Once in a while...

,,,I find myself on the side of the online commenters. The tale of the witless family who became so panicked in a seven-acre cornfield maze that they called 911has elicited actual humour and wit from a segment of the population chiefly known to grunt. That is nearly as astounding as the story itself.

I'll cut only a small bit bit of slack. Maybe one has to be country-raised to be able to walk into a cornfield at dusk and know how to walk out again: namely, pick a direction and walk. The easy walk, of course, is between the rows. It can also be the longest way out. Most farmers up my way plowed and planted the long way, so it was nothing to have a cornfield 200 yards wide and two miles long; even in New England. However, this is a seven acre field: that's about 500 by 600 feet, about half a city block. From the middle, one could walk five minutes in any direction and be out. Anyone could, that is, but people who might well get lost in their own living room. (Be sure to follow the link and take note of where in the field these people actually were.)

Here, next door to hysterical Salem, it is already the crazy season. Danvers, where the cornfield maze lies, is not only equally infected by seasonal nuttiness, it's where the witchcraft delusion actually happened. Hmm.

Another Daily Double

Once upon a time I worked--I'm blowing my cover--at the Paul Revere House. This was Bicentennial era, when the employees were mostly earnest young radical historians like me. Some of us arrived with chips on our shoulders set there by debunkers for cash; others were products of the new history that looked not at Great Men but at ordinary people. Some of us were both. Either way, we became fascinated by Revere and we loved to take on the snarky debunkers. Nothing made one's day like letting a wannabe debunker rant, then quietly walking to a drawer, pulling out Revere's own depositions about April 18-19, 1775, and reading them aloud. The wannabes would slink to the exits. Today, as I have heard it, the Revere House has returned to lying for dollars*, so the Grizzly had no opportunity to be exposed to evidence.

I do know where her followers came from. I suppose they were the same people who, as hyperactive snot-nosed brats, employed their time at the Revere House setting off fireworks in the courtyard. Changing history to suit their agenda is bred into their inbred little minds. It is a comfort that so many candidates are going after the same small percentage of psychotics, heedless of the fact that whomsoever wins will have to weasel back to the centre, or at least to sanity.

About the leg. My next opus will reflect on today's adventures in defensive medicine, in which untold thousands and six hours were spent to confirm the patient's own initial diagnosis. I would do that now, but I did get Vicodin as a party favour and I'm about thought out. Peace, dudes.

*
In those days we were wholly evidence-based. When tourists asked where the barn was or the name of Paul Revere's horse, we told them there was no evidence he even owned a horse until after the war.(Despatch riders didn't need to own horses.) Not long ago, a friend's family was assured that the perennials in the courtyard were planted by the patriot's own hand. Not: I helped the boss plant them myself in 1976...and that courtyard was the adjoining lot until well into the 20th century. If there is a difference between that lie and the lies the Tea Party has tried to throw up on Wikipedia to change history, it eludes me.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!

Not to be confused with the piratical "arr!"

In 1972, a full 37 years ago, the band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards recorded the hymn "Amazing Grace," whose English (god save the mark) roots had been forgotten for a century. To most people, it was an American hymn.

To their astonishment, the Guards band had a full-fledged hit on their hands. To the grief of many people, we have had a cliche on our hands ever since. No American funeral, especially of the tear-jerking public variety, is complete without bagpipers choking back their bile and playing "Amazing Grace."

Good god, I am so fucking sick of it.

Why, might one ask, has a hymn whose tangled ancestry never included Scottish bagpipes until these recent times become a tedious staple of funerary events? Simple: because it was a hit. Because few Americans--even those of remoter Scottish ancestry-- had ever heard bagpipes before this hit. As Tolkien said of his American "cultus," they had never encountered art before and became quite drunk on it.

A requirement of my Welsh ancestry is supposed to be scorn for bagpipes. In my culture, real music is that of the voice or the harp. I think that's a bit of denial. The bagpipes came to Britain from the Middle East courtesy of the Romans. When they left, the bagpipes stayed, perhaps because the supernatural harmony that just one instrument can produce resonates with the Celtic mind.

No matter where I am, the sound of bagpipes automatically snaps my head around to the music. To me, the disgusting thing about this American obsession with "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes is its sheer narrowness. The bagpipe repertory includes a grand array of moving compositions; some dating to the 18th century or before, some much more recent. If you want laments, there is a full subcategory for this. There is the entire library of pibroch, piobareachd, variations of primary themes, capable of almost infinite variety. There is even Scottish rock music built from bagpipe themes and even—I am not making this up—experiments with electric bagpipes.

And all the pitiful Americans can come up with is "Amazing Grace." What drivel.

A bagpiper lived not too far from me a few years ago. Some warm evenings, one would hear a free-form lamentation pibroch played out from a quarter mile off: if such music doesn't make your hair stand on end, you're not alive. Once you've heard that, the funerary "Amazing Grace" falls into place as an absurd burlesque of a profound native art form.

On this, Scots all, my hat's off to you. Oh yes, and the whisky. The haggis, not so much.