I chose this photo of a very old Pete Seeger, who died during the night last night, for a reason: it reveals the absolute beauty of age. The smile in his eyes, the happiness in his eyes, is captured by the camera just as clearly as the smile on his lips. He was a handsome young man, but this is true beauty.
My writing about the great and indispensable Pete Seeger will have to wait. I feel his loss too greatly to write now. God bless him. God bless and comfort the family and friends he's left behind. But he will never really leave us in such an important way. The legacy he leaves is tremendous, important, staggering!
There's a big folk festival going on in the skies tonight with Pete, Woody, Doc Watson, Merle, Mary Travers, and so many others. It's making pieces of the ceiling fall down here like snow, (it is snowing here) they are having such a party. Play it, folks. We are listening. Much love.
Pete Seeger before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee
1952
We were fighting for the right as women to have and enjoy sex as free, responsible, decent, non-slut adult women when I was in my late teens and early twenties and a college student. We fought for "nice girls" to be allowed to enjoy sex just as "nice men" do. We fought that Double Standard. We fought for contraception then, too. And we won. And we thought we won control of the means of production (our own bodies), too. We thought we won not only for ourselves, but for our daughters and our granddaughters, as well. I am now 64 years old, POST post-menopausal. Why in Hell are we having to fight this again? Why are we fighting for the right to have "libidos" again over forty years later against the same pasty-faced, pudgy, ugly, Christian white men in power? This is silly. No more generations of American women will be raised and judged like my grandmother and my mother and aunts. Never again. No more aspirin between the knees. NO! NO! NO!
Who are these two musical favorites of mine kissing each other? And why?
I have loved the tiny flamed-haired Patty Griffin since her first album, "Living with Ghosts," in 1996. She's folk, she can rock, she can do gospel, she can go country. In 2007 she was the Americana Music Association's Artist of the year, and in 2011 she won a Grammy for Best Traditional Gospel Album for the wonderful Downtown Church, which includes her song Up to the Mountain in honor of MLK, Jr.
Everybody knows Robert Plant, lead singer and chest barer with the long golden mane and the tight jeans from one of the greatest classic rock bands ever, Led Zeppelin. He was a wild one, always happy, always having a good time on the road. Except that he wrote "All of My Love" to his son who died at age 5 of a stomach infection at home in the UK while Plant was on tour in the US. Most of his lyrics deserve more serious attention than they get, in my opinion, especially if you like Norse or Celtic mythology and weird rabbit holes to go down.
Then Plant discovered Americana and bluegrass. He made an award-winning CD with Alison Krauss, which is one of my all time favorites, in 2007. He appeared at Merlefest and seemed to be having the time of his life. Not too long after that he formed a band reviving the name of his very first band "Band of Joy" that was PURE AMERICANA. Buddy Miller suggested that Patty Griffin be added, mostly to sing back up, and she said yes to the demotion. They made one CD and toured for about a year in 2010-2011 and somewhere along the way, my favorite rock god and my favorite Americana singer-songwriter became a couple.
That CD "Band of Joy" was nominated for a Grammy as Best Americana Album in 2011 and Plant received the nomination for Best Solo Rock Vocal for "Silver Rider" from that CD.
Griffin and Plant now live together, dividing their time between Austin, Texas, and the UK, and he sings backup on HER albums. Can that wild man settle down to one woman, even at the age of 64? I hope so. I am just so jealous of her that I could cry if he didn't keep me laughing all the time.
Patty Griffin, she'll turn 50 in March
Patty around 2010
Robert Plant now at 64
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant - Led Zeppelin 1976
What a beautiful, angelic portrait of a little devil!
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all God's children.
Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrong deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote, and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.
It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day out on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat and injustice of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!"
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."
