"The Senate opened a rare Sunday night session in a desperate attempt to extend a national security surveillance program... that was on the verge of expiring at midnight."

"Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, criticizing Mr. McConnell on the Senate floor, said, 'The majority leader had five months' to fix the problem through committee work. 'Everyone saw this coming,' Mr. Reid, the Senate minority leader, said."

The session quickly became contentious when Senator Rand Paul, the other Kentucky Republican, whom Mr. McConnell has endorsed for president, fought for the right to speak. After being rebuked by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for not understanding the Senate rules, Mr. Paul railed against the surveillance program. �We should be upset, we should be marching in the streets,� he said.

Mr. Paul seemed determined to use his procedural weapon � the words �I object�...

"Hours after the Senate balked at reauthorizing the bulk collection of U.S. telephone records, the National Security Agency began shutting down..."

"... a controversial program Saturday that senior intelligence and law enforcement officials say is vital to track terrorists in the United States."

That's the Senate, working according to plan � balking at bulk � acting through inaction.

I'm playing "Canyons Of Your Mind" by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

And Meade says: "What's that? Elvis?"

Me: "That's the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. I'm researching the origin of the phrase 'canyons of your mind.' What do you think is the first appearance of that phrase?"

Meade: "I don't know. Glenn Campbell?"

Me: "That's 'Gentle on My Mind.'"

Now, I believe the answer to my question is "Elusive Butterfly," which was a hit in 1965 by man who wrote the song, Bob Lind. It's rolling through the canyons of my mind this morning a propos of Florence Henderson saying that 1960s NY Mayor John Lindsay gave her the crabs. "Gentle on My Mind" was written by John Hartford in 1967.

This idea of the brain as a landscape � it's such a standard hippie trope � is it there in "Gentle on My Mind"? Yes. This singer sings of traveling alone but seeing his girlfriend "walkin' on the backroads/By the rivers flowing gentle on my mind." The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band is mocking "canyons of your mind" in 1968, but Bob Lind was serious in 1965: "You might have heard my footsteps/Echo softly in the distance through the canyons of your mind."

Also mocking the phrase was Frank Zappa in "We're Turning Again" (at 3:25):



"We can turn it around/We can do it again/We can go back in time/Through the canyons of your mind On the Eve of Destruction/We can act like we are something really special/We'll just jump in the bathtub/With that other guy Jim/And make him be more careful/We can visit Big Mama/And whap her on the back/When she eats her sandwich/We can take care of Janis..."

That's got to be much later than 1965, because Jim Morrison died in the bathtub in 1971. Yes, it's the opening track on the 1985 album "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention." "Mothers of Prevention" referred, of course, to The Parents Music Resource Center � you know, that Tipper Gore warning-label business, against which Zappa testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, saying, among other things: "A couple of blowjobs here and there and � bingo! � you get a hearing."

Who knew then that in the next decade � the next canyon of the nation's mind � Tipper's husband would be Vice President, and everyone would be talking about blowjobs?

Stray fact encountered chasing the bright elusive butterfly of canyons of your mind: A movie inspired John Hartford to write "Gentle on My Mind": It was, oddly enough, "Dr. Zhivago."



ADDED: In the comments to the earlier post � the one with the Florence Henderson and the crabs � Roughcoat brought up another song, one I'd consigned to an unreachable canyon of my mind:

Summer breeze, makes me feel fine
Blowing through the canyons of my miiiiiiiind.

That came quite late in the development of hippie tropes � in 1972. How lame, but there were takers for that kind of lameness that year. The original artists were the very douche-y Seals & Croft. And that song has been covered by many artists over the years, including by Jason Mraz (who seems perfectly Seals & Croft-y) and Type O Negative (which is odd). Also odd: I once saw Type O Negative in concert! I must say that of all the bands I saw in my days of chauffeuring teenagers to concerts, there was only one band that I couldn't find it in myself to appreciate, and that was Type O Negative. So hail, Type O Negative! And listen to the Type O Negative "Summer Breeze," here. If you need to air out your mind canyons after that, here's that nice young man Jason Mraz.

Mraz lives a health-conscious lifestyle and has said that he eats mostly raw vegan foods. His vegan diet has also influenced his music. He owns a five-and-a-half acre avocado farm in Bonsall, California. He is an investor at Caf� Gratitude, a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles.... His hobbies include surfing, yoga and photography.

"The top 10 Senate races of 2016, ranked."

By Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post. Wisconsin is #2:

Assuming [former Senator Russ] Feingold runs -- and we assume he does -- Sen. Ron Johnson (R) is in deep trouble. The only two polls conducted in this race show Feingold with leads of nine and 16 points, which is a very tough place for any incumbent to start. Republicans' best hope may be that Feingold ran an atrocious campaign against Johnson -- when the Democrat was the incumbent -- in 2010, and maybe he will do the same again this time. (Previous ranking: 3)

Do you remember what was "atrocious" about Feingold's campaign in 2010? I don't. I had to go back into my archive to see what I noticed at the time. I found this post about an early October debate between Feingold and Johnson, where both candidates were asked how close they were to be the beliefs of the Tea Party: "Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values."

Going back into September, I see that Feingold decided to distance himself from the Democrats. He had an ad that showed him eating alone because he had no friends in Washington. And when President Obama came to Madison to do a huge rally, it was questionable whether Feingold would even show up:

The media had predicted Feingold wouldn�t show up at the event, suggesting he didn�t want to be tied to the increasingly unpopular Obama. You wouldn�t know it from his passionate speech. �I�ll tell you something, Mr. President,� he booms, �you are my friend!�

 Atrocious?

"But the Senate Judiciary Committee is emerging as a serious buzz kill for the pro-reform set."

"The powerful panel is stacked with some of the most senior lawmakers in Congress, many of whom came to power during a tough-on-crime era of the drug wars that saw stiffer penalties for drug possession. Several of them openly gripe about what they call the Obama administration�s lack of enforcement of existing federal drug laws � and they certainly aren�t willing to send a signal that Congress is OK with the movement to liberalize pot."

ADDED: In the last couple days, my position on the legalization of marijuana has changed. Oddly enough, it's because of something I read about Ibsen! I don't have the time right now to explain my train of thought, but I can give you the passage � from Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" � that got me started on it:

There was one aspect of Ibsen�s vanity which verged on the ludicrous... He had a lifelong passion for medals and orders. In fact, he went to embarrassing lengths to get them...

[T]here is ample evidence for Ibsen�s passion since he insisted on displaying his growing galaxy of stars on every possible occasion. As early as 1878 he is reported to have worn all of them, including one like a dog-collar round his neck, at a club dinner. The Swedish painter Georg Pauli came across Ibsen sporting his medals (not the ribbons alone but the actual stars) in a Rome street. At times he seems to have put them on virtually every evening. He defended his practice by saying that, in the presence of �younger friends�, it �reminds me that I need to keep within certain limits.� All the same, people who had invited him to dinner were always relieved when he arrived without them, as they attracted smiles and even open laughter as the wine circulated....