God Bless the Grass in New York and Ireland, and spring’s busy awakening

Despite the biting easterly winds of late, spring continues to subtly stir. Bird song is increasing in volume, variety and pitch, welcoming the earlier morning light.

Prime breeding territories are sought, while green shoots of celandine begin to carpet the places of their eventual flowering. Swelling buds too, defy winter’s waning grip, calling spring to step forward with hope and renewal. We must wait a little longer however, until the season is secure, when chiffchaffs call and hedgerows flourish.

I watched A Complete Unknown at the cinema last week, the film charting Bob Dylan’s early development as folk singer, writer and musician. During this turbulent period of social change and unrest he was often in the company of other great American creative talents, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, and an ailing Woody Guthrie.

As personal relationships ebbed and flowed, it was evident through the film that this 1960s period in America was highly productive in musical output and artistry.

Reflecting on this very enjoyable snapshot of Dylan’s burgeoning career, I was drawn to the songs and music of one of his earliest supporters, Pete Seeger – a social activist, protest singer and advocate for many causes including civil rights and environmental protection.

In January 1966, he released the record God Bless the Grass, said to be the first album totally dedicated to songs about the environment, encouraging awareness of the natural world and the need for its protection. The title song written by fellow campaigner, Malvina Reynolds, opens with the lines:

“God bless the grass that grows through the crack. They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back. The concrete gets tired of what it has to do, It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru, God bless the grass.”

Also that year, Seeger, along with his wife Toshi, founded the Hudson River Sloop Clearway, a conservation organisation set up primarily to help clean up the Hudson, which was being heavily polluted. Smaller than the Mississippi, the Hudson River flows north to south from the Adirondack Mountains for over 300 miles through eastern New York state, finally entering the Atlantic at New York Bay.

The couple set out to build the sloop Clearway vessel, a replica of boats which sailed the Hudson in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was launched in 1969 and remains to this day a powerful emblem for environmental protection of the region’s waterways.

The non-profit Hudson River organisation inspires, through educational programmes on the boat and community outreach, a lifelong stewardship of the river, its tributaries and valleys. Young people on the ‘sailing classroom’ explore the river’s ecology, cultural significance and test water quality, experiences which enhance their classroom learning.

It also empowers local communities to hold various polluters to account. Seeger in his song, My Dirty Stream, highlighting the pollution of the Hudson River, wrote of keeping, “the dream… that my Hudson River will once again run clear”. He sings of it starting, “high in the mountain, crystal clear”, and later, the verse:

“At Glens Falls, five thousand honest hands work at the consolidated paper plant, five million gallons of waste a day – why should we do it any other way?”

It is comforting to know that Seeger, who died in 2014, his wife a year earlier, both lived to see the positive impact the organisation they helped found had on conservation and education.

They used the art forms of music and song to effect significant change and help create a new generation of environmental leaders, a notable example of the convergence of art and science.