***
Reprinted from Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans

Pete Seeger, the American folk musician, recently lost his banjo. The banjo was designed and built by Seeger, in 1945, to accommodate his long arms, vast voice, and troubadour's life. It became a new standard for banjos known as The Pete Seeger Banjo.

It was found near his home, in the case he'd painted with his name and number. It had fallen from the roof of the great man's car and was sitting poetically alongside a New York state roadway. The young man who found and returned it did not know who Seeger was.

Some years ago, Pete and Toshi Seeger were in New Orleans for JazzFest, staying in the Faubourg Marigny home of Shirley Jensen. I went to her house, across from the Santa Fe Restaurant on Dauphine and Frenchmen, to photograph Seeger and his long neck banjo.

Afterwards, we walked back to Squalor Heights to hear some Sweet Emma Barrett records. Seeger loved her cover of Jelly Roll Blues (GHB-141, Sweet Emma Barrett and Her New Orleans Music) and later wrote about it in Sing Out. He wore an old English-looking cap with a long peacock feather that dipped and bobbed behind him as his lanky legs stepped across Elysian Fields. I wondered if anyone seeing us would realize I was walking with Pete Seeger.

In New York City, that following Fall, a student at NYU listened to me gushing about Seeger, with whom I had just lunched on Fifty Seventh Street. The student and I met on the subway and he was showing me where to get off for the East Village. He listened politely then said he, too, did not know who Seeger was. At every season life turns.

Seeger wrote and sang significant songs like Turn, Turn, Turn. His folk revival group, The Weavers had enormous Billboard hits, like On Top of Old Smoky, and local favorite, Shrimp Boats are A Coming. He is said by many -- though not by him -- to have written the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome. "All that I did was change 'will' to 'shall', " he said that JazzFest day in New Orleans.

***

The tall windows at Squalor Heights have been double curtained of late to shield weighty electric bills from broiling afternoon temperatures. This morning's sun fell like silent thunder across Faubourg Marigny's dark slate roofs. Such heat thins the soul and purse, while swelling the hearts and purses of bankers, bond-ers, and electricity brokers.

New Orleans' electric utility went private back when Hurricane Reagon still looked like a refreshing breeze. It went private and built billion dollar nuclear power plants that leaked happily within all regulatory boundaries. It grew increasingly profitable, also, within all regulatory boundaries, of course. In time, the now privately owned utility gathered enough cash and collateral from our monthly bills to buy distant power plants -- even overseas power plants. All the better with which to serve us, of course, under the mystical-magical hand of "free markets."

History as I see it: New Orleans' City Council ceded its "Public" control to New Orleans Public Service, Incorporated (NOPSI). We all cheered, "The gluebutts have been ousted!"

Next, Great Swamp City's own homeboy Entergy Corporation, a proud Fortune Five Hundred company, swallowed NOPSI. We cheered again, but with less enthusiasm. Now, Entergy has been swallowed by a Florida company that we will call "Florida Power & Colonization."

Florida Power & Colonization promises to bring old New Orleans into the new gilded age of deregulation, freer than ever from hobbling socialistic home rule. Zip-a-dee-do-da?

An Entergy bee, who asked that his name not be used, buzzed that eight hundred jobs will follow Florida Power & Colonization out of New Orleans. Without doubt, these eight hundred jobs will be replaced with eight hundred thousand tourists needing ever more expensive electricity along with our locally provided services. Just another painless economic shakeout where suit jobs are traded for jobs guessing where them tourists "got dem shoes."

Just think of the songs Pete Seeger could write about New Orleans and Florida Power & Colonization. But, hey, we don't need no social activists singing rousing songs any longer. Today we have the magical-mystical hand of free markets, right?

Keep the faith, speed the day, turn off your air-conditioner and think about tomorrow. Now, take a coffee break. Norma, make mine medicinal red!