well, that ain't right......

Many years ago I went to a high school chorus concert, a good friend of mine, a mentor, was leading the chorus, A very religious fella of the born again variety. They performed a choral arrangement of "Imagine". A bold choice at the time. There was one change made in the lyric, I bet you can see this comin'- "And No Religion too..." became "And ONE Religion too..."

Well, that ain't right

The other day at the opening of the new congress, The Representatives read the Constitution aloud, into the record, a nice bit of state/stagecraft. Except they didn't read the entire document, some of the "icky" stuff (slavery, prohibition) was left out.

....ain't right.

A new edition Of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer is (are) going to be published with some modifications, the most glaring of course, is the substitution of the word "slave" for the "N" word.

.........

If your going to make the choice and do the thing, whatever the thing is, do it. Could it be painful? could it be awkward? Could it raise questions?

Yes?

Tough.

Do the thing! Prepare for the sh*t storm that may ensue, but don't be a wimp, don't blink, move forward.

Don't presume that you can make these changes because, ....well....cause...y'see.....

No. I don't see. You shouldn't do it. Things are messy, the past, the present, the future are all overflowing with dilemmas,you can't fix them, maybe you can learn from them, maybe you can gain some insight, glean a bit of wisdom, but that ain't going to happen if you hide the funky stuff because the neighbors are coming over.

Do the thing and take the hit.

ps on a slightly related topic, years ago I was working on a production of the musical "Tom Sawyer" (a wonderful show, by the way) and in doing research I visited The Mark Twain House in Hartford. A great library and research facility as well as...his house! which you can tour. And there,If memory serves on the second floor, in the kids playroom, was the table where Twain wrote Tom Sawyer. Right There! I love that kinda stuff.