A sad one by Richard Manuel

Richard Manuel

Emmett Till

I heard The Ballad of Emmett Till via Never Get Out of the Boat



and I was curious who he was. When I looked up the Wikipedia entry I was disgusted by the horror of it all. In short it's about a barn full of goddamned devils torturing and beating a 14 year old not just to death but way past it. It shook me up.

While we have come a long way, this happened not that long ago, and all people have to continue strive to understand each other. In my opinion, there's no better place to nurture that understanding than America where the country is not based on religion, not based on ethnicity and if you become an American it's not some conditional existence, because your father never buried an axe in the head of say, a Burgundian or Ostrogoth 400 years ago. You're an American. I'm not saying America is better than anywhere else, it's just that we're neck deep in diversity whether the godamned devils like it or not.

Yeah, go ahead complain about our imperfections, (I often do) because you can, but remember it's through understanding that we grow.

WD Zantzinger Gets His At Last

Hattie Carroll

NYT Obit
Bob Dylan's song The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll was based on his arrest for murder and conviction of manslaughter. Interesting sad story of racism. Great song.

Hear here:
The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll

World Series: American Idiot Wind

Don't want to be an American idiot.
People see me all the time and they just cant remember how to act
Don't want a nation under the new mania
Their minds are filled with big ideas, images and distorted facts.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
Even you, yesterday you had to ask me where it was at,
The subliminal mind fuck America.
I couldn't believe after all these years, you didn't know me better than that.