Shopsmith Forums

Gene Howe wrote:Greetings from sunny and warm Tucson.
Took the grandkids to see the big rodeo parade yesterday. Estimated that there were 250 K spectators. Glad we had grandstand seats reserved. It’s supposed to be the largest non motorized parade in the country. To give you a hint of the flavor of the celebration: The Sherriff’s posse men’s vocal group sang all of Frankie Laine’s greatest hits and a bunch of the Sons of the Pioneers songs.
Saw every Miss…..whatever…. in the state, almost every marching band that had a bus, and hundreds of horses and riders and horses pulling coaches, wagons and sulkies. Percherons and Clydesdales, Pintos and Paso Finos, paints and palominos… lots of horses. It was quite a spectacle.

Later today, Phyllis and I are headed to Green Vally to visit with Paul and Elinor Miller (Shipwright) then, back here to mask doors and windows on son’s new garage. We’ll get the first coat of primer on tomorrow.

See ya’ll Monday, probably. Have a fun weekend everyone.

Glad to hear of a good time had by all.

Also glad to see you were smart enough to steer clear of unowho!:D

If you get this in time, say 'Howdy' to Paul!

To make a long story short, it's been a very rough couple of months for my business. But this evening I finally got some good news, and found myself actually singing to my dog while heating up some yummy (really) leftovers for dinner at about 10:00 PM, after the wife and kids had turned in for the night.

For some reason, the tune I sang to the dog was "Where have all the flowers gone?". The dog liked it well enough, but I couldn't remember who the 60's artist was, having been a mere pup myself at that time. I just had a dim recollection that it was a war protest song.

So I Googled it, and discovered that Pete Seeger was the artist. Watched a couple YouTube videos, and discovered that he also did Guantanamera, which brought back some very fond memories of a newlywed Carribean vacation with the LOML.

Now here's the freaky part. Seeger died late yesterday, at age 94. Right about the time that I started singing one of his songs, that had not crossed my mind for years, to my dog.

Supernatural forces aside, I'm curious what you Vietnam-era guys think of Seeger. To me, I just remember liking the music on the radio, without much understanding of the message behind the lyrics. To you guys five or ten years older, I'd bet that there is a visceral reaction, one way or the other.

It would be enlightening to hear your thoughts and feelings.

Edit: Oops .. not so freaky after all. it seems that Pete Seeger died on Jan 27, not Feb 27. So much for keeping up with the news cycle ...

I'll be 73 in April and did my stint in the AF from '59 to 65.
Though Seeger's political views were and are abhorrent to me, I thoroughly enjoyed his music. Still do.
Gustav Stickley was a socialist/progressive. Didn't keep him from designing and making beautiful furniture. It did doom his business model, however.

Although his timing was appropriate to the Vietnam debacle, I do not think he was specifically targeting that 'war'.

I rather think he was more generic, and in that context we should pay heed.

Yes I enjoyed the music independent of any anti-war 'message'.



No one can argue that creating a war makes any sense. Trying to prevent them does. Fighting fire with fire does not make sense in this context.

Nor can one ignore belligerent actions!

Naive, inattentive, uninvolved, may fairly accurately describe my depth of discernment back then....and probably still.

To me, Seeger's music didn't seem particularly anti war. No more so than the general population, anyway. He would be probably more aptly characterized as "anti violence". I'm with him there. But his adherence to communism was very evident in many of his lyrics. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer", are two that come to mind.

In a 1995 interview he stated: "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it." For me, that statement takes a bit of reflection and pondering to fully comprehend.
Seeger seemed to be a good and gentle soul and, would have probably been a fun guy with which to converse and debate.

Gene Howe wrote:Naive, inattentive, uninvolved, may fairly accurately describe my depth of discernment back then....and probably still.

To me, Seeger's music didn't seem particularly anti war. No more so than the general population, anyway. He would be probably more aptly characterized as "anti violence". I'm with him there. But his adherence to communism was very evident in many of his lyrics. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", "If I Had a Hammer", are two that come to mind.

In a 1995 interview he stated: "I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it." For me, that statement takes a bit of reflection and pondering to fully comprehend.
Seeger seemed to be a good and gentle soul and, would have probably been a fun guy with which to converse and debate.

Sounds like something from an open minded self honest independent thinking person to me. Apparently we are soul mates, as it took 0 time to reflect upon that and understand it!]Sorta[/U] like our government is not really a democracy either.(think republic!) And we send people to congress to 'represent' us.

Most folks do need time to reflect upon unusual positions on things we are preconditioned to consider differently. We need individuals to shake us out of our complacent ruts occasionally.


FWIW: This year is my maiden voyage with Medicare Plan D. The fine print re what initial period expenses are constitutes a scam as far as I am concerned. Why should the insurance companies 'out of pocket expenses' contribute to my initial period calculation that takes me to the 'donut hole' several times faster than my own. Or do I not understand it correctly?

Yes I changed the subject, but this IS potpourri.

[quote="JPG40504"]
FWIW: This year is my maiden voyage with Medicare Plan D. The fine print re what initial period expenses are constitutes a scam as far as I am concerned. Why should the insurance companies 'out of pocket expenses' contribute to my initial period calculation that takes me to the 'donut hole' several times faster than my own. Or do I not understand it correctly?

Yes I changed the subject, but this IS potpourri.]

The rules and regs surrounding Part D were written and enacted by the fine politicos we elected to mandate our lives from fantasy land (DC). I suspect they wanted to be certain we have to pay twice for our benefits. Then again it could be another way to pay back those who provide big dollars for re-elections. (These thoughts offered by one who has become highly suspicious of anything designed or enacted by those in DC.)

Re: "Where Did All the Flowers Go?" was not only about wars, but the strife of Martin Luther King and other leaders and young folks being killed in our streets and in the war. The song was inclusive regarding all the strife in our country and the world. While I did and do not subscribe to his beliefs, the song was used by many folks that I knew at the time (teachers, parents, grandparents, civic leaders, etc.) were opposed to the Viet Nam war. If you'll remember that France pulled out of the country in about 1954/5. President Eisenhower put in military advisors in 1957. If you see the Viet Nam Wall Memorial, in the upper left corner of the left panel, you'll see the dates of those listed started in 1958. President Kennedy retained the Eisenhower policy and many folks thought that Kennedy would remove the troops as the Cuban missile crises heated up. It was a plan cooked up by Admiral Keth and President LB Johnson that initiated the war. I was about to graduate from high school in 1964 when LBJ took the Keth lie to the Congress to initiate the war. Admiral Keth called the red phone of the president, stated that a destroyer sitting about 8 or 9 miles was attacked by the Viet Cong. I don't remember the name of the ship, but from 4 years active service in the Navy at that time, no log entries in the ship log regarding any such attack. It was never sent to the yards for refurbishing from the pseudo attack. When Admiral Walter Zumwalt came to be the admiral of the 7th fleet in 1969, he had Admiral Keth removed. I went to the front lines on USS Neches, highlined to the USS America, Dec. 6, 1968 and finished that cruise. Then in 1970, spent all year on Yankee Station except when the USS Pueblo was taken in N. Korea. We formed a task force and went to S. Korea as a show of force. We were the flag ship and show the dignitaries some of the hardward and showed the weapons. Bombs dropped from a A-6 Intruder pulled up a wall of water. 20mm rounds from an A-7 Crusader pulled up another wall of water. A missile launched to kill a drone overhead was impressive. When the Russians sent out there Bearcats, they were greeted with 2 F-4's from our decks. As the Russians flew over, we gave the single finger salute.

I have some of this recorded in my two cruise books. I hope this helps the question about the song.

swampgator wrote:Re: "Where Did All the Flowers Go?" was not only about wars, but the strife of Martin Luther King and other leaders and young folks being killed in our streets and in the war. The song was inclusive regarding all the strife in our country and the world. While I did and do not subscribe to his beliefs, the song was used by many folks that I knew at the time (teachers, parents, grandparents, civic leaders, etc.) were opposed to the Viet Nam war. If you'll remember that France pulled out of the country in about 1954/5. President Eisenhower put in military advisors in 1957. If you see the Viet Nam Wall Memorial, in the upper left corner of the left panel, you'll see the dates of those listed started in 1958. President Kennedy retained the Eisenhower policy and many folks thought that Kennedy would remove the troops as the Cuban missile crises heated up. It was a plan cooked up by Admiral Keth and President LB Johnson that initiated the war. I was about to graduate from high school in 1964 when LBJ took the Keth lie to the Congress to initiate the war. Admiral Keth called the red phone of the president, stated that a destroyer sitting about 8 or 9 miles was attacked by the Viet Cong. I don't remember the name of the ship, but from 4 years active service in the Navy at that time, no log entries in the ship log regarding any such attack. It was never sent to the yards for refurbishing from the pseudo attack. When Admiral Walter Zumwalt came to be the admiral of the 7th fleet in 1969, he had Admiral Keth removed. I went to the front lines on USS Neches, highlined to the USS America, Dec. 6, 1968 and finished that cruise. Then in 1970, spent all year on Yankee Station except when the USS Pueblo was taken in N. Korea. We formed a task force and went to S. Korea as a show of force. We were the flag ship and show the dignitaries some of the hardward and showed the weapons. Bombs dropped from a A-6 Intruder pulled up a wall of water. 20mm rounds from an A-7 Crusader pulled up another wall of water. A missile launched to kill a drone overhead was impressive. When the Russians sent out there Bearcats, they were greeted with 2 F-4's from our decks. As the Russians flew over, we gave the single finger salute.

I have some of this recorded in my two cruise books. I hope this helps the question about the song.

Thanks for sharing your story. That is the kind of uncensored history that would certainly never have made it into any textbook when I was a kid.

I've read that there is an ancient Chinese curse that translates as "May you live in interesting times". The 60's certainly were interesting times. I mostly just observed them as a youngster, including exchanging letters and the little reel-type audio tapes with a favorite uncle in Vietnam, watching Walter Cronkite on the nightly news, and reading Newsweek cover to cover from a very early age.

I didn't realize what an impressive guy my uncle was until his funeral ... he wouldn't talk to me about the war after it was over. His first tour he served as a infantry platoon leader and received a Purple Heart, thankfully for a minor wound. Then he volunteered for a second tour as a gunship pilot, and received a DFC for an above-and-beyond-the-call flight to help out a pinned-down infantry unit. I saw the citation after the funeral, and apparently he had to hose a whole tree-line full of VC to rescue our troops. He would never tell me the story while he was alive.

So I've always carried a bit of guilt for never having served. My older brother was three years ahead of me in school, and his graduating class was the first one from which no one was drafted. My class, '76, was the first one that never even had to register. The all-volunteer army was just an experiment then. I understand that it has worked out very well.

Interesting that the Vietnam war is coming up here.

I have a childhood friend and he and I were emailing back and forth trying to catch up a little after (after a long while). We had just got to the draft and how and when and where. He got his draft papers and joined the Navy and was able to keep out of the conflict.... me I was drafted and spent a year in country.

Now I know this is going to sound a bit strange to some of you but my 8th grade class consisted of 4 boy and 4 girls, yep just 8 of us. I'd not kept in contact with anyone until one of the other guys contacted me. He had moved out west between our junior and senor years. So as we were catching up I found that one of the other 4 of us had moved to Canada to avoid the draft. I hadn't know that. The other guy we have no knowledge of. So we are now trying to contact the guy in Canada, I think he got squared away with the government here but who knows.

Those were interesting time.

Ed