Fare thee well to much of who I was... I don't know if we will meet again.

Turloch O'Carolan, on his deathbed, wrote the great O'Carolin's Farewell to Music. I was trying to repair a broken link here, the link to the Letter From the Birmingham Jail, and in frustration just placed the whole letter here... and thought of my coming to the place I am in this month, a farewell to American Politics.

This week two dear dear people and good friends of mine were convicted by a jury in New York of crimes they did not commit. Conviction came in a courtroom filled with the fear that this nation has adopted in place of love of the bright dreams of patriots like Dr. King.

King's martyrdom was quite different than the martyrdom of my two friends. King died to move this nation towards something. They are facing the possibility of decades of their lives taken, placed in a box of hatred from which their words can be controlled, not to move towards something, but to end the process of America's journey towards liberty which began with the words, we hold these truths to be self evident.

Our land of self evident truths is buried beneath fear. So my farewell, is not a farewell to music, but a farewell to American politics. I fear that many of us live as a reaction to the hatred and base cruelty of the American state. They become a reaction... become, be... that reaction. It does me no good to be that reaction when we live in a land without hope of progressive change. Reaction often makes the old state anew.

Many friends will say, after years of activism, I have given in to fear and have become a coward. I can accept that accusation without an offer of defense. I do not think so. I believe that for me, it is time to live my convictions in the light and let America be, we are no longer family, this America and I. I cannot see myself tonight joining her martyrs from Lexington Green to the Courtroom where the Rosenburgs were murdered, or singing her songs in love or anger. As with that beautiful young man of my mind's eye, who stood in the light, apart from the Second World War and said, "No... I can't change the world, but I wont be changed by it..."

I do not join those who said to me, "don't associate our meeting with thy friend, she is a communist" nor do I join those who say, keep your head down and wait things out. No.
I maybe called to the words of the welsh song, the fortress of Owain Glyn Dwr, which says the walls of the fortress of Owain Glyn Dwr is the fireplace of your grandmother.

When others ask in anger what to do, I cannot tell them. I just turn away and turn back home to the gentler way. I cannot build an America of freedom and justice. I can live free and just, and try to keep out of the way of the madness which grips the world.

God grant us the strength to live well, and grant those gripped in madness sight to see the virtue of our ways, or grant them blindness to us as they hunt.

So, farewell to most of my songs, and hello again to the songs of my ancestors.