We started learning Sun an interesting composition: It's an arrangement of Simple Gifts - the old Shaker tune - sung in round form and with Pachelbel's famous Canon as accompaniment. Hope that makes sense.
It sounds odd, but it really works!!
Here's a short sample from Buechner's book:
Despair - Despair has been called the unforgivable sin - not presumably because God refuses to forgive it but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven.
I can hear it in my head, and it makes a lot of sense, Molly! I'd like to hear it (out loud, that is!)
I like cannon. Tchaikovsky!
Tuned anvils are kinda neat too.
A hundred years ago 96 percent of our population was engaged in farming. It did not last. Farming went mechanized and used far fewer people. Farms grew larger and were farmed with more machinery and a lot fewer people. The Farmers left the farm, their children left the farm and went to the city to work in the factory. By 2000, about 2 percent of our people farmed.
WOW!.
What a transition. One day you are a farmer. You get up at dawn because you decide to get up at dawn. You plow the back 40 when you want to plow the back 40. You milk the cow using the bucket you want to use. You are in control of all aspects of your life. Then it is off the farm and into the factory. The boss says be there at 7:00Am. Show up at 7:05Am and you will get fired. The Boss says do it this way.. and you WILL DO IT THIS WAY or get the highway.
What a transition the former farmer went through. He went from total control of his working life to no control of his working life.
Into the breach steps unions and the democratic party. You could not tell the boss off, and your union could not either ... not until the McCarren act got you the right to organize and bargain work rules. As a factory worker you may have had good pay, but the boss called all the shots.. except those shots the Democrats and unions called for you. Put that picture of FDR right next to Jesus and vote that straight democratic ticket.
By the 1930's and the Depression those Republican Former Farmers and the new immigrants had become the champions of the benign Democrats and Unions. They were their protectors. It lasted until the 80's and 90's when our economy changed. The employee worker relationship changed.
Today fewer and fewer of us are being used as human robots doing a simple repetitive jobs on an assembly line. More and more of us have control of our lives. Fewer of us find it demeaning to be told to show up for work at 8:00Am. More of us see ourselves in control of our own destinies. Today fewer and fewer americans see themselves as victims of "BIG BUSINESS".
My grandfather born in 1872, farmed the land. He was a very independent man. He voted for McKinley too. His sons for the most part worked for others. They resented the control the "powerful" had over their lives. Two of my uncles were union officials, my Dad was a professional politician. They were democrats. They worked to keep the 'powerful' from controling them. In later life some even discovered the rules and regulations the Democrats enactes were more to control them than to protect them.
My generation stepped out of that mold. We got college educations. We entered professions. We owned small businesses and were our own bosses. I remember my Dad's shock when he found I was active in Republican politics. He said "Don't you realize the Republicans are for the rich?" I replied,"Yes Dad, I am rich. That is why I'm a Republican."
My generation's sons and daughters never new what Dad knew. They never had to fear the boss and his power. Some are in business and some in professions. But many are professionals who are recruited and courted to take jobs. They are bugged by headhunters trying to hire them... not bosses wanting to oppress them. They don't hate their jobs, they like their jobs.
What I am saying is we are at long last in a new realignment. I do not think the mommy party and daddy party are correct descriptions. They are the "I'll protect and control your life" party opposed by the "run your own life" party.
It just occurs to me that the rise and perhaps fall of the Democratic party has paralleled our occupations. There was a time when we were nearly all independent farmers and no William Jennings Bryan's need apply. Then came the day when many of us were just tiny replaceable human robots in vast array of assembly lines with a restricted future and no control. Now we are transitioning back to a nation of people who own stock and are valued employees with bosses concerned about our morale.
Perhaps that has a lot to do with our political outlook. In that perspective "The big corporation are coming to oppress you and you must join us to get protection." is a pitch whose day has passed with the 20th century. It seems to me the "let us take care of you and remove your worries" is doomed to failure with two generations of "I'll do it my Way" citizens going to the polls.