Monday, June 30, 2003

I will be back tomorrow, i.e. next month. For now, here's an entry from Non-bloggin' Bart--

Bart: Enroute to Sam's w/ mother, an older white woman sitting upfront was singing. Someone in back of the bus yelled at her to shut up. The woman gets up, talks to the
driver or to herself, hard to tell, then sits down. She berates no one in particular for not liking God, then addresses the black woman sitting in front of us, telling her she may prefer "negro spirituals", and commences to sing the song with the "lift that barge tote that bail" line. The woman
takes it silently, but glanced at us briefly after my mother asked me if the old woman was singing at me, having not caught the "spiritual" line. At the Crossroads Mall stop, the black woman gets off, and some other blacks board.
The old woman sings sweet low sweet chariot before getting off to smoke her corncob pipe since it'd be a few minutes before the driver came back.
She was still on when we reached Sam's.

A tv collolary, oddly enough: old Col Blake era MASH episode. Harry Morgan plays a crazy general visiting the unit. Pierce is brought up for a hearing after telling the general off. One of the parties involved is a black
helicopter pilot. When asked to tell his story, Morgan asks him to sing first, etc. Morgan starts singing an old spiritual as he waltzes out of the tent.