1776 the musical (film) was our entertainment last night

At the Estates last night, a large group enjoyed the movie, "1776 The Musical" (1972), adapted from an earlier stage play, which was adapted from the history of the drafting and writing/approval of the Declaration of Independence. I hadn't seen it during the bicentennial, and really enjoyed it. I found it about as accurate as a film could be for something adapted from a book/play adapted from actual history. After all, one could fill a library with important books on this event and biographies of all the people of the Continental Congress. Some critics of the time complained the timeline was wrong--too condensed.

So, I checked this "wrong timeline" idea with the Library of Congress which noted there were numerous drafts then 5 men who worked on it, and then about a week when the whole group met. Considering what we get today as "news," I'd call this accurate.

"Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia behind a veil of Congressionally imposed secrecy in June 1776 for a country wracked by military and political uncertainties. In anticipation of a vote for independence, the Continental Congress on June 11 appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston as a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The committee then delegated Thomas Jefferson to undertake the task. Jefferson worked diligently in private for days to compose a document. Proof of the arduous nature of the work can be seen in the fragment of the first known composition draft of the declaration, which is on public display here for the first time.

Jefferson then made a clean or "fair" copy of the composition declaration, which became the foundation of the document, labeled by Jefferson as the "original Rough draught." Revised first by Adams, then by Franklin, and then by the full committee, a total of forty-seven alterations including the insertion of three complete paragraphs was made on the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28. After voting for independence on July 2, the Congress then continued to refine the document, making thirty-nine additional revisions to the committee draft before its final adoption on the morning of July 4 . . ." https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/declara3.html

We've been having a film series for the 250th anniversary celebration.

The firing of the first Librarian, Carla Hayden

I just found out that Trump fired Carla Hayden the Librarian of Congress in May. In her bio she's always called the first woman and first black to ever hold that position. I was thinking she was also the first librarian to ever hold that position. It was never considered important enough to have an actual librarian in that position. Well, since it's always been a political position, she was also appointed by Obama, was a Democrat and is 72 years old. That she's a Democrat is not odd, since probably 95% of librarians are very liberal and routinely support the far left issues. ALA is an advocacy group, but not for children, or reading or education. Trump didn't fire her during his first term, so I'm guessing she's said some unflattering things about him and his policies. You have freedom of speech to speak ill of the boss, and he has the freedom to choose someone else for the job. It's a titular position and someone else is doing the actual work. In the past it's been a position for a scholar, not a real librarian.

"On Friday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Hayden of putting "inappropriate books for children" in the library, which receives a copy of every book that is copyrighted in the United States each year. She also claimed the librarian had done "quite concerning things ... in the pursuit of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion), and "did not fit the needs of the American people." "
(Newsweek)

However, if Ms. Leavitt said this, it isn't accurate. Works are protected automatically, without copyright notice or registration. If LC received a copy of every book that is copyrighted in the U.S. there wouldn't be a building large enough to hold them.

"Copyright protectable works receive instant and automatic copyright protection at the time that they are created. U.S. law today does not require placing a notice of copyright on the work or registering the work with the U.S. Copyright Office. The law provides some important benefits if you do use the notice or register the work, but you are the copyright owner even without these formalities." (Copyright quick guide, Columbia University Libraries) If I write a letter to my friend or draw a horse on a postcard, you don't have a right to use it.

 
Perhaps she meant Ms. Hayden was putting in the Library of Congress children's material that couldn't be read aloud in front of Congress because it was disgusting and salacious?

About Springfield, Ohio and a popular hymn

Complaints by the locals about imported migrant labor is not new to the U.S. Native born Californians were very hostile to the dust bowl agricultural workers (remember the Joads in Grapes of Wrath book?). In those days, and even when my family lived in Alameda in 1944, they were called Oakies and Arkies, pejorative terms then. Even my mom who was from Illinois didn't like them as she tried to stretch Dad's military pay while they bought what they wanted with government vouchers (or so she thought). In 1942, the Farm Security Administration (part of FDR's "New Deal") operated ninety-five camps with housing for seventy-five thousand people in California. The Library of Congress has an archive of photographs and books about those years and one photographer claimed in 1940 that the FSA camp at Visalia, CA had miserable weather and the local residents were grifters and corrupted. "I like it the least of the western states. My impression is that everything is commercialized, the police & city officials are corrupt grafters, there is little of that gracious western hospitality & most of the people are of that reactionary, super-patriotic, fascist-minded type. Practically every newspaper features a daily red-baiting article with 2 inch headlines that condemn [Democratic] Gov. [Culbert L.] Olson, the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board], or Pres. Roosevelt."

Sounds like a true 2024 Democrat journalist, doesn't he? California and Minnesota even then had very active Socialist and Communist parties.

I know little about California's history or migrant labor. It's just one of those serendipitous things you find in the amazing LC collection while researching a hymn, and find it had been recorded in a migrant labor camp in Visalia in 1940, "Just a closer walk with thee." No one knows who wrote it, but it was the most popular and most recorded hymn of the 20th century.

https://genius.com/Patsy-cline-just-a-closer-walk-with-thee-lyrics  Patsy Cline

https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000132/  Library of Congress FSA recording

https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/just-a-closer-walk-with-thee    Details of publishing history