© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
🎧 Help keep the Spring Membership Drive short! Support the Buy-Back Campaign today before the Friday, March 29th deadline. Tap here to donate 💖

In The Mailbox, An Uncanny Postscript from Pete Seeger

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Kim Alexander got a message in the mail this week from Pete Seeger, the day after he died.

KIM ALEXANDER: I screamed. (Laughter) It was really a magical moment but in some ways, it was not entirely surprising because of the kind of person that Pete Seeger was, and what he meant to all of us.

SIEGEL: The letter she received had been posted just a few days before the folk singer and activist died on Monday at the age of 94. Alexander runs a nonprofit in Sacramento, Calif., and in her spare time, she coordinates a weekly music jam there. And she'd written Seeger in August.

ALEXANDER: I wrote to him because I wanted to tell him while he was still with us what an impact he'd had on me, and how I had used that inspiration to impact others.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Kim Alexander, a self-described jamvangelist, also shared with Seeger an article about how to get people to relax and join in with these kinds of public music jams.

ALEXANDER: And so he wrote back a note to me, in the margins - as he was known to do in his letter-writing - and he wrote: (Reading) Dear Kim, I've read this article several times. I think your article on jamming is wonderful and should be printed not just in Sing Out but in other magazines as well, and issued as a lovely pamphlet on good paper with good drawings on the cover. But I'm now 94, and I can't help much. My health is not good. You stay well. Keep on, 94-year-old Pete.

With a little drawing of a banjo, and then it says January 2014.

SIEGEL: Kim Alexander, reading a note she received from Pete Seeger. It arrived in her mailbox Tuesday of this week, the day after Seeger died.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, ''SO LONG, IT'S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YOU")

PETE SEEGER: (Singing) So long, it's been good to know you. So long, it's been good to know you. So long, been good to know you. This dusty old dust is getting my home. And I got to be drifting along now it's so long, been good to know you. So long, it's been good to know you. So long, been good to know you. The dusty old dust is getting my home. And I got to be drifting along. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Prior to his retirement, Robert Siegel was the senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered. With 40 years of experience working in radio news, Siegel hosted the country's most-listened-to, afternoon-drive-time news radio program and reported on stories and happenings all over the globe, and reported from a variety of locations across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. He signed off in his final broadcast of All Things Considered on January 5, 2018.
Over two decades of journalism, Audie Cornish has become a recognized and trusted voice on the airwaves as co-host of NPR's flagship news program, All Things Considered.