Mother of Muses

Sing of the heroes who stood alone,

whose names are engraved on tablets of stone.

— Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's "Mother of Muses," critics agree, is among the singer-songwriter's finest pieces. 

Released in 2020—seven decades after his arrival in New York as a fresh-faced folkie from Minnesota—the song represents a collage of archaic people and events that Dylan counts as sources of inspiration.

Sing of Sherman, Montgomery and Scott,
Sing of Zhukov and Patton and the battles they fought,
Who cleared the path for Presley to sing, 

Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King,
Who did what they did and then went on their way,
Man, I could tell their stories all day.

Romping the "old, weird America," Dylan is like a vacuum cleaner whose bag never gets emptied.

He compiles, more than composes; derives, more than devises—pastiching from the sourcebook we call American History and hoping listeners never forget that "we stand on the shoulders of giants."

"All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources," Mark Twain said. "There is not a rag of originality about them."

That's certainly true of Dylan's murky lyrics. As a songwriter, he's is like a dealer at an antiques mall or a docent at a roadside attraction, ready to regale you with lore about obscure objects and eccentric people.

Listening to his words is like taking vacation with Sarah Vowell.

"When Bob Dylan performs, he channels a whole universe of time-weathered emotions, ideas, and legacies," says Giovanni Russonello, music critic for The New York Times. 

His rootedness makes him an "ambassador for the country's past and its indelible ideals."

In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan describes songwriting as inheritance, a process of "converting something that exists into something that didn't."

"Mother of Muses" acknowledges just a few of the dusty items in the cabinet.

There are thousands more in Dylan's catalog.

NOTE: Bob Dylan turned 81 May 24.

Altered States

Good news: Uvalde looks like the national tipping point in gun control.

Federal reform, of course, is impossible, because the NRA owns the GOP.

But it doesn't own every governor, making blue-state reforms quite feasible.

My own governor and the Democratic leadership in Delaware's legislature right now are pushing a "historic" package of six gun-control reforms.

The reforms would:

• Raise the age to purchase guns to 21; 
• Strengthen background checks; 
• Ban the sale of assault weapons; 
• Ban the accessories used to turn handguns into AR-15s; 
• Ban high-capacity magazines; and
• Hold gun manufacturers and dealers liable for recklessness.

"We have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies,” Delaware's governor said Thursday in a news release. "I look forward to seeing these bills on my desk this session.”

Other blue states' governors are pushing similar reforms.

If the governors succeed, as I believe they will, we'll soon find ourselves an even more "divided nation." 

There will be gun-safe states and gun-loving states. 

NRA-free states and NRA-owned states. 

Blue states and red states. 

That's red as in blood.

And that's okay, in my book, because parents can simply pick up and move from a red to a blue state.

If they value their kids' lives, they can relocate.

Sure, the housing is tight in the blue states; but the schools and libraries are better, and the jobs plentiful.

Let the red states relish their militarized weapons—and the weekly mass shootings that stem from them.

We blue-state citizens will send them thoughts and prayers.

Lumber Jack

I don't know of any great man who ever had a great son.

— Anthony Mann

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright had a son named Jack who was tormented all his life by his father's fame.

He hoped some of it would rub off on him, but things just never quite worked out.

At the age of 18, shiftless and unhappy, Jack Wright quit his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin—his father's alma mater—and headed to the West Coast, where he scraped along on menial jobs until deciding to try his hand at architecture. 

Jack smooth-talked his way into a job as a draftsman at a Los Angeles construction company, but quickly grew restless with his junior-man's position. When he announced his intention to move abroad to study architecture, Jack's father offered him a job as office manager at his now-bustling Chicago studio, in lieu of help with tuition.

Jack would last at the studio of Frank Lloyd Wright only four years: his father fired him after a heated argument over salary.

Suddenly jobless, Jack Wright tried something altogether new: designing toys for Chicago retailer Marshall Field. 

Swiping his father's earthquake-proof design for Tokyo's Imperial Hotel, Jack designed a set of notched wooden logs that kids could play with (his US patent application described the miniature logs' purpose as "Toy Cabin Construction"). 

He packaged the logs in a garish green and red cardboard box that featured a log cabin and a portrait of Illinois' favorite son, Abe Lincoln. 

The packaging promised "Interesting playthings typifying the spirit of America."

Jack Wright's "Lincoln Logs" caught on like wildfire. Parents and kids—swept up in a post-World War I patriotism craze—couldn't get enough of them. 

Although they never made him rich and famous—Jack would return to architecture after selling his patent for the toy to Playskool for $800—Lincoln Logs became 20th-century American kids' go-to building blocks, peaking in sales at 100 million sets. 

In 1999, along with the Hula Hoop, View-Master and the Radio Flyer Wagon, they were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, 27 years after Jack Wright's death.

Trust Fund Babies

 He had a lifelong desire to earn a living,
which helped keep him grounded.

— Julian Baggini

"Let me tell you about the very rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. 

"They are different from you and me. 

"They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. 

"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."

Outside of trust fund babies, who doesn't loathe trust fund babies?

They're loathsome because they're born with immunity to all quotidian hardships.

While the rest of us worry what the boss really thinks, how much longer the car will last, and whether to pay the whole credit card bill this month, they worry about the currents next week off Barbados, whether to hang the Basquiat alongside the Beeple, and what to wear to Saturday's steeplechase.

They're not immune, of course, to overdoses, cirrhosis, cancers, or car accidents.

That, at least, is satisfying.

Numerically, trust fund babies are small in number.

Almost 75% of the super-rich 1% have earned their wealth; and only 16% have inherited "old money" (earned two, three or four generations ago).

Nonetheless, that 16% represents 527,000 people to loathe.

These loathsome people have inherited, on average, $2.7 million, according to the Federal Reserve. 

That's $447 for every $1 inherited by the poor.

And not all trust fund babies are, of course, airheaded wastrels. 

History is rife with trust fund babies who worked hard and changed the world.

Buddha. St. Francis. Lafayette. Cézanne. Tolstoy. Bertrand Russell. Edith Wharton. FDR. JFK. William S. Burroughs. Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper.

The list is long.

But we tend to stereotype trust fund babies.

Unfairly advantaged in almost every stage and walk of life, they're spoiled and lazy; vain and vapid; aloof and self-righteous; petty and paranoid.

Bolstered by wealth, they are directionless, and know nothing of failure and hardship.

Perpetual child actors, "their life is a series of highlight reels," says writer Tim Denning.

But the trust fund baby would tell us we're guilty of envy, and that envy's a sin.

"Envy rots the bones," Proverbs says.

Envy is insecurity masquerading as resentment: it invites you to compare yourself to others who, by dint of good luck, enjoy status you lack—and to cultivate hatred for them.

"Envy is a mind game with our sinful nature," says Christian writer Quinn Jackson.

"At its core, envy comes from the lack of belief that God is all powerful, cares about you deeply and has wonderful plans for your life."

Envy is in fact so sinful, Jackson says, it's practically inadmissible. 

To admit to being envious is to admit you're "ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted."

Hogwash.

At its core, envy seeks justice.

Envy resides within the heart of democracy.

Envy isn't hate; it's contempt, targeted, in this case, at unearned moneyed privilege—and the power it wields over us, even if only potentially.

As a member of the trust fundless, that contempt is my right.

You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

A Horse Named Charley

Charley Horse. A muscular pain, cramping, or stiffness that results from a strain or bruise.

— Webster's Dictionary

In March 1886, a sportswriter for The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that a local baseball player was suffering a "brand new disease" called a Charley Horse.

In fact, sportswriters around the country had been reporting many instances of the new disease.

A writer for The Boston Globe reported that the disease would cause a ballplayer to run around the field "after the fashion of a boy astride of a wooden horse, sometimes called a Charley Horse."

But what, readers wondered, was a pro baseball Charley Horse?

A writer for The Wheeling Intelligencer unearthed the answer:

"The disease consists of a peculiar contraction and hardening of the muscles and tendons of the thigh, to which ballplayers are liable from sudden starting and stopping in chasing balls. 

"Shortstop Jack Glasscock is said to have originated the name because the way the men limped around reminded him of an old horse he once owned named Charley."

While they agreed on the symptoms, not all sportswriters accepted the name's origin story.

A sportswriter for The Chicago Tribune attributed the name to horse racing, where a lame horse was called a "Charley."

A writer for The Grand Rapids Daily Democrat said the name came from manufacturing, where lame horses called "Charlies" were used to pull carts.

And a writer for The Washington Post said that the name came from a ballplayer,  Charlie "Hoss" Radbourn, who often experienced leg cramps while running bases.

While it might seem odd that sportswriters of the 1880s would label Charley Horse a disease, keep in mind that physicians today say that frequent Charley Horses—especially the nocturnal kind—can signal other, fatal diseases, including alcoholism, ALS, cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, diabetes, kidney failure, Parkinson’s, MS, and lung cancer.

Photo by Rachel Morrison