We the Powerful
2007-11-19
It's probably not Election Day as you are reading this, but chances are that you have already voted today, multiple times. Not because you engaged in election fraud, but because you engaged in consumption. Chances are, you paid a bill, filled up your tank with gas, or just picked up a bottled beverage at the corner store. So you made your voice heard.
Really? Well, yes. In our imperfect democracy, it often feels as though our voices are not being heard (didn't we clearly say on the last election day that we wanted to end the war?), yet in our imperfect capitalist economy, we are constantly stating preferences for the kind of world we want to live in, whether we mean to or not. And because of this, each of us has more power than we are willing to acknowledge. Each of us has more responsibility than we are willing to fully inhabit..
A Meditation on Corn (originally published in the "KIDS Can Make a Difference" newsletter
2006-12-30
My 14 month-old son loves corn on the cob. Just plain kernel corn is OK, but the fresh sweet summer stuff, lightly steamed with no butter required, where a good amount of baby effort, enthusiasm, and tooth power is required to strip clean an ear -- that's his favorite. Whole, fresh, local, requiring a little work?as with so much else, maybe he's onto something here.
The season for corn has passed here in the northeast, but it still takes up a fair amount of my thoughts, given that my thoughts, when they are not consumed by family or career, are often turned to our dysfunctional food system. Corn is at the crux. Please feel free to double-check my facts or question my oversimplification, but I'd like to freely meditate on corn for a bit, to follow it on a journey.
To the sadza (stiff "mealie meal" porridge) that makes up the staple of every meal in Zimbabwe, to the polenta that is enjoyed in Italy, to the high fructose corn syrup that sweetens most of our juices and sodas in the States, corn is now everywhere. Yet maize is indigenous only to Mesoamerica, where it was domesticated many millennia ago from a wild variety much less tender and more tiny than the varieties we know today. Many centuries before American pop music and movies took over the world, this grain became the original vanguard of globalization. In weight terms, its worldwide production now exceeds that of any other grain.
Today, we "harvest poverty" in corn's Central American birthplace by mercilessly subsidizing and "free" trading corn into markets where local farmers simply can't compete. So where once a Mexican farmer could feed his family with tortillas grown on his own small plot, and have some left over to sell in the local market, now American corn is sold there at a price below his costs. He is forced off his land, to enter the crowded and exploitative urban wage economy, or perhaps to illegally immigrate to the States.
There he might be a migrant worker, harvesting fruits and vegetables (but not the corn whose heavily mechanized, grand scale production is part of its unnatural cheapness) and barely eking out a living. Or perhaps he works in a slaughterhouse or meat packing plant, preparing beef -- beef that was made fat in its short life by an unnatural diet of corn. It is the corn fed to cows in manure-covered feed lots that makes their ruminant stomachs so vulnerable to infection, necessitating huge doses of antibiotics to keep them alive and growing. It is the corn-fed cows whose stomachs are especially hospitable to e coli, which passes from their bodies into the groundwater, later appearing on the spinach which caused such an alarming outbreak of illness earlier this year.
Perhaps this worker earns enough to bring his family north, where his kids assimilate into the new American childhood of too little activity and too much processed junk food -- especially to those products that are sweetened by irresistibly cheap and ubiquitous high-fructose corn syrup. Obesity, diabetes, or perhaps just a shortened attention span and heightened behavior problems are the outcomes of this strange diet. While once this family lived off the land and had immediate access to fresh produce, however limited, now they have proximity only to gas station "convenience" stores and an unhealthy food lifestyle that is irresponsibly marketed to kids of all incomes and backgrounds.
Corn -- genetically-engineered into pesticide resistant superbreeds, grown on endless acres of mono-culture nutrient-depleted fields, heavily doused with petroleum-derived fertilizer; perverting policy decisions of even the most well-meaning legislator and trade representative; erasing the livelihoods of small farmers across the world and close to home; too plentiful, too cheap, too malleable into useless sugar and starch and cattle fodder.. Wherever we follow it, we see tragedy and waste. Yet it doesn't need to be that way, and it simply can't be that way for much longer.
Anyone who is reading this newsletter doesn't need to be reminded that our food system is not working: food is too cheap on its face, but the hidden costs are taking their toll on economic justice, our immigration system, our environment, our health, our foreign policy and our energy supply. Convenience, quickness, cheapness, and sweetness are not always the answer. Instead, we can labor over the blossoming of food security and sovereignty that is happening at the grassroots across the world. Let's put a little work and thought into it and enjoy the process -- we do know how.
For solutions and more information, check out: www.worldhungeryear.org/fslc
Sometimes I hate songwriting.. (the making of "Let it Show")
2006-04-18
Sometimes I hate songwriting. Well, most times I hate songwriting. The process makes me feel like I am hitched up to an IV giving me a slow drip of lethargy, numbness and self-pity. And here I was again, staring into space with an empty notebook in front of me and a guitar and Wurlitzer piano at arms length, untouched. It was a perfect summer day, and I wanted to be doing anything but this. But I had pledged to myself that I would write one more song to bring into the studio. I was just about to start recording a new album with my band, and the studio dates were about two weeks away.
Another, more significant, deadline was looming: I was about 6 weeks away from the projected birthday of my first child. We knew he was going to be a boy. Most times it was hard to think of anything else but him, whoever he was.
little man, little man, I can see
you are not such a mystery to me
little questions, little highs, little lows, in a row
senses overflow
With a few lines of lyric, it was time to find some chords and/or a melody. My fingers went to something on the guitar neck that sounded pretty interesting and different (turned out later it was just a trusty old C major chord) and I plucked out some notes and started to sing.
Nothing really exciting so far. It was all so depressing, and I wanted to take a nap. It would be nice to blame my tiredness and bad mood on the pregnancy, but that had been the easy part. I had felt fine and energetic thoughout - it was just the condition of being a songwriter that made me sluggish. I went to the other room and lay down on the bed, gazing at the cherry dresser against the wall.
will you be bumpy like a pine cone?
cover your soft heart, try to be alone?
will you be smooth like sanded timber?
woodgrain winding, graceful and limber?
During my first date with my record label, the head of the company Al Cafaro shared with me his music business mantra: "Authenticity -- Discovery - Ownership." Create something real, let it come to the people organically, and then they consider it their own. I liked that word "authenticity" - it was certainly something I always strived for.
I've been thinking of this way-processed world
of authenticity and the one thing you should know -
is find your joy and let it show
Maceo Duva Crump was born on September 2nd, 2005, and he is indeed a joyful boy. Most of his gestation and the first 5 months of his life have had the creation of my album "Ready" as its soundtrack, and his song "Let it Show" was the hardest for me to make and the easiest for me to listen to.
(originally published 4/06 in "Hot Mom's Club" magazine)
Here are the symptoms of a food system that is sick..
2006-04-02
(a recent note to my fellow board members at WHY)
Dear Board Members,
In light of ongoing strategic planning discussions about our mission and programs, I would like to offer my perspective on WHYs work and how it has evolved over the years.
All of you know that WHYs approach to the problems of hunger and poverty has always been holistic. From the beginning, we have aimed to understand and address the root causes of hunger and poverty and thus have taken into account the political, economic, social, environmental and other factors that interact to result in such a tragic and unnecessary blight on society. Nationally and internationally, we have explored the realms of agriculture, education, housing, health care, nutrition, wages, civil rights, all levels of policy and governance, etc. We have aligned with a wide spectrum of anti-hunger organizations, academics, policy makers, media and businesses, and have always sought to humbly learn as much as we can from them while also sharing what we know.
An early teacher to [my dad and WHY co-founder] Harry and [current Executive Director Bill Ayres] Bill was author/activist Frances Moore Lappe, whose groundbreaking book Diet for a Small Planet presented the compelling idea that our personal food choices are connected to the overall food system and the health of the planet. Today, WHY is an important leader in the Food Security movement that has taken up the challenge of transforming the overall food system so that it better serves poor people and us all, at home and abroad. We are looking at big questions like food aid and free trade, smaller questions like how we make individual choices as consumers and citizens that affect our health, markets, and the food system, and everything in between.
Food system, food security -- What do they mean? Anyone who reads the news these days knows that we are in the middle of expanding epidemics of obesity, diabetes and related health problems. We also know about the disappearance of family farms and the relentless consolidation of food production and wonder whether it is only nostalgia for times past that makes this seem tragic. These problems disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable that are WHYs primary concern. However, just as WHY has always insisted that hunger and poverty affect us all, we are now increasingly seeing that the sickness that afflicts our food system and threatens our food security is something none of us can fully escape from, whatever our privilege and income levels.
Here are the symptoms of a food system that is sick:
- epidemics in the mostly avoidable afflictions of obesity, type-2 diabetes, and heart disease, especially among children.
- a society where a convenience store offers food that is not only non-essential, but most often dangerous. In rural and inner-city neighborhoods across the country, the most accessible food is heavily processed and packaged and packed with sugar, salt and fat; in bodegas, gas stations, and strip-mall delis. What if it were convenient and appealing to buy fresh vegetables and fruits?
- middle and high-income kids whose parents, despite their education and income, feel outmatched by the ubiquitous marketing that presents colorful, cartoon-character adorned sugary products as being food
- low-income kids whose families lack the resources, education and transportation to buy nutritious food: vegetables, fruit, unprocessed meats, whole-grain breads and cereals, etc..
- an agricultural system that pays corporate farmers to make more of what is not needed, necessitating the creation of new uses for commodities like corn. High-fructose corn syrup was invented decades ago in response to agricultural surpluses and now appears in the majority of so called fruit juices, other beverages, and snack foods. Sugar, like gas, has been made irresistibly cheap by government subsidies beyond what an actual free market would dictate, and is therefore forced into more and more products.
- local small farmers from Mali to Mexico to Massachusetts being unable to compete with corporitized, heavily mechanized agricultural products from the US and Europe thanks to so-called free-trade policies. Therefore we have a Mexican farmer, who once fed his family with tortillas from his own farm and sold the excess in the local market at a real price, going head to head with American subsidized corn where there is no chance to compete. He loses his land and is forced into a depressed wage economy and possibly is forced to illegally immigrate to the US. Poverty and dependency has been harvested where there was sustainability and self-reliance. Who benefits from this series of events?
- the mass-marketed exportation of our bad food habits and products to the rest of the world --
- an average American meal that travels 1500 miles from farm to plate. The story of this meal is one of huge expenditures of fuel for mechanized agriculture and transportation by air and truck and in petroleum-based and
Growing Up With Hunger
2005-09-21
I grew up with hunger. Not that I was ever deprived of nutritious food, or was raised in one of the millions of families that have to make those impossible budgeting choices between rent, medicine, and fresh vegetables. No, rather I was raised as the child of two hunger-fighting activists in a home where the issue was never far from our family consciousness. My mother Sandy is an educator, businesswomman and poet, who while raising 5 children has always been involved in one community effort or another for the arts, civil rights, peace and justice. My father Harry was a performing songwriter who used his public profile and indomitable energy to raise awareness, money and political will for a variety of progressive causes. They were united in the belief that individuals and small committed groups of people can make an impact in improving their communities, and both saw hunger as the fundamental issue of our time.
In the 70s, I was a little girl, and we were all learning. My dad dove into books by the experts, coming to understand that (as Frances Moore Lapp? would later write): hunger was not caused by a scarcity of food but rather by a scarcity of democracy. Harry effectively lobbied for the creation of a Commission on World Hunger under President Carter and, with that group of legislators and citizens, learned more?and started pressing for action. In 1975, after a series of in-depth conversations with his friend Bill Ayres, they started WHY (World Hunger Year). My mother was a guiding force, constantly asked the probing questions of what does and does not make sense in this world, and pointing toward innovative solutions. My older sister Jaime spent her 16th summer working in a hospital for malnourished kids in Haiti and studied issues of Latin American poverty and development in college, while a brother Jono did a post-college bike tour to work on organic farms up and down the east coast. My dad died in 1981, but by the time I was in high school, hunger-fighting heroes like Frankie Lapp? and Larry Brown were as well known to me as pop stars, benefits were as regular as soccer games, and questioning the utility of trade vs. aid or domestic farm subsidies were part of my adolescent wonderings.
Hunger was one thing ? though intellectually understood, it was still an abstraction, even as conditions in America brought it increasingly closer to home. Food was another. After-school friends would complain about the lack of sweet and salty snack options in our fridge, but we had plenty. Yet real food was also abstract in its way. My dad was in and out at all hours and ate accordingly. He would spout statistics about nutrition, pesticides, and industrial agriculture, make quips about the high plastic content of junk food, and then wolf down a greasy sandwich or sugared snack cake. For my mom, with 5 kids, two constantly-ringing phone lines and multiple manic schedules, food was definitely more about necessity than carefully-selected ingredients, gourmet cooking or settled family time. She would affectionately quote her own father saying, of his own lack of interest in food: "I eat to live, I don't live to eat." She took this as her own mantra, paying homage to Calvinist roots and the tacit warning that too much attention to food would be a decadent waste of time and effort. So while in the world we paid attention to how food acted as the commodity of life, death and justice, at home we treated it with the uniquely American mix of ambivalence, guilt, convenience and often, wastefulness.
At some point I left home for college and began to create my own relationship with food. I studied International Relations and learned more about the causes of hunger and poverty while discovering ethnic restaurants, the Nuyorican cooking of a Spanish Harlem-raised friend, and the procrastination-enabling potential of the University cafeteria. During my studies at Brown University and later at Berklee College of Music, meals became a bonding ritual with friends and a window into different cultures and mores. I began to appreciate flavors both wild and subtle, and to enjoy the languorous tempo of a lunch shared with a non-American. I began to shop for myself and to cook, and to think about diet and nutrition in new ways. I loved the decisions and rituals of food preparation, and I loved to eat, though it was a guilty pleasure tainted by the suspicion that I should just hurry up and get the job done ? that my time would be best spent elsewhere.
Later, I moved to New York and began working as a musician and teacher. I joined the WHY Board and became involved with KIDS Can Make a Difference. Sometime in the mid-90s Larry and Jane Levine asked if I would represent KIDS at a "Just Food" conference in Brooklyn, and I had a small epiphany over lunch when a NYC restaurateur spoke of the intrinsic value to the world of something so simple as growing and eating your own basil on the windowsill.
Patriotism is a Process... Democracy is a journey
2004-11-01
Dear friends,
A few weeks ago while on tour in the south, several of my band members and I had an afternoon off in Charlottesville Virginia, where we took the opportunity to visit Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. As we gathered outside the door for a tour of the house and gardens, the guide began her presentation by pointing out that Jefferson was a product of The Enlightenment, then went on to explain that The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the 18th century that emphasized rational thought and logic, exploration of diverse sources of information, active "free inquiry" and the exchange of ideas, and the ongoing search for discernable, discoverable truth. We went into the foyer to see artifacts from Plains Indian cultures and maps of various continents arranged on the walls. We walked through the library among its bookshelves with texts in the variety of languages Jefferson knew. We learned of Jefferson's appreciation for the varied cultural achievements of France, and of his admiration for the influential English political thinkers John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon. Scattered throughout the house was evidence of Jefferson's tireless pursuit of new knowledge and experimentation -- from music to beer brewing, from astronomy to architecture to accounting. Later, as visitors brought their individual questions to the guide, she recounted how Jefferson had extensively studied the New Testament to discern the "sublime morality" of the teachings of Jesus, while also insisting that we must "Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." My mind lit up with renewed awareness of how important all this open questioning and thinking was to the founding of our democracy, and how much these fundamental ideas are under assault today.
Just this past Wednesday, I was doing errands in midtown New York City and came across a special exhibit in Rockefeller Center. On display there was one of the original surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence primarily written by Jefferson and put out by a Philadelphia printing press over the night of July 4th, 1776. It can be an emotional experience to read the famous words again, and also to see how they have been called upon over the years to remind us of work still to be done in asserting the guarantee that "all men are created equal." Circling the glass case of the Independence document were large placards with words from Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce tribe, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, all referring to the original promise of the Declaration -- a promise we still struggle to fulfill.
This struggle for equality embraces the necessity of helping 36 million Americans who live in poverty, 45 million Americans who lack health insurance, and millions more children who suffer from unequal schooling, bad nutrition, and the merciless commercialization of childhood. This struggle knows that poverty is a kind of slavery, where people are forced to choose between one bad choice and another. This struggle confronts racism, homophobia and all bigotry once and for all. This struggle notes that we are holding over a thousand captives in Cuba without serious evidence or charge and without the protection of basic civil rights, and that we have tortured hundreds more in Iraq in the name of freedom. This struggle knows that building the rights of women is the clearest road to political and economic freedom. This struggle sees that we cannot remove dictators without doing our part to remove the conditions that enable them. This struggle works in coalitions and true partnerships. This struggle cares for the democratic aspirations of all people, not just where it is judged convenient; it looks to China, Zimbabwe, Israel-Palestine, Pakistan, Sudan, Cuba, Angola, Chechnya, Kenya, Afghanistan, Burma, Kazahkstan, Congo, North Korea, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Mexico, Iran and throughout the world to see where human rights can be supported and opened; organically, respectfully and with clarity.
As Americans, we hold the forging of new paths as a national trademark. We refuse to linger too much in the lessons and traditions of the past; and we instinctively insist on breaking new ground, on charging forward with confidence and bluster, and of letting our actions be limited only by our imaginations. This has been a source of our great achievements, as well as the root of many of our tragedies. Of course all humans are caught in the delicate balance of old and new -- of tradition and innovation -- of reverence for the elders vs. a belief that the future holds new and perhaps even better ideas. Today we have a wealth of old ideas still to explore, digest, and make our own: political documents ranging from the Babylonian King Hammurabi's Code of Laws (circa 1700s BCE, from what is now Iraq) to the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence; spiritual texts from the Old Testament to the Bhagavad Gita to the Koran. There is wisdom in all these texts -- wisdom that is only made more compelling when they are studied, dissected, argued with, and interpreted in the context of the day and with an eye to the moral evolution of humankind. In this way we can take the words of equality written by the aristocratic slaveholder Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence to mean equality for all races and classes of men and women today. And in this way progressive Koranic scholars take the Islamic pillar of jihad to mean not "holy" triumphalist war in the literal sense of mass killing, but rather the internal, eternal, reflective struggle that all people of faith must wage with themselves in the search for a righteous life.
America has built a government on religious and political values, old and new, that have inspired striving people throughout the world, but to continue being a source of inspiration and a beacon of democracy, we need to constantly refresh these ideas with candid humility and honest self-evaluation. We need to insist upon a government that respects divergent voices and rational thought over ideology and blind faith. We need to ceaselessly collect all the information we can for our use in making common-sense and just decisions, and to recognize that no one has all the answers. We need to avoid complacency with our progress but instead keep on pushing. We need to recognize that patriotism is a process, and that democracy is a long and hard journey that we are only just beginning. With this in mind, we can be a model and a helper to the hundreds of countries around the world who are on the earliest steps of this path.
Let's look at what we more or less agree upon. Whatever happens in this election, as citizens we are all faced with finding common ground in order to solve the big problems ahead of us: common ground in the shared "conservative" ideals of respecting bonds of commitment, marriage and community for all people; of protecting the family unit in all its varied forms; of holding the state to its charge of securing our civil rights and keeping it out of the businesses of private life and death; of revering the voices of our elders and ancient texts while evolving their meanings into contemporary life; of keeping our economies dynamic and creative; and of conserving the sustainability of our natural environment and resources -- and in the "liberal" wisdom of honoring work with a living wage; of seeking economic justice and access to self-sufficiency as an essential building block of freedom; of strengthening the nation and the world by empowering the disenfranchised; of expanding the civil and economic rights of all segments of society; of protecting the state from encroachment of organized religion and vice versa; of holding up the organs of commerce to high standards of accountability to the public trust; and of insisting upon a government existing by the informed consent and patriotic dissent of its citizens.
We have so many opportunities to move ourselves further along the path to democracy. Every little bit helps, and our success depends on the widest variety of perspectives, institutions, individuals and groups taking part. Some things that make a difference: Voting -- in elections big and small; standing up against bigotry; enlarging the vocabulary of political, social and religious discourse -- putting ideas into our own words; donating money to a charitable cause; cleaning up after yourself; helping to clean up a neighborhood park, parking lot, or sidewalk; conserving and recycling resources and reducing use of fossil fuels; supporting public and accessible private education; mentoring a child; listening to other perspectives and offering your own insights that go beyond the "talking points" of your political party or other group; smiling at a stranger and thanking a public servant; volunteering with a group that can use your help; learning a foreign language; thinking about pragmatic over ideological solutions to community problems; helping build an infrastructure for peace and conflict resolution instead of just infrastructures for war; learning about different countries and cultures; making art, music, poetry etc. that opens up new ideas and makes people think -- or just looks and sounds good; supporting local shops, businesses and farms; getting your news from varied sources -- going deeper than the nightly news; and asking the real questions and exploring the lessons of your religious faith for deeper answers.
In a few days (or weeks, or months), when the smoke clears, we are all going to need to reach out to each other, across the dividing lines, to see where we can go from here. The ideals of the Enlightenment have been out of favor with our current government and we are charged with the necessity of bringing them alive again. We are going to need to learn, to question, to explore, and to engage anew. It could be fun.
Thanks for reading, and happy voting!
Jen
Looking In, Looking Out
2001-06-21
During my first semester at Berklee, I would lock myself in a practice room and spread my New York Times out over the piano keys. There I would sit, slumped over with guilt as I dug into the news. It would take a while before I would get around to my Ear Training, and my reading would be taunted by fluid scales of other fingers that filtered in from adjacent practice rooms. A friend walking down those long aisles of discipline might spot me through the little window there and laugh before going off to fine-tune what seemed to me to be impossible levels of skill at his or her instrument. I felt like a fraud. I loved music so much, but it all seemed so specific, and my unfocused mind would not permit me to swim in it to the exclusion of other things.
At night, I would go home to my Cambridge apartment and proofread the papers of my Harvard graduate school roommate. She was a socially-minded woman with aspirations of public service in government, and I could see myself in her place. I had just arrived with a degree in international relations from a liberal arts college where I had spent my time writing papers on subjects like government in Zimbabwe and US-Mexican Relations. I was as passionate about studying these topics as I was about deepening my understanding of education, public policy, literature, and different cultures. My interests were not just academic; they were somehow personal.
Then there was music. My spirit and my body depended on it. I had been a listener and a singer for all of my life. I was able to take this for granted until my college band came apart during senior year. School was to end and real life to begin, and it occurred to me that I might not be able to live without being involved in making music, in some way. So I turned down graduate school to become an undergraduate again at Berklee.
It's a little weird to go from weighty class discussions about NAFTA, led by a former-ambassador professor, to the connect-the-dots work of notating a basic bossa drum pattern in arranging 1. But what was stranger for me was to go from forming abstract questions on social, political, and economic issues--thinking about the world--to the immediate little problems of what chord should go next. If I was going to sing, I needed songs, and I wanted to write them myself. This was what I wanted to learn when I came to Berklee. So my focus had to turn inward. Like a shy toddler who can walk confidently but is just learning to put words together, I began to make ragged little gestures that aspired to be songs.
How crucial is self-absorption to the process of making music or any form of art? And when your body is your instrument, and your own psyche is your subject, how do you survive the tedium and narcissism of looking into this ever-present physical-emotional mirror? I'm still the same toddler, but I live in New York City now, writing and performing and trying to "make it" and I struggle with this question every day. I want to find the inward balance of personal discipline and introspection to make good art, but both my life and my art demand that I turn away from the mirror to feel a vital connection to the striving, suffering, dancing outside.
My father Harry Chapin had wrestled with these issues, years before, in a different context at a different time. At the age when I was singing in the James Brown Ensemble and studying jazz harmony, he was a self-taught folkie, writing and performing songs inspired by the message-driven music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. He went on to find a great degree of commercial success with his own brand of "story songs" about the lives of everyday people. But by the time he hit number one on the pop charts, he had begun to question what, if any, meaning lay in achieving status as a "rock star."
Conversations with my mother and his good friend Bill Ayres deepened his concern over the self-absorption of the 70s, coming so soon after the idealism and social activism of the previous decade. Famines in Bangladesh and Ethiopia were in the headlines, and my dad became especially disturbed over the existence of hunger in a resource-rich world. He would say that hunger was "an obscenity" and that hunger in America was "the ultimate obscenity." In 1975, my father and Bill Ayres founded World Hunger Year (WHY). The name came from the urgency they felt, which told them that every year was world hunger year until hunger was eliminated. A new life began for my dad. The ensuing whirlwind of lobbying, meetings, and appearances combined with an impossibly busy schedule of concerts and recordings only accelerated until he died in 1981.
It's hard to avoid clich?s in describing the impact this legacy has had on me, especially the obvious one that my father's short life is "a lot to live up to." And it has been, and remains, a lot. The fact is that I was raised on the idea of fighting social inequities even more than I was raised to make music. But both are in me deeper than any pressu