Drawing parallels

Mark Twain urf Samuel Langhorne Clemen's, ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ is a must read for any technology buff. Somewhere in-between pages, he compares the intellectual work with labor kind of work, and, it is perhaps right to interpret that this work, whatever form it may be, is work; be it intellectual or labor, the bliss in it is in doing it. References to Gandhi’s understated (not much well known) ‘Village Swaraj’ tells the same in a different form.

In Verbatim from Mark Twain

One can find many reference and online copies to old literature. Buying a paper copy is helpful to the eyes. A century and half down the line of Page 73 of Mark Twain’s, “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”, has some relevance down here, I feel:

We were off before sunrise, Sandy riding and I limping along behind. In half an hour we came upon a group of ragged poor creatures who had assembled to mend the thing which was regarded as a road. They were as humble as animals to me; and when I proposed to breakfast with them, they were so flattered, so overwhelmed by this extraordinary condescension of mine that at first they were not able to believe that I was in earnest. My lady put up her scornful lip and withdrew to one side; she said in their hearing that she would as soon think of eating with the other cattle—a remark which embarrassed these poor devils merely because it referred to them, and not because it insulted or offended them, for it didn’t. And yet they were not slaves, not chattels. By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respectworthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be a Nation, and these innumerable clams had permitted it so long that they had come at last to accept it as a truth; and not only that, but to believe it right and as it should be. The priests had told their fathers and themselves that this ironical state of things was ordained of God; and so, not reflecting upon how unlike God it would be to amuse himself with sarcasms, and especially such poor transparent ones as this, they had dropped the matter there and become respectfully quiet.

Woody Guthrie - I Ain't Got No Home

Lately Bollywood has been influencing me with their techniques. And I have learnt once again that - that is, if for long, you are not able to put some stuff on a story board, you put a song in between. You take it from the open source.

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico

My Artisans screwed it up once again. Also, a few odd ten or maybe eleven lost their lives, and for long the fire was being looked to be doused.

While the problem bounces in both political and environmental zones, like a real bouncy rubber ball, putting the American prez’s existence into fix, somewhere it is realized that next time more resources are put into improving the safety case making of such difficult terrain and conditions of working.

Sometimes outliers outweigh the risk.

JW Powell and Wallace Stegner

"Beyond the Hundredth Meridian" is a biography on legendary John Wesley Powell (also, Wiki link) by the legendary Wallace Stegner (also, Wiki link). A must read book, has some paragraphs, where Stegner quotes Powell; and is pretty relevant why an ordinary construction workman’s life could be as important.

As following –

By the division of labor men have become interdependent, so that every man works for some other man. To the extent that culture has progressed beyond the plane occupied by the brute, man has ceased to work directly for himself and come to work directly for others and indirectly for himself. He struggles directly to benefit others, that he may indirectly but ultimately benefit himself. This principle of political economy ... must be fully appreciated before we can thoroughly understand the vast extent to which interdependence has been established. For the glasses which I wear, mines were worked in California, and railroads constructed across the continent to transport the product of those mines to the manufactories in the East. For the bits of steel on the bow, mines were worked in Michigan, smelting- works were erected in Chicago ... Merchant houses and banking houses were rendered necessary. Many men were employed in producing and bringing that little instrument to me. As I sit in my library to read a book, I open the pages with a paper cutter, the ivory of which was obtained through the employment of a tribe of African elephant hunters. The paper on which my book is printed was made of the rags saved by the beggars of Italy. A watchman stands on guard in Hoosac Tunnel that I may some time ride through it in safety. If all the men who have worked for me, directly and indirectly, for the past ten years, and who are now scattered through the four quarters of the earth, were marshaled on the plain outside of the city, organized and equipped for war, I could march to the proudest capital of the world and the armies of Europe could not withstand me. I am the master of all the world. But during all my life I have worked for other men, and thus I am every man's servant ; so are we all — servants to many masters and masters of many servants. It is thus that men are gradually becoming organized into one vast body-politic, every one is striving to serve his fellow-man and all working for the common welfare. Thus the enmity of man to man is appeased, and men live and labor for one another ; individualism is transmuted into socialism, egoism into altruism, and man is lifted above the brute to an immeasurable height...

After this note, Wallace categorically states –

He (JW Powell) did man more honor than he deserved. Not everyone was yet willing, at least in 1878, to work for the common welfare or even agree what the common welfare was. Not everybody in the west, not everybody in congress.

A song must come in between

Woody Guthrie was an American musician, who in the earlier part of last century extensively travelled his country. Some glorify him that he took trains without ticket and some argue him being a lefty. Whatever, Woody does has lots of beautiful songs which bring into limelight the conditions of working people in the then America. ‘The Great Grand Coulee’ – is one such song. Now the contention here is that Woody was paid some good fee and comforts of a limousine to glorify these big structures along the Columbia basin as well as building the resources that America needed for the coming big war. Result - some mighty fine lines. The YouTube link does not has the original song, but this attached video has his son Arlo (Woodstock 69 fame), probably half a century later. Have a read at the lyrics too.

‘Great Grand Coulee Dam’ - An amazing example where one artist is glorified by the other.



Well the world owns seven wonders as the travelers always tell.
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well.
But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land.
That King Columbia River and the great Grand Coulee Dam.

She come up the Canadian Rockies where the crystal waters glide,
Comes a-roaring down the canyon to meet that salty tide
From the great Pacific Ocean to where the sun sets in the west,
That big Grand Coulee country in that land I love the best.

Oh Uncle Sam took up the notion in the year of thirty three,
For the factory and the farmer and for all of you and me.
He said: roll it on Columbia, you can roll out to the sea
But river, while you're rolling you can do some work for me.

In the misty glitter of that wild and windward spray,
Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave.
Once she tore men's boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream,
That day that Grand Coulee dam went across that wild and restless stream.

Now from Washington and Oregon you can hear them factories a-hum,
Making corn and making manganese and light aluminum.
Always a flying fortress to blast for Uncle Sam,
That King Columbia river and the great Grand Coulee dam.

Well the world owns seven wonders as the travelers always tell.
Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well.
But now the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam's fair land.
That King Columbia river and the great Grand Coulee Dam.

Woody Guthrie