Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Pete Seeger

I was on a ship off Vietnam in 1970 when Pete Seeger sang "Bring 'Em Home".  I don't remember hearing it.  It was heard loud and clear by millions proving the power of a single voice saying the truth that did ultimately bring us home.

"Forever Young"

I am never too young to change the world!

Thank you Pete Seeger for the inspiration you have given us.  Inspiration, like courage, atrophies when it is not given and used courageously.

You are forever young.

He had the voice of my father.  He was forever young, never old to me.

God's Counting on Me, God's Counting on You.

"Time to turn things around. Trickle up not trickle down!"

"Don't give up, don't give in......"

Pete never did.

"What we do now...will effect eternity."

"Where Have All The Flowers Gone"

"On July 26, 1956, the House of Representatives voted 373 to 9 to cite Pete Seeger and seven others (including playwright Arthur Miller) for contempt, as they failed to cooperate with House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their attempts to investigate alleged subversives and communists. Pete Seeger testified before the HUAC in 1955.
In one of Pete's darkest moments, when his personal freedom, his career, and his safety were in jeopardy, a flash of inspiration ignited this song. The song was stirred by a passage from Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "And Quiet Flows the Don". Around the world the song traveled and in 1962 at a UNICEF concert in Germany, Marlene Dietrich, Academy Award-nominated German-born American actress, first performed the song in French, as "Qui peut dire ou vont les fleurs?" Shortly after she sang it in German. The song's impact in Germany just after WWII was shattering. It's universal message, "let there be peace in the world" did not get lost in its translation. To the contrary, the combination of the language, the setting, and the great lyrics has had a profound effect on people all around the world. May it have the same effect today and bring renewed awareness to all that hear it."


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