Respite from austerity

Even in this shriven season there is grace, there is mercy, there is beauty.




Who knows what will come, but try to enjoy each day - your family and others who enrich life, a glimpse of floral splendor, the heady song of a mockingbird, the cheeky stare of a chipmunk or squirrel.

Blogging Through The World Turned Upside Down

I am going to try something that I have never tried before. Blogging my way through a book as I read it. At times I have kept journals of books that I was reading, but never with the thought that anyone except a professor would see it. Of course, that may be true of this blog! No one may see it. But I do want to record the experience of what I believe is a very important book that captures the insanity of the moment in which we are living.

"Much of public discouse has departed sharply from reality" says Melanie Phillips (or here) in the second sentence of the Preface of her wonderful new book, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth, and Power. By the way, if you have not yet read her previous book, Londonistan, you need to read it if you want to know what the heck has happened to England! I would add that much of public discourse has departed sharply from politeness, kindness, courtesy, reticence to use foul language, and many other signs of civilization. If you want an example of that, just look at poor Congressman Joe Barton's Facebook page! You've never seen such a bunch of vicious hyenas tearing away at him with either no understanding that he was NOT excusing BP for the Gulf region oil leak/catastrophe, or else understanding but determined not to let this mini-crisis (Barton's apology to BP for the shakedown by President Obama) go to waste. Ah, how much we have learned from Rahm Emmanuel. How much public discourse has changed in the Obama Administration!


Which brings me back to the subject at hand. The World Turned Upside Down.

Coincidentally, I recently read that at the end of the American Revolution, when General Cornwallis' troops surrendered their arms in Yorktown, 1781, it is suggested that their military band played a march (assuming they only surrendered their arms, and not their musical instruments!) called "The World Turned Upside Down." It was to the tune, "When the King Enjoys His Own Again." There is some debate about this, but even the debate is instructive and entertaining in this article by historian Dennis Montgomery.

Here's one of the verses, that describes a state of chaos and insanity that British troops may have felt surrendering to the Yankee Doodles, and that Melanie Phillips, and many with her, feel today:

If buttercups buzz'd after the bee
If boats were on land, churches on sea
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse
If the mamas sold their babies
To the Gypsies for half a crown
If summer were spring
And the other way 'round
Then all the world would be upside down!

Good old Wikipedia says that the song was a ballad, first printed on broadsides, to protest the solemnization of Christmas that was enforced by the Cromwellians. Not quite as drastic as the Taliban, or the Somali Islamic Court thugs, but for its day, a real downer.

By the way, if you'd like to sing along with "The World Turned Upside Down," here's the tune, along with its own words, "When the King Enjoys His Own Again."

So much for my first blog through The World Turned Upside Down. Maybe I'll stick more with the subject next time!