything.
I love you, daddy good-night.
There goes my life.

She had that Honda loaded down.
With Abercrombie clothes and 15 pairs of shoes and his American Express.
He checked the oil and slammed the hood, said you're good to go.
She hugged them both and headed off to the West Coast.

[Chorus:]
And he cried,
There goes my life.
There goes my future, my everything.
I love you.
Baby good-bye.

There goes my life.
There goes my life.
Baby good-bye.)
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