Well, I got up this morning with Peter, Paul and Mary on my mind. Do you remember them? Some women might dream about Fabio or some such nonsense, but here is what happened. I was given a link for Peace Pilgrim and I started reading that. This is/was a very wise woman who gave up everything to search for inner peace. I will give you the link at the end of this, so watch for it. It is well worth a little more then a cursory glance. I am going to try to follow some of her teachings, but I can not foresee giving up my home and car and all that and walking off across the country hoping some one will feed me and give me a bed for the night. But the basic truths look very promising.
Back to Peter, Paul and Mary. These three people came to prominence in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village way back in the early 60's. Remember the 60's? Sure you do! I recall like it was yesterday. I was newly married and hopelessly in love with life. Hubby was a tree trimmer and moved around a lot, but there were dreams and hopes. And pretty soon there were babies. That slowed the moving around down to a crawl. We were in Garden City, Kansas when I realized that Viet Nam was more than the government was telling us. How long had it been going on and what was it? Did we ever really know the depth of that era? How much was covered up and for how many years? I talk to old timers now who still know and refuse to talk about Cambodia and wht went on there. Peter, Paul and Mary knew. They sang about it and we marched about it. Civil Rights? They were there. So was I.
Where were you when Oswald shot Kennedy? When Ruby shot Oswald? Did you hear Martin Luther King, Jr's I have a dream speech? Did you see him fall? Tommy Cash sings a song that covers that era. If you can listen to this and not reflect, you are probably one of my very young readers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uGc62RWIkc
But through it all Peter, Paul and Mary were singing the folk songs. I did not know at the time that they were folk songs, only that they expressed what I was feeling along with a whole nation. And I think they really believed in what they sang about. If I Had a Hammer! This Land is My Land! Where Have all the Flowers Gone? Blowin' in the Wind.
After Mary was gone Peter and Paul still continued to fight for what they had believed in for so long. In 2010 they sent a letter to the National Organization for Marriage (who campaigns to stop gay marriage and civil unions) telling them to stop using their song This Land is My Land in their rallies because it was " directly contrary to our advocacy position. " Principled people, especially in the entertainment industry are sometimes hard to find.
But what really makes me sad is that there will never be an era like that and there are not words in my vocabulary to describe how we felt. Music is the one medium that comes closest and Peter, Paul and Mary were the icons of the time. But Mary is gone and while we get out the old guitar and sing the old songs at the Peace Flotilla and in the coffee shop, it is pure nostalgia. Sort of the Don Quixote and the whole tilting at windmills thing. The dragons have all been slain. We now our government would never lie to us and that the printed word is the one we can believe. Oh, wait. Seems I see some Senator hanging his head and saying "Sorry. I lied." And I see a crumbling Newspaper Empire because someone hacked the phones and got caught.
But it is still different. In this day and age information is instantly at our fingertips. We do not have to wait for a trio to pick up a guitar and tell us about the wrongs in the world. And I am going to save Peace Pilgrim for another day. Today I am going to listen to Peter, Paul and Mary and relive my lost youth.
