Melting Pot #9 Ronald Reagan And Phyllis Schlafly And Theresa May

The Anglosphere has some really great thinkers who did good things in the real world for us to compare.

As part of Phyllis Schlafly Month, which I started to celebrate on the September, the 7th anniversary of the conservative thinker’s death, I now compare some of her thoughts with a few of former British Prime Minister, Theresa May, who was born on this day the 1st of October in 1956.

From May:

“You can’t solve a problem as complex as inequality in one legal clause.”

“I get cross about 13 years of Labour government that brought the country to the state it did.”

“I grew up the daughter of a local vicar and the granddaughter of a regimental sergeant major.”

From Schlafly:

“The purpose of our military is to field the finest troops possible to defend our nation and win wars.”

“I don’t think the GOP is going to die; I think Trump is going to revive it.”

“Remember, those that wait upon the Lord will rise up with wings like eagles, and they will run and not be weary. And don’t you ever be weary, because the battle goes on, year after year, and we need all of you young people to join us in the battle.”

Geoff Fox, 1st October, 2023

IWOTA #20 Twiggy

Twiggy, a.k.a. Dame Lesley Lawson, DBE, was a very unusual 1960’s fashion model, who was born on the 19th of September, 1949, in northwest suburban London to working class parents.

For the brilliance of her thought, I name her an Indigenous Woman Of The Anglosphere (IWOTA).

Here are some examples from her slightly strange and unique mind:

“Confusion is the best form of communication. It’s left to be unexplained.”

“Always be natural. Putting on airs will make a giggle out of you. Be yourself and if you don’t know something say so.”

“I want to continue to try and break the barrier between male and female.”

“I think everyone should sing – it’s so good for you, as it makes you breathe deeply, and it’s good for you emotionally, too. It’s a brilliant release way of lifting the spirits.”

“Life is about making choices: you can either spend three quid on a glossy magazine or you can spend it clearing three square metres of minefield and help give people their lives back. As simple as that.”

“Being young isn’t about age, it’s about being a free spirit. You can meet someone of 20 who’s boring and old, or you can meet someone of 70 who’s youthful and exciting. I met Fred Astaire when he was 72 and I was 21, and I fell in love with him. He certainly was a free spirit.”

“What happened to me in the Sixties was so major and so worldwide and so huge, there’s no way I can repeat it. But in a way, I had nothing to do with it, it just took me over. It was bizarre, it was weird, and I had no control over it. I don’t think anyone could have planned what happened to me.”

“I used to be a thing; I’m a person now.”

I find her thought quite brilliant.

Geoff Fox, 19th September, 2023, Down Under

Previous Indigenous Women Of The Anglosphere include Shirley Temple, Patsy Cline, Audrey Hepburn, Rosa Parks, Barbara Stanwyck, Tammy Bruce, Yvonne De Carlo, Mary Astor, Mrs Patrick Campbell, Virginia Satir, Lady Gregory, Joy Davidman and Gertrude Bell

IMOTA #22 Hank Williams

Hank Williams was born in Butler County, Alabama, on September 17, in 1923.

100 years ago today.

He changed the way people could hear the real American voice. For that astonishing contribution to world culture, I name him a truly magnificent indigenous Man Of The Anglosphere. (IMOTA)

Here are just a few of his best words:

“I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin’ like myself.”

”If you’re gonna sing, sing ’em something they can understand.”

“To sing like a hillbilly, you had to have lived like a hillbilly. You had to have smelt a lot of mule manure.”

“Folk songs express the dreams and prayers and hopes of the working people.”

“The way I feel is that if you don’t like folk music, stay away from my shows.”

“Personally, I cain’t stand classical stuff, but I don’t tell the world about it. I just turn the radio off. Now, why cain’t these folks who don’t like my kind of music do the same?”

“….. I’m in love, I’m in love with a beautiful gal
That’s what’s the matter with me ….. “ (These words were written by Irving Mills but immortalised by Hank.)

“If you’re thinkin’ of me like I’m thinkin’ of you
Then I know what you’re thinkin’ of” (Has any poet ever written a better couplet than this?)

“There ain’t a man livin’ who hasn’t talked to his dog.”

Hank Williams playing guitar on a sidewalk in Montgomery Alabama. 1938. In that year Roy Acuff joined the Grand Ole Oprey.

God Bless Hank Williams – a truly charismatic man.

Geoff Fox, 17th September, 2023

Previous Indigenous Men Of The Anglosphere (IMOTA) are:

1. John Wycliffe
2. Douglas MacArthur
3. George Pell
4. R.S. Thomas
5. Donald Trump
6. John Barrymore
7. William Shatner
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. Count Basie
10. Clint Eastwood
11. Walt Whitman
12. Brigham Young
13. John Wayne
14. Sitting Bull
15. Marlon Brando
16. George Gershwin
17. Will Rogers
18. Ron Paul
19. Alan Dershowitz
20. A. J. P. Taylor
21. J. C. Penney

IMOTA #21 Edward Teller

Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen bomb, received a Nobel Prize for peace in 1991 and was rumoured to be an inspiration for Dr Strangelove.

He died in Stanford on the 9th of September, 2003.

Teller believed:

“Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.”

and

“Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.”

His thought provoking words are good enough for me to call him an Indigenous Man Of Anglosphere (IMOTA) but I am not if I admire him.

Perhaps he was a Carry A Big Stick man of peace.

Only God is omniscient.

Geoff Fox, 9th Sept, 2023, Down Under

Aussie Rules #2 Heart And Soul Bobby Hill

Michael Warren gets off the shot. In 1968 he was an All-American basketball player in an outstanding Bruins team. Then for me he became the moral heart soul the series Hill Street Blues with his almost constant decency and tolerance playing Officer Bobby Hill.

Now, in Australia, another black man named Bobby Hill, of Collingwood. Football Club, is thrilling sports loving people with dash and class.

Tonight, in Melbourne, Australia, Bobby Hill’s goal kicking has been a crucial factor in a postseason finals triumph for his team.

An equal personal best. 3 big goals. Including the first two of the game in which winning margin for Hills team Collingwood was just over one goal.

And also watch this brilliant curving goal from earlier in the season:

For me, despite the horrible authoritarianism of modern Australian governments, Aussie Rules footy is still one.of the greatest forms of freedom.in my world.

God Bless Bobby Hill Now And Then

Geoff Fox, 7th September, 2023, Down Under.

Women For Freedom #40 Lady Godiva

Lady Godiva (LG – seen above in an 1898 painting by Englishman John Collier with words added by me) and her hubby, Leofric, the Earl Of Mercia were both generous to Christian religious houses. He established a Benedictine monastery in Coventry. She gave gold and silver jewelry to monasteries. One necklace was hung on the neck of the Virgin Mary. The first known Rosary-like string of prayer beads was made by her. That’s history.

Different times.

According to legend, LG was deeply troubled by oppressive taxation of the people by her husband and entreated him again and again to lower taxes but he refused. However she persisted and eventually he gave in on the condition that she rode naked through the streets of the town. She issued a proclamation ordering people to shut their windows and stay inside.

Lady Godiva sounds like a great libertarian opponent of over-government to me.

A role for Nicole Kidman?

Geoff Fox, August 10, 2023, Down Under

IMOTA #16 George Gershwin

On July 11, 1937 Gershwin died tragically young, 38 years old.

He had a marvelous way with words, making him an outstanding contributor to the Anglosphere.

Here’s some proof:

“True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.”

“All great composers of the past spent most of their time studying. Feeling alone won’t do the job. A man also needs technique.“

But feeling wasn’t completely unnecessary to Gershwin:

“When I’m in my normal mood, music drips from my fingers.”

With Irving Berlin and Paul McCartney, he dominated the crafting of great popular melody in his century:

“I frequently hear music in the very heart of noise.”

And he knew that craft isn’t everything:

“Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.”

………….

The capacity for Great Music is a gift to us from God.

Geoff Fox, 11th July (Chicago time), 2023, Down Under

Previous IMOTA (Indigenous Men Of The Anglosphere) are:

1. John Wycliffe
2. Douglas MacArthur
3. George Pell
4. R.S. Thomas
5. Donald Trump
6. John Barrymore
7. William Shatner
8. Thomas Jefferson
9. Count Basie
10. Clint Eastwood
11. Walt Whitman
12. Brigham Young
13. John Wayne
14. Sitting Bull
15. Marlon Brando

The Bikini And The Bomb And The Band (My Melting Pot #1)

“I don’t play to jam, but because I’m fishing. I’m looking for something, that I hope you can never find.” – Robbie Robertson, one of my favourite guitarists.

One birth of the bikini on Frenchwoman Micheline Bernardini‘s body in a photo shoot on July 5th, 1946, owes its then new name to the island where, four days earlier, America tested one of the first of the atomic weapons which still both terrify and (hopefully) stabilise the modern world.

Robbie Robertson, who was born 0n July 5, but in 1943, said:

“You don’t stumble upon your heritage. It’s there, just waiting to be explored.”

God Bless Beauty And The Fearsome Freedom To Enjoy It.

Geoff Fox, July 5th, 2023, Down Under

Great Americans # 9 Singer Songwriter Steve Young

Steve Young is one of my alltime favorite singer songwriters.

I predict that, long term, this glorious artist will be more famous than his namesake, the great ’49ers quarterback, whom nfl.com ranks as the 15th greatest quarterback of all time. Others put the football playing Steve Young in the top ten of quarterbacks.

At the moment the footballer is much more famous than the singer, whose birthday is coming up on the 12th of July.

Who wants to help me bridge the current gap in fame between these two men?

For those who know little about the singer, please listen to “My Oklahoma” written by Young’s wife, Terrye Newkirk, aka Cheryl Young.

The lyrics are gloriously free American words about being as one with the place you live in:

“Stars out in the morning
And the still rustle of corn
What a good place to be born

Clouds over the prairie
Till the wind blows them away
At the still start of the day

Hey, my Oklahoma
Are you still awaiting for me
With your gold plain waving free”

In “The Ballad Of William Sycamore” Young makes a song out of a Steven Vincent Benét poem in which the spirit of a man, hit hard by the loss of his sons in American wars at the Alamo and under Custer, finds redemption in reuniting with the land:

"Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil, Like the seed of the prairie-thistle; It has washed my bones with honey and oil And picked them clean as a whistle.

And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring, And my sons, like the wild-geese flying; And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing And have much content in my dying.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks, The towns where you would have bound me! I sleep in my earth like a tired fox, And my buffalo have found me."

In “Vison of A Child” , a song written for his son, Jubal, Young again finds union between the imagination and the natural world in lyrics like:

“Little Jubal boy
The woods and fields are dark
Except for the light of the moon and stars
So go on ahead
Through the portals of your dreams
Go on escape these earthly bars
And you can sail the silver streams
As you travel through your dreams
As you travel through the night”

A glorious voice.

For me, a great American.

Steve Young.

The singer.

Geoff Fox, 25th May, 2023, Down Under

The Fabric Of Society #1 Freedom

I am a libertarian.

To me, freedom looks like the essential glue or fabric for society.

(An alternative view would be to say that the dichotomy of Freedom well balanced with Discipline (FbD) is what holds us together.)

But today, on my birthday, I speculate that my poet’s etymological analysis of the word “freedom” can give us both freedom and discipline in one. To do this I first suggest that the roots of the word “freedom” can lead us to call it the home or homes where we can feel free.

This might not actually be what happened in the evolution of language.

But I think it is is worth embracing because I believe it represents what we need.

It’s my birthday.

I am a poet.

So I am taking liberties with in offering this explanation of “freedom”, which literalists might dislike but others might enjoy.

For me, the word “freedom” combines the adjective “free” with the Latin word “domus” or home to mean a home where someone can feel free.

This works for me as the FbD I mentioned above.

Freedom balanced with discipline.

Homes are, or were, most commonly (like the homes I grew up in, first in Canberra, then in Melbourne) heterosexual places where parents raised kids. So there had to be rules.

One online etymological source says that the word “freedom” comes from the Old English “free” and “doom” meaning “regulation” or “statute”. Meaning, I presume, “no regulations”, “no statutes” or what some might call “anarchy”.

I prefer my flight of fancy in going back to the Latin which I studied in my youth for ten years. Maybe “domus” is where “doom” came from.

So, now, on my birthday, I feel I can say:

“Freedom is the home(s) where we feel free.”

A personal definition.

Humane.

Non-authoritarian.

Who agrees?

Geoff Fox, 23rd May, 2023, Down Under

PS I thank the United States Of America for how much help I can get online in artistically pursuing this idea and other libertarian ideas from so many of America’s wonderful freedom lovers like Tulsi Gabbard.

The above piece of word art is a photograph of Tulsi authored by Tulsi with words added by me. This resulting piece of word art is published by me under a GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2.