5/24/04

Hi  Friends,

I've had quite a month! The new CD is really receiving a tremendous amount of airplay around the country and  is currently number seven on the Folk DJ charts. I've had a chance to play with some good and talented friends on the Phil Ochs tour and capped it all off this weekend with a series of shows to  enthusiastic outdoor crowds in perfect summer like weather.

I don't know what's changed exactly but the songs I'm singing now seem to be striking a chord with so many folks. It's easy to forget (actually it's not so much) how varied and volatile the reaction to songs like Dragon, Minnie Lou, AmBush and Not with my Jesus was just a year ago. Maybe like all fevers the militaristic one that has gripped our nation has finally broken...

On Saturday afternoon I fully expected some serious exception to be taken by at least some in the audience when I called from stage, "Only this president could fight a war for oil and have gas prices actually go UP!"  I was truly astonished at the cheer that went up from the crowd.
 

As I type these words, Mr. Bush is on prime time TV recounting all the reasons we should continue to be afraid. All the reasons we need to rely on no one else but him for our protection. It's such an easy thing to make people fear. And these guys are perhaps as good at it as anyone has ever been.  Still, the trick gets old. It wears thin. You turn on the TV and you see the video  of the little children who were dancing at the wedding feast moments before our helicopter gunship attacked last week (As explanation for this image I actually heard an American  general say today "Bad people celebrate too!")  and you realize in an even  deeper way how these are human beings just like us. You see the picture of a naked Iraqi smeared with feces by his American captors and you come to the same realization. Human beings.  All the good and all the bad.

Sooner or later we're gonna find a new way to do this. Fear will be recognized for what it is, a tool employed by what Pete Seeger calls powerful fools. And we'll start looking for a new place to live. A place much like this world with one major exception; that with all the rich diversity of colors, cultures and creeds among its inhabitants, there'll be no "them" there.

Peace,

John