So last night I was watching/listening to PBS rerun the Bill Moyers Journal with Fein and the other guy. After that, as a part of their fund raising week, Rocky Mountain PBS did the rerun of a gathering of folk musicians, the people whose music so influenced me as I was coming of age.
I listened to "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and was swept back to a time where as a young woman I listened to every word, closed my eyes and felt in sync with the artists.
Now, I sometimes feel so out of step......
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Many of the greats were there: Judy Collins, Kingston Trio, Brothers Four, Glen Yarborough, Smothers Brothers, and so many more. These were the artists of the "Beat Generation," slightly older than me, but a part of the early counter culture, pre-hippie, pre drugs, sex and rock and roll.
They wrote and sang their own songs: songs that represented their feelings, not those the greedy corporate owners of the record company. They sang songs about things that reflected our common humanity: songs about life, love, war, death. One of my favorites was biblical based: "Turn, Turn, Turn". They sang about a freedom of the spirit, about resisting the mentality of the 1950's where even then, some saw the coming of the corporatism we have today.
Overwhelmingly the audience was older, like me. White, gray haired, the women looking like any women of my age group, the men often still bearded, long haired in shades of gray. They all knew the words.
The artists, while being earnest in helping to raise money, still seemed to have an underlying anti-establishment air about them. Maybe it was my wishful thinking. Maybe they felt obliged to speak so very carefully considering what had happened to PBS/Bill Moyers over the last several years at the hands of some corporatists who wanted to make sure progressive voice were wiped off PBS as well as their corporate stations.
But it made me wonder about my generation. While most of my friends are left-leaning, somewhat liberal/progressives, few are activists. Then I remembered that back then, I was still a bit out of step. My college friends were pretty middle of the road, most coming from republican, rural areas. I used to think I had a split personality. On campus, I fit in. It was not even conscious. I went to frat parties, drank and had fun with friends. The biggest protests on my campus, a state college in the middle of farm country, PA, were about changing the dress code, the sexist hours (men had no hours, women had curfews), and getting unlimited cuts for classes.
Then when I went home to Philly for weekends, I hung out with my cousins who were involved in protest marches for civil rights, for ending the war and the draft and later on for women's rights.
Two worlds. They say as we grow older, we are supposed to get more conservative. I became more liberal, more progressive, and more vocal about my beliefs. Maybe it was because the two cousins who were most influential in my political education, died way too young, their voices silenced by disease too early in life. Or maybe it was the 80s that did it. I never got, I still do not get the Reagan worship. The 80s were horrid for poor people, for freedom, for liberal people like myself. I remember trying to tell some friends about what was going on in Central America with the support of our government. I got blank stares.
Maybe it was because I had no children and they were all busy dealing with their adolescent kids.
Now, many of them are busy with their grandchildren. And so again, as we have all reached retirement, I am involved, blogging, writing, canvasing neighborhoods. My brain says that the people with children and grandchildren ought to be the most involved, the most concerned. It is their descendants who will be left to deal with poverty, climate messes, increasing terrorism created by theocratic bullies from every corner of the world, overwhelming debt.
If we, the seniors, the boomers, don't speak out, don't make waves, don't work for getting democracy back, will our children do it? Or will they leave such a mess to their own children, that only then will the citizens rise up and demand that the government be of the people, by the people, for the people. Will it be too late?
I have no answers. This diary is about thinking out loud and wondering, "When will we ever learn, when we ever learn?"