Salisbury High School - Pillar Yearbook (Salisbury, CT)

Page 14 text:

I2 Ye S arum Booke larity. We love to make others suffer and to make fools of them. The argument will probably be that it is human nature to do all the things mentionedg but I ask when is human nature going to learn that wars are only destructive menaces to the world and accomplish nothing? When is human nature going to learn that power is only a very minor thing in this World? When is human nature going to learn to stop being greedy for money? These are the eternal rhetorical questionsg but only by asking them and searching earnestly for the answers will man have any chance to advance. SWING FEVER HE FIRST question that must be answered is whether Swing can be classed as an editorial topic or not. It Seems to me that it should be so esteemed since it occupies a prevalent position in the eye of youth. And with the present youth being the future America, it seems logical to assume that swing will have some effect on this country. Therefore with a temporal significance it reaches out into the future. When jazz came into being, our grandmothers and grand- fathers were horrified. They simply could not understand how their children could appreciate such noise. The same has happened today with our younger generation, except that the change has been from jazz to swing , instead of light classics to j azz . It seems that the happy medium between the classics and swing is rather hard to find, for I remembervone time when I took a music lover to Benny Goodman's, and he did the most amazing thing. After we were seated, all he said was, My God, What a noise! and before I knew quite what was happening, he had taken the insides out of a roll and stuffed them in his ears. Of course when the quartet started we left. Of course that is the blacker side to swing and cannot be understood by this generation. The other viewpoint can be felt when hundreds of couples stare open-mouthecl at Gene Krupa's drumming and far prefer to get a table next to the trumpet section than dance .... or go to the Onyx to sit and listen to Stuff Smith and the boys. Something has happened to popular music in this past yearg it has taken on some kind of a frenzied tempo that has made us more than ever music conscious.

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Ye Sarum Booke II hold, but if held will work advantageously for its owner so long as he will treat it properly and use it for worthwhile unselfish purposes. WHEN WILL WE LEARN? A LTHOUGH the human race has progressed industrially compared to the cave-man days, we have, since the first day of life upon this earth of ours, in the standpoint of desires, stayed absolutely still. By desires I mean the longing for power, the greed of out-doing the other persong and as the world becomes more and more civilized, the increasing want of money. Prejudices, too, continue in all their strength. Our Lord, jesus Christ, was killed without a fair trial, so are some of our citizens still treated. Down south a few men executed a colored- man who was deprived of a fair trial. The various countries of today are crazed with the idea of world supremacy, as the Greek and Roman empires were in ancient times. To satisfy this craving, scientists have dis- covered deadly chemicals for both gases and explosives to be used to kill many an innocent and peaceful person for the profit of one or two political enemies. The dictators of the world have taken the inhabitants of their countries and have made them into military slaves to be slaughtered as pigs in the next war, if it can be called a war. Nowadays, gangsters go to any extremes to earn small profits. The crooked politician takes the very bread away from the poor, so he will be able to live like a king out of the pockets of honest citizens. These men throw innocent by-standers into prisons for criminals to make the public believe they are protecting the commonwealth, so that the public will vote for them next election. As these things are true about the world as a whole, so are they true of the individual. Each one of us is like a machine, we will not run unless we have fuel, and that fuel is money. We waste all our lives earning and spending it, and we do not take time out to see what nature has in store for us. We are always meddling in other people's business, and mocking them when they do something out of the ordinary. People, boys especially whether they want to or not, are always siding up with the majority against some person or other gain to popu-

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Ye Sarum Booke I3 What all this change signifies I am unable to guess. Per- haps it might mean that we are returning, in a way, to the state of the savage when we thrill at the drum breaks of Chick Webb, perhaps our harmonic sense of music has hit a new low when we rave about the squeaks of Benny's clarinet, or almost feel the shrill blasts of Bunny Berigan's trumpet. After all what is the supreme criterion of music? Does it not seem rational to assume that everyone might have a different one, and if this is true why should not this generation have a different one from the last? Even if we are retrogressing in the estimate of some people, is it our own estimate? As we grow older we probably will be- gin to love the great classics more and more, but at our stage of development I think it is better to love swing than no music at all. The love of a thing lies in the appreciation of it, there- fore if a drum break and some hot licks on a clarinet are appreci- ated by us as much as a Wagnerian crisis, by someone else, the love for each may be equal. Are we returning to the native's rhythmic madness? What- ever is happening, all swing fiends love it .... and after all, since the present generation is ephemeral in its universal value, why should it not enjoy an ephemeral madness? .i.1....T SATISFACTION WHENEVER the word satisfaction is mentioned, depressing images arise in my mind. I think of small towns with their numerous citizens all deep in the groove of self satisfaction. I think of blighted ambitions, of greatness which might have been. Images of men in their forties rocking back and forth in contentment as they sit on the wide porches, and of women who are satisfied with life and who bitterly denounce all who are not contented, also come to mind. I see a state of inertia, of sure- ness that one's self is perfection, and that progress is a thing of the past. There is no retrogression. When men are satisfied they are in a state of suspended animation. They live and love in one frame of mind. Advancing years do not show a corresponding evolution in mental ability, or material position. They are perfectly happy in keeping their same job without ever desiring