Josna Rege

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633. Students of Life, Singers of Songs

In culture, history, Immigration, Music, Politics, singing, Stories, United States on January 26, 2026 at 6:56 pm
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Renée Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, shot dead by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2026

On Saturday, January 24th, before driving to join my monthly RUSH group (Rise Up Singing in Harmony, see TMA 331, 450, 487, 556), I hastily drafted a new verse to Holly Near’s It Could Have Been Me. She wrote the song in May, 1970, after police shot dead students demonstrating against the Vietnam War at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State University in Mississippi. Subsequent verses remembered Victor Jara in Chile, women in Vietnam, Karen Silkwood in Oklahoma, and people struggling for freedom in Nicaragua and El Salvador. More recently, Near wrote a new verse in the aftermath of the 2016 mass shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Her chorus goes like this:



It could have been me, but instead it was you
So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two
I’ll be a student of life, a singer of songs
A farmer of food and the righter of wrongs
It could have been me, but instead it was you
And it may be me, dear sisters and brothers, before we are through
But if you can die/sing/work/live for freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom
If you can die for freedom, I can too.

Arriving a little late, I slipped into the circle as the first song was chosen:



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John Brown’s Body (Rise Up Singing (RUS) p. 61)
This is a 1959 Smithsonian Folkways Recording, by Pete Seeger. “John Brown’s Body” is a marching song sung, and most probably written, in 1861 by Union soldiers in the U.S. Civil War about the radical abolitionist of the same name. The tune, also that of Julia Ward Howe’s 1861 The Battle Hymn of the Republic, dates back to religious camp meetings of the late 18th century.
We sang it with gusto, starting the afternoon on a high note. Still, as I reflect on it later, both songs had come out of a deeply divided nation in the midst of a civil war; ominous, given that the United States is again deeply divided today, but I dread more than almost anything else the thought that it might descend into another civil war.

Forgive me for listing the rest of the songs out of order and with a few omissions, since I am reconstructing the list from memory.

Loch Lomond (RUS, p.153)
An old favorite of our group, always sung with great longing. I particularly love this less-known version by the Corries. And here’s a more upbeat rendition of the traditional version, sung by Molly Whupple.

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Anti-war march on the Pentagon, 1967
(https://docsteach.org/document/demonstrator-offering-flower/)

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? (RUS, p. 165)
Pete Seeger’s anti-war anthem, sung here by The Kingston Trio. The words were inspired by a Cossack folksong and the tune borrowed from an Irish melody.

Hymn for Nations (RUS, p. 159)
To the tune of Ode to Joy, a chorale in Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, sung here by the great Paul Robeson—see the lyrics of his English verse below. (It had been the 50th anniversary of Robeson’s death just the day before, January 23rd, 2026.) Pete Seeger also sang it, slightly tweaking the lyrics as was his wont: you can read the lyrics of his version here.

Build the road of peace before us
Build it wide and deep and long
Speed the slow and check the eager
Help the weak and curb the strong
None shall push aside another
None shall let another fall
March beside me, O my brothers
All for one and one for all.

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Morning Has Broken (RUS, p.154)

This beautiful Eleanor Farjeon poem was famously recorded in 1971 by Yusuf/Cat Stevens.
I think that the words and the melody complement each other perfectly.

The Gypsy Rover (Rise Again (RA), p. 4)

Dublin songwriter Leo Maguire’s modern ballad, sung here by Liam Clancy of The Clancy Brothers.

Deportee—Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (RUS, p. 50)

Woody Guthrie wrote this in 1948; tragically. it could have been written yesterday. I can never forget or forgive the meme on the current U.S. president’s social media page as he threatened to send the military into Chicago “to curb crime.”

By the Rivers of Babylon (RUS, p. 63)
This is the 1970 recording by The Melodians. I first encountered it in the film, The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, who died just two months ago, in November, 2025, and chose it in his memory.

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ReggieHarrismusic.com

Roll On, Woody (RA, p. 249)
This song was written by folksinger-songwriter Reggie Harris in honor of Woody Guthrie. It is sung here by Annie Patterson and Peter Blood, champions of group singing and compilers of the Rise Up Singing books. (I’m still looking for a good video-recording of Harris singing it himself.)

We Shall Not Be Moved/No Nos Moverán


Originating as a religious hymn in the early 20th century United States this song became an anthem for social movements, starting with unionizing struggles in the 1930s, then the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and on until today. It crossed the Atlantic to be sung as “No Nos Moverán” in the resistance against dictator Francisco Franco in Spain, and crossed back to Salvador Allende’s Chile, before he was killed in the military coup of 1973. It is still being sung wherever people need unity, strength, and resolve.
Here, Mavis Staples sings the English version and Joan Baez, the Spanish.

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Photo: Getty images

America the Beautiful (RUS, p. 1) 
I write about this song in TMA #452, America. I think it was chosen at this particular moment because, like the song’s author, Katharine Lee Bates, we recognize that while this country is blessed with abundant natural beauty, the beauty of its nation-state is clearly an as-yet-unrealized ideal. I chose this unpolished video-clip to honor the singer Evelyn Harris, formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock and beloved in our community, whom we lost just last month, and who would sing it on July 4th every year at the joyful, welcoming citizenship ceremony organized by the Center for New Americans.

Down in the Valley to Pray (RA, p. 12)

A traditional American spiritual. This was recorded in 2003 by Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, and Alison Krauss.

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Hard Times Come Again No More (RUS, p. 101)
An old Stephen Foster song, and a favorite in our group. Performed here by Mark O’Connor, James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyer.

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Singin’ in the Rain (RA, p. 250)

This was the title song from the 1952 movie, sung and danced by Gene Kelly, and a welcome break from the sombre tone of the day.



Let It Be Me (RUS, p. 126)
We sang this with feeling. I never tire of the Everly Brothers’ harmonies.

A Song of Peace (RUS, p. 163)
Written and sung here by the late Bill Staines, dearly beloved in this part of the country, the lyrics reflect an inclusive nationalism, a much-needed antidote to the virulent strain that is now endemic worldwide.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight falls on clover leaf and pine
But the other lands have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
So Hear this song you people of all nations
This song of peace for other lands and mine
This song of peace for other lands and mine.

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“Ten Days Later. . .” (https://www2.kenyon.edu/Khistory/60s/webpage.htm)

It Could Have Been Me (RUS, p. 215)
I chose Holly Near’s beautiful song, and added this verse to her sad but resolute memorial to the martyrs of U.S. wars:


One cold Minnesota morning

On her child’s kindergarten run

A trigger-happy agent 

Killed Renee Good with his gun.

Masks, profiling, violence

In homes, workplaces, towns

But we’ll stand together, support each other

And force ICE to stand down.

Ch. It could have been me. . .

Tragically, the new verse was already out of date: a name was now missing, the name of Alex Pretti, who just that morning had been shot 10 times in five seconds by masked Customs and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis as he tried to help a woman whom they were accosting.

RIP Renee Nicole Good, Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Students of life, righters of wrongs.
If you can work for freedom, we can too.



May singing together help to sustain us through these hard times.

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632. A Sense of Proportion

In Food, reflections, retirement, Stories on January 13, 2026 at 4:29 pm
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Small everyday rituals help me maintain my balance in these chaotic times. Of course, as I age, literally staying on my feet is essential, but I am talking here about inner balance. It is easy to wake up in panic mode, triggered by the ever-lengthening To Do list (which must of course be done) and the crises in the nation and around the world. But the To Do list and the crises can only be tackled one item at a time, and will always be there. It serves no purpose to start getting worked up about them before even having had one’s first cup of tea.

Two of my friends have recently mentioned the world being in some kind of destabilizing astrological configuration. My first—and, to be honest, my second, and third—inclination is to dismiss such suggestions out of hand, but this time a tiny part of me actually gave them some credence. Everything everywhere seems to be out of joint. Of course, this is nothing new—people have been feeling these things from time immemorial. But whether or not there are unseen forces at work misaligning everything from the earth beneath our feet to the relationships within families, there are things we can do to find and keep our own sense of proportion. What a wonderful phrase! My dear friend Hayat used it today in reference to what her father would say to his children when they lost their tempers with each other: “Has everyone lost their sense of proportion?!” In times like these, stress levels are high, sleep is disturbed, tempers are frayed, and self-righteous outrage—often entirely understandable—blinds us to all other perspectives but our own. We can indeed lose all sense of proportion.

As long as I can remember I have been slow to mobilize in the morning. In retirement, despite my best intentions, there are far too many mornings when I sleep in and take an inordinate amount of time to get going on the day’s work. I know that these winter days have only so many hours of daylight; that I ought to break the vicious cycle of too-late nights followed by too-late mornings; that my time is short and only getting shorter. Nevertheless, my morning rituals remain a must for my equanimity.

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First, tea in bed, two cups (whole-leaf, half Assam-half Darjeeling), preceded only by teeth-cleaning. Andrew and I take it in turns to do the honors—venturing down the cold corridor from the bedroom, turning up the heat in the living room, filling and turning on the kettle, warming the pot and the mugs, and after the requisite 5-minute steep, pouring and adding the milk (almond for him, 2% cow’s milk for me) and bearing a tray into the bedroom for us both. We have our first cups, then—in my case—a second, over the New York Times Spelling Bee and the news headlines of Democracy Now!. Between the first and second cup of tea, I have a slice of lightly buttered toast with Marmite, cut into quarters. If Andrew is lucky I let him have a couple of bites out of one of the quarters, but both of us know that this ritual is strictly mine. (There is a paean to Marmite in TMA #41, Eating for Four.) In the summer, when we have our own tomatoes coming in from the garden, Andrew would put a slice of tomato, heaven-fresh, on each quarter. Nowadays, it is just plain, with a slice of cucumber on occasion. But each bite, followed by a sip or two of piping-hot tea, is just what the doctor ordered. Now I’m ready. Despite the fresh horrors in the day’s headlines, despite the long shadow of the To Do list, it is a new day and I can face it with a smile.

Although I normally limit my consumption of Marmite-on-toast to the morning, I was up late the other night writing a particularly tedious article and losing my concentration. Naturally, Marmite came right to mind (by the way, don’t get me started about that infuriating marketing term, top of mind), and I decided to make myself a quick pick-me-up—a late-night slice, topped, in the absence of fresh tomato, with slivers of fresh green chili and a quartered pearl onion. Slipping the bread into the toaster, I screwed open the cap of the jar. What a surprise to see the image looking up at me—a Marmite smiley face!

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My face immediately broke into a corresponding grin. Returning to my work with a will, and with toast and a reheated mug of tea in hand, I wrapped it up in short order, without any further procrastination.

Such small rituals help me maintain my sense of proportion, despite everything.

Note: the corporate giant that owns the Marmite brand did not pay me to write this.

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631. Mind Cleanup, January 2026

In Family, Inter/Transnational, memories, people, places, reading, reflections, Stories, travel on January 5, 2026 at 4:51 pm
The White Rabbit: "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date"
The White Rabbit: “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date”

Always and inevitably, it seems, I am running late. This mind cleanup is long overdue, and ought to have been conducted before the end of 2025. I hope it will serve a two-fold purpose, as a review of the past year and an exercise in re-ordering and de-cluttering this scattered and wayward mind.

My last such exercise was back in October, 2019, more than six years ago and before the pandemic put paid to all my plans for the following year. Reviewing it now, I see that, far from decluttering, it ballooned into a long list of my activities and preoccupations, divided into 10 categories. It was all over the place. There was a lot on my mind, and I didn’t have any idea how to clear it up. The only thing that’s clear to me now is that I still don’t, which may be why I have been postponing this effort for so long.

But the hour is late, so here goes:

In 2025, Andrew and I traveled both to India (5 weeks in Jan-Feb) and to England (nearly 4 weeks in June-July). In India we attended reunions in Delhi and Dehradun of my high school in the foothills of the Himalayas, Class of 1969. After the larger reunion with my classmates, some of whom I had not met for nearly 60 years, a small group of us from four continents and five time zones who had been corresponding regularly by email for several years managed to actually spend a few days together in person. This accomplishment was so amazing that it felt almost unreal.

On the way to Mussoorie
On the way up to Mussoorie

After the reunion, we traveled from the north down to my father’s home state of Maharashtra to visit family in Mumbai and Pune, then further down the West Coast to Karwar, in Northern Karnataka, then back up to Goa for a few short days by the Arabian Sea before returning to Mumbai for the flight back home. Five weeks in India is too short a time.

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Karwar

The three months between our trips to India and England were busy ones. We had mini-split heat pumps installed in our house and removed our oil furnace and tank. That was a big job and although it got us off fossil fuels, it left us entirely dependent on electricity for home heating. We had the house insulated and are conserving like crazy this winter, wearing hats and jackets in the house, but bracing ourselves for skyrocketing electricity bills. I worked with Massachusetts Peace Action to organize a timely webinar, A New Generation of Nuclear Lies: Small Modular Reactors and Nuclear Plant Reopenings/ Relicensing, featuring M.V. Ramana and Linda Pentz Gunther. We cleared our back yard of debris after some very messy tree work, and planted a vegetable garden, which a dear friend watered for us while we were away.

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Sunset walk on Hampstead Heath

Traveling to England in June, we both came down with COVID soon after we arrived, and so had to cancel or postpone most of our plans to meet friends and family. Interestingly, this forced us to slow down and carry on as if we weren’t on holiday, but were just living there—in the part of North London where my mother was born and raised, where my parents met, and where I was born. We went on long walks, read in bed, made endless cups of tea, watched The Change and Eastenders, took the bus to supermarkets and charity shops, got take-out fish and chips. That time of enforced everydayness was really rather wonderful.

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For the rest of the year we stayed home, but between June and October three generations of family from India and England came to visit us. We tended the vegetable garden on the terraces out back and split a share in the UMass Student Farm’s CSA. Lots and lots of fresh vegetables to eat, give away, and preserve for the winter, some of which we are still eating.

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Butternut squash

In 2025, I kept up to speed on local affairs by joining the copyediting team for our town’s independent, progressive online weekly, The Amherst Indy. After the family visits, after the garden was put to bed, we supported the campaigns of intrepid friends running for our town council. They won!

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I did a lot of reading last year, reading and re-reading. In the month of April, participating again in the annual A-Z Blogging Challenge, I discussed a book a day, discovering anew books I thought I had read decades before. But apart from that one month of daily blogging, I did very little writing. That’s something I want to change in 2026.

2025 was a year of losses. In England, the last of my mother’s generation, Auntie Angy, passed away in March. And in India, the last of my father’s eight siblings, Mandatya, in November. I have found these deaths of my elders destabilizing, along with the deaths of two elderly neighbors and the departures of two more to assisted living facilities. Also in the U.S. we lost Janice, a dear friend who died much too young and before we could say goodbye. And Jimmy Cliff, without whom I might never have fallen in love with Reggae music.


So here I am in the first week of 2026, here we all are:

. . . as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
(Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold

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Free Palestine march and rally, Camden Town

Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela. Ignorance is not acceptable when one’s own nation is deeply complicit in the killings of thousands upon thousands, in daily violations of national sovereignty and international law. Closer to home, masked immigration enforcement personnel raid and round up hapless immigrants, sometimes in the dead of night, sometimes at their schools and workplaces, whisking them off to distant detention centers where they are humiliated, terrified, abused, and separated from their families. People are being told to self-deport or face deportation, in which case they will never be able to return. People are being arrested based on their accents and the color of their skin. It is hard not to take all these ongoing assaults personally.

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No Kings Day

It is hard not to be overwhelmed by sadness. I take refuge in the love of my dear partner, of family, friends, and community; in nature; in books, memories, home-cooked food. Sometimes, especially in these dark days of winter, curled up in my warm bed, I cannot seem to rouse myself. But it must be done. There is no time, no place to hide away.

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Small, comforting rituals

Amidst the chaos, I seek comfort in small daily rituals. But in 2026, there is work to be done, there are rifts to be healed. More is required of me—more creative energy, more concentration, more optimism of the will. More music and singing, more fellowship and joy. Joy, despite everything.

And now, off to bed. Tomorrow is another day.

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