Topic: The Blues at Pete Seeger's 90th Bithday Bash

[Stuart]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/arts/music/05seeg.html?em

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/opinion/05tue4.html?em

[andypitt]

Hey--Andy Pitt here. My daughter, Naomi and I were performers at the Bday Party for Pete at the Labor Hall in Barre, VT. We had a great time. The whole house was alive. I know Pete would have loved it. Mark Greenberg and I will deliver the Birthday card to Pete in the next few days. It was done by Eddy Epstein, the artist who did the cover for Pete's original How To Play The 5 String Banjo.
If a can figure out how to attach jpegs , I will do so.

Andy

[uncle bud]

Hi Andy - to attach a jpg, just click on the "Additional Options" below the window where you type your reply. You'll then see a field labelled "Attach". Click the "Browse" button, browse to the place on your computer that has the jpg, doubleclick the jpg file, then click Post as usual. That should attach the jpg to your post.

[Mr.OMuck]

Hey Andy! When you gonna start posting some o' your fine playing?

[dj]

But the real heartache is in the FACT that we have not followed up on the lengths great souls like Pete's have made.

The Hudson River is on place where we really have followed up.  Back in 1960, it was an open sewer, literally, with turds floating in every cove from Albany south to New York Harbor.  Pete wasn't by any means the only person involved with the river's cleanup - there was an army of people - but Pete was the public face of the cleanup project.  He was the one who brought people out to the early Sloop Festivals, the one who got people like Odetta and a young Arlo Guthrie to show up to increase the crowds, the one who got the River in the newspapers and on TV.  If not for him, the river cleanup would have gone much more slowly and been less certain.  Forty years ago there were no bald eagles on the river, today there are over 25 nesting pairs.  There were no more peregrine falcons, today they nest on every bridge over the river.  Beaver are back, and river otters, and mink.  And, in great part, we have Pete and a bunch of kindred souls to thank for that.   

[Mr.OMuck]

I saw pair of those bald eagles right outside the city limits not long ago. Fantastic sight!

[andypitt]

Thanks Uncle Bud.
Attached is a shot of the Birthday card signed by folks attending the Bday concert in Barre, VT.

--Phil -I'll post some of my playing in the near future.
Let's all Weenie Campbell.
Andy Pitt

[lindy]

Another good story about Pete

http://leonardearljohnson.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html#8375508684788947609

Just to add a short anecdote about somebody who?s doing something, like Pete has done for so many years:

A guy named Bill knocked on my door today asking if I was interested in selling my 1979 Dodge pickup truck with one of those indestructible slant-six engines in it.

He was straight from the 60s, scraggly beard, ponytail, thin as a rail, intense eyes. Within a half-hour I?d found out he had made many trips to Cuba and Central America since the early 1980s, delivering things like used computers to support a primitive network connecting rural and urban medical clinics. He had helped organize hunger strikes when he and his cohorts were stopped at the Mexican border with supplies marked for Cuba because of the US embargo and the Mexican government?s refusal to step on Washington?s toes about it. Two hunger strikes, two times given permission to cross the border, good batting average. He?d worked with the American Friends Service Committee on pacifist issues, but had refused to work with them on Cuba because he felt that by applying for a permit from our government to take supplies south, the AFSC was giving tacit approval to the embargo.

Bill?s thing right now is helping a recent college graduate (?from one of them good schools up north?) start a school in the lower ninth ward, which took the biggest brunt of flooding from Katrina and is receiving the least support for resurrection. Their goal is to help dropouts from the dysfunctional New Orleans school district get their GEDs. When Bill knocked on my door to ask about the truck they had 3 students; by the time the college grad arrived to look at the Dodge they had a fourth. Both seemed really excited about that.

No official support from any gummint agency yet for the school, they?re getting grants here and donations there. They?re teaching their students how to grow a garden, Bill said the kids couldn?t believe it when they made $170 selling their produce at a local farmer?s market last Saturday.

In short, I spent the afternoon getting an earful about what?s really going on in the lower ninth from someone who?s on the front lines, an honest-to-god Saul Alinsky community organizing radical, a skinny white guy who must be pushing 60 helping a young black man try to break the pattern of poverty in the hardest hit neighborhood in New Orleans.

Heroes, two people pushing back. It?s been a while since I?ve met someone like that, it brought Pete?s legacy to mind.

Lindy