{"id":1029,"date":"2014-05-05T17:38:01","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T00:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=1029"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:57:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:57:05","slug":"blessed-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/05\/05\/blessed-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Blessed Are"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Joan Baez - Blessed are e The night they drove old dixie down. AKAI GX 4000DB.\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0jIBFE4tqJ0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is an old Joan Baez song, from her 1971 album of the same title &#8212; an original song by her, after she had passed through her folk music phase and begun composing her own songs. Has some nice lyrics, e.g. &#8220;&#8230;and their personal acquaintance with pain&#8221;. And:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nRain will come and winds will blow,<br \/>\nwild deer die in the mountain snow.<br \/>\nBirds will beat at heaven&#8217;s wall,<br \/>\nwhat comes to one must come to us all.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(There&#8217;s no video to see, just that of a tape recorder.)<\/p>\n<p>Brought to mind by this interesting item in Sunday&#8217;s New York Times: <a href=\"www.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/04\/fashion\/blessed-becomes-popular-word-hashtag-social-media.html\">They Feel \u2018Blessed\u2019: Blessed Becomes a Popular Hashtag on Social Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fascinating, because with a single familial exception, this is a phrase I never hear, not at work, not in SoCal social life, not at science fiction conventions, not in posts of any of the blogs or news sites I follow. And if I did hear it in any of these contexts, I would have to be careful not to raise my eyebrows&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The article&#8217;s take:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThere\u2019s nothing quite like invoking holiness as a way to brag about your life. But calling something \u201cblessed\u201d has become the go-to term for those who want to boast about an accomplishment while pretending to be humble, fish for a compliment, acknowledge a success (without sounding too conceited), or purposely elicit envy. Blessed, \u201cdivine or supremely favored,\u201d is now used to explain that coveted Ted talk invite as well as to celebrate your grandmother\u2019s 91st birthday. It is carried out in hashtags (#blessed), acronyms (#BH, for the Hebrew \u201cbaruch hasem,\u201d which means \u201cblessed be God\u201d), and even, God forbid, emoji.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c \u2018Blessed\u2019 is used now where in the past one might have said \u2018lucky,\u2019 \u201d said the linguist Deborah Tannen. \u201cBut what makes these examples humble-brags is not \u2018blessed\u2019 itself but the context: telling the world your fianc\u00e9 is the best or that you\u2019ve been invited to do something impressive. Actually I don\u2019t even see the \u2018humble\u2019 in it. I just see \u2018brag.\u2019 \u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an old Joan Baez song, from her 1971 album of the same title &#8212; an original song by her, after she had passed through her folk music phase and begun composing her own songs. Has some nice lyrics, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/05\/05\/blessed-are\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,17,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-music","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1029"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1029\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}