Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 111

Don't Know Much About® the "Marshall Plan"

On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed into law the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, otherwise known as The Marshall Plan, widely considered the most important foreign policy success of the postwar period.

On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave Harvard's commencement address, introducing and justifying the European Recovery Program, which became known as the Marshall Plan. Marshall had been the Chief of Staff of the Army during World War II and Winston Churchill hailed him as the "true organizer of victory.".  This plan, part of the Cold War program of "containment" championed by George F. Kennan, is credited with restoring the economies of post World War II western Europe.

At Harvard, Marshall said:

The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character.

…Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.

Conceived by Undersecretary of State Will Clayton and first proposed by Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971), the Marshall Plan pumped more than $12 billion into selected war torn European countries during the next four years. (The countries participating were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.) It provided the economic side of Truman's policy of containment by removing the economic dislocation that might have fostered Communism in Western Europe. It also set up a Displaced Persons Plan under which some 300,000 Europeans, many of them Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, were granted American citizenship. By most accounts, the Marshall Plan was the most successful undertaking of the United States in the post-war era and is often cited as the most compelling argument in favor of foreign aid.

To some contemporary critics on the left, the Marshall Plan was not simply pure American altruism —the goodhearted generosity of America's best intentions. To them it was simply an extension of a capitalist plan for American economic domination, a calculated Cold War ploy to rebuild European capitalism. Or, to put it simply, if there was no Europe to sell to, who would buy all those products the American industrial machine was turning out?

By any measure, the Marshall Plan must be considered an enormously successful undertaking that helped return a devastated Europe to health. allowing free market democracies to flourish while Eastern Europe, hunkered down under repressive Soviet controlled regimes, stagnated socially and economically.

Marshall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. For more about Marshall, here is a link to the nonprofit Marshall Foundation:

Read more about World War II and the Cold War in Don't Know Much About® History

Don't Know Much About® "His Accidency," John Tyler

It is quite possible that all you know about the 10th President, John Tyler, is that he is the hind-part of a memorable campaign slogan: Tippecanoe and Tyler too!

John Tyler was born this day, March 29, in 1790, at Greenway, a James River plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, between Richmond and Williamsburg. The son of a wealthy planter and judge, he was raised among Virginia's elite, attending William and Mary College. He graduated at age 17 and then studied law, earning admission to the bar in 1809.

Tyler served in Congress in both the House and Senate, as well as the Virginia legislature, and in 1840 was named the running mate of William Henry Harrison, a fellow Virginian known as the hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe –fought against a confederation of Native American nations led by Tecumseh in 1811.

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too" defeated the incumbent Martin Van Buren, and Harrison took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, delivering the longest inaugural speech in history. He then took ill and died of pneumonia on April 4, 1841, becoming the first President to die in office.

That made Tyler the first Vice-President to succeed to the office on the death of a President. The chief controversy of his early administration was over his legal status. Was Tyler actually the President or merely the "acting President?" He regarded himself as President and even returned mail unopened that was addressed to "The Acting President." But many derided him as His Accidency.

Another distinction was Tyler's marriage, following the death of his first wife Letitia Christian  in 1842, to Julia Gardiner. The daughter of a wealthy New York politician, she had created a minor scandal in polite society by appearing in an advertisement at age 19. When they married in New York City in 1844, she was 24; Tyler was 54 and the 30-year age difference raised eyebrows and caused a rift with some of Tyler's grown children. However, this wedding earned Tyler the distinction of being the first President to be married while in office.

 

Sherwood Forest Virginia Home of President John Tyler (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

His single term ended and he failed to be renominated. Tyler gave way to the the candidacy of James K. Polk rather than run as third-party candidate. Tyler retired to this plantation  home, Sherwood Forest, which is a National Historic landmark in Virginia.

His final distinction was his election to the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy and his failed attempt to broker a peace deal before the Civil War broke out. But in November 1861, Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives, becoming the first former President to be elected to serve in another government –the Confederacy.

Tyler died on January 18, 1862 before taking his seat in the Confederate Congress. Although he had planned to be buried at his Sherwood Forest home, he is buried in Richmond.

 

For many years after the Civil War, his resting place was officially ignored. In 1915, 50 years after the Civil War ended, the Congress voted to erect a memorial stone over his grave.

Touch of Frost: A Videoblog

"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."

Robert Frost –born March 26, 1874.

One of my favorite spots in Vermont is the Frost gravesite in the cemetery of the First Church in Old Bennington -just down the street from the Bennington Monument.

Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost's poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of Dartmouth and then Harvard, then drifted from job to job: teacher, newspaper editor, cobbler. His poetry career took off during a three-year trip to England with his wife Elinor where Ezra Pound aided the young poet. Frost's language is plain and straightforward, his lines inspired by the laconic speech of his Yankee neighbors.

But while poems like "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" are accessible enough to make Frost a grammar-school favorite, his poetry is contemplative and sometimes dark—concerned with themes like growing old and facing death. Robert Frost –New England's poet of snowy woods, stone wall and apple trees.

I hope this "touch of Frost" will inspire you to read some of his work.

Here's a link to Robert Frost's page at Poets.org

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/192

It includes an account of Frost and JFK

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20540

The first poet invited to speak at a Presidential inaugural, Frost told the new President:

"Be more Irish than Harvard. Poetry and power is the formula for another Augustan Age. Don't be afraid of power."

 

Hear Robert Frost for yourself at Poets Out Loud:

http://robertfrostoutloud.com

This link is to Middlebury College's online Frost exhibit

http://midddigital.middlebury.edu/local_files/robert_frost/index.html

This is the website of Frost House and Museum in Franconia, N.H. http://www.frostplace.org/html/museum.html

Robert Frost died on January 29, 1963. He had written his own epitaph, "I had a lover's quarrel with the world," etched on his headstone in a church cemetery in Bennington, VT.

Here is the NYTimes obituary published after his death.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0129.html#article

This material is adapted from Don't Know Much About Literature written in collaboration with Jenny Davis.

Don't Know Much About® Internment

It was on March 23, 1775 that Patrick Henry offered his famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech in colonial Virgina.

On Mach 23, 1942 –167 years later– the United States government began taking away the liberty of more than one hundred thousand people–the Japanese Americans viewed as a threat after Pearl Harbor. On that date, the U.S. Army began removing people of Japanese descent from Los Angeles.

Photo by Dorothea Lange of Japanese-American grocery store on the day after Pearl Harbor Source: Library of Congress

 

Following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, there was a wave of fear and hysteria aimed at Japanese and people of Japanese descent living in America, including American citizens, mostly on the West Coast. In February 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which declared certain areas to be "exclusion zones" from which the military could remove anyone for security reasons. It provided the legal groundwork for the eventual relocation of approximately 120,000 people to a variety of detention centers around the country, the largest forced relocation in American history. Nearly two-thirds of them were American citizens. (Smaller numbers of Americans of German and Italian descent were also detained.)

Photo Source: National Archives

The attitude of many Americans at the time was expressed in a Los Angeles Times editorial of the period:

"A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched… So, a Japanese American born of Japanese parents, nurtured upon Japanese traditions, living in a transplanted Japanese atmosphere… notwithstanding his nominal brand of accidental citizenship almost inevitably and with the rarest exceptions grows up to be a Japanese, and not an American…" (Source: Impounded, p. 53)

There were several types of camps run by the government but the most notable, including Manzanar, were the "Relocation Centers" run by the War Relocation Authority. The camps were located in remote often desolate areas, some on lands purchased from Native American nations. Surrounded by barbed wire, they featured tar paper shacks with no toilets or cooking facilities."Spartan" would be a kind description.

In 1943, the Army invited Japanese Americans to enlist, and during the war, 30,000 Japanese Americans volunteered to serve in the U.S. military. (Source: National Archives)

The exclusion order was rescinded in 1945 and internees were allowed to leave, although many had lost their homes, businesses and property during their confinement. However, the last camp did not close until 1946.

In 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians to investigate the internment and, in 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which provided for a reparation of $20,000 to surviving detainees.

One of those detainees was Albert Kurihara who told the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981:

"I hope this country will never forget what happened, and do what it can to make sure that future generations will never forget." (from Impounded, Norton)

The National Parks Service offers a Teaching With Historic Places lesson plan based on the camps some of which are now part of the National Parks System including Minidoka in Idaho and the Manzanar camp in California.

Archival Research Gallery (National Archives) of Japanese-American Experience

Library of Congress Collection of Ansel Adams photographs of internment camp at Manzanar

Photographer Dorothea Lange also photographed the internment camps and her censored images were published in 2006 in the book Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment (WW Norton, 2006).

 

Don't Know Much About Mr. Madison

Today March 16, 2011, marks the  260th anniversary of the birth of America's fourth President, James Madison, also known as "The Father of the Constitution."

While small in stature, and sometimes overshadowed by his more famous Virginian predecessors, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Madison must be considered one of the greatest of the Founding Fathers for the breadth and influence of his contributions.

Montpelier, home of James Madison (Photo: Kenneth C. Davis, 2010)

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 in Port Conway, Virginia. The son of a tobacco planter, he was somewhat sickly as a child and was mostly tutored at home. But he proved to be a true scholar and at age 16, chose the unusual course –at that time– of going north to study at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), rather than the College of William and Mary in nearby Williamsburg. There he came under the influence of the college President, John Witherspoon, a future signer of the Declaration of Independence, and made a friend of fellow student, young Aaron Burr, son of the College's founder.

Returning to Virginia, Madison became involved in patriot politics and became a close colleague of his neighbor Thomas Jefferson, serving as Jefferson's adviser and confidant during the war years while Jefferson was Governor of Virginia.

In 1794, he married the widow Dolley Payne Todd, having been formally introduced by his college friend Aaron Burr.

A few Madison Highlights–

•Secured passage of the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), an act that is a cornerstone of religious freedom in America. As part of that effort, he wrote the influential Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. (I discuss the "Remonstrance" in my article "America's True History of Religious Tolerance" in the October 2010 Smithsonian.)

•Was the moving force behind the Constitutional Convention and was one of the principal authors of the Constitution

•With Alexander Hamilton and John Jay was one of the authors of The Federalist Papers, arguments in favor of the ratification of the Constitution

•Was principal author of the Bill of Rights, which he originally thought unnecessary

 

Following ratification of the Constitution, Madison was a member of the House of Representatives from Virginia and a powerful Congressional ally of George Washington.

•Drafted the first version of Washington's Farewell Address

•Supervised the Louisiana Purchase as Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of State

•Presided over the ill-prepared nation during the War of 1812, the "second war of independence"

 

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. –June 16, 1788

Madison died on June 28, 1836 at Montpelier, at age 85. He is buried at Montpelier.

LINKS:

The White House brief biography of James Madison

The Library of Congress Resource Collection on James Madison.

Madison's Major Papers and Inaugural Addresses can be found at the Avalon Project of the Yale Law School.

Today in History: "We the People" (v 2.0)

On March 11, 1861, the delegates at the Congress of the Confederate States of America, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, adopted a Constitution. Working under duress, they used the U.S. Constitution almost verbatim as their template. But they made some changes…

What was the difference between the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions?

One week after Lincoln's inaugural address, on March 11, the Confederacy adopted a constitution. Given the long-held arguments that the crisis was over such issues as federal power and states' rights, and not slavery, it might be assumed that the new Confederate nation adopted some very different form of government, perhaps more like the Articles of Confederation, under which the states operated before the Constitution was adopted.

In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was based almost verbatim on the U.S. Constitution. There were, however, several significant but relatively minor differences, as well as one big difference:

• The preamble added the words, "each State acting in its sovereign and independent character," and instead of forming "a more perfect Union," it was forming "a permanent federal government." It also added an invocation to "Almighty God" absent from the original.

• It permitted a tariff for revenue but not for protection of domestic industries, though the distinction between the two was unclear.

• It altered the executive branch by creating a presidency with a single six-year term, instead of (then) unlimited four-year terms. However, the presidency was strengthened with a line item veto with which certain parts of a budget can be removed by the president. (Many U.S. presidents of both parties have argued for the line item veto as a means to control congressional spending. A line item veto was finally passed in 1996 and used first by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional.

• The major differences between the two constitutions regarded slavery. First, the Confederate version didn't bother with neat euphemisms ("persons held in service") but simply and honestly called it slavery. While it upheld the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad, the Confederate constitution removed any restrictions on slavery. Slavery was going to be protected and extended into any new territory the Confederacy might acquire.

•There were also changes in citizenship requirements that were designed to prevent abolition-minded people from moving into the Confederate states and influencing slavery laws.

In other words, while "states' rights" is a powerful abstraction, and the back-and-forth between federal power and the power of the states has been a theme throughout American history, there were few explicit changes to the federal powers under the Constitution. There  was really only one right that the southern states cared about. Examining the speeches by southern leaders and the Confederate constitution itself underscores the fact that the only right in question was the right to continue slavery without restriction, both where it already existed and in the new territories being opened up in the West.

(adapted from Don't Know Much About History. For more about the Civil War, read Don't Know Much About the Civil War.

The complete text of the Confederate Constitution can be found in the documents at the Avalon Project, Yale Law School.

An excellent source to follow the progress of the Civil War can be found at Vermont Public Radio's Civil War Book of Days.

Sugaring Time and the Civil War

It may be Madness for everyone else, but the arrival of March in Vermont means one thing– it's Maple Sugar Time. As both the temperatures and sap rise, you see the web of sap lines descending from the woods to galvanized vats beside the roads, as dense clouds of wood smoke billow from sugar houses, large and small. One of my favorite sugaring spots is the Merck Forest, near my home in Vermont, where they celebrate Sugaring Season on March 19 & 20th, 2011.

But this year, as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches, the maple sugar season has a different meaning. Some 70 years before the war began on April 12, 1861, people had looked to maple sugar  –both as a political and economic weapon against slavery. The idea was simple –replace cane sugar, produced by slave labor, with maple sugar and it would be a blow to the slave system.

One of the first to advocate the idea was Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration and an early voice of abolition in America.  With the Quakers of Philadelphia, Rush proposed using maple sugar as a means of hastening the end of slavery by replacing one of the key products produced by slave labor.  (Rush also opposed the death penalty, was a proponent of public education, and advocated for the humane treatment of the mentally ill.)

In 1788 Rush had published an essay on the "Advantages of the Culture of the Sugar Maple Tree" in a Philadelphia monthly. In 1789 he had founded, with a group of Philadelphia Quakers, the Society for Promoting the Manufacture of Sugar from the Sugar Maple Tree. He had even staged a scientific tea party to prove the potency of maple sugar. The guests – Alexander Hamilton, Quaker merchant Henry Drinker, and "several Ladies" – sipped cups of hyson tea, sweetened with equal amounts of cane and maple sugar. All agreed the sugar from the maple was as sweet as cane sugar. (Source: The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)

Their aim was simple, as Rush's 1788 essay put it: "to lessen or destroy the consumption of West Indian sugar, and thus indirectly to destroy negro slavery."

Dr. Rush found an enthusiastic disciple in Thomas Jefferson, who explored the concept of an American maple sugar industry during a journey to Vermont and even attempted–unsuccessfully it would turn out– to import sugar maple trees to Monticello.

Jefferson and other conscientious consumers could now … "put sugar in (their) coffee without being saddened by the thought of all the toil, sweat, tears, suffering and crimes that have hitherto been necessary to procure this product." (Source: The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia)

Jefferson, Dr. Rush and other Abolitionists were ultimately disappointed as the maple sugar idea failed to gain a foothold and speculation in maple forests actually created a "maple bubble" which burst before this "sugar substitute" could prove itself an economic weapon against slavery.

But well into the 19th century, Abolitionists continued to  pursue the cause of maple sugar. The American artist Eastman Johnson attempted to make maple syrup a political statement through a collection of works showing the sugaring process was not only a part of New England's social fabric, but a way to strike a blow for freedom.

This failed effort to make what we buy and eat a political act may have been a quixotic disappointment. But the thought of putting maple syrup and sugar to use in a noble cause only makes them taste a little sweeter. And the fundamental idea that taking care in what what we purchase and consume can make a difference is still a valuable principle.

"We are not enemies but friends."

"That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?"

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It is more than a little ironic to me that today, as we mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's first inauguration on March 4, 1861 – and the events leading to the first shots in the Civil War on April 12, 1861—that "destroying the Union" has a very different context. In Wisconsin and other parts of the country, there is an assault on unionized workers –private and public. That attack on one group of Americans by another is, in fact, another kind of civil war.

When Lincoln delivered his first inaugural address, before a crowd said to number 30,000, on what was a balmy fifty-degree March day, in front of the unfinished Capitol Building, the nation was on the brink of the deadliest and most dangerous chapter in our history.

It is hard to imagine the weight of responsibility on Lincoln's shoulders as he rose to speak. Never was the nation more divided. The division extended well past North and South.

In his speech, Lincoln was measured, even conciliatory. No glove was thrown down, no threats issued. He sought to reassure the slaveholding states that he had no plan to abolish slavery. That was never the issue for him –although he was morally and philosophically opposed to slavery, Lincoln recognized that it was the law of the land. He and most other Republicans sought merely to limit its extension.

Lincoln was at first lawyerly, arguing for the permanence of the Constitution and the inherent political flaws and dangers of secession. But he also spoke compellingly and from the heart about the history of the Union, going back before 1776.  And in the end, he sought to connect Americans together, to find common ground –even as the  issues drove them further apart.

In rereading and reflecting on Lincoln's first inaugural –one of the greatest speeches in American history— I can only wonder in the present division: What would Lincoln say if he was in Wisconsin?

Maybe it would be as simple and as eloquent as this:

"We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

************

In this clip, the late political columnist and one-time presidential speechwriter William Safire discusses Lincoln's First Inaugural and the composition of that memorable closing passage in particular.

 

"Beam me IN, Scotty" –Classroom Skype Visits by Author Kenneth C. Davis

AN OPEN LETTER TO TEACHERS—

BEAM ME IN, SCOTTY!

Apologies to Captain Kirk.  I know it's really, "Beam me UP, Scotty."

For nearly 10 years, whenever possible, I have been traveling the country to schools, libraries, museums and teacher conferences to share my love for history, geography and all the subjects I have covered in the Don't Know Much About series of books for children and adults.  It's always great fun for me to talk about America's past, telling real stories of real people, exploring the "hidden history" I've uncovered, connecting history to the headlines –and sharing my love for writing and books.  Our students love to learn. Our teachers and librarians are dedicated professionals. And this writer has learned a lot from them along the way.



Now, with the power of computers, I want to visit your classroom virtually. Will you invite me?

Here is my plan. As we mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War on April 12, 1865, I will be making a limited number of free classroom Skype visits to discuss Civil War history, the life of Abraham Lincoln, and other aspects of this momentous tragedy in our past and how it continues to haunt us. These visits are planned to last 20-30 minutes. They will include a brief introduction by me of some of the major aspects of the Civil War, and time for students' questions –my favorite part of the visit.



If you would like to "Beam me IN, Scotty," via Skype, a video link to your classroom computers, please use the Contact page on my website.  We will get back to you in an effort to set up a convenient time and date.



I look forward to beaming into your classrooms!

Best wishes,

Kenneth C. Davis

Don't Know Much About® Field Trip: the National Anthem

Eighty years ago, on March 3, 1931 President Herbert Hoover signed into law the bill that made "The Star-Spangled Banner" the National Anthem

It has been officially butchered at baseball and football games ever since. Just ask Christina Aguilera who had some trouble with the part about those annoying ramparts at the most recent Super Bowl.

But the history of the song that has confounded singers for so long goes back much farther. To trace that history, I took a field trip to the song's birthplace, Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, Maryland.

It was September 13, 1814. America was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in Baltimore's harbor. In the morning, he could see that the Stars and Stripes still flew over Fort McHenry. Inspired, he wrote the lyrics that we all know –well some of you know some of them.

But here's what they didn't tell you:

Yes, Washington, D.C. was burned in 1814, including the President's Home which would later get a fresh coat of paint and be called the "White House." But Washington was torched in retaliation for the burning of York –now Toronto—in Canada earlier in the war.

Yes, Key wrote words. But the music comes from an old English drinking song. Good thing it wasn't 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

Here's a link to the original lyrics of the Drinking song via Poem of the Week

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw234.html

The Star Spangled Banner did not become the national anthem until 1916 when President Wilson declared it by Executive Order. But that didn't really count. And finally, in 1931, it became the National Anthem by Congressional resolution signed by President Herbert Hoover, on March 3.

Now, here are a couple of footnotes to the Francis Scott Key story—his son, Philip Barton Key, was a District attorney in Washington. DC. He was shot and killed by Congressman Daniel Sickles. Sickles was acquitted with the first use of the defense of temporary insanity in 1859. And went on to serve as a Civil War general –and not a very good one.

And speaking of the Civil War, Key's grandson was later imprisoned in Fort McHenry along with Baltimore's Mayor and other pro-Confederate sympathizers.

Here are some places to learn more about Fort McHenry, Key and the Flag that inspired the National Anthem.

http://www.nps.gov/archive/fomc/home.htm

The images and music in this video are courtesy of the Smithsonian Museum of American History: http://americanhistory.si.ed/starspangledbanner/



This version of the anthem in the video is performed on 19th century instruments:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/mp3/song.ssb.dsl.mp3