Sherry Chandler

Watchin the river flow

Wendell Berry Pulling his Personal Papers from the University of Kentucky

Wendell Berry, perhaps Kentucky’s best-known writer, is pulling many of his personal papers from the University of Kentucky’s archives to protest the naming of Wildcat Coal Lodge.

Berry excoriated his alma matter in a Dec. 20, 2009, letter, saying the decision to name a new dorm for UK basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end” to his association with the university.

“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20′ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”

I like the statement made by Ernie Yanarell, an outgoing faculty trustee who was opposed to the name Wildcat Coal Lodge

Yanarella said UK violated its own regulations in naming the building. Coal is not a purpose or function of the lodge, Yanarella said, and hence is included in the name for no reason “other than promotional considerations for the Kentucky coal industry.”

From the New Southerner, an interview with Karen Spears Zacharias, author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide: (‘Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV):

I didn’t write this book because I was offended by somebody. I wrote it because as a 14-year-old girl I had an encounter with the resurrected Christ. In that sacred moment there was no mention of money, no promise of riches, no assurances that my life would get better or that I would move on up to the big trailer soon.

There was just that moment of simple faith when I understood that no matter what, God would never leave nor forsake me. Best life now or worst life ever, He’s never going to abandon me. What concerns me about Golden Calf theology—this notion that God’s promise to us is to “prosper us”—is the exploitation of all things sacred. Corruption and greed have infiltrated the church. Indeed, there are plenty who would very articulately argue that it has always been a big problem for the church.

There was a time in America when the prosperity gospel was considered a fringe movement. Now the teachings are so mainstream they are taught from the pulpit of the largest church in America. That troubles me deeply.

David Cole on The Roberts Court’s Free Speech Problem:

In the Roberts Court’s world, corporations’ freedom to spend unlimited sums of money apparently deserves substantially greater protection than human rights advocates’ freedom to speak.

Via Marie Gauthier, University of Pittsburgh Press is having a half-price sale on their poetry list until August 1.

Also a mid-summer sale at Phoenicia Publishing.

And Salmon Publishing is offering free shipping on their catalogue. Salmon publilshes local poet Ron Houchen.

You never know how good a Dylan performance is until you hear some one else butcher his work. I was reminded of this the other day when I was looking for an acceptable YouTube version of “Watching the River Flow.” I didn’t find one, but I was fortunate enough to run across this. Man, it is clean, clean, clean.

Bob Dylan on why the South is different

from the Times Online:

It must be the Southern air. It�s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They�re all screaming and forlorning. It�s like they are caught in some weird web – some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can�t rest. They can�t live, and they can�t die. It�s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It�s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere � a lot of times even in people�s backyards.

Read the rest to find out Dylan’s thoughts on Barack Obama, U.S. Grant, and the ghosts that Elvis say. You can also hear “Chicago After Dark,” a track from his new album.

Thanks to The Falcon.

Meanwhile, here’s a Dylan interview with Bill Flanagan that The Guardian thinks is better than the album.

And what’s a birthday without –

Bob Dylan.

At YouTube

One more cup of coffee

“… the fisherman’s daughter grinding serenity in her coffee grinder.” —Yannis Ritsos, from “Absence,” trans Rae Dalven

From Friday’s NYTimes:

Drinking coffee may do more than just keep you awake. A new study suggests an intriguing potential link to mental health later in life, as well.

A team of Swedish and Danish researchers tracked coffee consumption in a group of 1,409 middle-age men and women for an average of 21 years. During that time, 61 participants developed dementia, 48 with Alzheimer�s disease.

After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.

At YouTube

New Morning

Can’t you feel that sun a-shinin’?
Ground hog runnin’ by the country stream
This must be the day that all of my dreams come true
So happy just to be alive
Underneath the sky of blue
On this new morning, new morning
On this new morning with you.

—Bob Dylan, New Morning

Listen to it here.

Girl from the North Country

At Youtube

I stole this from Susie because I had to. I always thought this version of “Girl from the North Country,” which is essentially the one on Nashville Skyline, was a hilarious example of two pop music icons singing near each other.

In 1969, Dylan caught a certain amount of flack for making “Nashville Skyline” with Nashville musicians, including Norman Blake and Earl Scruggs, and I don’t think the critics liked it much.

However, as Clinton Heylin would write about Nashville Skyline, “if Dylan was concerned about retaining a hold on the rock constituency, making albums with Johnny Cash in Nashville was tantamount to abdication in many eyes.”[2]

Helped by a promotional appearance on The Johnny Cash Show on June 7, Nashville Skyline went on to become one of Dylan’s best-selling albums. Three singles were pulled from the album, all of which received significant airplay on AM radio.

This video is, I take it, from that appearance on The Johnny Cash Show. It is out of sync and annoying but it’s fun to watch these two together.

“Nashville Skyline” is a slight album but I always thought it was fun. It has one good song, “Tonight I’ll be Staying Here with You.” (A better version of that on “Live 1975.”) And of course this so-called duet.

One more weekend

Have fun.

And just for grins, a couple of fun articles about another guy I’m a slobbering fan of, Terry Pratchett here and here. Proud mother warning on the latter, though I do think he does a pretty good job pulling an essay together.

Speaking of being an unredeemed Dylan fan, spouse and I have recently watched The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965, Murray Lerner’s 2007 documentary put together from black-and-white archival footage he shot at the time. The film has no narrator. Except for a few audience commentaries and one interview with Joan Baez that is not about Bob Dylan, it mostly just consists of Bob Dylan on stage singing. And yet it is put together in such a way that you can trace his transition from a nervy, self-conscious young folksinger (who looked a lot like Kentucky’s own Silas House) to the black-jacketed cryptic oracle of a generation with halo of curls singing “Wa-once upon a time, you felt so fine, threw the bums a dime, in your prime, now didn’t you?” to Mike Bloomfield’s screaming electric guitar runs.

Lerner liked to shoot close in and given the ranks of microphones and the harmonica rig he always wore, that means we spend a lot of time watching Dylan’s eyes as he sings. I did not find that boring. The man’s eyes are very expressive (see above) but I did find myself wondering what he was perceiving.

Only one complaint. Johnny Cash only gets to sing one verse of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” I’d have liked to hear all of that. It was one of the best things I’ve heard him do.

By the way, you can listen to a preview stream of the whole of Dylan’s new release Tell Tale Signs here at NPR. It’s another “bootleg.”