No need to imagine ...



Leonard Cohen may not have sung at the Inauguration, but Pete Seeger channelled Woody Guthrie at the concert a couple of days earlier, leading the crowd in singing lefty verses that had been discreetly dropped from most renditions of the song for decades.


One of my most treasured friendships has been with a man who was a Communist union activist in the Pacific North-West of the USA during the Depression and the New Deal. He spoke of 'Pete' affectionately, recalling that he used to visit the union offices and lift their spirits by spending an evening sitting about with his guitar singing, along with many other songs, 'Old Devil Time' and 'This Land Is Your Land'. I imagine my friend sitting up in the sky with his miraculously rejuvenated little pink toes hanging over the edge of a cloud, and smiling to bust his face in two to see his old friend up there on the Lincoln Memorial. I can't begin to think what he would have said about the Inauguration: probably that it was an opportunity to organise for real change.

Posted: Fri - January 23, 2009 at 11:43 AM           |

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