danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Everyone in America was apparently glued to the television last Thursday, when it appeared that a young boy had been carried aloft by a weather balloon that proceeded to float across eastern Colorado and land in the middle of a farm.  Admittedly, it makes for a dramatic story, particularly when it was accompanied by live video.  As the balloon drifted toward high-voltage power lines, I can understand how so many would feel so much anxiety for the safety of that boy.

We know now, however, that it was a hoax perpetrated by the child’s whore parents, in a shameful effort to attract attention they could parlay into a “reality” television deal.

Hearing about this fraud instantly brought a host of questions to mind.  Did these people think they were going to get away with it?  Do they have any concept of morality?  Does it bother them that, across the country last week, millions of genuinely anxious people wasted millions of honest prayers?  Is this how far our society has degenerated?

The answers to the first three questions are: apparently; apparently not; and I don’t know.  I was tempted to believe that the answer to the last question was a resounding yes – that our society has, in fact, been driven to the point of moral bankruptcy in the short span of our living memory.

Then yesterday Wikipedia stepped forward unexpectedly to challenge my perceptions.  It reaffirmed that we are indeed living in an age of depravity, but it moved the date of our moral degradation back nearly three hundred years, to 1726, to be precise.  In that year, a woman from Surry named Mary Toft perpetrated a hoax that seems so obviously unbelievable, so completely ridiculous, that it is hard to believe anyone could have fallen for it.  And yet people did, and some paid dearly for it.

Mary Toft suffered a miscarriage.  That much is true, and that much is surely worthy of pity.  But Mary Toft took things to another level.  A totally crazy level.  There’s no polite way to tell what she did, but, put simply, she cut up some rabbits and stuck them in her hoo-hoo, and then claimed to give birth to rabbits.  Some doctors heard of this and went to see her, and when they pulled more parts of rabbits from her hoo-hoo, they thought, “hey, this lady’s full of bunny babies!”  Now, you and I would immediately suspect something was amiss, because we know that there just wasn’t enough time since her miscarriage to carry rabbits to full term.  Also, people cannot give birth to rabbits.  But some people believed her.  In fact, some people had the hilariously ignorant idea that a woman could give birth to whatever she had been around.  So, let a cat sleep on your bed, and you’re going to deliver a kitten baby.  When the hoax was discovered (and I can’t believe it took as long as it did), the reputation of a prominent doctor was ruined, and the medical profession in general suffered.

So, let us not grieve for our lately-departed sense of decency; it has been dead for a long time.

UPDATE – 23 December 2009: The parents of “Balloon Boy” (a sort-of inaccurate name) were sentenced to time in jail today, and prohibited from profiting from their story for four years.

Filed under: Current Events, History, Musings on October 21st, 2009 | No Comments »

On January 31, 1988, I watched the pilot episode of a television program called The Wonder Years.  Though the show was set in the late 1960s, I related to it because I was about the same age as the main character.  As the series began, Kevin Arnold was starting junior high; so was I -  in real life.  Through subsequent seasons, the show dealt with many topics relevant to my (or any young man’s) life.  But one theme of The Wonder Years was always outside the realm of my experience: Kevin Arnold’s difficult relationship with his father.  Many episodes dealt with this topic, and it always made me simultaneously uncomfortable and grateful.  I felt uncomfortable because the tension seemed so real, and I knew that many fathers and sons had strained relations.  I felt grateful because I did not.  And though my life has certainly not been free of regret, and though “I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought / And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste”, I have never had to regret any aspect of my relationship with my father.  We have always got along well.

So, as I sat with my father on a blanket under the open sky last Saturday night, watching Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band play “Racing in the Street”, I felt like things couldn’t get better.

Sure, it looked like the sky might open up any time and unleash a raging storm.   But aside from a few sprinkles here and there, the weather held out.  And, sure, I was a little worried about how bad our view would be way back on the lawn, but that actually turned out great, too.  And, if $56 per ticket seems expensive, we did get three solid hours–twenty-seven songs–of rock.

Miriam and I met my dad at my Uncle Tom’s apartment in Tampa.  It could not have been more conveniently located.  We ate an early dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, which was enjoyable and new to me.  We made it to the Florida State Fairgrounds before six o’clock, but they didn’t open the gate for a little while after that.  We weren’t too far back in the line at the gate, but there were still enough people that I was slightly nervous about getting a decent spot on the lawn.  Plus, while were were standing there, the sky, which had spent the earlier part of the day raining, then the afternoon threatening more, began doing just that.  It didn’t last, though, and by the time we reached the grass we were hopeful.  Though there was a mad dash for the closest seats on the lawn, we managed to find a great spot.

As I expected, “Badlands” opened the show, but for the next two songs I was nervous.  Springsteen’s voice was shot.  It wasn’t that he couldn’t sing in tune; he couldn’t sing.  I honestly expected him to call the show off.  But he drank some sort of hot beverage, saying, “I’ll be better in a few songs”. Sure enough, he was.  By the time he got to “Seeds” his voice was strong.  In the request portion of the show, which has become a fixture of the last couple tours, Bruce grabbed just about every sign from the pit.  I saw some fools asking for “Ramrod” and “I’m a Rocker”.  Fools.  I did see someone after my own heart requesting “Drive All Night”, though, of course, we didn’t get it.  What we did get was “Growing Up”, requested by a child in the front row, “All or Nothing at All” which has only been played six times ever, and “Jole Blon” which hasn’t been played since 1981.  So, we did okay, especially considering that a few nights later he played “Ramrod”.

I was hoping to hear some classic songs I had not yet heard live, and I got them, including, in the encore, “Rosalita”.  After “American Land”, I figured the show was over.  But the crowd was so frantic that he busted out “Bobby Jean” and “Dancing in the Dark”, then, finally, “Hungry Heart”.  The place was out of control, and I didn’t think he would try and top it, so we grabbed our blanket and were making our way out when the noise got even louder.  Something was happening on stage that we couldn’t see.  Then we heard Bruce grab the mic and say, “I guess we forgot one”, before the opening strains of “Thunder Road”.  It was incredible.

Still, in a show which included so many highlights (including an enthusiastic version of–of all things–Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More”, which, as you know, is my personal anthem), perhaps the best single performance of the night was an astonishing version of “Johnny 99″.  It turned into a rollicking railroad reel with dueling guitar solos and showboating.  It was thrilling.

Nevertheless, ages and ages hence, when I think back on that night, I’ll most fondly remember hearing “Racing in the Street” while seated on a blanket with my father under the open sky.

Filed under: Family, Musings, Nostalgia, Popular Music, Television on September 20th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

“Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the 18th of September, N.S., 1709; and his initiation into the Christian Church was not delayed; for his baptism is recorded, in the register of St. Mary’s parish in that city, to have been performed on the day of his birth”.

So begins James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, perhaps the most significant biography written in English.  Its significance is generally thought to arise from Boswell’s skills as a writer, his attention to detail, and his honest portrayal of a man with whom he was an intimate acquaintance.  Boswell is justly credited on all those counts.  But it doesn’t hurt that James Boswell’s closest friend–and the subject of his great biography–was Samuel Johnson, the most brilliant and interesting man to ever write in our language.

Samuel Johnson was a large, awkward man.  His face and body were scarred, and he suffered frequent tics and convulsions.  He was awful to look upon, but everyone wanted to be in his company.  In her diary, Frances Burney wrote about a dinner party she attended on “the most consequential day” of her life – when she was introduced to Johnson:

Soon after we were seated, this great man entered.  I have so true a veneration for him, that the very sight of him inspires me with delight and reverence, notwithstanding the cruel infirmities to which he is subject; for he has almost perpetual convulsive movements, either of his hands, lips, feet, or knees, and sometimes all together.

Samuel Johnson wasn’t guaranteed success by right of birth.  His family wasn’t rich or titled.  His father was a downwardly-mobile bookseller.  Had Michael Johnson been a cobbler or a wheelwright, things might have turned out very differently.  But Samuel Johnson had access to books, and that made all the difference.  He attended college for a while, but when his family could no longer afford it, he withdrew without receiving his degree.  He suffered bouts of illness in the years that followed, and several of his friends and loved ones died.  He found no profitable employment.  Then, in his late twenties, he moved to London, which in those days was the center of the world.  Johnson made it on the street there as a writer, selling whatever he could.  He made connections, published some poetry, composed a play, and wrote regularly for The Gentleman’s Magazine, where his work drew notice.  Then he wrote a dictionary.

Today, it is hard for us to imagine a world without a dictionary.  In Johnson’s day there were several books of words vaguely resembling dictionaries, but they were laughably inadequate, seldom provided definitions, and often included only a small number of entries.  There was a real and obvious need for a true dictionary that would attempt to describe the English language as it was actually used.  Johnson took up the task of making one, claiming he could do it in three years.  It took him three times that, but in 1755, his Dictionary of the English Language was published.  It is an amazing thing to behold, and an astonishing achievement for one man.  The book cost more to print than Johnson was paid to write it.

In the years to come Johnson would write a series of periodical essays called The Rambler, then The Adventurer, then The Idler.  In these essays, Johnson discusses almost every topic imaginable, in language that is brilliant and touching.  Consider The Rambler, No. 47, in which he distinguishes between “passions of the mind” like fear, desire, or ambition–which he claims have their own cures–and sorrow, for which

there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. [...]

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, which no endeavours can possibly regain.

“Sorrow”, writes Johnson, “is a kind of rust of the soul”.

Johnson wrote during a period in which new forms of literature were coming into prominence, when the number of literate people was growing exponentially, and when the meaning of literacy itself was changing.  No longer would a knowledge of the classics–of Homer and Virgil–be required, nor would an understanding of Greek and Latin.  Johnson knew all the classical writers, and he understood their languages.  But, as we see from his praise of Burney’s Evelina, he knew that the audience was changing.  His Dictionary, his Lives of the Poets, his Rasselas, his Rambler, are all works for a new age.

Samuel Johnson was born three hundred years ago today.  Making his acquaintance changed my life.

Filed under: Literature and Books, Musings, Special Occasions on September 18th, 2009 | No Comments »

Much ado is being made today about the simultaneous release of the newly-remastered Beatles catalog, and the interactive video game, Beatles Rock Band.  I am intrigued by the former, and ambivalent about the latter.

One one hand, Rock Band strikes me as the height of poserdom – another example of the artificial replacing the real in our society.  We don’t play tennis or go bowling anymore; we play Wii Fit.  We don’t play guitar; we play Guitar Hero.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were introduced to one another on the afternoon of July 6, 1957.  Had the two merely played guitar-shaped pieces of plastic in their bedrooms instead of real guitars, popular music would be quite different today.  When the Beatles played the Ed Sullivan Show seven years later, an army of American boys were inspired to pick up their own guitars, start rock bands, and write the rock songs that defined an era.  What if today’s kids are picking up game controllers instead of real instruments?  Wither music?

On the other hand, a segment I heard on the radio last night raised a point I might have otherwise never considered.  A caller to On Point said that he treasures the quality time he has spent playing Rock Band with his children, and that it has helped him feel more connected with them.  They get to know his music, and he gets to know their music.  This got me thinking: what if the millions of parents who felt so upset by rock music in 1964 had instead been able to share the experience with their children?  After all, shaggy hair and suggestive hand-holding talk wasn’t really what bothered parents about the Beatles.  The Beatles were the physical embodiment of the growing divide separating the World War II generation from their kids.

The Beatles are popular enough, and certainly not at risk of being forgotten, even by kids today.  So I don’t think all this hoopla is about introducing a new generation to Lennon-McCartney.  I think, rather, that it might actually be about bonding.  Video games have divided parents and children for more than twenty years.  If Beatles Rock Band can bring them together, things really will have come full circle.

Filed under: Musings, Popular Music, Technology on September 9th, 2009 | No Comments »

ORLANDO – Stepping off the airplane this afternoon and walking into the bright and spacious concourse here was like entering the future.  After a week in Puerto Rico, many aspects of life in the United States which I have heretofore taken for granted seem like wonderful luxuries.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Puerto Rico is, in many respects, the third world.  True, many luxury hotels line the Atlantic coast in San Juan, and while there, Miriam and I could walk around the corner to Pueblo, which felt remarkably like an Albertson’s.  At the same time, however, a level of poverty exists there which is simply unknown in the the USA.  And that poverty is pervasive.  Unlike in America, Puerto Rican slums and projects stand right beside the homes of the wealthy, and slums stand on beachfront property.  Thus, Puerto Rico often felt like a foreign country to me.

As we drove from Orlando International Airport to Miriam’s parents’ home, the wide, safe, well-lit, properly maintained highway seemed to me like a vision from a futuristic utopia.

While I am glad to be home, and enjoy the luxuries of life in the United States, I am aware that I just took a legendary vacation that I will remember fondly for the rest of my life.

Filed under: Musings, Travel on August 21st, 2009 | No Comments »