This Old Man, He Played

And he played and he played.

Continuing to play music, he celebrated his 90^th birthday earlier this month.

I returned to my old haunts and dug up an interview done in the mid 1980s during a song fest in Quito:

Please click here to listen to the 7-minute interview.

Ken: I’ve been a fan of yours for 20 years. I remember the music during Vietnam and the civil rights struggle. Do you feel that music – that 'protest music' as it was called – made any impact on policies and decisions of governments? Or was it a way to vent frustrations for those who found themselves opposed to policies?

Pete: I don’t think I could say for sure. If I didn’t think that music did something I wouldn’t still be singing. I love to sing but I would rather be home with my family o n the beautiful Hudson River where I’m fortunate to live.

But I do believe songs can help pull this world together. I think of music in the broadest sense – lullabies and love songs, and various sorts of hymns and serious songs, blues and laments.

It’s hard to say though exactly what effect they have. Of course one can go into history and find people saying they have an effect. Plato is supposed to have said way back . . . he’s the old Greek philosopher … that it would be very dangerous for the wrong kind of music to be used in the republic. It could destroy the republic.

Here’s my favorite - not original with Pete. He set it to music 50 years ago though.

A video version

Text is here.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time for every purpose under heaven.

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep.

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together.

A time of war, a time of peace
A time of love, a time of hate
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing.

Turn, Turn, Turn.

Turned 90 on May 3. Pete Seeger.

Everybody at the Gate

Everybody, it seems, wants to be a gatekeeper of the information flow in our modern world of communications.

Gatekeepers. The term has been long used to describe those who determine what we read, hear and view in the media.

In Venezuela a small earthquake injured no one, but ignited a war of words between President Hugo Chavez and Globovision. Whose story was it? Charge and countercharge were flung, becoming aftershocks that eclipsed the quake itself.

Enemies at the gate: Globovision and a Latin American head of state vying for control.

Meanwhile, Irish student Shane Fitzgerald pushed on the info gate only to watch it swing wide open. His fabricated news content clocked the speed that info travels and revealed fact-checking failures in the news industry. With news of the death of French composer Maurice Jarre, Fitzgerald crafted a Jarre quote and submitted it to the online, crowd-sourced Wikipedia.

Wikipedia editors wisely removed the quote, as it lacked attribution. When Fitzgerald placed it a few more times, the hoax quote was picked up and used by mainstream media outlets around the world.

Everyman (and everywoman) at the gate.

And the traditional gatekeepers – the mainstream media? Asleep at the gate. A seemingly innocuous incident, but packing a powerful punch: image stands taller than the reality.

Another weakness of the mainstream media – its disconnect with its audiences – is chronicled in Frank Rich’s recent editorial. Rich also defends however, the traditional media as any society’s best champion against tyranny. Then he delivers a sobering reality: we get the information we’re willing to pay for.

It is far easier to mail “the sky is falling” messages in e-mail or spread them virally in newer ways. (These can and should be verified before forwarding by checking snopes.com or other reputable sites.)

The sky falling and the sky's the limit. Gatekeepers galore and infinite information. And all free! (And so much is worth exactly that.)

When critical content is needed, we need to know what price we'll pay to know what is true.

Where The Wall Tells All

Bouquets: Beauty, Bargain, Blessing

Flowers don't cost much here. Kathy is in the right place, loving the economy AND the activity of making bouquets. She prepared these two for a special lunch today.

12 gerberas for $3.00

12 liatrice for 80 cents

1 bunch of mini carnations for $1.25

1 bunch of baby's breath for $1.25

12 hypericum for $1.25

Can't beat that!!

Pile Your Rubbish Here

Pastor Bob & I had purchased the Cipro for his wife, who'd picked up a tummy bug during their visit. At the corner I jerked my thumb toward Deb’s work on the walls.

“Did you see the murals?”

Bob’s response was enthusiastic as we passed under the shade of the drive-thru at the liquor store to have a look.

A year earlier, he’d seen the work of Deb’s crew at the Galapagos Islands and had loved it. Amid evolutionary theory assumed as fact, murals stand as a testimonial to the Creator.

We stood and admired the work; it wasn’t long before Bob found his own story on the wall.

“This was me, right here.”

I knew his story even though I'd only met him an hour earlier.

The artist, Xavier, had captured it all in black and white: anguish, emptiness, desperation. Bob had known what life was like without God, whom he credits with non-churchy overtures toward a personal relationship. Like spoiling a drug deal at Bob’s lowest point, for example.

In the next panel, Jenny had artfully showed crowds playing with the wrong “toys.”

“Oh and look over there; people at the cross,” Bob gushed. He credits God with rescuing his marriage and bringing his family back.

We headed up the hill, Bob saw to his wife, and we drank a cup of coffee together.

“I better go,” I said.

“You need to? I could talk about Jesus all day.”

I really think he could have.

The next day I thought “oh, what a shame” when I saw garbage piled on the sidewalk in front of the murals. But the symbolism rushed in quickly:

Pile your rubbish here.

Right here.

At the foot of the cross.

Come as you are and pile your rubbish here.

As a chorus says,

Give them all, give them all, give them all to Jesus

Shattered dreams, wounded hearts, and broken toys.

Give them all, give them all, give them all to Jesus

And He will turn your sorrows into joy.

See (and buy!) more of Deb's work.

Book Details Spiritual Journey of Captive in Colombia

Source: CBN (used with permission)

A hostage of Colombia’s notorious FARC guerrillas for nearly six years, Marc Gonsalves considers his abduction a second chance to live for Christ. In early 2003, Gonsalves, along with Tom Howes and Keith Stansell, were captured by rebels after their plane’s engine problems forced them to land in the jungles of Colombia. A Christian already, Gonsalves’ faith had become cold, however.

“I wasn’t praying anymore,” he said. “I wasn’t going to church and I still believed in God . . . but I was still lost and this brought me back to Him immediately.” The ordeal of the three hostages is chronicled in a new book, Out of Captivity. Gonsalves had given up on surviving until he felt God’s presence in the midst of his suffering.

Locked in a 6x6 box, he heard Colombian military jets dropping bombs on the camp. “I was just shaking, physically shaking, and I just called out to God to protect us,” he said. “The next morning I woke up and I felt different. I felt like He saved me again--saved my physical life, and that’s when I believed that we were going to live through that.”

With a new desire for God’s Word, Gonsalves received a Bible from another hostage. He often discussed the Bible and his faith with fellow hostage Ingrid Betancourt--a French-Colombian politician kidnapped by the FARC while running for president of Colombia in 2002. Gonsalves said he saw in her a woman of faith who was generous and humane.

Gonsalves and 14 other hostages, including Howes, Stansell and Bentancourt were rescued on July 2, 2008. Their FARC captors had been tricked into handing them over to Colombian commandos posing as aid workers. They made it home safely.

=

If you have not already heard Ray Rising tell of his 810 days of captivitity in the jungles of Colombia, here are three audio files. They aired as one complete program on HCJB-Australia in 2004 or so. Ray was held captive in the mid 1990s. Each segment runs several minutes.

=

Includes a dramatic re-creation of Ray listening to a Luis Palau Crusade broadcast in camp, a regular morning occurrence during his captivity. Please press Play for Segment A.

"Most of them (captors) were between the ages of 14 and 20, so I got to be kind of a father to them." - Ray. Please press Play below for Segment B.

"Well, Ray is on a special assignment for awhile." -Doris. Please press Play for Segment C.

When Wall Street Won't Matter

Thoughtful truths of "You Can’t Take It With You" still bubble up in our conversations after we recently saw the comedy by Kaufman and Hart. Percolating you might say, just as each “bloop” of brew came into view through the glass knob on the lid on our old-fashioned percolator.

A central character, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, dropped out – of the workforce, not high school – and is a bohemian, a “hippie” of sorts decades before anyone had used the term. He spends his days attending commencement addresses, capturing snakes for his living room terrarium or improving his dart game. Around his dinner each evening are family members, household help and hang-arounders. Their own endeavors include writing unfinished novels, reading Trotsky, and making homebrews of fireworks in the basement. The conversations are lively.


Grandpa has not worked in 35 years, and advises the same lifestyle to a tightly wound business magnate, Mr. Kirby, whose son falls in love with Mr. Vanderhof’s granddaughter. Hence Grandpa’s admonition, “You’ve got all you could want; you can’t take it with you.”


The phrase refers to an end to all earthly attachments at death. Two characters however, had fled their homeland, Russia. Likely, their posessions remained behind. Duchess Olga had lost the most, for her social standing had also been left in Russia. Now she works as a waitress.

Introduced to Grandpa’s family amid adieu and adulation, Duchess Olga Katrina gets acquainted with the family, answering their questions. Yes, she knew the czar, in fact he was her cousin. Yes, there are other royal family members in America who fled the revolution. Yes, everyone wants to know about Rasputin.

Then she graciously accepts their invitation to dinner, assuming the role of a servant. “I just love to make blintzes,” she joyously proclaims as she sweeps into the kitchen in her duchess attire. Within minutes, royalty had won the hearts of this oddball entourage at the Vanderhof home.


Can we all do as much in tougher times when we’re adjusting expectations about major purchases over the next few years or maybe our eventual retirement? Or maybe expectations about our grocery spending next month? If we live like kings (compared to much of the world, we do) we might lose status, as the duchess did.

Can we take that? Or do we take ourselves too seriously (I do. And most of us do, according to Jim’s sermon series we also attended recently.)

Another guy who ended up amidst revolutionaries and tax men, in royal courts (on trial) or breaking bread with rough-edged workers was the Apostle Paul. He wrote these lifetime priorities to friends at Philippi:
-that I may know Him
-and the power of His resurrection
-and the fellowship of His sufferings
-and be conformed to His death
-so that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

With priorities like these in place, Wall Street won’t matter and we can go to the kitchen with a smile. And never be stingy with blintzes.