The Nation ran an article about Pete Seeger, written by Studs Terkel in 2005, honoring Pete on his 86th birthday. This video of him singing Tom Paxton’s, “What Did You Learn in School Today?” accompanied the article.
Studs Terkel:
For sixty-five years, he has held forth continuously through periods known more for their bleakness than for their hope: the cold war, the witchhunt, the civil rights and civil liberties battles. Pete has been in all of them. Wherever he was asked, when the need was the greatest, he, like Kilroy, was there.
Pete Seeger, in an interview with Amy Goodman:
I honestly believe that the future is going to be millions of little things saving us. I imagine a big seesaw, and at one end of this seesaw is on the ground with a basket half-full of big rocks in it. The other end of the seesaw is up in the air. It’s got a basket one-quarter full of sand. And some of us got teaspoons, and we’re trying to fill up sand.
A lot of people are laughing at us, and they say, “Ah, people like you have been trying to do that for thousands of years, and it’s leaking out as fast as you’re putting it in.” But we’re saying, “We’re getting more people with teaspoons all the time.” And we think, “One of these years, you’ll see that whole seesaw go zooop in the other direction.” And people will say, “Gee, how did it happen so suddenly?” Us and all our little teaspoons. Now granted, we’ve gotta keep putting it in, because if we don’t keep putting teaspoons in, it will leak out, and the rocks will go back down again. Who knows?
[.....]
Who knows where some good little thing that you’ve done may bring results years later that you never dreamed of.
Indeed.
You can listen to – or buy – dozens of Pete Seeger’s songs by following links to his albums in the sidebar of an article about him in Smithsonian Folkways Magazine.
Pete Seeger is 90 today. Happy Birthday, Pete!
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