THIS LAND IS OUR LAND? GUTHRIE'S UNCUT, UNCENSORED LYRICS

Irving Berlin wrote "God Bless America" in the form of a non denominational patriotic prayer

--- note introduction lyrics "as we raise our voices, in a solemn prayer" for God's blessing and peace for the nation "stand beside her and guide her through the night" --- Berlin originally wrote the song in 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army but decided that it did not fit in his revue Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside. His lyrics included the line, "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..." as well as "Stand beside her and guide her, to the right with the light from above."

Music critic Jody Rosen discovered a 1906 Jewish dialect novelty song, "When Mose with His Nose Leads the Band", contains a six-note fragment that is "instantly recognizable as the opening strains of "God Bless America." He interprets this as an example of Berlin's "habit of interpolating bits of half-remembered songs into his own numbers." Berlin, born Israel Baline, had himself written several Jewish-themed novelty tunes.

In 1938, as Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich became more militaristic and belligerent, Berlin, a first-generation Jewish European immigrant, decided to revive the song as a "peace song." Kate Smith premiered it on the 1938 Armistice Day broadcast of her radio show. Berlin made some minor changes: people might have interpreted "to the right" as a call to the political right, so he substituted "through the night" instead. He also provided an introduction that is now rarely heard but which Kate Smith always used:

"While the storm clouds gather far across the sea /

Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free /

Let us all be grateful for a land so fair /

As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer."

Meanwhile, folk singer compose Woody Guthrie disliked the song because it lacked detail of the real America. So he wrote his own patriotic song. Some of the verses rarely get sung in public though, even though those particular versus seem starkly modern.

This Land is Your Land
Woody Guthrie
Original 1944 Lyrics

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?


Confirmation of two other verses

A March 1944 recording in the possession of the Smithsonian, the earliest known recording of the song, has the "private property" verse included. This version was recorded the same day as 75 other songs. This was confirmed by several archivists for Smithsonian interviewed as part of the History Channel program Save Our History - Save our Sounds. The 1944 recording with this fourth verse can be found on Woody Guthrie: This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Volume 1, where it is track 14.


This Land Is Your Land
Woody Guthrie
1956 Lyrics

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

MY FREE VERSE POEM IN HONOR OF THE CENSUS COMPUTER SYSTEM ENTITLED

PBOCS

P is for the pains that you give me. You give some a pain in the neck, but I have a lower opinion.

B is for boxes of binders which we cannot ship when you do not work.

O resembles the number you are worth. On a good day even.

C is for the innocent computers you infected. C is also for the cramps you gIve us in our craniums.

S is for the sniveling sinister programmers that invented you and inflicted you on an unsuspecting sensus - - ur . . . census.

Put them all together they spell PBOCS -- a name that our posterity will wonder why we scream out at night for years into the future.

MODERNIZING THE SUPREME COURT

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to The Supreme Court nomination illustrates the narrow band of Supreme Court experience. The United States has a population of well over three hundred million, but the Supreme Court looks as if it judges a nation the size of Spain.

3 of the justices will be Jews and 6 Catholics. No Protestants, Buddhists, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians.

When we consider America’s variety of towns and cities – contemplate that before their appointments, our Supreme Court justices lived in:

Metro Boston (2);
Buffalo;
Chicago (2);
metro District of Columbia (5);
Jefferson City, MO;
Long Beach, IN;
Italy somewhere to write a thesis;
New York City (4);
New Jersey towns (5);
Pin Point Georgia;
Sacramento; '
San Francisco (2).

Kagan lived in upper Manhattan, Sotomayor in the Bronx and Greenwich Village, Ginsberg in Brooklyn, and Scalia in Queens.

4 of the 9 with connections to one city. I might try humor and say an associate justice has not lived in Provo, Utah since 1922, and that certainly illustrates the court’s lack of regional diversity.

America has more than 200 law schools. The justices studied at three: Columbia Law School (1); Harvard Law School (6); Yale Law School (3). The professors and students of these 200 plus law schools teach and study the same law.

Thousands of colleges dot America from sea to shining sea. The justices earned university degrees at --

College of the Holy Cross;
Cornell;
Georgetown;
Harvard;
London School of Economics;
Oxford (2);
Princeton (3);
Stanford (2).


THE CALL TO ACTION

The Kagan nomination to the Supreme Court illustrates the need to modernize the Supreme Court. A country of 300 million needs more than 9 justices.

A constitutional amendment should require one justice from each of the 13 judicial districts, plus 3 at-large justices and a chief justice for a total of 17 justices.

8 should be men; 8 women, and a toss of a coin should determine in the beginning which seats will start with men justices and which will start with women justices and then alternate back and forth through the years. This means more men or more women justices might serve on the court at any given moment; however, in the long view of time the gender composition numbers will add up roughly equal.

An appointment to the Supreme Court should not last a lifetime. It should last to the age of 86 at most.

The chief justice's gender should alternate through the years as well.

The only guarentees in life are death and taxes -- but death happens only once

15 April is Tax Day. It is also the 98th anniversary of the Titanic sinking. Apparently long ago, someone on the Congressional appropriations committees had a dark sense of humor.

The IRS Universal headquarters building occupies a full block at 1111 Constitution Avenue in Washington DC. If you think that address is accidental, you have been watching the wrong opera.

Over the front door is this inscription:
"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society" -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Frankly I think it should update its inscription to something more modern:

"What did you make? Fork it over."

Or more succinctly:

"Bend over."

THE XXI WINTER OLYMPIAD -- AND SO IN CONCLUSION

Congratulations to our Canadian brothers and sisters on a great Winter Olympic ice hockey game and a famous victory. This game may become nearly as famous as when the Canadians defeated the USA team in Salt Lake City.

Ice hockey started anciently with groups of guys on ice hitting flat rocks back and forth with sticks. Over the ages, we build up around the game expensive infrastructure, all that money in salaries and betting, and all kinds of nationalistic baggage to hang over a simple sport. Then we cover it all in alcohol. We should not regard these as steps in the right direction.

I always preferred the elegance of the Winter Olympics to more the sweaty gladiator aspects of the Summer Games. Unforunately, winter Olympic games’ costs have skyrocketed rather out of control.

By February 2010, experts estimate the total cost of the Games, including all the infrastructure improvements for the region that occurred, at $6 billion, with $600 million spent on hosting the actual games. Price-Waterhouse projects benefits and revenues to the city and province in the range of $10 billion; an eport projects direct revenues in the range of $1 billion. This is a long way in the wrong direction from the guys having fun with sticks and stones on ice.

Xtreme sports have no place in Winter Olympic games. Therefore, that luge track on which athletes clutching sleds the size of cookie platters can travel 95 miles an hour still concerns me. We find Luge and Skeleton exciting enough without the extreme speeds, thank you very much.

I have compiled a list of The top seven medal-winning countries in the last four Olympiads,
ranked by all medals

1 Germany three times
United States once

2 Germany once
Norway once
USA twice

3 Canada twice
Norway once
Russia once

Austria all four Olympiads
Canada all four Olympiads
Finland 1998
France 2002
Germany all four Olympiads
Italy 2002
Russia all four Olympiads
Netherlands 2002
Norway all four Olympiads
South Korea 2010 – shape of things to come?
Sweden 2006
Switzerland 2002, 2006
United States all four Olympiads

The interesting emergence of South Korea aside, the Winter Olympic games remain the domain of North American and European countries with mounds of money to spend on such frivolity. This is also not quite a step in the right direction either.

THE PROVO TEMPLE: GOOGIE, PAST POLITICS, AND THE FUTURE OF AN ARCHITECTURAL LANDMARK

ITEM CULLED FROM THE DAY'S NEWS HEADLINES

LDS Church isn't planning to renovate Provo Temple

preserved from Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700010478/No-plans-to-redo-Provo-LDS-temple.html
By Scott Taylor Deseret News
Published: Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010 7:17 p.m. MST


SALT LAKE CITY — After Wednesday's announced face-lift to the Ogden Utah Temple, the expected questions regarding the Provo, Salt Lake and Jordan River temples were answered with a resounding "no current plans" by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Given their mirrored timelines of some four decades and near-identical designs, the Ogden and Provo temples have long been labeled "sister" temples.

Because of the Ogden-Provo parallelism, many reasons cited for upgrading the former temple would seemingly apply also to the latter — seismic concerns, dated exterior and interior designs, inefficient mechanical systems and out-of-date building materials built on old specs and technology.

One major difference, however, is the LDS Church matching a revitalized temple with a redeveloping downtown Ogden.

"You combine that with what was going on in Ogden, and I think the First Presidency felt this would be a wonderful thing to do for the church and for the Saints in Ogden as well as a wonderful thing to do for the city of Ogden," said Elder William R. Walker, a member of the Quorums of the Seventy and executive director of the church's Temple Department.

Still, people wonder if the Provo Temple is destined for Ogden-style massive makeover.

"I think it would be safe to say that that wouldn't even be considered until the Payson Temple (announced last month) is completed," Elder Walker said.


RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY

“No current plans” means ”none of our business.”

The Salt Lake Church bureaucracy has plans afoot. You can rely on it. However, it is not quite ready to release them or do them just yet. If the Salt Lake City and County Building and the Utah State Capitol needed seismic upgrades, then the Salt Lake Temple needs a seismic upgrade, though probably on a lesser scale, since the temple has better-built features.

In the mid 1960s when the First Presidency discovered that church members performed a big majority of the Church’s total temple work in the Logan, Salt Lake City, and Manti, Utah temples (3 of 13 total), it commissioned Emil Fetzer to design temples for Ogden and Provo that could accommodate big crowds of people efficiently. Lots of people could get in, do the work, and get out without tripping over each other. And the Church could construct them -- how shall we say this diplomatically? -- on the cheap.

His design triumphed on both counts. The use of space in the Provo Temple should be a lesson to architects everywhere. The Provo Temple cost in the neighborhood of four million dollars to build, which even in the early 1970s was a reasonable neighborhood for a structure of that size and type.

Unfortunately, the public both Mormon and non-Mormon had problems with the style of both temples. Fetzer designed the temples in a time when liberals criticized the Church for its policy about not ordaining blacks – and to a lesser extent women – to the priesthood. Many considered the Church of Jesus an old-fashioned cult out-of-date and out-of-step with the times. So its new temple designs incorporated elements from the most futuristic architectural style available then. Thus architecturally, the church was – from a symbolic point of view – progressive. The styles available for Fetzer were Googie followed by Internationale Art Deco.

We can summarize the design problem of the Ogden and Provo Temples this way: the design combines googie and art deco architectural elements. Some elements of art deco still find public favor in certain places, but googie fell quite out of style. Having grown up with The Jetsons, I assumed that housing in the 21st century would resemble the Great Googie Symbol of the Age: The Space Needle. Instead, housing styles went backward in time, not forward.

I remember distinctly in the early 1970s, a person I knew publicly stated to me that the Provo Temple reminded him of an insurance company headquarters. For many people the big problem stylistically remains the second floor above ground level – Fetzer designed it to look as though it is smaller than the third floor. The outside walls of that floor consist of floor-to-ceiling, one-way mirrored glass. This is a good feature for the Provo Temple, because the temple was and is somewhat isolated from the city with fabulous views of the mountains and valleys. It worked out less successfully in Ogden, where the temple sat on busy Washington Avenue in the middle of downtown. The Ogden Temple view is less interesting, and the one-way glass reverses at night. Both temples have to employ a lot in the way of drapery.

From the point of view of past and current celestial room designs, the lack of windows in the Provo Temple Celestial Room constitutes another problem. The highest symbolic representation of the Celestial Kingdom seems a little dark in terms of natural light.

The Provo Temple’s economizing elements have worked out less successfully in the long view. It is now approaching its fortieth anniversary. It does look its age.


THE CALL TO ACTION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE PROVO TEMPLE

1. Add more and better protections from the downside of the gorgeous natural surrounding. If Ogden Temple needs a seismic upgrade, so does Provo – and even more so. The Provo Temple stands within a mile of the Wasatch earthquake fault. It also stands on an old flood plain fanning forth from Rock Canyon.

2. Replace the mechanical systems with energy-efficient equipment. Find ways to use less water, heat, air conditioning, and electrical power.

3. Add more and better insulation.

4. Make the interior furnishing more overtly googie, Danish modern, and art deco.
They do not embrace their heritage in 1960s googie, Danish mod, or art deco nearly enough.

5. Restore the escalators. The interior design is a model of efficiency and should be left alone as much as possible. The escalators were part of the building’s original efficiency features.

6. Replace the cast stone on the ground level and third level with some sort of granite exterior. If we compare-contrast the Provo Temple’s exterior walls with the exteriors of the Draper, Mount Timpanogos, and Oquirrh Mountain Temples’ exteriors, Provo’s comes out of the competition looking second rate. The purplish granite of the American Fork Temple looks especially elegant, and the brownish granite of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple looks especially unusual. If the Church can obtain granite facing from the same quarry that provided granite for the Salt Lake Temple and the Conference Center, that would be a triumphant improvement for the Ogden and Provo Temples as well.

7. As much as possible, save the floor-to-ceiling glass walls on the second level. Many find it one of the more spectacular features of the Provo Temple. It will require a better grade of twenty-first-century one-way glass. Certain one-way glasses now available turn opaque with a touch of a button. We might incorporate stained art glass into these walls as well.

8. Redesign the roof for better energy efficiency. It needs more of an incline to help with rain and melted snow run off. Some sort of skylight (as in the Draper Temple Celestial Room design) would add much to the Provo Celestial Room.


IN CONCLUSION THEN

The Salt Lake Church bureaucracy should leave the Provo Temple exterior design well enough alone. This will be the only International Art Deco / Googie design temple left on Earth. As such, it has historic elements to preserve – not destroy.

AVATAR and Hollywood Post-Feminist Doctrine

For the first time since 1943, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated ten films for the Best Picture Oscar. Only one of the five films nominated for best director will win the award:

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds (Can I write "Inglourious" in Blogspot [;^>) ?)
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (has to be the longest, most-pretentious nominee title since Doctor Strangelove)
Up in the Air

Dark Victory Gone with the Wind Goodbye, Mr. Chips Love Affair Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Ninotchka Of Mice and Men Stagecoach The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights all received nominations for best film of 1939. I do not think anyone will mistake 2009 for 1939.

AMPAS should have nominated ten films back in 1962. It nominated

David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia which won Best Picture of 1962
and
Mutiny on the Bounty
The Longest Day
The Music Man
To Kill a Mockingbird

In 1962, American producers also gave us

All Fall Down
Advise and Consent,
Bird Man of Alcatraz,
Cape Fear
Carnival of Souls
The Chapman Report
David and Lisa
Days of Wine and Roses
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Gay Purr-ee
Gigot
Gypsy
Hell Is for Heroes
Lolita
Lonely Are the Brave
Long Day's Journey Into Night
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Manchurian Candidate
The Miracle Worker
Requiem for a Heavyweight
Ride the High Country
The Road to Hong Kong
Sergeants 3
State Fair
Sweet Bird of Youth
Tender Is the Night
That Touch of Mink
The Trial
Two for the Seesaw
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
Zotz!

I do not believe anyone will confuse 2009 with 1962.

Thursday evening, I attended a six thirty p.m. showing of James Cameron’s Avatar in 3 Dimension. For the first time, I view a 3-D feature film. As a movie experience, it ranks with the times I viewed four other landmark technological films of blessed memory:

1963 How the West was Won Widescreen Cinerama stereophonic sound
(Viewed with my parents)

1967 The Sound of Music Widescreen Todd-AO stereophonic sound
(Viewed with my parents)

1977 Star Wars
eventually re-titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Dolby Surround Sound and special effects
(viewed with Randy Stokes)

1997 Titanic Special effects
(viewed with Richard Crookston)

In their ways, these films, plus Avatar felt like revelation.

If Avatar is any indication, the movies of the 21st Century will be very sensuous but hard on the eyes and the inner ear. 3-D certainly made the sets and alien forests come alive. Avatar contains much skin for a PG-13 film: Cameron computer generated a huge alien cast -- mostly nude and blue. 3-D enhanced them as well.

James Cameron does create great plots, but his dialog is first-year film-school stuff. He really should do what his stylistic influences from the classic age of movies -- Victor Fleming and David Lean -- did in the old days. They did not write their own movies: they hired either novelists (Noel Langley) or playwrights (Maxwell Anderson, Robert Bolt, Marc Connally, Sidney Howard) to write their screenplays.

Some complain that Avatar is anti religion. That complaint is silly. It is not often that we encounter a modern movie with both a Tree of Life and a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in it. The film might be at most anti-organized religion, but it certainly has spiritual elements to it.

Some complain that the film is anti-American. The plot is not so much anti-American as it is delightfully anti-business, anti-military, anti-technology. It will dominate and win the technological Oscars: I predict it will win six or seven Oscars. However, Kathryn Bigelow will win best director for The Hurt Locker. A Bigelow win would be good drama. Bigelow is Cameron’s ex-wife and would become the first woman to win the award for best director.

Only four women have received nominations for best director since 1975. Before Lina Wertmuller’s landmark nomination for Seven Beauties, Leni Riefenstahl worked in Germany as a female film director. Had AMPAS awarded a best foreign film Oscar in the 1930s, she might have won best foreign film twice for Triumph of the Will and Olympiad.

Dorothy Arzner deserved at least one directorial nomination. Her best film of the 1930s certainly was better than some of the turkeys nominated for best director in the 1930s. Ida Lupino should have received an Emmy nomination for directing the “A is for Aardvark” episode of Bewitched in 1965 and an Oscar nomination for directing The Trouble with Angels in 1966.

If Ms Bigelow does not win, then AMPAS should award best director to Lee Daniels, only the second black man ever to receive a nomination for best director.

Hollywood has been in bed with big business too long to award an anti-big-business movie the award for best film. It will I bet award best film to the realistic dramatic anti Iraq War film The Hurt Locker.