Lyr Add: What's Happening Now - Jay Feldman (2025

Subject: Lyr Add: What's Happening Now - Jay Feldman (2025
From: GUEST,Rick Pollay
Date: 16 Feb 25 - 01:37 PM

Dick Holdstock put this in circulation a few days ago among some West Coast folks on behalf of Jay Feldman. As another elder, it resonates so strongly with me that I want to spread it around far and wide. Woody Guthrie would be highly pleased, I am sure.

WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY - by Jay Feldman
tune: Woody Guthrie's “The Biggest Thing That Man has Ever Done”

I'm 81 years old and I have seen some stuff go down
I've seen some mighty troubles in my lifetime come around
I’ve watched some awful dreadful things but honestly I say
I never thought that I would see what's happening today.

I witnessed Joe McCarthy try to bring this country low
“are you now, or have you ever been”—that was an ugly show
Was it just a rarity, an aberrant display,
or was it more a portent of what’s happening today?

I saw them shoot the president and then his brother too
Cheney Schwerner Goodman were also but a few
Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King were Martyrs, they
but could this be the worst of all, what’s happening today?

We had the war in Vietnam, that was an awful time
I saw a million slaughtered, no reason and no rhyme.
so many died for no good cause, and why was that okay?
another time another place: what's happening today

And after that came Watergate, as you no doubt recall
I saw a sitting president and then I watched him fall
He lied and cheated all of us, they made him go away
yet now we have another one, it's happening today

But we survived the worst of times, democracy prevailed
yes on we went and through it all our ship of state it sailed
so if we pull together now we might have cause to say
that we can stop and turn around what's happening today.

and if we can prevent the worst from turning into grief
despite the heartless actions of the criminal-in-chief
then we might keep our country yet from going far astray
And we can turn the page on this, what’s happening today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWRB8jlfL1A