Very Hard to Believe

Ok, if my complete and incorrigible nerdiness weren't already apparent--I can't believe that nowhere on the Internet exists that famous photo of Julia Clifford with her Stroh fiddle! Just when I need it for my paper--but oh, well. However inconvenient it is (if I want that picture in my paper due tomorrow I'll have to rush in to school and scan it in), it's also quite gratifying that no one has done any sort of work yet that could have lead to the photo being put online.

In other news, I think it's possible that Emma Donoghue might be my not-so-evil twin. Well, she and I have some of the same favorite books and movies, and tend to wear the same colors, anyway. Here's where I learned all that.

Derby Results

It's a good thing I didn't have time to figure out online betting yesterday (although I'd probably have bet no more than $5 anyway), but even though none of my picks so much as placed, I liked Street Sense's major come-from-behind win so much that I didn't care.

For the record, my picks were Circular Quay for the win, Any Given Saturday for the place, and Dominican for the show. I didn't have time to really think about them, so I based my choices on a mixture of past performance (I thought it a good omen that Circular Quay had not been over-raced), relatively non-annoying names, and I confess that NBC's spot on the Dominican nuns in Kentucky influenced my choice for 3rd. Sad but true--but I did want to see a handful of elderly nuns celebrating their namesake. (Why are nuns cute to us non-Catholics? And why is it sweet that the oldest-looking of them said that maybe if the horse won, they'd get new converts...uh.... But anyway.)

NBC's coverage was irritatingly people-focused, I found--much more so than it was when I was a teenager, when they'd focus on the horses more than on the owners, trainers, jockeys, etc. The coverage used to tell some of those stories, but with plenty of horse stuff as well, and I found it difficult to decide which horse to back without watching them move, win previous races, etc. Perhaps if I'd had more time to devote to watching ESPN or something....

Another complaint about the televised coverage is that in this day of superior technology, the picture quality--especially the long views of the track--was problematic. Grainy, prone to digital mangling, etc. At times, it looked like the footage quality of Secretariat's wins in 1973! It seems to me we didn't have this problem a decade ago, so I hope they get it worked out soon. I probably won't get to watch the Preakness and Belmont Stakes this year because I'll be in Ireland, but still.

It's Worth Saying (Again)

...Värttinä are awesome! Luddite I am, I hardly ever pull out the albums after Kokko...right now Seleniko is totally hitting the spot, and maybe it'll even help me start writing my paper due on Monday...where there's life there's hope, and where there are singing Finns there's even more hope.

Folksingers and Breakfast Cereals

Here's an editorial from this morning's New York Times. As "Anonymous" (I know who you are!) writes in the comments to yesterday's post, it's a little strange that the press are making such a big deal of this, since inviting Joan Baez to sing at Walter Reed is a bit like inviting Jane Fonda to speak there. I'm sure Susan Sarandon isn't welcome, either, although I would guess that Bob Dylan might be, since he always denied any overt political message in those songs that have come to be foremost among anti-war songs. Would Pete Seeger be welcome?

But the question underneath all this, or perhaps the implicit commentary, is that if the Army feels threatened by Joan Baez, then the Army feels threatened, period. Would Baez have been allowed to sing back in 2003 before those pesky Weapons of Mass Destruction failed to turn up for the party?

I had to chortle at the writer's Fariña-farina joke. So obvious yet so non sequitur, so not funny that it's a total hoot.

Unwanted Folk

Published: May 3, 2007

Joan Baez sang at Woodstock. If you recognize either name, you probably already knew that. If you don’t, go to Google, then come back and help us puzzle something out.

Why would the Army be afraid of her?

Last Friday, John Mellencamp gave a concert for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Ms. Baez, a friend who’d been invited by Mr. Mellencamp, did not. She was barred by Army brass, supposedly because of the lateness of the invitation, although Mr. Mellencamp’s camp suggested it was because she was considered objectionable.

Objectionable for what? To whom?

Mr. Mellencamp and Ms. Baez are both politically outspoken. Both have denounced the Iraq war. Yet Mr. Mellencamp’s activism is the kind the Army could more easily overlook. He wears a T-shirt and jeans and sings songs so down-home, so red, white and blue, that you could use them to sell Chevy trucks, which Mr. Mellencamp has actually done. “Let’s forget about any problems we might have and let’s just have a good time,” Mr. Mellencamp told his audience in what The Washington Post reported was a rousing and apolitical show.

Although Ms. Baez is as much of an activist as ever — she camped in a tree last year to stop the bulldozing of an urban farm — she would probably have shown similar tact. In a letter in The Post yesterday, she said she regretted not having given soldiers a better welcome home from Vietnam, and would have loved to sing at Walter Reed.

What is astounding is that somebody apparently could not get past the image of willowy Joan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” nearly 40 years ago and thought troops so young they wouldn’t know Mimi Fariña from Cream of Wheat couldn’t or wouldn’t abide her presence.

They say generals are always fighting the last war. But Vietnam was two wars ago, three if you count the war on terror.

Joan Baez's Letter to the Washington Post

On the "Letters" page (A14) of the Washington Post, May 2, 2007:

Why I Wanted to Sing at Walter Reed

Regarding the April 28 Style article "At Walter Reed, Mellencamp Shuts
His Mouth and Sings":
Recently, John Mellencamp invited me to be his guest at a concert for
recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. I said yes
immediately. Only later did I realize how the passage of time had informed
my decision to join him.

I have always been an advocate for nonviolence, and I have stood as
firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. During
that war, I could not, in good conscience, have "sung for the troops."
Doing so would have meant condoning a war that was tearing soldiers,
civilians, this country, Vietnam and, in some senses, the world, apart. I
do not regret that decision.

What I do regret is having ignored the needs of the men and women who
returned from Vietnam. For some who were relatively unscathed, it seemed
possible to get on with life, with or without all of their limbs
intact.
But it's clear that, for many, returning was hell.

I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home
for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate
to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan.

In the end, four days before the concert, I was not "approved" by the
Army to take part. Strange irony.
JOAN BAEZ

Menlo Park, Calif.

Less Than Three Days...

...'til the Kentucky Derby.

Has anyone picked a favorite yet?

(Street Sense beats Any Given Saturday by a nose in the Tampa Bay Derby. Both horses are in Saturday's race.)

No Joan at Walter Reed

News of this just came through the WTJU email list. Here's the Washington Post article:

Joan Baez Unwelcome At Concert For Troops
Singer Was to Perform With Mellencamp at Walter Reed

By Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; Page C01

When rocker John Mellencamp performed for the recovering soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Friday night, a couple of things were missing. He squelched his typically blistering rhetoric against the war in Iraq. Also MIA, as it turned out, was folkie and antiwar activist Joan Baez, who says she was disinvited from the event by Army officials.

In a letter that appears today in The Washington Post, Baez says Mellencamp had wanted her to perform with him and that she had accepted his invitation.

"I have always been an advocate for nonviolence," she writes, "and I have stood as firmly against the Iraq war as I did the Vietnam War 40 years ago. . . . I realize now that I might have contributed to a better welcome home for those soldiers fresh from Vietnam. Maybe that's why I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation to sing for those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"In the end, four days before the concert, I was not 'approved' by the Army to take part. Strange irony."

Reached by telephone yesterday at her home in Menlo Park, Calif., Baez, 66, said she wasn't told why she was given the boot, but speculated, "There might have been one, there might have been 50 [soldiers] that thought I was a traitor."

Baez, who said Mellencamp had asked her to sing two songs with him, has been an avowed anti-violence activist ever since she refused to participate in an air raid drill at her Southern California high school. In the '60s, her name became synonymous with the antiwar movement, though many of the protest songs she was famous for performing, such as "Blowin' in the Wind," were covers of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger songs. In 1964 she protested the Vietnam War by refusing to pay 60 percent of her income taxes. In 1968, she married activist David Harris -- the two met in jail following a protest -- and moved with him into his draft resistance commune.

Walter Reed officials did not respond to several requests for comment yesterday. But in an e-mailed statement published Monday on RollingStone.com, spokesman Steve Sanderson said the medical center received the requests for participation by Baez and broadcaster Dan Rather just two days before the concert. (Rather now works for HDNet, which broadcast the Mellencamp concert.)

"These additional requirements were not in the agreement/contract and would have required a modification," Sanderson told the magazine's Web site.

Not so, says Baez's manager, Mark Spector; Mellencamp's management invited Baez to perform in March with the understanding that things could take a while "because of the red tape of Army bureaucracy." Mellencamp's management handled all the arrangements, according to Spector. And up until April 23, when Baez was turned down, everything was "still inching forward," he said: "They'd booked her flight; they'd booked her hotel."

Mellencamp's manager, Randy Hoffman, did not return calls requesting comment, and Mellencamp was ill and unavailable yesterday, according to his publicist. But Mellencamp told RollingStone.com: "They didn't give me a reason why she couldn't come. We asked why and they said, 'She can't fit here, period.' "

"One of my more cynical friends said, 'They let the rats in, why not you?' " Baez said, laughing, referring to a recent exposé of living conditions at Walter Reed.

It wasn't the first time that a performer has been blocked from Walter Reed. In 2004, Oscar-winning actress Patty Duke was refused permission to tour the wards. She'd been scheduled to visit troops as part of an Arts Advocacy Day in Washington. USO officials later said they didn't have enough time to let the patients know that a celebrity would be visiting -- although Michael Jackson was spotted in the ward the same night that Duke would have popped in for a visit.

An HDNet spokeswoman said Rather had planned to interview Mellencamp at the hospital, but "schedule-wise we couldn't make it happen."

After the concert, Baez said, Mellencamp left her a message to say, "I hope you're not mad at me." Her response: " 'Of course not. It's an honor to be turned down by the Army.' . . . But I would have been happier getting in . . . I thought times had changed enough."

So what exactly happened?

The answer -- since Walter Reed's officials aren't talking -- is blowin' in the wind. (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)

I'm not too surprised. After all, Baez's anti-war activities are well-known and decades in duration. On the other hand, how many of today's soldiers would have any clue who she is, since she's not nearly as high-profile as she was during the Vietnam War? In any case, this article makes me want to go crank "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around"....

Or this: