How do you grow a social conscience?

I was listening to a Peter, Paul, and Mary album on youtube the other day with my grand-daughter, and it was making me a little blinky and nostalgic. Many of the songs were ones my father sang to me, and that is a very fond memory of mine. So many of the others, too, were songs he felt it was very important for me to truly listen to; the protest songs of my childhood are deeply ingrained in my head and my heart. Along the Peter, Paul, and Mary, I was given lessons in close listening with the songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and other young, earnest musical revolutionaries. I was so young! I can remember being asked to sit on the rug in front of the stereo cabinet my father built to listen to "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall"-- I think I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. My father patiently explained what the song meant, and I listened, rapt. I don't know if it was the sense of importance he placed on my knowing, or if it was just the Dad-and-me "secret knowledge" feeling of things, but that moment has stayed with me for over 50 years. 

This is one of the reasons that I have become a poet, essayist, and perpetually dismayed adult, I think. What people do NOT know about things surprises and distresses me. The same errors, in the same ways, but with all of humanity and the planet at stake, over and over again. 

Woody Guthrie had a pointed message painted on this guitar: "This machine kills fascists." Music can soothe, but it is also a powerful weapon against hate, ignorance, and apathy. All we have to do is listen. And have the kiddies listen, too.

Take care,

C