If I Had a Hammer


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"My Dream Ticket for 2008."

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My brain is always forming "Non Sequiturs."
Therefore, this creation is dedicated to Wiley Miller.

POLITICAL QUOTES

"A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen."
- Winston Churchill

"Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."
- Will Rogers

"Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong."
- Richard Armour

"Why are politics and a pond similar? Because the scum always floats to the top in both!"
- Linda McDonald

"Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason."
- Anonymous

"What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?"
- Abraham Lincoln

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber."
- Plato

"Priests are no more necessary to religion than politicians to patriotism."
- John Haynes

"Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to become a saint."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"Get thee glass eyes, And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not."
- William Shakespeare

"On both sides of a war, how many mothers must face the death of their sons because a politician will not face the death of one misguided opinion?"
- Laura Teresa Marquez

"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
- George Orwell

"Politics: Poli a Latin word meaning many; and "tics" meaning bloodsucking creatures."
- Robin Williams





WORLDLY QUOTES

"A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity."
- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen."
- Louis L'Amour

"The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him."
- Niccolo Machiavelli

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."
- Eric Hoffer

"The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."
- Peter. B. Medawar

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts."
- John Keats

"Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness."
- Henrik Ibsen

"An old miser kept a tame jackdaw, that used to steal pieces of money, and hide them in a hole, which a cat observing, asked, "Why he would hoard up those round shining things that he could make no use of?" "Why," said the jackdaw, "my master has a whole chestfull, and makes no more use of them that I do."
- Jonathan Swift

"When money speaks, the truth keeps silent."
- Russian proverb

"Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money."
- Arthur Schopenhauer

"If moral behavior were simply following rules, we could program a computer to be moral."
- Samuel P. Ginde

"Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established."
- Ludwig Feuerbach

"Good music is very close to primitive language."
- Denis Diderot

"My life is my message."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

THE HEALTHCARE CRISIS









My political philosophy is spread throughout PoliSci - 101.   It would be very dull to concentrate my viewpoint all in one spot.   Moreover, over the years I have discovered that I am not alone in my viewpoint.   The cornerstone of my political philosopy is simple.   As taught by my grandfather who taught high school for 25 years, I have come to believe that "Politician is synonymous with crook." as he told me when I was eleven years old.   Fundamentally, I am non-partisan in my voting and try to help elect the most clever crook.

But, I digress.   We have serious problems as Americans.   Some of them have been identified as health coverage for all as attempted by the HMOs depicted in the above cartoons.   The gas crisis.   The financial crisis including mortgage defaults and failing businesses which are increasing daily.   The part of the global warming crisis caused by the human race.   And the recession that may end in a depression.   No, I have not forgotten war(s).   My contribution to all veterans is www.v-r-a.org and I receive daily e-mail with pleas for help that are far beyond the scope of my web site!   The cartoons contained here are from one of my favorite cartoonists, Wiley Miller.   Enjoy!

THE GAS CRISIS

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

THE GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS

THE RECESSION/DEPRESSION CRISIS

As we near the election of a new president, we have a choice as to where we can place the blame for further crisis: 1) We can blame the media. 2) We can blame the politicians. Or, we can blame both so that we don't have to accept the responsibility for anything.

BLAME THE MEDIA/CONGRESS FOR EVERY CRISIS

Let's pretend for a moment that everything is crisis free and we have the equivalent of Heaven on Earth. How do you think humans would react? Probably like the following.

THE HEAVENLY CRISIS

The alternative, of course, is that everything is going to get worse. As we used to say in the Military: "Smile, things could be worse. So, I did, and they were."

THE THINGS COULD BE WORSE CRISIS

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If I Had A Hammer

  • (Pete Seeger / Lee Hays)

    If I had a hammer I'd hammer in the morning
    I'd hammer in the evening all over this land
    I'd hammer out danger, I'd hammer out warning
    I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
    All over this land

    If I had a bell I'd ring it in the morning
    I'd ring it in the evening all over this land
    I'd ring our danger, I'd ring out warning
    I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
    All over this land

    If I had a song I'd sing it in the morning
    I'd sing it in the evening all over this land
    I'd sing out danger, I'd sing out warning
    I'd sing out love between my sisters and my brothers
    All over this land

    When I've got a hammer, and I've got a bell
    And I've got a song to sing all over this land
    It's a hammer of justice, it's a bell of freedom
    It's a song about love between my brothers and my sisters
    All over this land

    (as sung by Peter Paul & Mary)


Susanne´s Folksong-Notizen

  • [1980:] Lee Hays and I wrote Hammer in 1949. It was the very first song recorded by the Weavers. A collectors item. ("No one but collectors ever got it.") But nine years later a brand new group of singers, Peter, Paul and Mary, put it on every radio in the country. They rewrote my melody slightly, and most people nowadays sing it as they heard it on PPM's record. I made an interesting discovery, though: both versions can be sung at the same time, and they harmonize with each other. A moral there. (Notes Pete Seeger, 'Singalong')

  • [1980:] For the old-timers, the feeling [in the early days of People's Songs] was something on the order of a class reunion. At one of the first board of directors' meetings, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays entertained themselves by passing a sheet of paper back and forth, gleefully collaborating on the lyrics for "If I Had a Hammer ..." (Klein, Woody Guthrie 316)

  • [1985:] [Detailed story of Peekskill incident (see below, 1989) cf. Dunaway, Seeger 18ff.]

    [The right-wing magazine] 'Counterattack' and the FBI succeeded in blacklisting the Weavers, but If I Had A Hammer was unconquerable. The song had a specific radical message in 1952; when Seeger suggested the Weavers perform it on bookings, one of them answered, "Oh no. We can't get away with anything like that."

    "Why was it controversial?" Pete reflected. "In 1949 only 'Commies' used words like 'peace' and 'freedom'. ... The message was that we have got tools and that we are going to succeed. This is what a lot of spirituals say. We will overcome. I have a hammer. [...] No one could take these away." The Weavers never had the opportunity to make a hit of this - that honor fell to Peter, Paul and Mary - but they had the satisfaction of seeing that no edict and no committee could kill [the] song. (Dunaway, Seeger 157)

  • [1989:] It was becoming dangerous to be a performer if you were suspected of having left-wing views, and the following year Seeger and [Paul] Robeson faced their most dangerous concert of all. The venue was Peekskill, New York State, where on 4 September 1949 they both appeared at an outdoor show that turned into one of the most terrifying and violent events in the history of pop music.

    The concert had been planned for the previous month, when it was advertised in a Communist newspaper, but crowds had blocked the roads, beaten up some of the organizers, and it had to be called off. But the performers, and the Communist Party, decided that the show should still be held - this time on Labor Day. Supporters provided protection around the site, and the performance actually went ahead. Paul Robeson sang [...] Old Man River, and Seeger sang If I Had A Hammer.

    Fifteen years later (after first being revived by Peter, Paul and Mary) the song became a nightclub favourite, and the sing-along, Latin-tinged version by Trini Lopez sold 4 1/2 million copies around the world. In 1949 it was considered dangerously political, with highly controversial lyrics.

    Only when the concert was over did the trouble really start. The performers were ambushed as they left the show, for the residents had been whipped up into an anti-Communist fervour [...]. Seeger escaped, covered in glass, his car dented with rocks. (Denselow, Music 13)

  • [1993:] Peter, Paul and Mary [...] changed my melody of that song (and only then did it "take off".) (Seeger, Flowers 13)

    Us Weavers recorded it [...] in the fall of '49, for a microscopic label, Charter Records. Lee Hays used to say, "It was a collector's item - nobody but collectors ever bought it." A year later, when the Weavers were temporarily "on the charts", our manager wouldn't let us perform it. ("I'm trying to cool down the blacklisters; that song would encourage them.") But nine years later [Peter Paul and Mary] had a surprise hit with the song. [...]

    It was a young radical activist, Libby Frank, in 1952 who insisted on singing "my brothers and my sisters" instead of "all of my brothers". Lee resisted the change at first. "It doesn't ripple off the tongue as well. How about 'all of my siblings'?" He finally gave in. It was sung in Europe and elsewhere in the '50's, sometimes with variant melodies, sometimes with added verses [...]. Victor Jara, the great protest singer of Chile, made up a version in Spanish. (Seeger, Flowers 38)