Pete Seeger and a Top Ten Conservative Idiots Update [View all]
1st: I am done with my PhD work for now. I will write the newest Top Ten tomorrow or the next day.
2nd (and more important):
Everyone talks about Pete Seeger meaning something to them. In my early childhood, there were only three people, outside of my parents, that had a huge influence on my life. Those three were Raffi (don't laugh), Harry Chapin and Pete Seeger.
Pete was the first adult singer I ever listened to. His song about the SF Bay (Garbage) and DDT (The Cats are Scratching the Streets) profoundly impacted me at an extremely young age.
Each song turned on, in me at the young age of six, a social bearing years ahead of my age. Instead of reading the pablum that schools forced me to read, I began reading things that were considered subversive and even un-American. Pete Seeger led me to Rachel Carson. Pete Seeger led me to Ralph Nader. Pete Seeger led me to Cesar Chavez. Pete Seeger let me to Nelson Mandela.
I only lived about an hour away from Beacon as the crow flies, but once I watched him sing in Newburgh (on my side of the bridge). I couldn't have been more impacted. His hope, his love of people, his strength. . .his worldview. It brings small tears to my eyes remembering sitting in the audience and just listening to him talk, sing and interact with his fans as though he knew each of us personally. As he spoke about the Hudson River, his love of Mother Earth couldn't be more evident. His detest for things like Love Canal and the destruction of the brackish Hudson ecosystem made me look at the Upper Delaware River valley north of Port Jervis in the same light.
Because of Pete Seeger, I became an environmentalist. Because of Pete Seeger, I became a civil rights advocate. Because of Pete Seeger, I became the politcally active person I am too. While I only stand in a classroom and teach, I know I am doing with my students what Pete Seeger did to me.
As I teach my physical and human geography class and the lessons that would get me strung up in an American classroom (climate change, environmental sustainability, urbanization and land use, agriculture, social economics, environmental degradation and the human effects on the natural environment, including sensitive areas, the oceanic current belt, prevailing winds and pollution), I am reminded with each lesson the first two songs I committed to memory.
As I teach my history class, I use Pete Seeger's music to talk about the depression, the fight against fascism, the cold war and the Spanish Civil War.
Pete Seeger is the second hero of mine to pass on in as many months. I never met the man personally, but the impact his words, music, life, activism and struggle molded me into the person I am today.
Pete, this week's Top Ten is a tribute to you. It is written with you mind. You didn't know me. I didn't know you. But your impact on people like me cannot be understated.
Thank you Pete. Thank you for everything. And Godspeed.
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