How did we get to Midsummer? It’s already the longest day and halfway to next winter’s bleakness.
A few miles away this morning, the morris dancers greeted the dawn on the summit of Pack Monadnock, but I was still in bed.
I found out that the exact time of solstice was 7:28 am our time, and made a point to be outside at that time. I played a little improvisation on my horn… no great inspiration, but at least there was the wonderful feeling of breathing in and out being linked with music. The birds joined in. One bird leapt off a branch and soared upward into a brightly-lit gap in the trees, and I was reminded of Dar Williams’s song “I Saw a Bird Fly Away”. Denise and I sang a few lines of the song together, then chanted as the magic moment came and went, hoping that the positive vibrations emanating from us and from the birds’ tiny syrinxes would somehow make the coming six months peaceful and fruitful.
On Saturday, I scrambled into my car after the Peterborough peace vigil to try and make it to the tail-end of the New Hampshire Peace Action annual meeting, where I knew David Rovics would be singing at 2:00 pm. It was (so I had been led to believe) at the Daniel Webster Birthplace in Franklin. I got to the Franklin town line at almost 2:00 and, after a few turns and returns, found the rural cabin where the great orator, defeater of the Devil, had been born. It was deserted… worse than deserted.. the farmhouse next door that had served as a museum and ranger station the last time I was there, was all worn and smashed, and an apologetic sign said something about a private group trying to raise funds for restoration. This is New Hampshire, where even state historical treasures are left to decay in the tender mercies of private-sector charity.
I turned around and headed back into Franklin, assuming I’d missed the event completely, but on the way, I saw a sign for “Iraq Veterans Against the War” posted in front of something called “Webster Place”. Turning into the driveway, I saw cars parked in front of a brick building, but nothing obvious going on. Then I saw a sign with an arrow pointing down a dusty red-dirt road between cornfields, “NHPA this way”. I cautiously drove down the road following a white van, going slowly to avoid rocks and keep the dust clouds at a manageable level. After about a mile on, I came to a graveyard and a fork in the road, I took the fork that the van had taken, which dived out of the sunshine into the woods and eventually came to the banks of a river that was probably the Merrimack. There was a group of people swimming, and I asked the young woman who had been driving the van if this was where the Peace Action group was. She asked “Where have you come from?” with a fearful note in her voice that seemed to imply that nobody would just happen on this swimming hole and I must have stepped in to this reality from another dimension or something. My car was parked around the bend, and I guessed she hadn’t noticed me before. Then she calmed down and said, “Oh that must be at Webster Place”. “Is that the brick building I passed?” “Yes. ”
So, after pausing to take in the dappled sunlight on the river and the shapes of the huge oaks, I turned the car around and drove back across the Kansas-like landscape to the brick building where Dave Rovics was finishing up his set inside a kind of chapel. He was explaining to the audience, mostly men and women my age or older, that it was perfectly safe to go to the big upcoming demonstration in Toronto, even though the police were expected to behave badly and make lots of mass arrests with tear gas and all. All we had to do was pay attention to the signs that the police were forming a box and stay out of the way. Then he sang “They’re Building a Wall” and did an encore. I got to talk with him a little afterward. He talked about how he had found that giving away his songs on the internet was tactically good for him and probably for most other indie musicians, though it was not based on any philosophical idea… it just worked to get loyal fans who then attended concerts and bought merchandise. He said very few musicians were getting signed with labels, and that for most of them, the label was more of a detriment than a benefit. He had recently toured Britain and Europe and had played with two of my favorite musicians, Leon Rosselson and Tracey Curtis, as well as with Attila the Stockbroker.
On the way back home, I stopped in Concord, where there was an ethnic festival going on at the State House. The variety of skin-tones and languages was astounding for a state that thirty years ago was almost all white. There was good drumming and dancing and food, and I wished I could stay longer. Summer is so short, and now that it’s begun, it feels like it’s almost over. I’ll try to get some pictures to put up shortly.
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