Old man take a look at yourself

When I first saw the video for one of Neil Young's new songs, When I Watch You Sleeping, I thought that was Pegi peering through the glass at the studio session, as Neil sang with a full orchestra. After all, he lovingly wrote of her many virtues in Waging Heavy Peace and how much she had inspired him the 40 years they had been together, especially her commitment to their son Ben, who was severely crippled from cerebral palsy. The Bridge School grew out of this loving association. Well, turns out Neil filed for divorce this past summer and has been palling around with Darryl Hannah, who was more likely that blonde woman peering in on the recording.

Croz was notably upset when he learned of this development, lashing out at his old friend, and throwing a proposed reunion of CSNY into disarray. Neil had cancelled an appearance with his wife at Farm Aid, which had led many to wonder what was going on. Graham Nash tried to be the diplomat, as Young was furious that David Crosby could speak out against him that way. No word from Stephen Stills.

It does make you wonder about the honesty of Young's autobiography if he can end a marriage like that over Darryl Hannah. He had several relationships before meeting up with Pegi in the early 70s, notably Carrie Snodgrass. He describes Pegi as a bartender in a small town in Northern California, where he bought a farm which the two reshaped into their ranch. To read the book, Pegi was the light of his life, and Crosby thought there was something really special between them that would never break.

Throughout the book, Neil sounds like a man at peace with himself and the world after a long turbulent career in rock music dating back to his early collaborations with Stephen Stills in 1967 and eventually Crosby and Nash in the early 70's. CSNY set the music world on fire with their album, So Far, and over the years have gotten back together several times. Young recounts those days with fondness, particularly his time with Stephen Stills, who he viewed as a musical soulmate.

Neil has had a remarkable ability to split his interests in any number of ways. When he tried to do something new in the early 80s, recording an album Trans, in which he says he was trying to envision how his son Ben saw the world around him, the record company sued him for music "uncharacteristic of Neil Young." He also did a brief stint with the Shocking Pinks, a retro rock group that didn't please David Geffen either. Neil would return to form, but he didn't want to be pressured into doing so, breaking with Geffen Records. Through it all he never seemed to let go of two things, Pegi and Crazy Horse.

Well, who am I to say what drives Neil Young? But, for a man who has put himself out front so many times you expect more from him, not only in his music but the way he presents himself as well. Maybe this is just one of those bumps in the road and Neil was thinking of Pegi would he sang that beautiful lullaby. I just think Neil has to take a look at himself like he did in this powerful song.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

The People Debate the Constitution

As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified. After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution. Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through. But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 . The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others. Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified. A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.

Dispatches from Vilnius

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