Talk:Woody Guthrie

Is there a reason to use the more indirect, quasi-religious word "passing" instead of the more encyclopedic "death"?--En attendant Godot_{""We are all born mad. Some remain so."} 09:43, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

We are an indirect, quasi-religious site, not an encyclopedia? Although I see the changes have already been made... ħuman 14:38, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

a recent Woody moment

I don't know if this is considered proper use of this space, but since nothing else has been posted here in 7 years, I figure, "poke it and see what happens." This was a not-long-ago Facebook posting of mine:

I was at a concert recently at the Sun Bowl, a free, outdoor venue frequently featuring “tribute” shows and while it is my intention to do a blog elsewhere about these shows my posting today is more in the nature of a rant. “Rant” being defined as something that I know that I should not say but am going to anyway. It also means that this is a great place for folks not looking for blatant OPINION to stop reading.

The show was nominally a Peter, Paul & Mary tribute but the band, the three a singers and a stand-up bass player, did play some other songs too. So right at the end of the show one of them announced that “We lost Pete Seeger recently.” and then they launched into “This Land is Your Land”. a song no doubt Seeger played many times, but that was in fact written by Woody Guthrie. And more than half of the 7 or 8 thousand or so people in the audience leapt to their feet and clapped and sang along and I felt a huge wave of sadness wash over me as I looked out and thought, “Do these folks, most of whom are very conservative, know that this song was written by a communist?” And what would they make of the verse, not sung that night, that went:

*There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn't say nothing;
This land was made for you and me.

Because although this concert was free and held in a large outdoor setting, if you were caught there without your Sun City RCSC Privilege Card you would be escorted out by a nearest Sun City Posse member. When this was announced over the PA system it garnered one of the biggest applauses of the night. And I got to thinking (perhaps “feeling” would be a better word) that really these folks were singing “This land is My land . . . . ..This land was made for Me.” It just seemed like some sort of sign of the times and I did not like what I was reading on the sign. But since, like Woody’s sign, the other side was blank , it might not be too late to write something there for all of us.
Carptrash (talk) 17:30, 19 April 2015 (UTC)