The Gad About Town

Today is Towel Day.

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May 25, 1986, was a Sunday. For those of us in America, the day offered a New Yorker the chance to join hands with someone who was holding hands with someone who was holding hands with someone … all the way to the Pacific Ocean (or for a Californian, vice versa, to the Atlantic). It was Hands Across America Day, and Hands Across America was a one-time-only fundraiser for the USA for Africa charity.

Perhaps it is easy to forget that Hands Across America truly happened, that six million individuals actually paid money to reserve spots, which was how the charity raised money. The name itself sounded too much like a punchline awaiting a setup, and the event’s idea sounded forced. One can not predict that an event will be memorable or not. One can not sell that future memorability as a reason to pay money to participate.

As “Do Good/Feel Good” activities go, it may have inadvertently emphasized the “feel good” side of the equation over the “do good,” but 30 years ago today, a line of Americans six million long was indeed assembled and that line did indeed raise an estimated (and estimable!) $34 million to fight hunger and homelessness in America.

If you owned a television set that year, and if it was turned on for even just two minutes during the spring of 1986, it probably showed part of this music video (below the jump):
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I can’t say when it occurred to me to write my own songs. I couldn’t have come up with anything comparable or halfway close to the folk song lyrics I was singing to define the way I felt about the world. I guess it happens to you by degrees. You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs, especially if you’re a singer who has plenty of them and you’re learning more every day. Opportunities may come along for you to convert something — something that exists into something that didn’t yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It’s not like you see songs approaching and invite them in.—Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

Bob Dylan is 75 today. He will be on tour through the U.S. this summer. “Not Dark Yet,” from 1997 (below the fold):
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