APOLLO 11: "The world all stopped to watch it..."

The Moon and the humanitarian patriotism of John Stewart’s Americana

Oh, Mother Country, I do love you…

John Stewart

From the somewhat unlikely cocoon of The Kingston Trio, John Stewart (not to be confused with comedian “Jon”) emerged in the late 1960s to become one of the preeminent songwriters* in the movement that has come to be labeled “Americana.” Although it’s true that, in many ways, Americana can be considered just another word for “folk music,” there is a subtle distinction in its meaning, and it is especially appropriate as applied to the songs of John Stewart. At a time (maddeningly reminiscent of current days) when bumper stickers blared “America — love it or leave it!,” Stewart — who toured with Robert Kennedy’s final campaign — wrote of a heartfelt and unabashed love for America based not on waving flags but waving wheatfields, and the promise and possibilities of wind-swept prairies and wind-weathered people. (“Wind” was one of his favorite images.)**

Caryl and I grew up on those prairies. In the spring of 1969, having graduated together from our midwestern college (we were married the following December), we headed west to spend the summer in my home town, Rapid City, South Dakota, looking forward to one of our favorite pursuits: driving aimlessly through the backroads and valleys of the Black Hills, stopping here and there to attempt to find our way up a mildly-challenging granite crevice. And those backroads and mountain curves were always accompanied by music. In a time when one could still make a discovery by flipping through music store bins, I was doing just that at Haggerty’s in Rapid City when I found John Stewart’s album (in cassette form) — “California Bloodlines.” I recognized Stewart from the Kingston Trio days (I’m afraid I was a KT nerd), and snapped it up. It became the soundtrack of our summer. And, it turns out, not just ours…

Even more memorable — in that summer of 1969 — than discovering John Stewart’s music was sitting in my parents’ living room on July 20 watching the landing of Apollo 11’s lunar module, with Armstrong and Aldrin’s momentous walk. And so, a segue and an aside: I have eagerly viewed many of the movies and documentaries released in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the launch. (That’s today! — as I write.) The best, in my opinion, and the one I suggest if you are going to watch just one, is the CNN Films documentary, “Apollo 11.” I learned many things watching that film, one of which is that Buzz Aldrin had also just discovered John Stewart! Stewart’s “Mother Country” (from “California Bloodlines”) was on Aldrin’s “mix-tape” and was playing in the Command Module as they headed back to Earth. The documentary film-makers heard this in the background of some archival footage, and included the song in the movie’s soundtrack.

“You know, there was just a lot of people
Who were doin’ the best they could.”
The good old days…
Were just a lot of people doin’ the best they could.
And they did it pretty up and walkin’ good!

Oh, mother country, I do love you.
Oh, mother country, I do love you.

The “Mother Country” on Aldrin’s tape was not about space flight, but about a kind of American spirit exhibited in historical situations like the Johnstown Flood. The film-makers edited the lyrics for use in the soundtrack. You can hear Stewart’s whole song here: “Mother Country.”

A few years later, Stewart did, in fact, record a song about Apollo 11 — as an experience not just for America but for Earth. “Armstrong” is a lump-in-the-throat ode to humanity’s achievement of reaching the Moon, and, at the same time, a pensive reflection on the lives of those left behind as the Saturn rocket blasted skyward. The song, while marveling at what has been done, is not proclaiming “We’re number one!” but rather, as has often been remarked about the famous image of the Earth from the moon, “We’re all in this together.”

On this anniversary occasion, I hope you will listen to John Stewart’s rendition of this thoughtful song, “Armstrong.” I close this homage to that day, those guys, and John Stewart, by including his complete lyrics.

Black boy in Chicago
Playing in the street;
Not enough to wear,
Not near enough to eat.
Don’t you know he saw it
On a July afternoon — 
Saw a man named Armstrong
Walk upon the moon.

Young girl in Calcutta
Barely eight years old;
Flies that swarm the market place
Will see she don’t get old.
Don’t you know she heard it
On that July afternoon — 
Heard a man named Armstrong
Had walked upon the moon.

Rivers are getting dirty,
The wind is getting bad;
War and hate are killing off
The only earth we have.
But the world all stopped to watch it
On that July afternoon — 
Watched a man named Armstrong
Walk upon the moon

And I wonder if a long time ago,
Somewhere in the universe,
They watched a man named Adam
Walk upon the earth.

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*Preeminent, but perhaps you’ve never heard of John Stewart. He was a “songwriters’ songwriter.” His own albums are classics of Americana and folk, yet always stopped short of actual fame. (The Rolling Stone named “California Bloodlines” one of the 200 most important albums of all time.) The Monkee’s made a hit of his “Daydream Believer,” and Roseanne Cash recorded his “Runaway Train.” Stewart died in 2008, at the age of 68.

**I wrote about John Stewart’s ballad of a midwestern childhood, “The Pirates of Stone County Road,” here.

THE CONSOLATIONS--AND ODD CONTEXTS--OF POETRY

As related in his gripping true-life tale in the New York Times Magazine, the author, Jon Mooallem, was faced with an episode of not-knowing-what-to-say that makes my experiences of that uncomfortable phenomenon seem trivial. (The following slight hint of a spoiler will not detract from your enjoyment of the yarn.) He was pretty sure that he had to keep talking in order to keep his friend alive. And talking… and talking… for almost two hours, awaiting a rescue that was anything but certain. But what to say? After exhausting his store of platitudes—What to say?

He said poetry. Mooallem reports his gratitude to two college professors who made him memorize poetry. And so, there on the forest floor, he recited poems to his friend. Nature poems, comic poems, mystical poems. Love poems! Elizabeth Bishop, WH Auden, Robert Frost, AR Ammons, Richard Wilbur. “For the most part,” he says, “I trafficked in hits.” 

(With the author, I’m grateful that he could recall his poetic “hits," but it also caused me a bit of mild regret. I, too, had teachers who encouraged the memorization of poetry; but if I were to find myself in a similar situation, I could maybe muster three or four, with a few snippets thrown in. And I read poetry every day.)

Mooallem’s account reminded me of another nearly-doomed adventure: The 1907 Shackleton Antarctic Expedition. As the Endurance was being crushed in the ice, the crew rescued what they could from their sinking ship and scrambled on to an ice floe—adrift in the middle of the Weddell Sea—where, after checking to see that all had survived, and getting situated on their floating home, Shackleton read poetry to them. Not memorized, but read from one of the many volumes rescued from the library of the sinking ship.

The sinking of the Endurance

Priorities! If the reader is moved to exclaim, “What?! Poetry?! There on the ice floe?!,” it is well to recall that the expedition didn’t lose a man in the three-year ordeal, of which the sinking of the Endurance was just the beginning. Historians give the credit to the leadership of the poetry-loving Shackleton.*

The late U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall said, “Poetry is the language used at its best.” Although, for many, “poetry” means a breezy recitation of facile, sing-songy rhymes—either silly or maudlin—it is actually the deepest language of life, death, love, purpose, hope, and mystery. The reason that the Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the most beloved passages of scripture (and literature) for the last three thousand years is not because it’s beautiful (which it is), not because it speaks the truth about life and death (which it does), but because it’s poetry--the language used at its best—and most truthful. (I bemoan the literalism of those of the “Evangelical” church who limit the Bible by not allowing much of it to be the poetry that it is.) Author Mooallem could have said to his friend, “Hang in there, man.” Ernest Shackleton could have said, “Buck up, boys!” The Psalmist could have written, “Hey—everything’s going to be all right.” But they didn’t. They used poetry.

There are different versions of poetry. As a pastor, I sometimes hear—from an elderly parishioner whose eyesight is dimming—“I’m glad I know that hymn by memory.” One of the members I visit in the parish I’m serving in retirement is deeply into Alzheimer’s—often expressing confusion or even belligerence. I asked her daughter if she could suggest ways I might try to reach her mom. “She likes hymns,” she said. On my next visit, I didn’t say too much, but I sang “Beautiful Savior.” My elderly friend quieted down, her eyes calmed, and her lips were moving silently with the words.

I really do regret not memorizing more poetry, but—considering these variations—I think I could actually keep a friend awake for two hours with a combination of folk songs and old hymns. By which time, no doubt, he’d be very happy to see the rescue crew coming through the trees.

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*One of the last books I read which merits the saying, "I couldn't put it down," is Roland Huntford's "Shackleton."

And, on the pure fun of reading poetry out loud: "Cargoes of Diamonds, Emeralds, and... Snipping Snoppers?"

MORE TEAKETTLE, MAESTRO?

After forty years of coming home from a day of teaching to face the immediate challenge of putting supper on the table for our family, Caryl was only too happy to relinquish that task—about ten years ago—when I took to cooking as kind of a hobby. Now in retirement, I find it very satisfying to see her actually sitting down, reading or working a crossword, while I busy myself in the kitchen.

For me, one of the best parts of fixing a meal is listening to music while I’m cooking. And it has to be loud, or, should I say, of appropriate volume. My theory is that the music

My little Sony kitchen speakers can really
pump out the sound!

coming from the set of Sony bookcase speakers that I’ve put in the space above the kitchen cabinets should be at least as loud as what one would hear in a symphony hall or honky-tonk bar. 

One day last week I had just downloaded a new recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony and was using my supper prep time for its first listen. I punched “play” on my iPhone music app, and as the tremendous sounds of the Eleventh filled the kitchen with the cacophony of the 1905 Russian Revolution, I turned to my cutting board. As the music built in tension and sonority, I set my knife down and turned up the volume just a bit. My eyes might even have been glistening a little to the thrill of it all, when my reverie was rudely interrupted: Caryl, standing in the doorway, finger poked in the page of the book she was holding, “Does it have to be so loud?!” she shouted. I started to reply, “Have I ever told you my theory about how music should be loud enough…,” “WHAT?...” she shouted, cupping her ear. “MY THEORY…” I started again. “Oh, never mind, “ I said in something of a huff, “I can listen on my headphones.” (Despite my sweet, husbandly description, above, I actually didn’t realize that she was sitting in the next room, reading.)

Caryl returned to the living room and her book, I plugged in the headphones and turned again to the tasks of chopping, dicing, boiling water, and preparing the spices. The preparations were coming along nicely when Shostakovich got to the great second movement, the Allegro: “The Ninth of January.” That rapid, repeating gunfire assault: Staccato snare drums at full volume! The shrieking violins were the screams of the innocent protesters under attack. Once again, I put down my ladle and stared off into a kind of musical-historical haze. Once again, I was wrenched back into the now: Caryl, at the doorway: “WHAT IN THE WORLD…?!!!”

“But,” I started to say, “I’m wearing my headpho…” when, at that instant, I became aware that the teakettle was fuming at full steam about eighteen inches away from me. In that same instant, I realized that it had been screeching at full throat for about three minutes! “WHAT IN THE WORLD…?!!!”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, as I took off the headphones and removed the kettle from the heat. And then I explained, “You know what’s funny? It’s not that I didn’t hear the teakettle. I heard it—and I thought it was part of the symphony! It fit right in! Pretty funny, huh?”  Then we both had a good laugh. At least I think Caryl was laughing as she turned once again into the living room. I know I saw her head shaking.

In my defense, dear Reader, I urge you to listen to this movement, the Allegro from the Shostakovich 11^th. If you want to get right to it, you can start at about minute 14. But you must listen loud—loud enough so that a tea kettle at full throttle will sound like part of the ensemble, subtle as a flute.

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Dmitri Shostakovich, 1906~1975