¤ milky moon ¤

When I heard divers wife I though she was maybe going lower with her voice this time round....um.
I love this song. Still prefer divers wife I think.
This rocks though.

I have to agree with Andrew - the previous section sounds more sort of... mocking, almost. The rhyming scheme and the rhythm, especially the "text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal with any fluorescence" bit evokes a sort of frantic, frustrated, gesticulating speculation, like one of the aforementioned scholars grappling with a tricky problem. And then, "It's all right, and it's all over now" kind of hushes it and calms it down.

Hi everyone!
I think it hasn't been mentioned here yet that Joanna quotes George Washington twice in her lyrics:

"If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God."

Source:
http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/washi ... dvice.html

aha! another source to scour!

thank you

Oooh. This song seems to be pretty political, what with all the... political references and all.

Thank you so much for all this information!

It turns out John Purroy Mitchel is not the only John in this amazing song. There is also John Milton.
Here is a quote from his tractate "Of Education":
Inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages.

The words of Milton are inscribed around top of a small monument in McCarthy Square, Greenwich Village, Manhattan:
"BRAVE MEN AND WORTH / PATRIOTS DEAR TO / GOD AND FAMOUS / TO ALL AGES"

The text on the plaque which is placed on the front of the monument is a little bit different. It reads:
"BRAVE MEN, WOMEN AND WORTHY PATRIOTS DEAR TO GOD AND FAMOUS TO ALL AGES".

Here is some information from the site NYC Parks:
The City Council named the site in memory of Private First Class Bernard Joseph McCarthy, who was born and raised in Greenwich Village. A Marine, McCarthy was killed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1942 at the age of twenty-two. His was the first reported death of a Greenwich Village resident in the war.



Sources:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/readin ... ndex.shtml
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/mccart ... uments/998
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/mccarthysquare/history

Wow. I guess she's been spending a lot of time in NYC's parks, huh?

hmmm methinks the order is exactly backwards there, it starts with Andy(as i can guess he has led her happily through long walks in the parks, and ends exactly there...all that they offer and history too...because to take that all in is to sense the fragilty of those that make these histories?

John Purroy Mitchel was the mayor of New York from 1914 to 1917. At age 34 he was the second-youngest ever; he is sometimes referred to as "The Boy Mayor of New York."

Guess how old Andy is.

I think there is a huge chance that these two monuments in Central Park were the source of inspiration for the song as well.

Cleopatra's Needle

It is an Ancient Egyptian obelisk which actually has nothing to do with Cleopatra (it is just its popular name) as it was erected on the orders of Thutmose III around 1450 BC (a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty; Ramesses II, also known as Ozymandias, was a Pharaoh of the Ninteenth dynasty).

The Indian Hunter


I guess these two monuments could remind Joanna about poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith and hence the idea of the song was born.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra%27s_Needle
http://centralpark.org/index.php/2010/0 ... tral-park/
http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/centra ... uments/769

"Cleopatra's Needle" in Central Park is one of a pair - the other is on the Victoria Embankment by the Thames in London. Both are ancient Egyptian artefacts, but they do not in fact commemorate Cleopatra.

I've been to all three