Chase the blues away

Sometimes one just has one of those weeks. I'm at the age where I can be cranky in a cute curmudgeonly way. For much of the week, I didn't feel my crankiness was anywhere near cute, but I think I managed to cover it up most of the time. I will say that by the end of the week, I found myself expending a lot of energy just trying to be nice to my fellow human beings. This week, my radio show fell on Ella Fitzgerald's birthday. Two hours of the 'First Lady of Song' was just what the doctor ordered.

If anyone reading this page is feeling cranky or out of sorts,

or if you're enjoying moments of inner sunshine peace,

I do hope you enjoy the show.

  

Four-twenty and so on and so forth...

Back in the 1970's, there was a group of teenage high school friends who were known as The Waldos. And it came to pass that they heard tell of a secret abandoned field of marijuana. It was determined that a search for this pot of gold might provide an efficacious result, so they determined to set out upon such task by congregating by a local statue at 4:20 in the PM. The meeting time became a slang term which eventually found its way into the general population. For many years now, April the 20th has been the date of "smoke ins", celebrations of stoner age culture, and protest marches seeking legalization of cannabis sativa and various things hemp.

Smoking pot used to be one of those things that was just there somewhere in the background of the culture, often found in the circles of hot jazz and swing musicians. Hemp had many uses and was an excellent (and renewable) source for making everything from paper to rope and clothing.

In 1917, a young man by the name of Harry Anslinger married the niece of Andrew Mellon. His connections helped him acquire employment from military and police organizations, traveling the world with a mission of shaping international drug polices. In 1929, he became an assistant commissioner in the US Bureau of Prohibition.  In 1930, he became the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department's Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a position he held for 32 years, until 1962. He immediately began a campaign to destroy hemp as a feasible crop. Publisher William Randolph Hearst had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain. Hearst lost 800,000 acres of timberland to the Mexican Revolution, and needed to protect the rest of his investment. Hearst pushed the anti-hemp crusade. Both men hated Mexicans and African Americans; they began spreading the worst kind of lies and distortions to create negative stereotypes of our neighbors. They were soon joined by the Dupont company, which was about to release synthetics such as nylon. Pharmaceutical companies joined the fight. Hemp production had to go. Marijuana was portrayed as an evil, connected to the dastardly poor Mexican rabble. In 1937, a tax act was used to effectively prohibit hemp/pot. To pass it, Anslinger and Co. distorted and lied about the position of the American Medical Association. Their friends in Hollywood were pressed to join the crusade, and the "Reefer Madness" era began.

 

 

By July 1939, the local paper here in Vermont carried a few stories like this one:

 

 

From the late 1920's through to about 1939, jazz musicians created quite a few songs about the joys of pot smoking, the 'reefer man' and etc. Soon such recordings were outlawed, as was their use in the movies. For my radio show of April 18th, I played some of my collection of such songs.

Also in this week's radio show was a too short nod to the events which started late in the evening of... well, as a poet once put it, " 'Twas the 18th of April in '75, hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year." It's part of a poem we once knew as kids. It starts, "Listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...."  The poet, Mr. Longfellow, writing close to 100 years after the fact got a lot of it wrong. An earlier poem by Mr. Emerson started:

 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

 

One of these days I should really get back to regular posting and tell that story. There's parts of it elsewhere in the blog, but suffice it to say that on April the 19th the colonists fought back and really did change the world.

 

It was another fight that was the underpinning of the rest of the radio show. It was April, 1945. President Roosevelt had died (see last week's show post). The Allies were descending on Berlin. Here in Brattleboro, it was time to start the yearly Victory Garden. On the radio the night of April 21st, the Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands featured Johnny Long and His Orchestra....

 

The organization which registers and tracks the breeding of Holsteins is located in Brattleboro.

  

 

 

 

  

As always, I hope anyone who listens enjoys the show.

     

Crossing the Elbe...

On the morning of Tuesday April the 10th, 1945, one of trains arriving in Brattleboro carried a special passenger; Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the President. She met friends at the station and proceeded to the Brooks House for a late breakfast in the Colonial Room.


Brattleboro's Union Station (which had 22 trains pass trough each day in 1939)  now houses an art museum, with a much smaller Amtrak station in the back. This was taken from Plaza Park created across from the station to provide an appropriate entrance to the town. . The fountain used to be topped by a small statue, "The Spirit of Life" by Daniel Chester French. It was stolen in 1974, and eventually was recovered from an antique shop in New York City. It now resides in the town's  library. Several attempts to finance a duplicate for the fountain have so far failed to produce a result.   

The Brooks House dominates downtown Brattleboro. This was taken before the restoration from the devastating fire of April 2011 was complete. It now houses a lively mix of restaurants, shops, colleges and very pricey apartments - including one in the corner tower where Rudyard Kipling used to play poker.

After breakfast, Mrs. Roosevelt went to nearby Chester to accept a gift from the Senior class. They had raised $500.00 for a trip to New York or Washington DC, but since wartime travel restrictions were in place, they decided to donate the funds to 'further the cause of peace'.  Mrs. Roosevelt then went to Keene, NH to speak on the subject of post war education. On Wednesday the 11th, she returned to Washington, D.C.

 The 7th War Loan drive was starting. The war in Europe was going well, if any war can be described in such terms. Then it would be Japan's turn. Here in town, the annual Spring clean up was beginning.

 

 

 

 

The local paper for Thursday April 12th had already been released when there was news from the President's home (at the spa he financed which served those suffering from Infantile Paralysis) in Warm Springs, GA. He had been tending to paperwork while his portrait was being sketched when he suddenly declared that he a terrible headache, and collapsed. The President died later that afternoon. He was 63. Taking office in 1933, he had shepherded the country through the worst of the Depression, rebuilt the economy, prepared for and then fought the Second World War. In less than a month, Adolph Hitler would be dead and the Nazi regime destroyed. But Moses did not live to see the Promised Land.

 

  

 

 

My radio show last night listened in to late March and early April 1945 before featuring an extraordinary FDR Memorial broadcast of April the 14th, 1945, performed live at the 400 restaurant in NYC by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra.

As I post, it is April the 12th, 2015.
It was 70 years ago today.  

Lost in 1939 and it's Eastertime too

April 1939 would have probably driven me slightly crazy as I waited to the New York World's Fair to open at the end of the month. Not that I would have gotten there opening day, but... come on, it's the World of Tomorrow. It was so futuristic that the opening was going to be covered on that newfangled television thing.

 

 

 

 

 

I could go on and on about that Fair. I'm a fan of such things. My father went to the '39 Fair. I suspect it was the only thing about New York that he ever liked. When I was a kid, I found his old picture puzzle displaying a map of the fair. Sadly, it was missing a few pieces. Dad didn't spend time talking about the past, and said he didn't remember much about it. He would have been 14 at the time. I went to the 1964 - 65 New York World's Fair on two different occasions. I was 13 and 14 at the time. Well, that is, as they say, another story. The main thing here is that it was Eastertime, 1939, and the World of Tomorrow was waiting. Well, okay, it always is, but the clouds on the horizon that time were getting very dark.

 

 

This week's radio show played a few for April, Spring, Easter, and gave a nod to Passover with a sequence devoted to Yiddish swing. The old Philco tuned in a few clips from Eastertime 1939 before settling down to listen to Benny Goodman's Orchestra, joined by Martha Tilton and Johnny Mercer on the Camel Caravan originally broadcast on April the 4th, 1939. As it was on opposite Fibber McGee and Molly, anyone whose folks chose Fibber can finally catch up.

 

 

 

As always, I hope any listeners enjoy the show!