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Post-293: Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel

3/30/2015

"Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel" is a traditional American song out of 1800s with many versions. One version is by Jimmie Driftwood, a prolific songwriter out of Arkansas, active from the 1930s-1990s. The lyrics are nowhere to be found online. I'll transcribe them and put them up here.

The song was recorded in 1959. It tells the story of a man who went to California during the Gold Rush.

Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel
By Jimmy Driftwood / 1959 / "The Westward Movement" album

Oh!
There was an old man
from the county called Pike
And his name was Jolly ol' Higgins

The darned ol' fool
Who went an' bought an ol' mule
And was bound for the California diggins

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Post-292: On Lee Kuan Yew, Founder of Singapore

3/29/2015

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Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965.

Singapore's government in '65 was led by a man born Harry Lee, educated at Cambridge. By then, he was using the name Kuan Yew. He'd led Singapore since 1959, when full self-government was granted by the British. Lee Kuan Yew did everything he could to prevent the expulsion from Malaysia, I've read. When it was finalized, he went on television, in front of the entire nation-to-be, and as he announced the expulsion, he wept. He wept!

Singapore was unable to feed itself or even provide itself with water, and so he understandably feared that Singapore would be reduced to a pathetic walled-off island ghetto, a kind of Southeast-Asian Gaza. No wonder he wept.

Lee Kuan Yew in the 1950s

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Post-291: "It Works Good" (Or, a 1974 Prediction about the Evolution of English)

3/27/2015

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I didn't exist yet in the summer of 1974 and I wouldn't for some time to come. No matter. Through the Internet, I can look back at the news published across the world even years before I was born and in places I've never been.

On Thursday July 11th, 1974, the Milwaukee Journal (circulation then 400,000) ran front-page stories about the Watergate scandal. That's too boring to me to re-read. Towards the back of that day's paper, a certain letter to the editor was also published. (Don't ask how I found this.) I'll republish it here, over forty years later, because I think it's rather clever. It makes certain predictions we can analyze, given the passage of almost forty-one years now.

The writer was a young man called Jack Chiang. From certain things he says, I would guess is from Hong Kong, and would further guess he is today 60s; possibly early 70s. I wonder what he's made of the past four decades.

Here is the letter:

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Post-293: Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel

Post-292: On Lee Kuan Yew, Founder of Singapore

Post-291: "It Works Good" (Or, a 1974 Prediction about the Evolution of English)

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