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Woody Guthrie
Sunday Open Thread
Happy Sunday Democratic, Independent, and Republican readers!
Hope everyone is having a nice weekend, so far. As always, there's plenty to chatter about in the world of politics. But Sundays, if we so choose, can be a day of tuning out and relaxation.
Today is no exception in that regard as documentary filmmaker extraordinaire, Ken Burns, and his new series on our national parks begins today on your local PBS station. The series is six episodes and will run every night this week through Friday. As they say, "check your local listings." I know I already have my DVR set for the week.
The latest Burns series is titled, "The National Parks: America’s Best Idea" and was written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan. The twelve-hour series took ten years to make and it cost a whopping $15 million dollars. Wow!
America's Folk Song: This Land Is Your Land
There was a revival of folk music in this country and in Britain after WWII, when folk music was embraced by Americans as the cultural antithesis of popular music. This Land Is Your Land is one of America’s most famous and beloved folk songs. It's a song we love to hear on national holidays like the 4th of July, but few Americans know Woody Guthrie, whose photo is on the left, wrote it in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America and originally titled the song, God Blessed America for Me.
The lyrics were first penned by Guthrie in 1940, but the lyrics of This Land Is Your Land were sung by Guthrie with different words at various times, perhaps to enhance his political viewpoint at one particular time and to be more politically correct on another. How can it be so hard to lock down the verses of a song? Check out the last three verses of Guthrie’s song below: