Yesterday the River Pool at Beacon, N.Y., held its annual swim across the Hudson. (I fetched the watermelons.) 203 or so swimmers left the dock at Newburgh at 9:30 a.m. Before they left they gathered around Pete Seeger, who picked out a phrase on his banjo then sang “This Land Is Your Land.” The swimmers sang along. I heard some of them were crying.
The song is especially appropriate because Seeger and many others saved the river over the last 30 years.
Then Seeger said, “See you on the other side!” The 89-year-old was good for his word, too. Later he was at a tent on the Beacon side, singing “This Land Is Your Land.”
I had a couple responses to it. First, Seeger told me a year back, “You know how if you throw a tennis ball against the floor, the
harder you throw it down on cement, the higher it bounces? These
horrible things in Washington will spur on the best things over the
next eight years. The greatest people will come forward.” Did that include Seeger? “Oh no, I’m going to be kicking the bucket in the
next few years.”
Second, This Land Is Your Land is a populist/nationalist song about land. The best verse is about climbing over a fence where there’s a No Trespassing sign. All these lefties are singing it. I wonder how Palestinians feel when they hear that song?
