Remember This Time...?

Amazing to think that it's been so long ago that this song first came about!

It introduced me to two big influences in my life...song writer Bob Dylan and the group Peter, Paul, and Mary! I still enjoy the works of this time. How could you not?

Jul 9, 1962:

Bob Dylan records "Blowin' In The Wind"

"This here ain't no protest song or anything like that, 'cause I don't write no protest songs." That was how Bob Dylan introduced one of the most eloquent protest songs ever written when he first performed it publicly. It was the spring of his first full year in New York City, and he was onstage at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village, talking about a song he claims to have written in just 10 minutes: "Blowin' In The Wind." A few weeks later, on this day in 1962, Dylan walked into a studio and recorded the song that would make him a star.

Dylan's recording of "Blowin' In The Wind" would first be released nearly a full year later, on his breakthrough album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. This was not the version of the song that most people would first hear, however. That honor went to the cover version by Peter, Paul and Mary—a version that not only became a smash hit on the pop charts, but also transformed what Dylan would later call "just another song" into the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement.

"Blowin' In The Wind" bore little or no resemblance to the highly topical, highly literal protest songs of the day, but that may have been precisely what made it so effective as a protest song. A lyric like "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?" lends itself perfectly to those seeking racial justice, just as "How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?" does to those seeking peace. The moving, vaguely spiritual, clearly dissatisfied, yet ultimately ambiguous nature of "Blowin' In the Wind" made it the quintessential protest song of the 1960s—"A song that the times seemed to call forth," in the words of critic Greil Marcus.

It also represented a significant breakthrough for Bob Dylan as a songwriter. From "Blowin' In The Wind" onward, Dylan's songs would reflect a far more personal and poetic approach to self-expression—an approach that would lead him away from songs like "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and toward songs like "Like A Rolling Stone." And Dylan's development as a songwriter would, in turn, have a similar effect on The Beatles, whose own move from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to "A Day In The Life" can be traced directly to their exposure to The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in the spring of 196



Sorry, but I was feeling the need to trip down memory lane this morning! Forgive me, OK?

Let's get some coffee on the patio this morning. We can talk over all the old times and how times have changed!

Only In Texas....!

Just one more interesting fact of history concerning Texas.

I know you may get tired of hearing about Texas, but being a native son I feel a certain compulsion to tell these stories when I find them! Besides, you have to admit this is pretty interesting! We can thank the folks over at LiveScience for this article.

Humans camped by the shores of a small creek in Texas possibly even before the Clovis society, classically regarded as the first human inhabitants of the Americas, settled in the West.

The site, located in central Texas on the bank of Buttermilk Creek, has produced almost 16,000 artifacts, including stone chips and blade-like objects, in soil dating up to 15,500 years old, more than 2,000 years before the first evidence of Clovis culture. Many of the items are flakes from cutting or sharpening of tools, but the research team also found about 50 tools, including several cutting surfaces — including spear points and knives.

"The tools that we found there indicate that they were camping along the Buttermilk Creek," study researcher Mike Waters, at Texas A&M University, told LiveScience. "This probably would have been a place where they were living and conducting daily activities."

All of the objects were small and light and seem to indicate that the group led a mobile lifestyle, moving from place to place but always returning. From the wear and tear on the artifacts, some seem to have been used for cutting soft materials, like hides, while others may have been used on harder materials, like stone.

The prehistoric humans seem to have used the site for multiple centuries, as the soil where the artifacts were found was dated to between 12,800 and 15,500 years ago. "They would leave the site and come back, and each time leave behind evidence of their activities," Waters said. "They slowly but surely built up these deposits. Dating them shows they range from 15,500 years ago, then just keep going until the Clovis material."

The researchers couldn't date the material with the gold-standard method using carbon-14, since none of the artifacts had organic components, such as plant matter. The team used a different kind of dating on the soil around the artifacts, and some researchers called it into question. Extended excavation of the site could reveal carbon-dateable objects, which would confirm the age of the site.

If the dating is correct, this group would predate the Clovis society, long thought to have colonized the Americas 13,000 years ago, and could have given rise to the Clovis society. These prehistoric human societies are generally defined by the stone tools they used, the size and shape of which changed over time. Clovis used bigger blades and tools than those found at this layer of the Buttermilk site.

The site isn't the first to predate Clovis, though Waters believes his evidence is the clearest yet.

Not everyone agrees with Waters' interpretations of the findings, though. While other researchers don't question that there were probably human populations in America before Clovis, they note the evidence isn't as strong at this site as at some others.

Tom Dillehay, a researcher at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee who wasn't involved in the study, told LiveScience that the ecological conditions at the site, including rain-swept mud and remnants of creek flooding, may have mixed the sediment layers, meaning the Clovis sediments could have been buried on top of the artifacts described by Waters, and therefore been considered more recent. The top layers are very thin.

Gary Haynes, of the University of Nevada, Reno, praised the authors for a "potentially major find" but had many of the same concerns about the research.

"They need to excavate a bigger area of the site before they can draw these kinds of conclusions," Dillehay told LiveScience. "I don't see that the data is there to present the conclusions that they are presenting."

I always kinda wanted to go on a dig, ya know? Just think of the excitement when digging up or finding something not seen for a thousand years or so! What a rush that would be!

Let's have some fresh coffee on the patio and talk about our old ancestors...OK?