Dylan, Just as You Want Him
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Meaning. Bob Dylan’s songs and lyrics are timeless, transcendent for so many. From Jann Wenner’s interview in Rolling Stone, the president’s hilarious reflection on the musician’s February performance at the White House Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement:
“Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that. He came in and played “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I’m sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.”
—President Barack Obama
(h/t saving paper)
The “People’s Historian”
Andy Dayton, associate web producer
Last Wednesday was, of course, President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address. And while coverage of the speech filled up the news cycle, there was another important story not to be forgotten: the passing of Howard Zinn.
Zinn was a renowned historian, activist, and author of A People’s History of the United States, which presented many of the unheard and undocumented stories of U.S. history. Zinn continued to pursue this course throughout the rest of his life, and in a 2008 interview said that he hoped to be remembered for “introducing a different way of thinking about the world.”
Last year a friend invited me to see Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States — one of a series of performances that brought the stories of A People’s History to life through public readings. Rather than bring a troupe of actors with him, Zinn collected an impressive array of local performers, with a variety of different skill levels and delivery styles. Included in the evening were reenactments of Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Maria Stewart’s “Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall in Boston” and Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”
But the part I found most stirring was a breathtaking delivery of Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (you can watch Brian Jones performing the same speech below). On a day that many Americans were celebrating, Douglass delivered a scathing indictment of slavery in America:
“The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
For me, this memory takes the confluence of Zinn’s passing and Obama’s address from coincidence to something more meaningful. At first, there is an irony in the fact that a man whose life was devoted to telling the stories of the oppressed was, on his death, nearly eclipsed by the first black president of the United States. And, on the eve of Black History Month, Douglass’ words remind us how far we’ve progressed since his time. It also gives a biting reminder of the problems yet to be overcome and the inconsolable history we continue live with as a nation.
(photo: Andy Dayton/Flickr)
"Prayers for the New President"
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
If you’re not a regular of TIME’s Swampland blog and are a political junkie, then I suggest you subscribe to their RSS feed (or at least bookmark the site). Our previous guest, Amy Sullivan, posted an insightful recap of yesterday’s prayer service to launch President Obama’s first day in office.
From (left to right) First Lady Michelle Obama, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, former President Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pray at the 56th Presidential Inaugural Prayer Service at Washington National Cathedral.
Here are a few excised lines from Sullivan’s observations that resonated with me:
…I urge you to watch the service if you have the time. I’ve sat through a lot of these things and this was first time I was struck by the useful secular purposes that civil religion can hold.
[…]
This president is unusually grounded, but after a week of parties and concerts and celebrations and fanfare that would explode even the smallest ego, it seemed right to send Obama off to his first day of work on that note. “We need you to listen to the better angels of your nature,” Watkins [Reverend Sharon Watkins, head of the Disciples of Christ denomination] preached to an audience of one, “and by your example encourage us to do the same.”
What made the sermon such a useful model of civil religion is that Watkins rooted it in secular ideas as well as Scripture. “This is the Biblical way,” she said. “It is also the American way—to look beyond ourselves.” She quoted Emma Lazarus, a Cherokee legend, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Obama’s own 2004 DNC speech: “It’s that fundamental belief—I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper—that makes this country work.” It was a perfect complement to Obama’s address yesterday, letting him know that those were nice words, but he’d better stick to them. Because religious communities, the nation as a whole, and the world will be watching to hold him accountable.
The Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins gave the sermon at the prayer service.
And further down:
Democratic interfaith events can sometimes be so packed with participants in an effort not to leave anyone out that they are not inclusive so much as exercises in box-checking. But the procession of religious leaders at the start of the service—Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Jewish, Episcopal, Evangelical—had the feel instead of a celebration of the religious diversity that thrives more in the U.S. than any other country in the world.
The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss, Jr., the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, and the Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III singing.
The Most Rev. Francisco González, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, and Dr. Ingrid Mattson (president of the Islamic Society of North America).
Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church in America
President Barack Obama signing the guestbook at Washington National Cathedral.
President Barack Obama signed the Cathedral guestbook: “Thank you for your prayers and support in the days ahead!”
(All photos taken by Donovan Marks and courtesy of Washington National Cathedral, with more photos here.)
A Witness to History, One Day Shy
Trent Gilliss, Online Editor
At the end of each day (or often during), my spouse Shelley and I often talk about articles, blogs, and photographs we’ve read and viewed during work. Her reading anchors me to the world outside of the news and journalism business. In my circles so many times, the news is cited at you — ‘Did you read the article about the Ugandan man in the Times?’ ‘Wasn’t that report on breast cancer on CNN…’ and so on — serving as fodder for a potential story we might cover.
This is as it should be, in some respects, but sometimes I feel like the larger point is lost — relating to others, to people and their joys and their sorrows. On Friday, while we were driving, Shelley told me this story about Eugene Allen and his wife:
They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They’d go vote together. She’d lean on her cane with one hand, and on him with the other, while walking down to the precinct. And she’d get supper going afterward. They’d gone over their Election Day plans more than once.
“Imagine,” she said.
“That’s right,” he said.
On Monday Helene had a doctor’s appointment. Gene woke and nudged her once, then again. He shuffled around to her side of the bed. He nudged Helene again. He was all alone.
“I woke up and my wife didn’t,” he said later.
Some friends and family members rushed over. He wanted to make coffee. They had to shoo the butler out of the kitchen.
The lady whom he married 65 years ago will be buried today.
The butler cast his vote for Obama on Tuesday. He so missed telling his Helene about the black man bound for the Oval Office.
Well, we looked at each other, found ourselves choked up, eyes welling and reaching for each other’s hand, and our two boys in the back seat wondering why their mommy and daddy were sad. Through this story, we truly understood the power of this election and its impact on our sons’ generation. But, as importantly, they’ll know how their parents understood each other more deeply and more personally — all through several paragraphs of a single news story.
(photo: Kevin Clark/The Washington Post)
