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Saturday, July 08, 2023
AeroSpace & Defense News Updates
“This Land Is Your Land”: The Story Behind America’s Best-Known Protest Song
“This Land Is Your Land”: The Story Behind America’s Best-Known Protest Song
It has been a staple of kindergarten classrooms for decades. But Woody Guthrie didn’t intend for the song to be a ringing endorsement of American exceptionalism—he wrote it for those who were getting left behind.
Mental Floss- Kenneth Partrid
American singer Woody Guthrie, circa 1960. Woody Guthrie photo: Getty Images. Landscape: iStock / mammuth .
- It's the musical equivalent of apple pie, though the flavor varies wildly depending on who's doing the singing.
- The underlying message, repeated throughout the song, makes the heart swell: "This land was made for you and me."
- Guthrie's original 1940 draft of the song contains six verses, two of which carry progressive political messages that add nuance to the song's overt patriotism.
- These controversial verses are generally omitted from children's songbooks and the like, but they speak volumes about Guthrie's mindset when he put pen to paper 80 years ago. . .
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- Instead of doing a sarcastic parody, he wrote a song that pulls double-duty, celebrating America's natural splendor while criticizing the nation for falling short of its promise.
- In the "lost" fourth verse, Guthrie decries the notion of private property, suggesting America is being carved up by the wealthy:
There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said: 'Private Property.'
But on the backside, it didn't say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.
The sixth and final verse in the original manuscript references the poor folks Guthrie saw living on government assistance during the Great Depression:
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple,
By the relief office I saw my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there wondering if
God blessed America for me?
- That original recording was lost until the '90s, however, so for years, all anyone knew was the version Guthrie recorded for 1951's Songs to Grow On.
- Guthrie's rendition on that album features neither the "no trespassing" verse nor the one about the relief office, which he never actually recorded.
- It may have had something to do with the mounting anti-communist furor that would lead to the Red Scare of the late '40s and early '50s.
- As a pro-union communist sympathizer, Guthrie and his fellow rabble-rousing folky buddy Pete Seeger had already faced industry blacklisting in the early '40s.
"We did one program on CBS Radio, and a newspaper reported out, said, 'Red minstrels try to get on the networks,'" Seeger told NPR. "And that was the last job we got."
Woody Guthrie, circa March 1943. Photo from Penn State, Flickr // CC BY-NC 2.0.
- Guthrie likely stole the melody from the Carter Family's 1935 tune " Little Darling, Pal of Mine," which itself was patterned after an old gospel hymn titled " When the World's On Fire" (sometimes called " Oh, My Loving Brother").
- "This Land" was a perfect fit for classrooms and campsites, where the song would take on new life."
In the early '50s, famed American folklorist Alan Lomax came up with a nifty plan for preserving the nation's musical heritage. He approached legendary music publisher Howie Richmond with the idea of including rural folk songs—the kind he'd been documenting for the Library of Congress—in school music textbooks. Richmond, who had become Guthrie's publisher in 1950, loved the idea, and to sweeten the deal for textbook publishers, he lowered his usual licensing rates and offered "This Land Is Your Land" for just $1.
- That's how "This Land Is Your Land" went viral and became nearly as ubiquitous as the national anthem, even without the radio play and jukebox real estate of Smith's "God Bless America."
- While the versions distributed to America's impressionable youth lacked "no trespassing" and "relief office" verses, the song's original lyrics were never forgotten. Following Guthrie's death in 1967, artists like Seeger continued performing the "lost verses," lest people forget the anger that inspired the song.
- When President Ronald Reagan used the song at his victory party in 1984, after it had been used by Walter Mondale's campaign, both sides were probably trying to evoke feel-good patriotism.
- The same goes for Reagan's advisors and allies who were invoking Bruce Springsteen's " Born in the U.S.A." during rallies and in newspaper articles. Reagan himself name-checked Springsteen and his "message of hope" during a rally in Hammonton, New Jersey.
- The president either didn't know or didn't care that "Born in the U.S.A." was another song about loving your country but hating how poorly it treats some of its citizens.
- And, when given the opportunity to perform the song with Pete Seeger at Barack Obama's pre-inauguration concert in 2009, he readily agreed to sing all the verses at Seeger's insistence.
Over the years, "This Land Is Your Land" has been covered by everyone from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who performed the song in Zuccotti Park during an Occupy Wall Street protest in 2011.
- Lady Gaga sang a snippet to open her Super Bowl halftime show in 2017, causing fans and critics to speculate about whether she was making a political statement. She mashed it up with "God Bless America," so it's a safe bet she knew the history of the song.
Whether it enters the public domain, as one imagines Guthrie would have wanted, or doesn't, "This Land Is Your Land" isn't going anywhere.
- The song has been adopted and modified by Native Americans, Swedish anti-Nazi troubadours, and people all over the globe who find truth and comfort in Guthrie's words, however they choose to interpret them.
"The whole idea of a land is your spot on Earth, you know," Woody's daughter Nora told NPR. "A spot where you can claim safety, sanity."
Friday, July 07, 2023
STUNNING + FUTURISTIC Dubai's Insane $22BN Mega Plan To Connect The City in an Enclosed Emission-Free BioSphere Climate-Controlled
It will cost a staggering $22 billion and today we are going to look at the insane engineering behind the Loop Dubai
Numerous records for high temperatures and streaks of hot weather could be set over the next two weeks.
- An excessive heat warning is in place through at least July 13 for much of south-central Arizona, including Phoenix and Tucson. In addition to a week or more of days with extreme heat, temperatures won’t drop too far at night, offering little relief and posing a health risk for those without access to air conditioning.
- It’s not just the heat. Unusually low humidity for July across the region is mixing with high temperatures, exacerbating a wildfire risk by drying out the land surface. Red-flag warnings for high fire danger are posted for northern Arizona and the Four Corners region out of concern for the potential of fast-moving blazes, several of which are already scorching land.
Numerous records for high temperatures and streaks of hot weather could be set over the next two weeks.
There’s no clear end in sight to this heat wave. The heat dome, set to expand and strengthen over the region, may persist beyond the limits of current forecasts.
How long this heat wave lasts may ultimately depend on whether monsoon season kicks in, but forecasters expect a near- to below-average monsoon season after a very active one last year.
The hottest time of year in Arizona is often late June into early July, highlighted in the graph below of cumulative days at or above 105 degrees in Phoenix. Deeper into July, and more noticeably by August, clouds and rain generated by monsoons tend to reduce the heat but increase humidity.
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