I have felt foolish and sentimental for singing (in the privacy of my home) "And we all sang Bread and Roses" with such feeling and so many tears. But wasn't that a time!

Art: The Weavers' recording of On Top of Old Smokey had Across the Wide Missouri on the flip side (still does; I'm looking at the copy I inherited and listened to as a child). The credits list Terry Gilkyson with chorus and orchestra directed by Vic Schoen. I don't know these people, but I'm sure others do. Wimoweh was backed by Old Paint, and Gordon Jenkins did do that one.   I can't fing my 78 of Tzena Tzenaat the moment, but as I recall, it wasn't by the Weavers. I always insisted that my parents play it while I washed dishes back in 1950.

Bob & Don: You have brought back a lot of memories. That tour of Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry, and his cousin; I saw them at Reed College in Portland, with an after party at an old Victorian called The Castle. In 1955-57 I went to News Year's Eve parties at the Hull's house on Boylston in Seattle, where we sang the political songs and "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore". Red Diaper Babies all.

I got my FBI file in the '70's. Mostly it wasn't about me, but about my parents. However, to show the tenor of the times: In 1957 (McCarthy was already disgraced and out of the Senate by then) I had a discussion with my HS physics teacher about atmospheric nuclear bomb tests. I was informed by my counselor shortly there after that said teacherhad asked other teachers about my "communist thinking". So I, being an arrogant young snot, borrowed my mother's International Publishers copy ofEngels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" and read it in class for several days. It wasn't long after that that two guys in a Nash Rambler (these details are engraved on my memory) showed up at the house wanting to talk to my stepfather. They refused to talk to me or my mother, and waited in their car until stepfather cmae home. They grabbed him before he could enter the house, put his in their car,drove aroung the corner and questioned hin for an hour and a half about my politics. They identified themselves as FBI, and I was 16 years old.

I don't know about the larger picture, but I know the Weavers and all the other folk (Walt Robertson was a personal favorite) were what cemented my emotional commitment to activism (I marched in SF yesterday).   And I take very seriously the comment of Jack Miller, an old Seattle Wobbly, as quoted by Utah Phillips, to the effect that a hundred years ago guys whoowned nothing but a blanket and worked the mills or the logging camps could make personal and political commitment that lasted their whole lives, so why can't we, who have so much, do the same?