The Muse and Whirled Retort 2025
The Muse and Whirled Retrot May, 2025
Thursday, May 1, 2025
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The Muse and Whirled Retort This is a candidate for the new album cover Ya know, maybe if we all keep our heads in the sand long enough the tide won’t come in.
Hey Y’all,
Speaking of such, here is rough mix of one of the songs. I wrote this in Paris after visiting the Louvre and seeing the Degas exhibit.
Here is the sample track: https://youtu.be/Pwt420wN_88?si=6lcUABWiBHXqrpwP
https://gofund.me/dfc21afb
***** Thank you all so much to those of you that have already donated to this project! I will be sending you your copy as soon as i have it in my hot little hands.
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Paul and I are working on a tour this summer. Dates are coming in on the west coast from Santa Cruz to Alaska in July and August. If you are out that way and would like to present us in some capacity please drop me a line.
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Enough! Enough of the crass commercial announcements!
Here is your M.U.S.E. .A.N.D. .W.H.I.R.L.E.D. .R.E.T.O.R.T.
May 1, 2025 Nevada City, CA
It is May Day and I reflect back to my dear friend Anne Feeney. I was honored to be present on May Day when we put her remains in the ground in Mt Olive, IL next to Mother Jones. These days are insane. This IS happening. And the only thing that can change that is the only thing that has EVER worked. People taking to the streets. So on May Day, I look to one of my heroines.
Here is what I read at her service.
Anne Feeney, Presente
 Anne Feeney and I are performing at the Oregon Country fair in 2002
“Don’t Mourn, Organize.” - Joe Hill.
For most of my life, her strength has been my strength. To say that I loved her would be an understatement. She is likely the reason you and I know each other. The reason that you and I have bonded since we met, is our commitment to some how, some way, and by any means necessary stand upon the long arc of the moral universe - use it as a trampoline - to assure that it continues to bend towards justice.
Her roots remain in the earth from whence she came, and to where she will lie. Her grand father William Patrick Feeney used his violin as a tool to organize mine workers. I have no doubt that her grand children will do the same.
May her life long commitment to social change serve as an inspiration for us all. But, her life is so so big: from anti war rallies in the 60’s armed with the cannon of Phil Ochs, to being hip deep in every labor struggle of her life time up to and including her dying day. Her insistence that we all use our voice, our art, to to drown and extinguish the fires that threaten us, was evident in her sleeves rolled up service to countless struggles. From organizations Like School of the Americas Watch, NOW, Students Against Sweatshops, Mountain Top Justice, and of course the AFL-CIO, to individual struggles all too many to list.
If it happened in the last 69 years. She was a part of it.
Her insistence that we all use our voice, our art, to to drown and extinguish the fires that threaten us, was evident at the People’s Music Network, The Great Labor Arts exchange and Western Workers Songs of Freedom and Struggle.
“Fear a movement that sings,” she insisted.
She brought that powerful voice to popular culture as well. The Oregon Country Faire, The High Sierra Music festival and of course, the Kerrville Folk Festival where she was awarded a “New Folk” award early in her career with political songs, ironically and poignantly the first musician to do so in that conservative Texas Hill Country.
“Take the music to where it needs to be heard,” she would say.
I recall her singing to the working staff there (of which she was a part) “The Internationale.” A small handful of cowpokes listened to her with their Stetsons tilted like the Victrola Dog until a Hispanic delivery man steped up to stand beside her and sang, “Levantaos, prisioneros de hambre”, a German tourist stepped up and offered “wird die Menschheit befreien.”
A Swede, an Israeli and even, yes, a camera toting tourist offered a verse in Japanese. She medleyed the song into “Solidarity forever,” and before she was done she had the entire ranch singing with a Texas accent, “The union makes us strong!”
“Take the music to where it needs to be heard,” she would say, and she did.
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” - Mother Jones.
Thank you to all of you that have sent comforting words to me and the rest of her family. Know that it helps - even if I don’t have the bandwidth to personally respond.
As you know, I had a decade long shotgun seat view, crisscrossing the country in jalopies made of passion, from picket lines in the rain to tear gas in the streets. She was there. Her life is so so big, it will take all of us to -- as Pete Seeger sang with her -- “Carry it on!”
May we carry it on. It is a heavy lift, but together we are strong. It will take all of us.
A giant has fallen, and we must all, now, stand upon each other’s shoulders -megaphone in hand - as we announce to the world that from this vantage point we CAN see the arc of the moral universe as it bends towards justice.
Anne Feeney, Presente!
******** H.E.R.E.S. .D.A. .D.A.T.E.S.
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