Lydia Likes It

Gordon Lightfoot

If you could read my mind, you'd know how much I miss Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. His "best of" album, Gord's Gold (pictured above), contains almost all of my favorites from the 1960s and 1970s, with one exception that came out a few years later, in 1976. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald tells the true story of a shipwreck in Lake Superior -- a kind of documentary song, unlike any other that comes to mind. 

Harry Belafonte, musician, actor, civil rights activist

When I was growing up, my parents often played folk music in our house. (Well, opera too, but I tried not to listen.) I never heard folk music in any of my friends' homes. It wasn't until later, when I moved out after high school, that I appreciated how growing up on a steady diet of Harry Belafonte, The Weavers, The Kingston Trio and others implanted the notion of activism deep in my soul. I listened to the words of Day-O, Belafonte's "banana boat song", and understood that the message was about fair pay and justice, and not just about bananas. Belafonte, a confidante of Martin Luther King, worked alongside him on the 1963 Freedom March on Washington DC, and he never stopped using his platform to fight for human rights around the world. He died earlier this year at age 96. Rest in peace and power, Mr. Belafonte.

Lunch doodles

Am I the last to discover Mo Willems and his wonderful books for children? Three years after the start of the pandemic, the New York Times published a short piece about by the artist and the videos he made to help himself through it. So, three years after the start of the pandemic, why I am writing about this now? Because I sat down and binge watched them all with a big smile on my face (and ordered a few new drawing journals). Because Mo Willems, author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and eight other Pigeon books, treats kids like thoughtful human beings. And because I also believe that science has gotten us to this point, but art is in it with us for the long term. I'm letting the artist speak for himself here, because he is so much more eloquent than I am. Enjoy his videos; if this one makes you smile, there's a whole series to watch. Now, go get your Sharpies and doodle along!

BY MO WILLEMS, from the New York Times April 9, 2023: I think like many people in early March 2020, I couldn’t or wouldn’t comprehend the magnitude of an actual pandemic, so I didn’t. I’d been traveling to Los Angeles, then I flew to D.C. for a big show where lots of kids would come and doodle while a jazz band improvised. But when I landed, I saw what was on the airport TV screens. That’s when it hit me: We can’t do this. So I canceled the show and flew home.

I’d long been saying that I write about things that confuse me or scare me because if I’m confused or scared enough, I assume that it must be a universal emotion. On that plane, I knew I was afraid. So I thought, maybe other people were afraid, too. That gave me an idea. That was on Thursday, March 12. On Friday I called the Kennedy Center, where I was artist in residence, and pitched the idea of shooting a midday doodling session from my home studio. On Saturday, I wrote a few beat sheets, and my wife, Cher, and son, Trix, set up what we needed. On Sunday, we shot the first Lunch Doodle with a cellphone on a tripod on a table — that was it. No lights. No microphone. We did it in one shot with no edits, then sent the video to the team at the Kennedy Center, who formatted it and announced on social media the video would drop on Monday at noon.

As the week progressed, a pal got in touch to say, “You know what, let me send you a microphone.” My mother-in-law reached out to say, “Let me send you a comb.” The shows got tighter. It was, to be honest, stressful and isolating at the beginning. But within a couple of days, we started getting letters and drawings sent by kids. That felt good.

The whole project gave our family agency, which is what we desperately needed in those early days. Thanks to the kids, our sense of being untethered in a stormy sea gave way to a sense of being connected to a community, which grew into a realization: Science was going to get us out of this pandemic. But art was going to get us through it.

If I Were a Carpenter

 

In high school, I got my first -- my only -- acoustic guitar. I taught myself to play, and honestly, I never got very good, but I had loads of fun imagining myself a wandering hippie minstrel. One of the first songs I learned, If I Were a Carpenter, was written by Tim Hardin, who performed it live at Woodstock in 1969. Bobby Darin recorded it first, in 1966, and though his version was a commercial success, I've always loved the simplicity of Tim Hardin's own very first recording of it. An Earworm Award winner, if ever there was one. Here are the lyrics, in case you'd like to sing along.

 

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady,
Would you marry me anyway?
Would you have my baby?

 

If a tinker were my trade
Would you still find me,
Carrying the pots I made,
Following behind me?

 

Save my love for sorrow,

Save my love for lonely.

I've given you my tomorrow,

Love me only.

 

If I worked my hands in wood,
Would you still love me?
Answer me babe, "Yes I would,
I'll put you above me."

 

If I were a miller
At a mill wheel grinding,
Would you miss your color box,
And your soft shoe shining?

 

Save my love through loneliness,
Save my love for sorrow,
I've given you my onliness,
Come give your tomorrow.

 

If I were a carpenter
And you were a lady,
Would you marry me anyway?
Would you have my baby?

Andy Borowitz, political humorist

If I could live for one day in someone else's brain, I'd choose Andy Borowitz as my brain host. It takes a special kind of person to find humor in today's political climate. Borowitz, a writer for The New Yorker, is exactly that special. A Harvard-educated American writer, comedian, satirist and actor, he won the first-ever National Press Club award for humor. His new book, Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber, published in 2022, looks at the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Donald J. Trump. When Biden won the presidency, I worried that Borowitz would lose his edge after five years of satirizing the other guy. That didn't happen; Borowitz is sharper than ever, and finds plenty of grist for his mill. Sign up to get The Borowitz Report delivered to your inbox every weekday.