I spent much of yesterday sitting at a computer and listening to the music of the late Pete Seeger on Spotify.
As I travelled through the USA last summer I listened to his voice quite often and I found it inspiring.
Many of us, of a certain age, will have heard songs such as Where have all the flowers gone?, Turn, turn, turn, and If I had a hammer coming out of an old radio in our youth. They might have been sung by Seeger himself or Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary or others. And they bring back memories of more inspirational times?
I listened again to Seeger’s voice singing these songs which are, in the UK at least, far less well known: This Land is Your Land, The Big Muddy and My Oklahoma Home Blowed Away (all of which have an environmental message) and the D-Day Dodgers (which is just irreverent fun).
And towards the end of yesterday I heard the sad news of the passing of Jonathan Osborne – a former colleague at the RSPB.
I last saw Jonathan in person at the Bird Fair in 2012 but Facebook has allowed us to keep in touch with each others’ birding and bad jokes all the same.
Thoughts go out to his two daughters. Your Dad was a great bloke!
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Very sad news. Legends will always come and go in conservation and whilst I missed some, I feel privileged to have met the ones I did during my RSPB tenure between 2002 and 2007. I am not going to embarass them by naming them here and I cannot claim to remember Jonathan although I am sure I met him at some point.
Jonno will certainly be missed, since his retirement I’ve enjoyed keeping up with his photography and Cypriot adventures. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.
I too never met jonathan but it is sad whenever conservation looses somebody and of course there are those they leave behind, they have my sympathy.
I’ve known of and listened to Pete Seeger since I was a teenager fifty years ago my taste in music has evolved rather than changed in that time, but I still know the words to many of his songs and felt truly saddened by the news yesterday.
Very sorry indeed to hear about Pete Seeger and Jonathan Osborne
“Irreverent fun” is an interesting description of the D-Day Dodgers song; I suspect my uncle who fought in N. Africa and Italy, and lost several friends there would have thought it a little more than that; he didn’t care very much for Lady Astor!
“This land was made for you and me” – unless you are a native American of course in which case it’s definitely mine. Whether Pete Seeger ticked Woodie Guthrie off for the error of his lyrics – who knows?
What I liked about PS was the way he had stood up to the threats and intimidation from people who disagreed with his views.
Sad news about Jonathan Osborne. I first met him many years ago when he had just joined The Development Department at the RSPB under Trevor Gunton which really dates me. As has been commented he was a good bloke.