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Posts Tagged ‘Dan Schatz’

We Are Counted Not as Numbers, but as Names

Posted in Music, Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , , on May 27, 2020| 2 Comments »

Tonight we received confirmation of 100,000 known deaths in the United States to COVID-19. The news is heartbreaking, not least because so many of these deaths could have been prevented if leaders had chosen to act differently, and because so many more preventable deaths are likely. So my heartbreak is tempered with anger.

But today, my overhwleming feeling is grief.  Some who died were people I knew, repsected, admired and loved. Some were neighbors. Some were artists. Some were strangers who, in ways most of us will never know, made this world better with their living. Each one of them had a name, a story, a family, and a community.

638px-Aids_Quilt

The AIDS emorial Quilt in Washington, DC

In 1985, a group of activists started The Names Project, creating a giant quilt, with panels made by families and friends of AIDS victims.  Today the quilt has over 200,000 panels, each representing a name.  Seeing the quilt on display for the first time at the National Mall inspired Cathy Fink to write the song “Names,” which she and Marcy Marxer recorded in 1989.

And I know that my name could be there
And I feel the pain and the fear
And as human love and passions do not make us all the same,
We are counted not as numbers, but as names.

Cathy’s song remains, after all these years, one of the most powerful I know.  With her permission, I’ve made a quick home video of the song.

I’m going to keep singing this one, hard though it is to get through without tears.  I need those tears; I think we all do. They help us hold on to our humanity, and as deaths contnue to grow, they remind us that “we are counted not as numbers, but as names.”

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excerpt from The New York Times

 

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Thankful for Each Other

Posted in Music, Spirit, tagged , , , , , , on November 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

After a storm, there are reasons to grieve and reasons to be thankful.

Last month Hurricane Sandy left entire communities devastated, destroyed homes and shorelines, sparked fires in some homes and left many more in the cold for weeks into November.  A great many – some of whom were on the edge to begin with – are still suffering.

There are far too many reasons to grieve.

Yet it is often at times like these that neighbors discover one another and people help each other with the basic needs of life.  The divisions of ideology, which seemed so important only days before, mean little when placed against the basic needs of survival.  People help one another.  Sometimes we do it through religious communities, sometimes through charities and sometimes through government assistance – but very often it’s far simpler than that.  People see other people struggling, and offer what help they can.  Communities come together.

Thanksgiving always brings these kinds of thoughts to my mind, because essentially it is  a day about community – families sharing a meal together, volunteers at food banks and soup kitchens making sure that the poorest among us can enjoy a good meal, friends invited to each others’ Thanksgiving tables.  There are no gifts and few decorations – just a quiet meal shared with others.

That’s what I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving Day – people who help one another when there is need, and who reach out to neighbors in community.  What a better world it would be if we all remembered to be thankful, first and foremost, for each other.

Big Bill Broonzy said that Joe Turner Blues was the oldest blues song he knew, but the story remains as current today as it ever was.  It tells of a man whose giving saved many a poor family after the floods came – and of a community who turned toward each other in thanksgiving.

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