Eclectic Company: Year End Giving

If your inbox looked anything like mine during the last few weeks of 2012, you were running ten-to-one end of year “last chance” philanthropic requests to personal emails; if you’re like me and feel moved to gift more as the holidays draw closer, you know it’s really hard to choose how to spread the donations around. This year, the POSSLQ and I decided to put our end-of-year money where the music was, and to use our donation dollars attending musical fundraisers. We went to the Beacon Theatre concert to free Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement activist who was convicted more than 35 years ago of first degree murder of two FBI agents involved in a conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on flimsy, falsified and later completely discredited evidence. Peltier, 68 years old and ill, is serving two consecutive life sentences for these crimes committed by someone else. He had some great civil rights/criminal defense attorneys working on his unsuccessful appeals over the years, including the late William Kunstler, who appeared in old grainy video speaking out on Peltier's behalf. Peltier’s next parole hearing is in 2024 – you do the math – hence the movement to bring him home this year.

The concert and education-spreading event brought out that grand old man of folksinging justice, Pete Seeger (93!), who led us in a lengthy, vigorous “Turn, Turn, Turn,” his rendering of the biblical verses about the yin/yang seasons of life, and folk, pop and Caribbean singer (and U.N. ambassador) Harry Belafonte, American songster Jackson Browne (“Running On Empty”), Canadian songwriter and environmental activist Bruce Cockburn, actors Danny Glover and Peter Coyote (you know him from his supporting roles in E.T. and Erin Brockovich, among 100+ others), and rapper Common, who was joined by the artist formerly known as Mos’ Def. Political filmmaker Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine) made a surprise visit, reading a poem he’d written for Peltier, and some old films and still images were played onstage, Native American drummers and singers and the Chief of the Oglala Sioux were poignant and to the point, and many other musicians, actors, and public figures spoke or sang in support. You can read about Peltier and the events that led from the epic historical story Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee to the Free Leonard Peltier movement, online, and you too can donate to bring him home this year.

A few days earlier, on 12-12-12, I watched the Concert for Sandy Relief at home, alone (the POSSLQ doesn’t care for rock). This was an amazingly well-publicized and widely-aired event (local promoters, take note: Posters, flyers, ad buys in newspapers, on radio, TV, and cable/satellite stations, emails, facebook links, youtube pitches – even billboards – were underwritten by sponsors and co-presenters, and sent out to the masses and the targeteds alike). I tuned in a couple of hours late, turning up the uneven sound and trying to understand the intermittent host, announcer, and revolving emcees. The first thing I could actually make out was talk show host Jimmy Fallon, who made a few lame jokes, then introduced The Rolling Stones. Mssrs. Richards and Watts and La Jagger turned in an over-familiar performance of “Jumping Jack Flash” (“I was born in a crossfire hurricane” obviously the rationale). The sound was godawful (where were the freaking monitors?) and it seemed as if RubberMouthy Mick couldn’t hear himself or the band, which may have been why he made a nasty joke about the numerous elderly British Invasion stars on the bill, saying that if it “rained in London” America’s big names had better plan to fly there to support the U.K. (I was so shocked to hear him not quite making a joke of it that I didn’t get it written down in time, but having checked with the blogs later, yep, he said it), before stomping off, apparently only part-way through the Stones’ planned set, leaving space for The Who to play forever, though pleasingly.

I’ll take a short detour here to admit that my youthful righteous feminist self stopped liking the Stones circa Sticky Fingers. Back in the days of hubby #1, we were having dinner (great honor) at the home of the Dean of America’s Rock Critics, with his wife and one of her longtime friends, an English music critic/editor and feminist, when the talk turned to the Stones, and the English friend said she’d never liked the macho rock they exemplified. Before I could chime in in agreement, the Dean’s wife caught the glint of venom in the Dean’s eye and rushed to a defense of her friend’s position. But it was too late: the Dean dramatically ordered the friend to leave and never darken their doorstep more, forcibly severing the women’s friendship. The hubby and I left to take the shaken friend away (to sleep on our couch?, maybe), and tried to salve the shock of her banishment. I never did hear the end of that story, if, some years later, there was a second ending. That event gelled my amorphous dislike of the league of the Rolling Stones.

Well back at 12-12-12, like at a great GRAMMY awards night where unusual planned jams happen, the few things I liked about the concert qua concert were Chris Martin of Coldplay singing “Viva La Vida,” then bringing out Michael Stipe “from [R.E.M.’s] retirement and he’s gone right back in again” to sing an acoustic duet with one guitar on “Losing My Religion,” a pair of songs about the discomforts and even unpleasant shocks associated with fame. Listening to them, pure simple voices on songs I’ve loved long and hard nearly made me find an ism of my own. Then Sir Paul McCartney brought out Dave Grohl et remaining al (“I realized I was in the middle of a Nirvana reunion,” McCartney said, singing lead and playing slide on a whack-job of a cigarbox electric guitar-ette that somehow mesmerized me more than the incongruity of 70+ year old Sir Paul singing forever-young-Kurt Cobain’s vocals). Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi were among the famous pledge takers manning the phones during the concert, which pulled in upwards of $50 million from ticket and merch sales, live recordings (through iTunes), and donations. Not too late to pitch a few pennies in that direction if you're still flush with the spirit of the season.

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