{"id":668,"date":"2023-03-02T04:18:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T08:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/?p=668"},"modified":"2023-03-09T18:00:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-09T22:00:47","slug":"an-itty-bitty-ditty-on-the-shitty-nitty-gritty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"An Itty Bitty Ditty on the Shitty Nitty Gritty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>For John Morgan, who stood up for the rights of his fellow people &#8211; even the ones who irritated him.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From time immemorial, people have told stories of giants.<br>Through those handed-down stories, giants become real to us,<br>fee-fie-foe-fumming around in our subconscious minds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and becoming part of our collective cultural experience.<br>As a storyteller, John kept many of those giants real for us,<br>Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the like,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>whether in the classroom or the living room,<br>John brought those hallowed dead back to vivid human life,<br>as looking-glasses for us to examine ourselves and our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While storybook giants are always with us,<br>it is in the nature of individual giants to pass into history,<br>and so become their own stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We, who had the good fortune to know him,<br>will now tell stories about John,<br>keeping him real for all of us<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>so that we can stand on his shoulders,<br>and stand up for the rights of our fellow people,<br>even the ones who irritate us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For John Morgan, who stood up for the rights of his fellow people &#8211; even the ones who irritated him. From time immemorial, people have told stories of giants.Through those&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/?p=668\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">An Itty Bitty Ditty on the Shitty Nitty Gritty<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":671,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freerangepoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}