I got this in my inbox this morning:

It’s been over a decade since
I subcribed to your magazine,
but you used to publish a yearly edition of the top US industrial areas, by city.

Do you still do that, and if so, when was the last month and when will it appear again? Thank you.

I’m sure he didn’t mean it, but he has a real rhythm here . . . two 8-syllable lines, two lines of 24(ish), with the pause before the final two beats, “areas, by city.” is echoed with “again? Thank you.”

And what subject holds more pathos than a wistful look back at a magazine subscription left to die? This e-mail is about the relentless nature of change, and, although he is trying to hold on to something, the reader knows that, of course, there is no longer a yearly edition of the top US industrial areas, by city. That time is past.

Are people still upset about Rev. Joseph Lowrey’s inaugural prayer ?  Let me explain.

In addition to responding to the lyrics of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Lowrey was also responding to an old African American folk saying that goes like this [there are many versions of it floating around]:

If you’re white, you’re right.
If you’re yellow, you’re mellow.
If you’re brown, hang around.
But if you’re black, brother, get back!

This version is from Eldridge Cleaver’s essay “As Crinkly As Yours” in Alan Dundes’ Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel (U Mississippi P, 1965).

As I heard it, Lowrey was expressing his hope that this ancient expression of the racist status quo was finally going to become untrue.  As a middle-aged white woman from Mississippi, I share this hope.  Folks who found his words insulting need to get a life.  Everything is not about somebody trying to diss you.