"Year w/out a Summer" & "Rich Men North of a Million:" This Date in History

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Two years ago Billy Bragg released this song...not exactly a response to Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" but more of a clarifying of the message...of course that is my opinion.

 
donbosco said:
Two years ago Billy Bragg released this song...not exactly a response to Oliver Anthony's "Rich Men North of Richmond" but more of a clarifying of the message...of course that is my opinion.

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I don't understand. Bragg specifically said that it was a response, and obviously the lyrics are structured like a discourse with Anthony.
 
I don’t believe that Bragg was ‘calling out’ Anthony but rather wanted to leave him room to reinterpret his ways of seeing. He’d make a better ally than enemy after all.
 
donbosco said:
I don’t believe that Bragg was ‘calling out’ Anthony but rather wanted to leave him room to reinterpret his ways of seeing. He’d make a better ally than enemy after all.
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I see. OK, I think that's what Bragg said he was doing. I'm not sure if Bragg was being fully honest -- he's been around the block long enough to sniff out the BS -- but yes, I agree that was the primary intent.
 
donbosco said:
I genuinely think Bragg sees Anthony as a worker.
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I agree, but there's this last lyric:

Well, they wanna divide us because together we're strong
Are you gonna take action now you sung your damn song?
If you don't like the rich men having total control
You better get the union to roll

"Damn song" suggests to me that Bragg expects a negative answer to that rhetorical question. And while I have not followed the career of Oliver Anthony, having heard nothing about him for a while suggests to me that he has not turned to union support.
 
superrific said:
I agree, but there's this last lyric:

Well, they wanna divide us because together we're strong
Are you gonna take action now you sung your damn song?
If you don't like the rich men having total control
You better get the union to roll

"Damn song" suggests to me that Bragg expects a negative answer to that rhetorical question. And while I have not followed the career of Oliver Anthony, having heard nothing about him for a while suggests to me that he has not turned to union support.
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Bragg has been at it for decades...he knows his is the Lucha Prolongada.
 
All I know is I have a buddy that lives in the Richmond area
He has no use for anyone North of the River-of course including NOVA.. A little tongue in cheek-maybe
 
donbosco said:
#OnThisDay in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the legal right to #vote.
But the story didn’t end there. For many Black women, systemic barriers like poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation kept them from the ballot box. Ida B. Wells-Barnett and others formed the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913 to fight for voting rights that went beyond the text of the amendment.

Read more in this JSTOR Daily article from 2020: https://bit.ly/4oFkxJR
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There use to be a show that came on during the summer a couple of years in the “60’s. On one show they had a skit making fun of the literacy tests. The skit was set at a voting station in Mississippi. The man giving the tests asked a white man to count to 10. The next person in line is a black man. The man asked him what the Theory of Relativity meant. The black man replied, “It means I can’t vote.”
 
#OTD in 1784 Franklin declared INDP from NC. Led by John Sevier the western settlers wrote a Constitution & elected a Legislature. The Federal Govt. did not recognize the secession & Franklin languished but Sevier was elected the US House from NC in 1789. That same year those lands were ceded by NC to Federal Government & in 1796 TN created. Franklin was basically ignored into oblivion.
https://www.ncdcr.gov/blog/2016/08/23/lost-state-franklin
 
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05C40 said:
For being basically uninhabited, those few that were in the Western Hemisphere must have had some mad/mythical/extraterrestial building skills.

On the serious side, my understanding of history was irrevocably changed/influenced by Alfred S. Crosby's trilogy: The Columbian Exchange (1972), Ecological Imperialism (1986), and The Measure of Reality (1997). I love the quote about Crosby that went something like, "The Columbian Exchange blasted a crater in the anthropology of the Americas that we as an academic discipline still haven't crawled out of." Also, I loved the books Charles C. Mann wrote: 1491 (2005) and 1493 (2011), about pre-Columbian America and the post-Columbian world.

I loved the story that Mann told about his interview of Crosby for a newspaper article where he asked whether Crosby would write a book that focused on what Mann later covered in "1491." And supposedly Crosby told Mann that he (Crosby) was too old to undertake that task and challenged Mann to write that book.

Two last notes: 1) I absolutely and categorically reject what I consider to be the absurd notion that anyone other than Native Americans were responsible for the magnificent and monumental buildings and cities of the pre-Columbian Americans. It wasn't extra-terrestrials. It wasn't the Egyptians. It wasn't the Chinese. It wasn't the Romans. It wasn't the Polynesians. It wasn't the Vikings. And it wasn't Irish monks. It was the Native Americans. 2) I really hope I live long enough to get some sort of realistic appraisal of the Pre-Columbian societies that existed in the basin of the Amazon River. But I doubt I will. The technology to really do that is just too far in the future.
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I was looking for this and finally encountered it. A short version of Charles C. Mann's 1491.

Charles C. Mann, 1491

cogweb.ucla.edu cogweb.ucla.edu
 
donbosco said:
I was looking for this and finally encountered it. A short version of Charles C. Mann's 1491.

Charles C. Mann, 1491

cogweb.ucla.edu cogweb.ucla.edu
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That's not a short version of "1491." That's a 2002 magazine article in "The Atlantic" that was so well received that Charles Mann expanded it into a full-length book, published in 2005. I know I am quibbling over terminology, but I do not consider a magazine article that inspired a book to be a summary of that book. In 2002, I was a subscriber to "The Atlantic" and had already read "The Columbian Exchange." So, you can only imagine, that with my eyes previously opened by "The Columbian Exchange," how eagerly I tore through Mann's article. I made something of a nuisance of myself at a family gathering a week or two after I received the March 2002 issue of "The Atlantic" by insisting to some of my relatives that they need to sit down and immediately read the article. I've been an a** h*** for a long time.
 
05C40 said:
That's not a short version of "1491." That's a 2002 magazine article in "The Atlantic" that was so well received that Charles Mann expanded it into a full-length book, published in 2005. I know I am quibbling over terminology, but I do not consider a magazine article that inspired a book to be a summary of that book. In 2002, I was a subscriber to "The Atlantic" and had already read "The Columbian Exchange." So, you can only imagine, that with my eyes previously opened by "The Columbian Exchange," how eagerly I tore through Mann's article. I made something of a nuisance of myself at a family gathering a week or two after I received the March 2002 issue of "The Atlantic" by insisting to some of my relatives that they need to sit down and immediately read the article. I've been an a** h*** for a long time.
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Alas you are correct. I did "let my hair down" for a moment. My apologies.
 
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