dual personalities

Well, it’s the last week of July and the summer continues to rush by in a blur.

If you want to feel really old, I’ll remind you that today is the 58th anniversary of the day Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He was 24 years old. Dylan was said to have “electrified one half of his audience, and electrocuted the other”. He didn’t return to the festival for 37 years.

Dylan took exception with the people who called him a traitor. He later said: “These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equatable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil m-f-ckers can rot in hell.”

Today is also the birthday of the artist Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) who lived a long, productive and successful life. He was married once and had four children. He was a Quaker. During his career, he produced almost 900 pieces of art. 

He lived in New Hampshire where he belonged to the Cornish Art Colony…

His painting Daybreak became the most popular art print of the 20^th century. Supposedly one in four U.S. households owned a print of the neoclassical landscape with two nymphs in the foreground.

We also toast Walter Brennan (1894-1974) on his birthday. Brennan played more than 230 film and television roles during a career that spanned nearly five decades. He won three Academy Awards for best supporting actor and deserved several more for movies like To Have and Have Not (1944), Red River 1948)…

and My Darling Clementine (1946) which I recently watched again. He is the definitive Old Man Clanton, playing against type, menacing and scary.

So join me in toasting these three great American artists. Put down your phone. Listen to some Bob. Look at some art. Watch an old movie. You’ll be glad you did.