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Maybe We’ll Have All the Fascists Out of the Way by Then. Maybe So.

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“I’m not personally in the money-lending business. It would be against the law for me to lend you money without letting the governor know.”

 

“Th’ gov’ner? Shucks, me ‘n’ th’ gov’ner’s always goin’ aroun’ with our hands in each other’s pockits. Big friends.” – from “A Fast-Running Train Whistles Down” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Among other things you can’t do in the Kennedy Center: you can’t take pictures.

I wasn’t even trying to take a picture during the show. I’d arrived at my seat, after finally meeting Andie, my contact at the Grammy Museum who helped get me into so many events for this project. So many that upon meeting, we hugged like old pals.

But even that connection didn’t spare me from getting a tap on the shoulder as I raised my phone to take a photo of the auditorium as people filed in.

“No photography in the Kennedy Center,” the usher sneered.

I hate arbitrary rules.

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Some Rob You With a Six-Gun, Some With a Fountain Pen

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If you think of something new to say, if a cyclone comes, or a flood wrecks the country, or a bus load of school children freeze to death along the road, if a big ship goes down, and an airplane falls in your neighborhood, an outlaw shoots it out with the deputies, or the working people go out and win a war, yes, you’ll find a train load of things you can set down and make up a song about. You’ll hear people singing your words around over the country, and you’ll sing their songs everywhere you travel or everywhere you live; and these are the only kind of songs my head or my memory or my guitar has got room for. – “The Telegram That Never Came” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Robert Santelli has this panel discussion business down-pat: prompt musicians to tell their stories both in words and music. After he made me shrivel in my seat, he moved on to introducing the panel, who all told their stories of how they became familiar with Woody Guthrie’s music. For Noel Stookey, he was a part of the Beat scene at Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, where he learned about Woody from Ramblin’ Jack and Bob Dylan.

Ramblin’ Jack learned about Woody by calling him repeatedly while Guthrie was hospitalized with appendicitis in 1951, eventually showing up at his house and not leaving for a few years.

LaFave grew up in Oklahoma with the Guthrie lore, which he passed on to accordion player Radoslav Lorković, who joined the musicians on stage, giving extra spring to LaFave’s soft-sung take on “Oklahoma Hills.”

At the beginning of the program the audience was told that, because the discussion was being recorded for the library’s archives, we needed to be quiet. But I love to sing along to “Oklahoma Hills”! Ask Aimee. Folk music isn’t meant to be quietly enjoyed while ensconced in your seat. With everyone conscious of every move and noise they make, the song’s spark gets extinguished.

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If an Atom Bomb Hits New York It’ll be New York No More

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“What will be your first selection, Mr. Guthrie?”

“Little tune, I guess, call’d New York City.” And so I forked the announcer out of the way with the wiry end of my guitar handle and made up these words as I sung:

 

This Rainbow Room she’s mighty fine

You can spit from here to th’ Texas line!

In New York City

Lord, New York City

This is New York City, an’ I really gotta know my line! – “Crossroads” from “Bound for Glory”

 

Although the good folks at the Grammy Museum had set me up with a free ticket for Saturday night’s Woody at 100 tribute concert, I was a bit panicked about the first-come, first-served nature of the day’s symposium at Brooklyn. Even more panicked about the transportation issue.

Let me repeat: don’t be fooled by the TV and movies. Cabs aren’t ever-present. Turns out, they’re illegal in all the boroughs except Manhattan. I learned this late Friday night while trying to figure out how to get myself to Brooklyn College the next morning. Not confident in my ability to not flub public transportation, I arranged a car service. Which I hate. It’s a plain car that costs twice as much as a cab. Basically paying to not be seen in a bright yellow vehicle that exclaims, “Hey! I don’t have a car of my own!”

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Shoes

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By Robin Wheeler
I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time on Thursday, May third. Late afternoon, as the tide rolled in at Santa Cruz, after I traveled 2100 miles.
I started in a parking lot on top of a short cliff, stretched away from the boardwalk with its rides and barking sea lions. I could hear them across the water when the ocean retreated.
“You know it’s always been my dream to see a boardwalk,” Clara Jane told me when I described the scene to her on the phone. My daughter’s an 8-year-old Midwesterner; she didn’t know what a boardwalk was until she read about them a month ago. I’ll bring her next time.

The water was a long way down and a hike across deep sand marked with char left from beach fires and a giant peace sign made from flowers sprouted in the sand, given body from twigs and shell fragments.

Close enough that I could hear the power of the waves and smell the bright saline air. So tired from over 12 hours of travel, but I’ll never have a first time at the Pacific Ocean. I climbed. Down the twisting, sand-covered metal steps, kicking off my sensible vegan Mary Jane mules and plunging my tired skin into the cold sand.

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