PETE SEEGER’S SPIRIT SAILS ON
Last month the body of Pete Seeger, environmentalist and so many other good things, died. In the Water Closet and elsewhere our hero’s spirit sails on. In 1966, he, good wife Toshi, and others founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. in an effort to clean up their river, the mighty but then filthy Hudson. The founders were certainly bucking the political and economic tides of the time. It was in the decade before President Nixon signed the Clean Water Act. Others had given up on the Hudson, long an industrial dump. The environmental group ordered a wooden sloop built in the old way from Harvey Gamage of Maine. In 1969 his beauty, christened Clearwater, was launched and sailed to her new homeport in Poughkeepsie on the Hudson.
Pete’s story of leading many great causes is almost as well known as his songs.1 The older Closeteers remember first hearing him as part of the Weavers in the 1950s singing Leadbelly’s ballad “Irene Good Night”. A Howard Johnson restaurant and ice cream parlor then in Salisbury’s center was an evening hangout for high schoolers. One Closeteer and friends dropped nickels in the jukebox over and over in hopes of seeing Irene “in their dreams”. How quaint the words nickel and jukebox sound 60 years later. Weavers’ songs and thousands of others are now available in many teens’ pockets.
Water Closet for 2-7-14; Casco Bay Yarns
In January Red Caulfield, a friend of the Steam Team, loaned us a little book entitled Casco Bay Yarns by Williams Haynes.1 Red has a knack for finding gems about Yankee lore that probably few have ever read. None ever made bestseller lists, but we like ‘em. Red...Our Sponsors
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MST WINTER FAMILY HIKE
Well while some were home getting ready for the game, 33 of us “hardy folks” ventured out to explore a remote location only accessible under the right conditions. A little rain and winter conditions isn’t enough to keep our thirst for knowledge and...A GREAT STATE WITHOUT ENOUGH WATER
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In this weeks Water Closet, we provide personal insights about an old friend, William “Billy” Packer and a review of his book “Fisherman’s Call”. Packer was an outstanding fisherman in the 70’s and 80’s specializing in harpooning blue fin tuna, a very valuable and prized fish both then and now. He had an epiphany at about age 40 which transformed him from a fisherman into and avid environmentalist. Packer became a preacher, teacher and guru for the environmentalist cause which he has dedicated almost half his life to. In 2011, he published “Fisherman’s Call” describing his early life as a fisherman and his transformation into an environmentalist. I think the article makes for interesting reading.