Of course, Longfellow borrowed the rhymeless meter from the Finnish Kalevala (more specifically an early translation into German, since Longfellow didn't read Finnish.)
The Kalevala is a good read, too.
Posted on 06/20/2005 7:04:27 AM PDT by crushkerry
This summer's family wedding season has drawn to a close for me. The last stop found me in Duluth, Minnesota (not Duluth, Georgia; there would be no runaway brides at this ceremony) from where hails my maternal lineage. These are a hearty breed of Norwegian and Ojibwa stock. Lutheran. Hard working. Honest. Humble. And very, very liberal. Now, I'm not about talking your sanctimonious, excruciating Northeast liberals here, but rather genuine progressives with big, if bleeding, hearts.
One of my uncles is a Vietnam Vet and a genuine ex-hippie. My two other uncles share his progressive enthusiasms. For example, one asked me teasingly how I enjoyed Fahrenheit 9/11.
Fortunately, all three play guitars and sing quite well. So with a fire roaring (it was in the mid-60s this June weekend, with a steady breeze rolling in from Lake Superior), we gathered around to listen to some old-time protest songs.
Now, given my right-wing bona fides, the reader might be surprised to learn I have always had a sneaker for protest songs. Maybe it's the inner anti-government crank in me. Or maybe it was growing up listening to Irish rebel songs (dad's side) like Come Out Ye Black & Tans and Kevin Barry. Whatever the case, I'm a sucker for a ditty that artfully tells The Man where to stick it.
All the ghosts were there that evening. John Prine. Woody Guthrie. Pete Seeger. Gordon Lightfoot. Of course, you can't sit around a fire and complain about the establishment without Bob Dylan, himself a loyal son of Minnesota, making an appearance.
My uncle Jesse picked up a six string and belted out The Times They Are A-Changin'. It's one of Dylan's angriest, most threatening songs:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
I can rest assured that by "people" Dylan is talking about rich, white Republicans like me (except for the rich part). And yet I'm hooked after only a few bars. But before long, it seemed as though my uncles were singing to themselves:
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
I scanned the younger faces that glowed against the fire. Suddenly it dawned on me. Their sons and daughters are beyond their command.
There's my cousin, nursing a 4.0 GPA at a fancy liberal arts college, fresh from voting to re-elect George W. Bush on his first-ever ballot, much to the disfavor of his mom. There's the bridesmaid, also a cousin. She's been a die-hard Republican since her high school days and is still dedicated to the cause. And there's yet another cousin, fresh from a conservative Bible college located in Tulsa. And, of course, there's me, a paid professional political hack.
What's happening to my family is a microcosm of what's happening to the entire Land of 10,000 Lakes. Yes, yes, George W. Bush lost Minnesota. But it was "in play" up until the very end and the Democrats actually had to spend big money to keep it blue. President Bush ended up with 48%, up from Bob Dole's 36% in 1996. And the county-by-county electoral map from 2004 bears similarities to the national map. True blue counties, which can be counted on one hand, stand out against a sea (or, perhaps a Great Lake) of red.
Meanwhile, Minnesota has a Republican governor and one Republican senator. Democrat Senator Mark Dayton's retirement provides the GOP a chance to pick up the other Senate seat in 2006.
If you listen closely to the wind blowing in from "the big lake they call Gitche Gumee" you can still hear Bob Dylan singing, "the times, they are a-changin'."
Patrick Hynes is a freelance writer and the proprietor of AnkleBitingPundits.com
He is also the proprietor of AnkleBitingPundits.com
This is an enjoyable article. I love it when blue begins to turn to red!
In the recent interview of Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone(?) he said that he hated those hippie types. His farm was inundated with the freeloaders trying to commune with him. He quote,"wanted to set these people on fire!".......
It's funny how many 60's protest songs are perfectly appropriate today to protest against the aging hippie generation that made them popular in the first place.
No one tried to say a thing
When they carried him out in jest
Except of course, the little neighbor boy
Who carried him to rest
And he just walked along alone
Whit his guilt so well concealed
And muttered underneath his breath
"Nothing is revealed".
Well, the moral of the story
The moral of the song
Is simply that one should never be
Where ones does not belong
So when you see your neighbor carryin' somethin'
Help him with his load
And don't go mistaking Paradise
For that home across the road.
~ The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest
Bob Dylan just wanted (like the rest of us) to keep his own money.
Does this mean that we're the hippies of the early 21st Century?
My longtime goal has always been to live long enough to see those self-absorbed, self-important creeps repudiated, humiliated, mocked and badgered for the rest of their natural lives. It looks like I'll have my wish.
In spite of that it looks like the damage they caused is permanent.
In his auto-bio, he said he couldn't get away from the freaks. He didn't want to be the revolutionary icon that the leftist media was trying to portray him as. HE JUST WANTED TO WRITE SONGS! He even said that allthat imagry in his lyrics was just that! Pretty words on paper that made a good tune..........I remember my HS hippy friends were all agog over his every word. Dissecting it and projecting it onto their own ideals. If they only knew!.............
Isn't this the first of two or three books he plans to write ?
http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com
I believe so......http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/6539707/bobdylan?pageid=rs.ArtistArticles&pageregion=mainRegion
Next time around perhaps Minnie-land will turn blue.
Maybe the Cheese state neighbor will also turn a lovely shade of blue too. Time to liberate all of the heartland from the commie leftist libs.
I read a squib of Dylan's narrative on a national mag some months ago. I found it a bit disingenuous.
Only no drum circles!
Drum circles are evil.
All true hippies are either unaffiliated with a political party or maybe Libertarian.
You know, it starts as a drum circle, next thing you know youv got a college.
One must be careful of how the "squib" was put forth. The Left is not nice to those who don't conform to their portrayals. An icon of theirs who disavows their beliefs would be savaged and un-forgiven...........The times they are a-changin'........
Go out and get yourself a copy of Tim O'Brien's Red on Blonde. He covers all Dylan tunes thereon. Tim has a fantastic voice.
Warning: The record contains musicians playing the banjo.
I know the left likes to eat their young. But eat their "old" ?
Thanks... I'll check it out.
Warning: The record contains musicians playing the banjo.
Not a problem... In fact, it's an incentive.
You would both probably like my parody.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Uh--I think you meant to say red!
that story made me homesick! i grew up on a farm in Northern Minnesota. my observations are the same.. the young people there are voting for conservatives more and more. they grew up with the fruits of the welfare state, gun control, etc and didn't like it (i'm an example of that). maybe there's hope for this country and even for the birthplace of the socialist Farmer - Labor Movement, Minnesota.
Dylan and Willie Nelson are touring the country together now. Their only venue's are minor league ballparks to attract a family audience.
LOL!
bump
... "the times, they are a-changin'."
**
Indeed. I love it.
I have seen change this in my own huge extended family, which overwhelmingly leans Republican. After 9/11, those who changed ran right, and no one turned left. There are a few young people who oppose the war, but they are not strident Bush haters, and I have a feeling that the coming years will bring them wisdom.
Well done, sir.
They will "eat" anybody who sets back their agenda or stands in the way of it..........
I know musicians who make all kind of excuses for Dylan's marble-mouthed, nasal, atonal delivery.
I don't buy it. The boy should just write songs and then let somebody who can actually SING perform them.
Dylan and Willie Nelson are touring the country together now.
&&
Willie Nelson will never get my attention again since he campaigned for Kerry -- among other things.
How old is Dylan anyway? I saw part of an interview on tv recently. He looked like 12 miles of bad road.
( . . . ya got something against banjos? I don't, assuming said musicians can actually PLAY.)
...blame Longfellow ...
&&
I was thinking the same thing -- "Song of Hiawatha".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
Of course, Longfellow borrowed the rhymeless meter from the Finnish Kalevala (more specifically an early translation into German, since Longfellow didn't read Finnish.)
The Kalevala is a good read, too.
Where do I sign up for the "Absolutely Any Reference Whatsoever, Even If the Figure '26,000 tons' Is Brought Up In a Completely Unrelated Reference, To the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Ping List"?
Dylan's voice is an acquired taste.
I've seen him live a number of times, he is certainly NOT atonal. He can carry a tune no problem. Nasal...guilty as charged. Marble mouthed...also guilty as charged.
When the human voice (or any other instrument for that matter) sounds, overtones are produced. Some pleasing. Others not so. Dylan, not so much.
See tagline.
Anyone know the political leanings of Dylan's musical son?
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
But, like the author, I can take all that musical nostalgia of the left as a good listen and a symbol of a past that perhaps never really was, with no application to understanding politics and diplomacy today.
Congressman Billybob
Bite your tongue! Even with an inverted definition, I have the Eric Cartman reaction when confronted with the word "hippie."
Holy cow, Michigan and Minnesota really are Great Lakes brethren!
I know a bunch of people who are otherwise smart but successful, but have big blinders on and blame the West for the rest of the worlds problems. They are also hardcore socialists but don't see themselves as such.
Pretty sad. From what I can tell, it's because they never learned critical reading skills. They just accept what they read in the MSM without question.
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