Spitball Army

1984 was a landslide victory year for Ronald Reagan.  His Democratic opponent was former Vice-President Walter Mondale.  Reagan’s re-election was practically assured as, under his first term watch, the economy showed definite signs of revival.  It seemed that there was little for the Democrats to do than go through the motions, and pretend that their candidate stood a chance.

As it played out, Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota, and the District of Columbia.  He was helped and hurt, probably in equal measure, by his selection of New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.  It mobilized many female voters, but repelled many voters with deep-seated sexist views.  That’s the price of progress, I suppose, and no one said that it’d be easy.  Check out this choice quote from the 12 July 1984 issue of the New York Times:

“She’s a woman, she’s ethnic [Italian-American], she’s Catholic,” said one adviser to Mr. Mondale. “We have broken the barrier. She will energize, not just women, but a lot of men who have fallen away from the Democrats.”

One could posit that the Democratic Party was laying ground for the Hillarys and Pelosis and Obamas of the 21st century.  It seems to be working, but not without struggle.

Here are a couple of special interest campaign buttons from the Democratic side.  I am assuming that the green Mondale/Ferraro button is representing the National Organization for Women (NOW).  I’m not certain which branch of the vast Harvard organization printed up the “Harvard for Mondale/Ferraro ’84 for America” button, but the campus did seem to lean Democratic that year.  That is not to say that the Reagan contingent was absent from the campus; there was a surprisingly strong Republican/conservative voice among the student body, much more noticable than in 1980.

And, in this corner, representing the worst-justification-for-voting (read: idealism quotient close or equal to zero) buttons: the “No Reagan” button and the “Anybody But Reagan” button.  The “No Reagan,” or “Ghostbusters,” button was probably purchased or collected from a hawker in Harvard Square.  On the back of it is a sticker that says:

CUSTOM-MADE
Larry Fox
Box M
Valley Stream
NY 11582
(516) 791-7929
BUTTONS  BUMPER STICKERS  DECALS  LABELS

Three things that are making my world a better place:

• Yim Yames  Tribute To  (CD)

  

  Jim James, the singer and frontman of My Morning Jacket, has just released a 6-song EP of covers of songs written by George Harrison.  Two of them are from the Beatles era, and the remaining four were all drawn from Harrison’s classic All Things Must Pass album.  While having a strong fondness for Harrison, and All Things, in particular, I was disappointed in the sameness of the sound of the four central tracks on the CD.  The songs that bookend the EP, however (“Long, Long, Long” from The Beatles’ “White Album” and the title track from All Things Must Pass), have an eerie lightness and languorous spirit to them that comes close to channeling the soulfulness of some of the quieter music that George Harrison produced in his lifetime.

  [audio:Jim_James___Long_Long_Long.mp3]
  “Long, Long, Long” (2009) by Yim Yames (Jim James), from Tribute To

• Harvard Beats Yale 29-29  (DVD)
  This terrific documentary is not exclusively a sports doc.  The Harvard/Yale game of 1968 happened only ten years before I entered Harvard as a Freshman, but the events surrounding this event seem a world away.  The final minutes of the football match-up are nail-biting, unbelievable and, frankly, ridiculous, but it’s the context that is laid out before that really amps up the drama.  The Harvard team is portrayed as a scrappy close-knit bunch of guys from wildly diverse backgrounds, while the Yale team seems made up of several “legacy” undergrads.  Tommy Lee Jones, a guard for Harvard, talks about the secret talents of his roommate, Al Gore; one of the Yale players describes a date with Meryl Streep; Vietnam veterans play alongside SDS members.  This is as much a social document as it is the remembrance of an amazing sporting event.

• California Pizza Kitchen’s Garlic Chicken Pizza (forbidden foods)
  Pizza is not on my short list of allowed foods, but I went ahead and purchased this frozen pie at the supermarket, anyway.  What a treat!  Once baked in the oven, the crust was thin and crispy, with a mellow butteriness.  The simple topping consisted merely of mozzarella cheese, chunks of chopped garlic cloves, and a generous smattering of the white meat from a chicken breast.  The same pizza might cost $15 to $20 at your local trattoria.  This cost about $5.00.

The 1980 Presidential election took place in the Fall of my Junior year in college.  The campus was flooded with propaganda in the form of buttons, pamphlets, stickers, and, of course, a full schedule of lectures and speakers.  At one point in either this election or the 1984 election (when I was both living in and employed by my former undergraduate house), Stephen Stills came by the Quincy House common room to sing a couple of songs and stump for his candidate (a Democrat, no doubt, but I can’t remember which one). College campuses are a prime target for political campaigns: the student population is full of impressionable young first-time voters eager to test out their new-found freedom to form and express their ideals, and the campaign machines are equally eager to harvest them for their causes.

I’ve got one little tiny Jimmy Carter button.  It is doubtful that it ever got any use.  The economy was in the toilet, there were long lines at the gas stations, and the Iranian hostage situation had been dragging on for months.  The general feeling was that Jimmy Carter had floundered in his last couple of years as President and would be ineffective to get the country out of its rut.

For a brief moment, it seemed, there was a blast of hope when Ted Kennedy announced a run for the Democratic nomination.  He took Massachusetts, his home state and my residence at the time, but lost in the Democratic Primary election to Carter.

Faced with a choice between Carter and Ronald Reagan, I chose to go “independent,” and backed John Anderson, a Republican congressman from Illinois who dropped his GOP affiliation for this election.  There was a sizable groundswell of support for Anderson on the Harvard campus.  I even participated as a runner in a “Run for Anderson” footrace along the Charles River, from which I saved a placard that I sadly discovered recently had been ruined by mildew and insects.  Anderson’s running mate, the former Democratic governor of Wisconsin Patrick Lucey, has since vanished from the collective memory, but there was some excitement about the bi-partisan nature of the ticket.

Reagan eventually won, as history has recorded, taking even the strongly-Democratic state of Massachusetts.  John Anderson got 7% of the national vote in the final election.  Former California governor Jerry Brown fell out after the Democratic primary but, on either a trunk or an old piece of luggage somewhere in my cluttered house, I have affixed a “Brown for President” sticker.

More stubs:

I missed most of opening act Ron Sexsmith’s set because I foolishly went to eat a Japanese dinner with several music business folks.  After getting no service, I excused myself and headed downtown; otherwise, I would have missed Ron’s set completely.  Thankfully, I did catch a full set from him that afternoon, when he played an inspirational in-store gig at Laser’s Edge.  Coldplay’s set at the Concert Hall was the second time I had seen them (the first was at The Tabernacle in Atlanta), and they were on fire.  It was a fantastic show, the lighting acrobatics were great, and they played almost all of what I consider their finest album (A Rush of Blood to the Head).

This was one of the loudest concerts I have ever attended.  I am not the biggest fan of Clapton, and this show did little to sway me.  The clarity of the sound was sacrificed for the volume, and the BJCC Arena is one big echo chamber.  I only had one earplug on me, so I stuffed it in my left ear and turned and watched the stage using my peripheral vision (!!).  Thankfully, opener Robert Cray was spirited and exciting, which one merely needed eyes to appreciate.

Kris Kristofferson is legendary.  Acknowledged?  Then why don’t I remember this show?  This date was almost exactly two weeks after the Lewis Black show of 27 October, which I also don’t remember.  Was I under a Halloween memory hex that year?

More ticket stubs, found in the recesses of the desk that I no longer use as a desk.

I accompanied a writer from one of our local papers to this concert.  It was, by every performance measure, a really good show – one of the tours where it seemed that Elton had realized there were more people who wanted to hear his moldy oldies and album cuts than dreck like “The One” and “Something About the Way You Look Tonight.”  The resulting set list was heavy on songs like “Burn Down the Mission” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.”  To my surprise and eventual horror, I could see from our seats that Elton was using a tele-prompter that was constantly scrolling the lyrics.  It was located to his left, beside the piano and out of view of the majority of the audience.  My concert companion shrugged it off: Maybe it’s just a safety, in case he forgets a line of a song.  I was inconsolable.

I almost knocked Shelby Lynne over as we turned the corner of her touring bus on the way into the venue.  She was hovereing halfway between the bottom step and the parking lot pavement, on her way out of the bus.

At this show on The Rising tour we had great seats, about fifteen rows up stage left, adjacent to the set.  The Civic Center was not full.  Someone told me later that this was the only stop on the tour that did not sell out (another dubious achievement, courtesy of Birmingham, Alabama).  Just before the lights went down, a group of six or seven people came to our aisle, entered, and excused themselves past us: it was Birmingham native Emmylou Harris and some friends.  Toward the end of the show, Emmylou rose from her seat and excused herself past us again.  A couple of songs later, she walked onstage and sang “My Hometown” with the Boss.