Good advice. If New York needs me, New York know how to get a hold of me, otherwise, I'm going to just keep silent today.

You write in the spirit of Harvey Milk's great "America, love it or leave it" speech. A civilized round of applause, sir.

Maybe it's just the rather plodding MIDI sequence (as ever-so-euphoniously rendered through the strangled-dwarf sound system of a TiBook, but the song is perhaps a few verses on the long side. One might perhaps select and rearrange these a bit if one performed them, privately or publically.

America might be a different place if children grew up singing the praises of some of the virtues articulated in America the Beautiful and not covered in the current anthem:

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

Long may you continue to find way to sing out about your love for your country, along with your belief in its continued possibility for improvement.

All year I've been distinguishing between "God Bless America" patriots and "This Land Is Your Land" patriots. I had forgotten the other verses of "America the Beautiful." They're good, too. Thanks for reminding me.

Patrick,

I agree about "America the Beautiful". I was not familiar with any but the first verse (and I considered it pretty bland and uninspiring), but after 9/11 last year, I heard some group on TV singing the whole song. When I heard the particular words

Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!

I broke into tears myself.

Marissa,

We miss a lot from our short attention spans. Most people never sing more than the chorus of "This Land is Your Land", either. But the best part (for lefties like me) are the last two:

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Have you heard the version of America the Beautiful that the rock group Spirit did on their live album "Spirit of 76"? Not being American, it was the first time I'd happened to hear the song.

It's beautiful.

Thinking of that now, in the context of this post makes me think of the concert at the end of Martin's _The Armageddon Rag_.

Jo

I mostly stayed away from tv and news and media the past few days.I played a lot of computer games. Part of the time I stayed by myself, and didn\ computer/online intake stuff, and part of the time I drank, and part of the time I dipped into the wallowing, and then retreated. Part of the time was stayed entirely sober, and still I engaged and avoided. Occassionally I popped up and said something drunken, foolish, and regretably foolish. I spent the evening of September 11th hanging out having sober funny \ conversations with my new friends in this house: talking some politics, talking some movie/tv stuff,talking some sf/comics stuff, talking some frivoliousness stuff.

It worked out, though it didn't make me the most educated geek about all the Productions Produced.

I was eye-popped to hear that the Food Channel had temporarily gone off the air Out Of Respect, whose logic I cannot follow, since I recall no cannibals at ground zero, and the idea that people might want to get away by thinking about making a nice food dish made more sense to me, but what do I know?

I'm still winding down, and winding up.

I'm 24, Daryl, and many people my age were taught the first verse and maybe the second verse in grade school (in the Reagan years). So I delight in singing the rest of the song for them and watching their faces. Sometimes I sing some other Woody Guthrie tunes, too, just to make the point clear. Loving one's country and wanting to improve it should never, ever be portrayed as antithetical, no matter what end of the political spectrum you're on.

"America the Beautiful" and "This Land Is Your Land" are both also singable for an average person, which is sadly more than I can say for "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Gary: Sometimes Just Shutting Down is the respectful gesture they want to do. Wil Wheaton shut down his weblog yesterday; the usual URL showed the towers/ribbon logo and the legend "May Peace Prevail on Earth - 9-11-01."

Mris: The SSB is singable by the average really DRUNK person (assuming the listeners are also riding the ethanol hang-glider), which is where the tune comes from. "To Anakreon in Heaven" was a gleeclub drinking song. You know the words? They're about getting drunk and...well, indulging in carnal pleasures.

Nothing against the SSB; many a song has gotten refurbished in this way, and the SSB in particular I've sung with great pleasure, in an arrangement by Stravinsky. In keeping with current themes, he was arrested for writing it. He was a Russian (the Arab of the day) and anything he did was automatically suspicious.

Daryl: Those 2 lines of American the Beautiful have always been my favorites but I never knew why until now.

MKK

RE: Chris Hatton's: "the SSB in particular I've sung with great pleasure, in an arrangement by Stravinsky. In keeping with current themes, he was arrested for writing it. He was a Russian (the Arab of the day) and anything he did was automatically suspicious."

The story I heard isn't about him being arrested, but the authorities in Boston (natch) confiscated the orchestral parts of his arrangement on the grounds that they defaced a national monument.

He was briefly jailed for that same "defacement." I imagine the judge took one look at the case and screamed "Are you people INSANE!?!?!?"

And it's not atonal or anything, either. It's aggressive, and you can see why an ordinary Joe of the time might not have liked it, but it's not that...I mean it ends on a unison of all parts. My guess is that they were offended by the very idea of a Russian arranging it at all.

Yesterday at a local high school, they were having a ceremony with the band playing "America the Beautiful." The band director had written out the words for the students to sing, and had changed "God shed his grace on thee" to "Please send good grace to thee." (I'm not quite sure who he thought was going to be doing the sending.) The students ignored the band director and sang the original words.

I found that verse very striking as well. I had never noticed it until after 9/11/01. Maybe we didn't sing that verse in elementary school.