Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger.

Ninety years old today.



Always kept a U.S. Budget pie-chart in his banjo case, up-dated as needed, hauled out for a community-organizing moment in so many of his concerts. The slice of the budget that went for war today, war yesterday and more war tomorrow, like Topsy, "... just growed and growed".

Henry Kissinger has the Nobel Peace Prize. Pete has a pie chart.

Two old men, with their respective places on the world stage.

I don't know whether there's an afterlife. I'm not counting on it, but open to being surprised.

If there is, I'd hope I could be on the sidelines to see the encounters with the gatekeeper when these two present their credentials.

o A guy with a grin and a banjo case.

o A guy with a proclamation and a medal and evidence of a cash award plus a wee bit of other baggage*.

* From the Nixon tapes, five days after thug/murderer Pinochet took over in Chile:

Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?

Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.

Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something.

Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.

Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though.

Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [garbled] created the conditions as great as possible.

Nixon: That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played

^ The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon. Accessed online November 26, 2006.

h/t Ed Werstein