Remembering Pete Seeger

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In 1996, in my job of assistant editor at a weekly newspaper, I awarded myself the title of music reviewer for a single issue and attended a concert given at a local high school by Pete Seeger, who died three years ago today at age 94. (Our newspaper’s actual music reviewer was only interested in attending and writing about rock concerts. This was a stroke of luck for me.) I wrote a review, even though I knew that a review is not what one writes about a Pete Seeger concert. An appreciation. A thank-you note. But not a mere review judging aesthetic merits.

It was a great concert, by the way.
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January 26 in History

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is Australia Day, the day that great nation celebrates as its foundation day.

On this date in 1788, the First Fleet, eleven ships from Great Britain with more than 1000 convicts on board, arrived in Sydney Harbor and raised the British flag. The First Fleet was sent to establish a prison colony far, far from home.

When the United States won independence, one of the side effects was the American right to refuse British convicts. In 1787, ships with the recently convicted were dispatched to Australia, and on this date in 1788, the First Fleet arrived. Over time, many of the convicts were pardoned.
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A Memory of Mary Tyler Moore

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The television star (this is one of those occasions in which “icon” can not be overused) Mary Tyler Moore died earlier today at the age of 80. I have one brief, personal memory of an encounter with her. I wish my family had saved the answering machine tape …

In our current era of Twitter and Facebook and the many other social media outlets, virtual celebrity encounters can be had quite easily. (Among my Facebook friends are the accounts of Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks. Mr. Brooks plays several games each night on the service.) These encounters were more rare once upon a time, the 1990s, say.

In the 1980s, Mary Tyler Moore and her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, lived in Millbrook, New York, in Dutchess County. This is the county in which I was born and raised.
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