Tag Archives: pete seeger

When I woke up this morning I turned on the computer and saw that Pete Seeger had passed away.  It wasn’t too shocking or unexpected, he was 94 years old.  But, it’s sad.

I liked Pete Seeger when I was a child, he sang lots of songs for children, sort of a musical Dr. Seuss.  This was one of my favorites.  I also came to admire him on a whole different level as an adult.  There was this, which was the song that got the Smothers Brothers kicked off the air when Seeger added the line “President Johnson is a big damn fool,” and I began to realize that free speech  in America was maybe not all it was cracked up to be.

Pete Seeger, 1919-2014
(photo circa 1970)

Anyway, all  day long people have been posting their favorite Pete Seeger songs, and talking about their Pete Seeger memories, and it’s been a nice little facebook memorial.  I was pleased to note that it was not just my generation; plenty of people much younger than I am were touched by his music.  And it was not just the Americans, either.  His voice was heard around the world.

In this world of social inequality and political divisiveness we (or maybe I should just say I) spend a lot of time thinking about people we really hate, and how much we will not mourn them when they die.  Most of the Republican Party, the Koch brothers, the Waltons, people who abuse animals, rapists, wife beaters, bankers, lobbyists, Kim Jong Un, Robert Mugabe, religious fundamentalist fanatics both Christian and Muslim, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, pretty much everybody who works for Fox News, and many more.

So, how is it that when somebody actually dies, it is almost invariably someone we will miss, someone we loved?  It’s because, as horrible as the world seems, it’s not.  Love is stronger than hate and the good people still outnumber the bad people by more than 9 to 1.  That’s something we should remember.