It is a heady feeling to go after a miscreant with a big stick to lambaste him to your satisfaction.  It is another satisfying feeling to skewer that miscreant with a salty song that can get everybody singing it at the same time.  Mr. Roosevelt was a President long ago and Mr. Seeger still is a symbol for the same kind of exposing chicanery and disloyal activities on the part of self-serving so-called "patriots".

You have to know how to read in order to relive the history of the first Roosevelt's hegemony as President of these not yet 50 States.  Back in Roosevelt's time the West was still not part of the U.S. and certainly not Alaska land Hawaii.  During that time, Pete Seeger grew up in a singing family that adopted causes that could be exposed by singing good songs about a good and better U.S.

One of Pete Seeger's projects was to try to clean up the Hudson River by being the force behind building a sailing sloop that once was common on that river.  It was called the Clearwater and harkened back to simpler times and the work that had to be done to clean up the river after the big factories lining it were finally stopped from dumping into it.  Those factories never were made to be part of the clean up - that was then and this was now. It was left up to Seeger and his banjo.

It was the business of all of us to clean up the messes that dirtied America.  Yet, the filthy rich protected their gains by living in an America that made it possible for them to become the wealthy few.  How many of them contributed to the cleaning up of that river and the other ugly leavings of unfettered Capitalism felt its privilege to do as it pleased?  Not many.  How many joined in the singing of the songs that exposed the magnates and their wannabees to become rich while the poor became poorer?  Not any to my knowledge.  The class division persists.

T. Roosevelt spoke softly and carried a big stick.  He managed to become what was called the first Progressive President.  Unfortunately he went on to head something he called the Bull Moose Party and lost out to the Democrats and Republicans.  The time of the 19^th Century Populists was over and its work was left to the folk singers who sang with gusto and exposed the sad bad practices that made the Hudson filthy. Today the Hudson has fish living in it once again.  The Clearwater sails up and down as a living advertisement of what can be done by song and by story.

My story as part of this tale was the time I lived on Sandy Hook with the Sea Ventures group.  The Clearwater stopped by.  I got on it and by chance the fellow at the tiller said, "Hold this, I'll be back".  So, I steered the Clearwater and did my bit.