US Sedition Act

[/ dave /]

Justin Schwartz wrote:

> > Agreed. Abe said lots of nice things. And Marx wrote him a
> > nice letter.
>
> He did some great ones too, let's not forget. He saved the country
> and ended slavery, not too shabby for a country boy and railroad
> lawyer from Southern Illinois. --jks

I have an old double-LP set (on the highbrow Caedmon label) of Carl Sandburg
reading from his biographical tome on Abe Lincoln, recorded in 1957 - nearly 2
hours of oddly hypnotic whispers, drawn-out mumbles, and exclamations on the life
of Abe from his time in Illinois right through his presidency.

While a solitary late-night listen probably falls somewhat short of the
mind-altering Kesey hijinks mentioned earlier, it's a trip of sorts nonetheless -
a trip I'll admit I've repeated perhaps a dozen times, being a person who lives
for interesting sounds.

Sandburg, by that time, was obviously far-removed from his days as a cub reporter
on a small anti-capitalist rag in Chicago just before World War I. He later worked
on the Chicago Daily News with a young Ben Hecht, and there are some amusing
anecdotes in Hecht's 1954 autobiography on, among other things, Sandburg's first
appearance on the scene in 1914, reciting his poetry to the reporters in the
pressroom of a Chicago government building (and looking, according to Hecht, like
a "cowhand"). Hecht goes on to provide a surprisingly deeply-felt portrait of
Sandburg that pulls no punches in its effusive praise for the poet and his
influence amongst many of the scribblers in the Chicago newspaper world of the
day. But I digress...

Incidentally, Hecht (no marxist, he) talks of the young Dan MacGregor, who worked
with Sandburg on the radical anti-capitalist paper, and later went to report on -
and fight with - the striking copper miners in Ludlow, Colorado. Apparently
MacGregor went to Mexico to cover Pancho Villa's exploits as well, and died
fighting there alongside him (?). If anyone knows more about him, it'd be
interesting to hear.

I have another Caedmon LP of Stanley Holloway, Beatrice Lillie and Cyril Ritchard
reading the nonsense verse of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, but strangely enough
I think I might still go with the Sandburg/Abe Lincoln pairing on the Hi-Fi if I
was tripping with Kesey. Go figure.

--

/  dave  /