By way of preamble to this message, I'd like to make clear that The Referee has for many years been a fan of Woody Guthrie. I want you to know that I'm not one of those Johnny-come-lately types who latches on to trendy things because someone at Rolling Stone or OK! magazine decides they're hip. Oh no. I'm a hardcore fan.
"How hardcore are you?" I hear you ask. I'm glad you asked that. Well, I'm so hardcore that one of the Little Referees (who are not so little as they used to be) is named after Mr Guthrie. And the other is named after Mr Dylan, who looked up to Guthrie as his hero, famously visited him in hospital in New York when he was suffering with complications related to Huntington's disease, and wrote the wonderful Song to Woody, which was one of the few original songs on Dylan's debut album "Bob Dylan" in 1962. In fact, it is often said that Dylan moved to New York from his childhood home in Minnesota at least in part to seek out his idol and visit him in hospital before he died. And the rest, as they say, is history.
For those not too familiar with the great man, Woody Guthrie was born in Oklahoma in 1912 and died in New York City (so good they named it thrice: see my message of 18/9/06, or 9/18/06, if you prefer) in 1967. In the interim he wrote hundreds of great American folk songs, most famously "This Land Is Your Land", often played with the words "This Machine Kills Fascists" emblazoned on his guitar, and is considered by many people who know about these things to be the Godfather of modern American folk music.
Why am I going on about this? A fine question.
Well, the Information Steve Heighway has recently been abuzz (abuzz?) with an extract from the great man's notebook scribblings from 1943 (or 1942; there is disagreement in some parts of the blogosphere about exactly which year he wrote it.) (Note here the use of the semi-colon, the Godfather of punctuation: neither a comma (let's pause for a moment) or a colon (look what's coming next), it says "let's pause for a moment before we see what's coming next"; and (there it is again), because it's often misunderstood, it's also criminally under-used.)
Anyway, where were we? Oh yes. Woody's notebook, in which he used two pages, right in the middle of the book, plus lots of scribbled illustrations, to set out his "New Year's Rulin's" for whichever year it was.
And what a great read they are. A couple of things are immediately noticeable. Firstly, there are 33 of them. I expect it's true for most of us that we attempt at best 2 or 3 resolutions at this time of year: "I'll go to the gym more often, possibly"; "I'll be nicer to the children, or not"; "I'll be slightly less offensive to chuggers and salespeople this year". Perhaps it takes a great man like Guthrie to take on ten times the number of resolutions that we mere mortals can muster.
The other thing that strikes one is that Woody's rulin's are so, for want of a better word, elemental. He doesn't mess about with avoiding gluten or donating a larger proportion of his income to charity. Oh no. He focuses instead on more basic and urgent concerns, including "Take Bath", "Change Socks", and "Wash Teeth, If Any".
That last rulin' perhaps suggests that Mr Guthrie had intended that his resolutions would not just be for his personal use but would also one day be read by the likes of you, dear reader, and me. Otherwise, why bother with "If Any"? Presumably, even in the early 1940s, people were aware how many teeth they had, give or take. And, if one had no teeth at all, one would almost certainly have noticed.
Whether or not the rulin's were intended for wider consumption, I for one am grateful for the work of the folk who look after Woody's huge archives of song lyrics and other writings, for preserving his down-to-earth resolutions, which perhaps put into perspective the rather pale, post-modern angst of our twenty-teens new year concerns.
Amongst my favo(u)rite rulin's are "Read Lots Good Books", "Listen To Radio A Lot", "Keep Hope Machine Running", its close relative "Stay Glad", the spectacular "Dance Better" (how I wish) and, especially relevant for those us with a rather, shall we say, expansive domestic management style, "Keep Rancho Clean".
And so, for this year, I have resolved not to dream up 2 or 3 lily-livered post-modern whinges that I have only a limited intention of addressing. Instead, I am going to attach the New Year's Rulin's to the wall of my office (AKA Message Central) and do my level best to embrace each and every one of them with the gusto they deserve.
And so, a belated Happy New Year to all. Stay glad, read lots of good books, and blogs, and keep your rancho clean.
