Mariah OUTSIDE
April/May 1979
Pete Seeger by Anne LaBastille
A hot, humid day on the Hudson River; it only serves to magnify the signs of pollution. The water looks murkier and scummier than ever. The air smells more tainted and heavy. The glut of waterfront railroad tracks, factories, and old docks seems dingier and more confining. The river looks to me like one long sewer after my drive down from the Adirondack Mountains, the wild and pristine source of the Hudson.
Nevertheless, it is an auspicious day. Pete Seeger's newest boat, the sloop Woody Guthrie, is going out on its first training cruise. This marks the start of a broad attack by one of America's best-known folk singers on the crud and corruption which have turned the Hudson into one of the dirtiest, most dangerous rivers in the country.
A beat-up blue pickup bounces down to the river's edge and parks beside the weatherbeaten Beacon (New York) Sloop Club, which the singer founded. Out climbs Seeger and his son-in-law, Emilio Rodriguez, a professional photographer. Seeger is grizzly-blond with misty-blue eyes;
Rodriguez, black-haired, black-eyed. Both men are long and lean. They wear short, sparse beards and go barefoot.
Seeger has spanned 40 years of politics and pollution with his particular brand of nonviolent protest. In the Thirties and Forties, he was deeply involved in the labor union movement. Many of his songs and lyrics, such as "If I Had a Hammer," date from that era. In the Fifties, he was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the anti-Communist witch hunts. In the Sixties, Seeger was still singing out his dissensions, this time against militarism. His song "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" was seen as a powerfully symbolic declaration against President Johnson and the Vietnam War.
During the present decade, Seeger has begun to battle environmental problems, largely those along the degenerate Hudson. "The Hudson is unique among American rivers," Seeger explains, "because so much of the national experience is represented here both in terms of our social development and resource degradation. Compressed within its watershed is a reflection of the national dilemma: how to satisfy the demands of a high-level consumer society without ruining the land and air and water. Few rivers in America today are being subjected to the extreme pressure that the Hudson is experiencing."
Whether Seeger is championing causes against racism or pollution or sexism, he claims it is all the same fight. "The world faces just one big after the traditional Hudson River Dutch windships which once plied the river.
The two smaller ferry sloops will be used to take people out on day sails to show them the beauties of the river and to enlist their support in the effort to clean it up. Seeger's plan is simple: "We want to help people learn to love their river again." To further that end, he has formed the Clearwater organization, a nonprofit outfit based in Poughkeepsie. Dues go to run the ships, provide expert testimony at environmental hearings, conduct onboard ecology programs, send representatives to antinuclear rallies, start new sloop clubs, and hold festivals.
It was aboard the Woody Guthrie that I had a chance to talk to Seeger off and on between his instructions to the crew. I learned that I was interviewing three people: Seeger the man, Seeger the musician, and Seeger the environmentalist. At the end of the day's sail, I could say in all honesty that Pete Seeger is an absolutely simple, honest, genuine man. His head is in the clouds of a better world. His integrity is complete.
Mariah/OUTSIDE: What do you think about ecology and environment?
Seeger: I try to avoid those words. I think words are traps, so I'm wary of labels and oversimplification. My father, who is a musicologist, was convinced that if the human race fails to make it, it will be due to an over-dependence on words. Words are wonderful tools, but we don't realize their shortcomings. The moment any word becomes really valuable, it not only can be misused, it will be misused. Take words like "ecology," "outdoors," "liberty," "organic," and "equality." The moment they become important symbols, people decide to use them for their own purposes. I say trust no symbols.
Anyway, look at that place over there. You don't need words to describe what happened. Fifty years ago it used to be a garbage dump. Fifty years of Beacon's bottles, cans, and industrial wastes are there. Nine years ago the Clearwater came through. We said, "How wonderful it would be to have a waterfront park here." But the police said, "They'll never do it. The niggers will take over." The establishment couldn't have been more contemptuous. Well, we refused to give up. Each year we came back with the Clearwater and served homemade food, played music, and took people on sails. And every year more and more people would come down to the waterfront. They began to say, "My, it would be nice to have a park down there."
Finally, this year the city has committed to making a park out of that dump. When we had our Strawberry Festival there last June, a couple of thousand people showed up. Emilio was in charge of cooking the shortcake biscuits in an oven made from an old oil drum. He turned out about 200 biscuits an hour over a driftwood fire. The berries were picked right here, and we used real whipped cream and real butter on the biscuits. It was the world's best strawberry shortcake. The mayor and commissioner of accounts came down and joined in eating shortcake and square dancing. I realized right then that this dump-park is symbolic of the whole world.
M/0: What do you mean by that?
Seeger: Well, I realized that our major responsibility is right here at home. We have a world on its way to becoming a garbage dump. We've had two million years of human history-cannibalism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, exploitation, and pollution of one sort or another. And we're supposed to build a decent world on top of all this. We've got to work at home, but we must also put it in context with world problems. Everyone must be a citizen of both places.
M/0: Why are you spending so much time on environmental problems?
Seeger: Partly because I'm hoping that there's still a chance for the human race. It makes me more hopeful when I don't run away from the problem, but try to attack it and solve it.
M/0: What sort of impact do you think environmentalists are having on the ecological scene?
Seeger: They're like a few guys putting grains of sand on one side of a scale with teaspoons, while on the other side a lot of industrialists are loading boulders on with dump trucks. The question is whether the sand is falling off as fast as we are putting it on the scale. We need more teaspoons and more people. You can never tell what might work if we had enough people with teaspoons.
M/0: Are you optimistic about the environment?
Seeger: I don't think there's a 50-50 chance to save it. I used to say there was, and then I realized I was just kidding myself.
M/0: What about the future in general?
Seeger: If there's a human race 300 years from now, it'll have to be a race without racism, sexism, militarism, alienation, or pollution.
M/0: Do you think the Hudson will ever run clean again?
Seeger: One hundred years from now, it will be as clean as a whistle. At least there's a 95 percent chance it will. If we don't get rid of pollution-and if we don't get rid of racism, sexism, militarism, and the rest-there's not going to be anything left of the human race. Then the river will be clean again. Won't be anyone around to pollute it!
Of course, there's a five percent chance that 100 years from now we'll still be discriminating against each other, threatening to kill each other, and cheating and polluting each other. But I don't think we have more than 100 years left to straighten out and fly right.
M/0: What are some of the actual threats to the Hudson River?
Seeger: There are a lot. There's the high-flow Hudson skim project, which would withdraw one billion gallons of water per day during high-flow stages of the river and deliver it to the metropolitan New York area. Then there are PCBs. There are still about ten pounds of this chemical seeping into the river every day from unknown sources. We also need to watch nuclear plants and their proliferation.
M/0: Tell me about your role in helping to win the PCB case in the Hudson.
Seeger: It's hard to say, except that all the little pieces of publicity help. The Clearwater went to Albany. We had photographs on television. My daughter sewed a beautiful banner 50 feet long that read "No more PCBs." We flew it from the mast of the sloop. The Clearwater organization has had numerous conferences with officials in Albany, and our office in Poughkeepsie has a full-time staff whose job it is to talk to state and industry representatives.
Of course, now PCBs have been banned and are being phased out under the new Toxic Substances Control Act. I don't know how many years it will take, but I do know that the price of liberty is eternal publicity!
M/0: How many years have you been sailing on the Hudson River?
Seeger: About 16. Sailing here is quite different than sailing at the seashore. We have tidal currents-six hours up, six hours down-but you have to be careful about the fickle winds. They switch around a lot because of the surrounding mountains. I'm really still trying to leam to be a sailor.
M/0: Have you written any songs about sailing?
Seeger: Yes. I was sailing up the river in a little plastic bathtub of a boat and made up a song called "Sailing up My Dirty Stream." It goes like this:
"Sailing up my dirty stream,
Still I love it and I'll keep the dream,
That some day, though maybe not this year,
My Hudson River and my country will run clear."
The whole symbolism of it is that, dirty as it is, it's still fun to sail on the river. You could see the lumps of shit floating by, but it was still fun.
M/0: How did you first get the idea to build the Clearwater, and now your smaller ferry sloops?
Seeger: Shortly after I wrote that song, a guy told me that big boats used to sail on the Hudson-sailboats with booms 70 feet long! He loaned me a sentimental little book by two middle-aged men who had decided that before they died they would write down everything they could remember about Hudson River sloops. They thought that the sloops were the most beautiful boats ever built and that they would never be seen again on the river. It wasn't great literature, but I loved it.
M/0: Did you ever take the Clearwater to the Great Lakes to protest the pollution there?
Seeger: No, the hull is not suitable, and the mast is too tall and heavy. In 1970 we took the Clearwater to Washington, D.C. The hull groaned and creaked and big waves washed over the boat, so we decided after that to use it only in the river.
M/0: But didn't the Clearwater go up to the Seabrook Nuclear Plant last June?
Seeger: Yes, but only after a great debate over Clearwater's role. Some people felt we should stick to cleaning up the Hudson. Well, the Clearwater did go, but it could only get within a mile or two of the plant. Mind you, it was not a blockade; rather, more of a public relations move. I went up separately and sang at two concerts with Jackson Browne.
The fascinating thing was that we were able to hold on to this coalition between local folk at Seabrook and the anarchists, gays, and whatnot from Boston and other places who wanted to stop the nuclear plant. I tell you that the world can be saved by people who fight for their own homes. The only weakness here is that they may not see far enough over the horizon. When I got up there to Seabrook, I realized that the other side of the coin is just as true. Our homes are going to be saved by people who fight for the world. So my motto for the last two years has been "The world will be saved by people fighting for their homes. Homes will be saved by people who fight for the world."
M/0: Do you ever think of retiring and making the Clearwater your home?
Seeger: I don't know. There are too many things to do on land. Yet, if I could persuade my wife, Toshi, it would be nice. I'm not sure two people can handle this boat, though. We'd have to adjust the rigging.
M/0: Toshi?
Seeger: It's Japanese. My wife is half Japanese.
M/0: Is that your house up there on the hill you were pointing to?
Seeger: Yes, it's a log cabin with a cinderblock barn behind it.
M/0: Do you have electricity, a telephone, and other modem conveniences?
Seeger: I'm afraid it's terribly civilized. We have a front lawn, washing machine, oil furnace, refrigerator, and a telephone that's ringing too much of the time.
M/0: Would you call yourself an ecological populist?
Seeger; Ha, ha. If I could take two or three days to define those words, I'd say yes. But without that time, I'd be cautious about saying I am. I'll be a Fifth Amendment ecologist.
M/0: Are you an outdoorsman?
Seeger: My generation isn't, really, but my children are. I look at it like this: A great many of us had ancestors who were at home in the outdoors four generations ago. Their children said, "To hell with the outdoors; I'm getting a job in town where I can make some money." Farmers who used to live up on the mountainsides had kids who went down to work in the mills. Their kids didn't know anything about the mountains. But now their kids are going out hiking. One thing I'd like your readers to realize is that they can enjoy themselves outdoors wherever they are. They don't have to go to the Rockies, the seashore, or the desert. Dig right into the outdoors at home.
M/0: Tell me, how did you get into music? Did you go to college to study it?
Seeger: I went to Harvard for two years, studying sociology. One time, during a rare chance to talk to one of my professors, I asked why he used so many long words. He said one has to impress people. Well, that was the kind of cynicism I didn't want to study, so I left there a few months later. I started looking for a job as a journalist. At that time, Alan Lomax, a young man from Texas, was put in charge of the folk song archives in Washington, D.C. He persuaded me to come down and help him. I learned some awfully good songs and never did look for an honest job again.
M/0: Why has your music been so popular for so long?
Seeger: It's just basically good music. Woody Guthrie and I said to hell with Tin Pan Alley and started singing songs that we thought were good 40 years ago. My records don't sell much, but they get around. I'm really very proud that as a musician I've lived long enough to see hundreds of young people come along who like the same kind of music I do. I've never really been a commercial musician. I make a good living, and fortunately I'm not in the bracket of the pop singers who can't go anywhere without an entourage.
M/0: Is is true you were blacklisted because of your music in the Fifties?
Seeger: Yes. It's almost axiomatic that if you have something controversial to say, especially in the entertainment business, you will suffer unemployment as a result. It's been that way since early organized human society. I learned one good thing from Paul Robeson: If you feel something strongly as a citizen, you should become involved.
Way back in 1941, after Pearl Harbor, the radio people came around and wanted Woody Guthrie and me to sing "Round and Round Hitler's Grave" on CBS network radio. Next day, the New
York World Telegram had a headline, "Commie Folk Singers Try To Infiltrate Radio." That's the last job we got. And there was the author of "This Land Is Your Land." It's the old story: You give a dog a bad name and kill it.
M/0: What environmental songs have you written?
Seeger: I made a whole record album for Columbia called God Bless the Grass. It's one of my better ones. All the songs are strictly ecological, like "Sailing up My Dirty Stream," "The Quiet Joy of Brotherhood," and so on. It's out of print now. More recently, the Clearwater organization put out two records. The People are Scratching All Over the Street and The Greater Things in the World. And I wrote some new verses to "Garbage."
Now that's an example of a song I claim to be blacklisted. It's been an underground hit for six years. I'm only one of hundreds who sing it. It's gone from one guitar picker to another, just like "This Land Is Your Land" did. People laugh over it and make up new verses. I once did it on the Today Show. I knew they'd feel funny about it so I prepared two others. They asked, "What song have you got to sing for us?" And I said, "I have a satirical song called 'Garbage.'" After I started singing, they said, "Pete, don't you think it's a little early in the morning for that?" So I sang "Walking Down Death Row." They said, "Pete, got something different?" So I sang "If Revolution Comes to My Country." They said, "Guess we better stick with 'Garbage.'" The whole studio, cameramen and all, broke up. I sang "Garbage" on the air, and they haven't asked me back recently.
You know, Plato said, "Watch music. It's a very important art form. Rulers should be careful about what songs are allowed to be sung." Andrew Fletcher said, "I don't care who writes a country's laws; I just want to know who writes a country's songs." If rulers really knew how important songs can be, they would probably have done something to Woody Guthrie and me and other people long ago.
M/0: Do you think your songs do any good?
Seeger: I have no proof at all that they do anything. Except, if I didn't think they did some good, I wouldn't still be singing them.
Anne LaBastille is the author of the book Woodswoman. She was honored in 1974 as Conservationist of the year by the World Wildlife Fund International.