Postcard #26
1854: a song that will linger forever in our ears
In times of trouble, we need our historical memory.
U.S. history is rich in radicalism, labor and union struggles, socialist thought and experiment, abolitionism, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, anti-war activism, feminism, LGBTQ campaigns, indigenous-American activism, and in more recent years, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, green movements, and the revival of union organizing. Search any of these terms and you will find that Americans have been busy and impressive from the start. These movements have been researched and recorded by generations of historians and activists. The record is there, even if it is too often forgotten or suppressed by our mainstream media and our political parties and leaders.
In times of trouble, we need imagination too. Art and artists. Our cultural works.
So, should you tire of reading history, turn to the playwrights, novelists and poets; blues, folk, soul and jazz artists; our sporting heroes. Look at our independent cinema or the dissident subtexts buried in classic Hollywood films. There are hundreds of gems to uncover along the way, small and large finds that will leave any American wondering how we have allowed so much to be erased from our vision of ourselves and our progressive efforts as a people and nation.
We are again in a time of deep trouble. The Republic is in trouble. In the wake of relentless Trump-regime actions at home and abroad, people everywhere are in trouble. The planet is in trouble. It seems that each day brings new trouble. But each day brings stirrings too, memories of our better selves. Resistances large and small. They all matter.
Consider just the past two days.
Friday (March 14): Trouble. Ten Democratic Senators vote to advance the Republican spending bill, thereby assuring its passage before a government shutdown and handing a gift-wrapped victory to the MAGA Republicans. It is impossible not to read this as an act of betrayal of the House Democrats who stood firm against the partisan Trump/Musk-driven bill. As for the rest of us, we watch in anger and despair as the Democrats effectively issue
“a blank check for the administration and Mr. Musk to continue their savage war against working families, the elderly, children, the sick, and the poor in order to lay the groundwork for massive tax breaks for the billionaire class… This legislation will also provide a green light for the administration to continue its illegal and unconstitutional activities." (Bernie Sanders)1
Saturday (March 15): Stirrings. Americans across the country and beyond mark the Ides of March with a postcard campaign under the title, The Ides of Trump: “Let's inundate the White House with postcards telling Trump how we think he's doing… Bonus points for anything resembling a pink slip or with the connotation "you're fired!”
Postcard writers are encouraged to:
“sharpen your wit, unsheathe your writing implements and write from the heart. All of our issues — DAPL, women’s rights, racial discrimination, religious freedom, immigration, economic security, education, the environment, conflicts of interest, the existence of facts — can and should find common cause. That cause is to make it irrefutable that the president’s claim of wide support is a farce.”2
Trouble and stirrings. These are our rollercoaster times. This morning, I am inspired by childhood friends sharing their postcards on social media as part of this mass act of resistance, one that is creative and playful in the best senses, but serious too - a statement of our deep unhappiness about the state of the union.
In that spirit, I’m resurrecting my occasional postcards to share past moments of our musical history that brought - and bring us still - love, hope, imagination, and resistance.
To start, Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More. Published in 1854, its lines “proved tragically prophetic for Foster, as it was reported that he sang this song quite often in his last days.” Foster died at the age of 37, with only 38 cents to his name.3
But we still sing it. A search for recordings of Hard Times delivered nearly 50 renditions of the song from the late 20th century to today.
Here’s the version I chose, dedicated to the postcard writers among my friends.
The Longest Johns hail from Bristol, UK. Please visit their wonderful site here.
For more, including a video of Sanders’s speech in the Senate, see Jessica Corbett, “Sanders Shows Senate Dems How to Message ‘No’ Vote on GOP Spending Scam,” Common Dreams, March 13, 2025.
Matt Helms & Ann Zaniewski, “Ides of Trump postcard-protest campaign now underway,” Detroit Free Press, March 2025.
For more about Stephen Foster’s life and times, songs, controversies, and legacies, see Stephen Foster, Song of America/Library of Congress.