Dave's Whiteboard

My parents, one Christmas, gave me an album by Peter, Paul and Mary.  Ignoring the question of how Mom and Dad knew who these people were, I didn’t like Peter, Paul and Mary.

Or so I thought.

By the following year, I wanted a guitar.  And I guess I learned informally, because I didn’t take lessons, and I didn’t know anyone who knew guitar.  I had found Earl Robinson’s Folk Guitar in Ten Sessions, which was more about accompanying singing than fancy fingering.

So: listening to Yarrow, Stookey, and Travers pulled me into a web of songs.  Some were traditional, some were contemporary, but for me they related in a way that other kinds of music hadn’t.  Related in the sense of having a connection, and related in the sense of giving an account of things outside.

I started learning about other kinds of music, about the “folk process” through which tradition song gets transformed, about social relevance.  And I learned that making music was not something only professionals did, or only other people: making music was an invitation.

I don’t know if Mary played an instrument.  Her voice helped carry the heart of a song: the braid of sounds and story.  Chan fhiach cuirm gun a còmhradh — it’s no feast if there’s no talk — and there’s not much of a song if there’s no connection.

In an interview, Mary said, “I’m not sure I want to be singing Leaving on a Jet Plane when I’m 75, but I know I’ll still be singing Blowin’ in the Wind.“  She died yesterday, three years short of that, but the connections remain.

A summertime side trip…

My car radio has a USB connection, and I have a couple of USB drives full of music.  Mostly they’re whole albums, but some of the albums are anthologies, so I’m never quite sure what old audio friend will show up.

Like the Ian Tyson classic Someday Soon, sung here by Suzy Bogguss:

When he comes to call
My pa ain’t got a good word to say
Guess it’s ’cause he was just as wild
In his younger days…

Or Shannon McNally’s Pale Moon (this isn’t the best audio, but it’s a live performance):

…I’m on the ground in N.Y.C.
the city of perpetual motion
the city that never sleeps
that’s all right, baby,
I wasn’t tired anyway…

Ian Tyson always reminds me of another Canadian icon.  Here’s Gordon Lightfoot singing about what was at that time the largest Great Lakes freighter.  (The video has news footage–the sideways launch of the Fitz from Great Lakes Steel, outside Detroit, on August 7, 1958. )

There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover the entire land mass of North and South American with one foot of water. (Wikipedia)

The dimming lights of the auto industry pain me–I grew up in Detroit (and not in a Detroit suburb).  When UAW president Walter Reuther died in a plane crash, they held the funeral in the Henry and Edsel Ford Auditorium.  It was broadcast live, and included a performance of Joe Hill. This video isn’t from the funeral, but was the clearest version I could find.

From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where workers strike and organize,
That’s where you’ll find Joe Hill,
it’s there you’ll find Joe Hill.

Andrew Maynard, an expert on new scientific technologies,  has a post reprising the notion of the two cultures (science and humanities, with a chasm between them).  He offers a one-question poll and sees the results as indicating that the chasm isn’t necessarily that vast.

Ruth Seeley offers a similar poll from the humanities side.

I liked both polls, though as I commented to Ruth, I’m not sure her topic is necessarily comparable Andrew’s.

Ruth knows this isn’t a serious disagreement; we’ve had several enjoyable exchanges. The two polls did give me an excuse to test a polling plugin (a piece of code for WordPress blogs like this one).

Other than messing around in the tool aisle, I was shooting for a question like Maynard’s that touches on more fundamental concepts.

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Okay; now you can scroll down to the comments and check. Then, if you would, the bonus round: a second poll to help analyze the answers:

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There’s an image on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website:

An amendment to the Citizenship Act went into effect today.  I took the quiz that the image links to, even though I knew how it would turn out:

1. Have you ever renounced your Canadian citizenship?  
   Nope.
2. Was your Canadian citizenship ever revoked for fraud?  
   No.
3. Where were you born?
   The Inverness hospital–oh, “in Canada.”
4. When were you born?
   (In my case, the right answer is:
   “Between January 1st, 1947, and February 14, 1977.”)
5. At the time of your birth, were your parents foreign diplomats in Canada?  
   No (unless under really deep cover).

So I passed.

Under the new law, “Citizenship will be automatic and retroactive to the day the person was born or lost citizenship, depending on the situation.”  So I’ve zipped back to 1958 when my parents became naturalized U.S. citizens.  At the time, I gained U.S. citizenship through them and automatically lost my Canadian citizenship.

Oh, there it is.  And retroactive, too, so I’ve been Canadian all along.  (You had doubts?) 

I read once that Stephen Hawking claimed time travel would never be possible.  He offered as proof the fact that we haven’t been invaded by tourists from the future.  (I used to think, well,  maybe we’re just the time-travel equivalent of someplace no one wants to visit. )  I guess Canada and I have showed him.

1066 and All That states (sensibly, I think) that history is what you remember.  More than that; at least for me, history is how you respond to what you remember–and perhaps what those responses lead you to.

You can turn inward, recalling only the good things and staying inside the value equivalent of a walled garden, or you can move outward, using what you know to help figure out other things.

I’m descended from Highlanders.  I remember my father talking to our upstairs neighbor in Detroit, who was (of course) also from Cape Breton.  Frank said to my dad, “Wouldn’t it be great, Hughie, if we could go back to Scotland?”

I don’t think anyone in Frank Gillis’s family had been within a thousand miles of Scotland for two hundred years, except perhaps during two world wars–but this was Frank’s attitude (and my dad’s).  Scotland for them was like Paris for Hemingway: a moveable feast, only with more MacDougals.

I treasure this connection to a small place, though not as a Celtic Disneyland frozen in time.  I know a little of how my ancestors came to Canada, and then my parents to the States.  That knowledge, I think, helps me connect a little with the origins, the journeys, and the memories held by others.

I don’t see Bonnie Prince Charlie as a noble hero, but today’s the anniversary of the last battle on the island of Britain.  Jacobite forces under Prince Charlie were crushed by the army of the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, on April 16, 1746.  The site is known by two names: Drumossie and Culloden.

So here’s Deanta with Mary Dillon, singing Alastair McDonald’s Culloden’s Harvest.