"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

Said the psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1966, and I'm thinking about it today, while still laughing at the viral video of Lawrence O'Donnell yelling "Stop the hammering!" I just embedded the O'Donnell video in the previous post and — because in the post before that we were talking about phallic symbols — the great commenter Laslo Spatula said "A Hammer is not quite a phallic symbol."

Is a hammer a phallic symbol? In Bob Dylan's song about nuclear war, "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall," there's the line:

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’...

Blood coming out of their wherever (to paraphrase Trump).

And then there's the hammer Pete Seeger wrote about:



Surely, Mary Travers was not wishing for a penis. "It's the hammer of justice," the lyrics tell us. Is it the hammer in the hammer and sickle, the "Communist symbol that was conceived during the Russian Revolution.... the hammer stood for industrial laborers and the sickle for the peasantry; combined they stood for the worker-peasant alliance for socialism"?

The hammer and sickle is not to be confused with the arm and hammer, "a symbol consisting of a muscular arm holding a hammer."

Used in ancient times as a symbol of the god Vulcan, it came to be known as a symbol of industry, for example blacksmithing and gold-beating. It has been used a symbol by many different kinds of organizations, including banks, local government, Freemasons, and socialist political parties. It has been used in heraldry, appearing in the Coat of arms of Birmingham and Seal of Wisconsin....

Wisconsin! There's also the best baking soda in the world:



And there's the arm and hammer sticking out of Goldbeater's House in London, described by Charles Dickens in "A Tale of Two Cities."

Hammers are important in mythology:

Mjölnir, the magic hammer of Thor. It was invulnerable and when thrown it would return to the user's hand. (Norse mythology)
Ukonvasara (also Ukonkirves), the symbol and magical weapon of the Finnish thunder god Ukko, and was similar to Thor's Mjölnir. (Finnish mythology)
Uchide no kozuchi, a legendary Japanese "magic hammer" which can "tap out" anything wished for. In popular belief, magic wooden hammer is a standard item held in the hand of the iconic deity Daikoku-ten. (Japanese folklore)
Hammer of Hephaestus, the hammer of the Greek smith-god Hephaestus which was used to make the Greek gods weapons.... (Greek mythology)

But let's talk about the "law of the hammer" — AKA "the law of the instrument" — which is the cognitive bias Professor Maslow was talking about in the famous quote that is the post title. The Wikipedia article on the subject explores the topic and traces the concept back to an old English expression "a Birmingham screwdriver" — which is not a screwdriver but a hammer — a hammer that is used for everything (including getting screws to go in).

If we take up the challenge to see the hammer as a phallic symbol, the law of the hammer becomes the temptation, if all you have is a phallus to treat everything as if it were a vagina:

Trump: Look at you, you are a pussy....

Trump was talking to a man, Billy Bush.

Trump: You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

Bob Dylan says thanks.

At the MusiCares Person of the Year event:

He thanked people who had played a key role in his early career, ranging from talent scout John Hammond to music publisher Lou Levy, as well as artists who recorded his songs early on, such as Peter, Paul & Mary. “They took a song of mine that was buried,” he said, alluding to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “They straightened it out. It’s not the way I would have recorded it (but they made it a smash).”

He also thanked the Byrds, the Turtles, and Sonny & Cher. “Their versions of my songs were like commercials,” he said. He also singled out the Staple Singers, Nina Simone, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and Joan Baez. (“She was the queen of folk music then, and she’s the queen of folk music now,” he said of Baez. “…I learned a lot from her.”)

Dylan says "Sonny & Cher," but if you look closely at that video, you'll see Cher is singing the "Sonny" voice too.

ADDED: More from Bob's speech here.  Don't miss the part about Tom T. Hall's song "I Love" being "a little over-cooked." As for what he said about Merle Haggard, well, Merle Haggard responds here: "Bob Dylan I've admired your songs since 1964. 'Don't Think Twice' Bob, Willie and I just recorded it on our new album."

"Crack's Top Ten Suggestions For What Meadhouse Can Do To Keep Me Entertained."

The Crack Emcee was really inspired by my comment "Remember, Meade and I need to do some road trips for your entertainment, and it's a big deal to do that customized Sprinter to suit the sensitivities of an old lady professor-blogger."

Note: The "Clarence Thomas" tag is not a mistake.

The photos of Bob Dylan on "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and George Harrison on "All Things Must Pass"...

... were both made by Barry Feinstein... who died today at the age of 80.

You can see the iconic Bob-as-Woody-Guthrie pic and the George-with-gnomes pic along with lots of other cool photos at the official Barry Feinstein website. And here's a book of Feinstein's pictures of Dylan. I hear it's got a lovely picture of Bob kissing Mary Travers.

When Mary Travers was thin, Mama Cass was radiant, and Joni Mitchell did not have multicolored fibers protruding from her skin.

They say everything can be replaced...



... but they are wrong.

Any day now, any day now...

Are you still looking toward the future, or do you look back to the gorgeous, unreachable past?

Mary died!

So sad!



Now the time has come to leave you...