Arkansas Blog

My former neighbor, Jerry Larkowski, had a great letter in the DimGaze about how it's time to change our national anthem to "America the Beautiful." In a lot of ways I agree with his sentiment although I prefer the message of "This Land is Your Land".

Anyway, here's what he wrote:

Like many, this Fourth of July weekend I displayed my American flag, watched fireworks and ate too much barbecue. But it was the playing of our country's patriotic songs that got me to thinking, and now writing. It is time for us to change our National Anthem.
Francis Scott Key wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after watching from a British ship Fort McHenry getting attacked during the Battle of Baltimore in the middle of the War of 1812. The lyrics have often been criticized for their tendency to glorify war. I personally don't care for some of the other morbid language within the other verses. We won the Battle of Baltimore, and later the War of 1812, but keep in mind that our National Anthem is rooted in America's getting attacked.
This Fourth of July weekend we sang "America the Beautiful." This song exalts prosperity ("waves of grain . . . fruited plain"), proclaims that "grace" has been "shed on thee," seeks God to mend its "ev'ry flaw," champions the sacrifice of its soldiers ("Who more than self their country loved") and calls for national "brotherhood" to "crown [its] good." And it gets better. Katherine Lee Bates composed these lyrics during a train ride across the country.
Let's keep the bald eagle, let's keep flyin' our flag, let's keep Uncle Sam pointing at us and wanting us. But let's thank Key for a great creation, set his song aside and let Bates' fine words tell the world what is important to us as Americans.

UFOs in Texas? Don't say we weren't warned! (blue name)

By the way....Happy Bastille Day.

After all, the French invented the word "liberty."

Click on Cato.

I'm with ya, Jake. I'm no Josh Groban my own self, but it ain't pretty when I try to hit those high notes ("red glare"). National Anthems shouldn't be impossible for the citizenry to sing.

America the Beautiful is a much better choice in terms of melody, lyrics, and theme.

I went back to wish everyone a happy b-d, but Cato beat me to it.

Don't forget to click on a banner ad while you're here!

Doc - it was probably an F-22 Raptor out of Lockeed Martin in FortWorth just making a quiet nightly run. My, they do like to turn on the afterburners when they make that turn to go home.

Max always says; Late, but..........we know you are a hard workin, good as gold ole
Louisiana boy.
July 14th...Bastille Day, 1973....oh la la,,,,I was there...........
could have been the night I....oh...aw.....
naw,,,,,,,,,,,,,I'll have some uptight wingers whining because they never had the great
sexual fireworks I experienced in that very liberal country.
Happy 14 July, mon amie.

If you like french

clicky

jazzy, every time you post an entry like that, my computer gasps and my monitor starts smokin'. Stop it, hon. (don't cha dare!) On a totally unrelated note, if we have a President Obama, will race relations improve in this country? What are the implications, if any, if we don't have a President Obama? Click on my bluename if you want to see what diverse groups of people are sayin'.

Go, Jazzy!

Having actually been to Fort McHenry and sat in the auditorium hearing and seeing the story we all know and then having the drapes on one wall pull back to reveal the Stars and Stripes waving in the breeze I can't go with anything other than the Star Spangled Banner. America the Beautiful is easier to sing, and has nicer lyrics, but there wouldn't be a USA without the events that lead to the Star Spangled Banner.

More fun and games at LRSD.

Jake, I always read your posts 2 if not 3 times and always enjoy them. Always make me think.

This weekend I went to a baseball tournament down in Hot Springs. Always enjoy watching the boys from Central play. I've come to really taking a liking to one of the players Dad's. Chit chat one day, I asked him what he did for a living. Response, Disabled Vet from the 90's.

In Germany training and was in some kind of an enclosed troup carrier that went off the side of a Mountain. Rolled end over end to the bottom of the mountain and most of the soldiers were killed. This guy fortunately just got every bone in his entire body broken!

Now the one thing that I like about baseball tournaments is they always tell you five minutes a head of time what will happen. National Anthem in 5 minutes.

I watched my friend this weekend with great pride. At the five minute mark, he marched half the distance to the flag. Feet together, left arm at an angle. He was ready for the National Anthem .

We should all be so proud.

jake i agree about this land is your land. it is a much better song and expresses my feelings but it was written by woddy for what would probably be considered reasons to put him in jail today. he meant it to be a communist response to america the beautiful. there was a play about guthrie at the rep several years ago and like the one this year about unions there were sing a longs on several songs. this land, union maid and a few others of the same ilk. it amazed me when the bankers, lawyers and wealthy drs stood up and clapped and sang along with these socialistic and communistic intended songs. i guarantee they would never espouse the politics of the words but they had a ball singing along.
woody was also ahead of john lennon on his song imagine. when he joined the merchant marine there was a blank for religion and woody wrote all. when told he couldn't use that he simply answered none. he was ahead of his time and saw what the future would bring.

Jake, make that two votes for "This Land is Your Land," if you keep ALL the verses:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

" but there wouldn't be a USA without the events that lead to the Star Spangled Banner."

I'm confused, Arkdemocrat. There was already a USA when those events led to Key's poem. They put the words to an old beer drinking song and didn't become our national anthem until the 1930s. I prefer "America the Beautiful' any time. And I think the French national anthem is the catchiest in the world!

Most don't sing ours. Too difficult. One understands why they had to be drinking to sind the music "To Ancreon in Heaven."

"Are the Good Times Really Over?" by Merle Haggard, with a new last verse, as they ARE!!! He'd be happy to write it...

...wish a Ford and a Chevy, still last 10 years like they should,

...back before Nixon lied, all on TV,

...no kinda chance for the flag or the Liberty Bell,

Is the best of the free life behind us now - are the Good Times really over, for good?

Sorry! Would YOU have kids now?
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Absolutely. "America the Beautiful" as our national anthem. Lyrics and melody? Much more pacifist than "Star Spangled Banner."

Gotta tell ya, though. It's gonna be tough to get past the challenging vocal range of "Star Spangled Banner." Done right, it's spine-tingling.

When you can knock that sucker outta the ballpark, like Whitney, it can't be beat.

But the "Star Spangled Banner's" martial lyrics and their origins do me in.

Celebrating war and violence and "bombs bursting in air" and "the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes" "half conceals, half discloses" "the havoc of war and the battle's confusion" "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution" "No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave" "Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just / And this be our motto: "In God is our trust" . . . .

Could be the Taliban's chant. "We're right, we've got God / Allah behind us and everybody else on the planet who disagrees with us is wrong."

Twin Towers, here we come! Shock and awe!

Baghdad, here we come! Shock and awe!

Tit for tat. For millennia.

I love our national anthem and what it (used to) stand for. But the world's grown up since.

Despite the Star Spangled Banner's daunting vocal and orchestral tonal power, Francis Scott Key's lyrics, well . . . read 'em for yourselves.

I love "America the Beautiful" more. Plus I can actually sing it.

The music is as rousing as "The Star Spangled Banner," but the lyrics are magnificent.

Google them, sometime.

For me anyway, the lyrics of "America the Beautiful" are more representative of what America fundamentally IS, WAS and may be AGAIN, if we survive the partisan present.

It's astonishing to me that anybody thinks any Presidential candidate is "incompetent" simply because of his or her skin's pigmentation, but alas.

Racism dies hard, I guess.

Meanwhile, clicky my name for the black hymn I detest most (because everybody plays it at their funerals) performed in the version I love most.

"Amazing Grace." Just on the black keys. At Carnegie Hall.

Clickyname and enjoy.

I'll keep posting till I get it right. And please, no dumb blonde comments. I'm a natural brunette, as anybody who knows me intimately will attest.

So you can go here, for "Amazing Grace" just on the black keys from Carnegie Hall:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0

Or maybe you can just clicky my name.

Jake, here's a letter you may enjoy from today's DimGaze, by a good friend of mine. She's as spunky as her letter and that's an amazing feat for her after 4 bouts with cancer and 7 bouts with pneumonia. She would be pissed if I mentioned her age, but she could be Jake's mother. Retired school teacher and the most active woman I've ever the pleasure to know:

"During the long political campaigns of late, I have heard people say they could not bring themselves to vote for a woman or a black-actually half-white-man. Some of these people are, in rapidly diminishing numbers, thank heaven, supporters of the present administration, and it is to them that I direct my question. In these terrible times of foreign policy, political, economic, constitutional, health care and environmental crises under the tenure of the white male currently in the White House, I feel compelled to ask: How's that working out for you ?
LINDA FARRELL / Bella Vista"
.

Boy could I happily hang with your friend, eLwood! There's something special about people, especially women (it's the crap that brings out the best humor), who make it to a ripe middle age and beyond with their passion, integrity and humor still kicking. Now that I've entered my fifties and experienced the last seven years I understand the allure of tuning out/sitting on the sidelines through the golden years. Let the younger generations do all those things they think need done...after all (and bless em), in their world it's all easy ha. But after that 30 seconds of quiet passes...I'm with Linda Farrell. Damn President Shit for Brains and his torture-loving, Constitution-stomping enablers. If we love our children/grandchildren and great grandchildren, we need to make sure that Monkeyboy's TRUE history/legacy lives on...in the hopes that our offspring are smarter than us (A LOT smarter) and actually learn from history.

No country that allows torture/Guantanamo deserves to sing heroic songs to itself. We've become the fat cat despots that we fought against.

Jazzy...still fighting the phone gang? Our phone service is good but they've been doing major road construction in our neighborhood and I guess the days of construction signs are gone...are just residing with the same laws that mandate covers on dump trucks. A 'Road Closed' sign goes up and strangers to the area are left to wander around hoping to come upon a new route (not easy). Someone even stuck up a homemade sign hoping to inform people that there was NO OUTLET through our area...lasted a day or two. Got so bad, it became funny...though my heart did go out to the driver of the huge truck who had to have the cops extract him from our street (a blind/SHARP curve that cannot be backed around).