July 14, 2012

Happy 100th Birthday Woody Guthrie!

This means I get to post my favorite Woody Guthrie songs!

Pastures of Plenty...





Perhaps the saddest song ever written, The Dying Miner, written about a Centralia, Illinois mining disaster.





And the best song to listen to when you visit the union cemetery in Mt. Olive Illinois.





Apart from Obama's speech, the part of the inaugural ceremonies that inspired me most was seeing the old blacklisted Pete Seeger lead the crowd in This Land is Your Land. He even included the rarely sung radical final verse.

It still gives me hope that America can move beyond the latest wave of hate-filled political movements. Not much has changed since the time that Woody sang. The forces of hate have always been with us. And they almost always lose in the end.