So we were watching Rutgers playing Maryland, two last ditch teams trying to salvage some dignity and momentum from disastrous football seasons, and given that, the conversation wandered. I asked my wife how it is I know what seems to be the state anthem when I couldn’t hum even the tune of any other state anthem. We played a chaste choral version of it on YouTube, and she gave me my answer. The melody is the same as Tanenbaum, the German Christmas song, which we mostly know as O Christmas Tree. Case closed.
Except on the YouTube sidebar I saw this, which purported to be Maryland, My Maryland. It really isn’t, but also might really be. A video poem of gray times our kids are trying to recast in pure black and white, where black is white and white is black, with the new black wholly evil. T’was never so. T’will never be. Maryland, my Maryland.