As we close this issue—a process that (despite ambitious
plans to the contrary) happens quickly, and always in tumult —we are visited by
one if the wettest, most thunderous, and greenest early summers that I can
remember.
As a result, the world-wide corporate headquarters for
insideouthv.com is surrounded by so much chaotic lushness, vegetation so riotous,
that we feel like we're living in somebody else's extravagant hydroponics garden
experiment.
As I sit here, the weeping willows in front of us are
growing so fast I can almost hear them crack, like a young kid on a growth
spurt who stretches out in in the morning. This evening a random sun peeked out,
and for a moment it was easier to imagine what this whole scene looked like
before the gun toting men intruded, before the footprint of modern civilization
arrived: when nature was dominant, and men just a small detail. (In fact,
exactly the world vividly imagined and idealized by the Hudson River School.)
In this spirit of
fecundity, in this hotbed of freshness, we are doing our second annual art
issue. For this, we knew we needed to check in with Pete Seeger, because our
boundless, inspirational admiration for his unflagging social activism—including
his enormous, almost paternal role in cleaning up the Hudson (itself a main
subject in this issue)—might not have been possible, or happened for as many of
us, all of us, if it were not for Pete Seeger the artist: the musician and poet
of genius.
Our wide-ranging conversation with him was replete with historic
depth, free-floating generosity, and humble matter-of-factness: It was quintessential
Pete. He shook off most of the attention he's gotten as of late (his 90th
birthday celebration, a petition for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, etc.) and
the attendant celebrity, but he did allow for one description of what he's
done: "I look upon myself as a sower of seeds."
If you're wondering how we came up with our cover idea (as
many readers often do), this is how: We didn't ask Pete if we could
"use" that image of him, with his banjo pointed to the heavens, from
his website. We already knew that answer. We had, after our talk, all the
"permission" we would ever need. Because he has made the Hudson River
Valley a place where seeds can take hold, where artists can thrive, where
nature in its implacable, moisture-filled glory (as portrayed by Hudson River
Schooler Jasper Francis Cropsey in Autumn—On the Hudson River, 1860) is still
the dominant thing, the central event. A place where the artists are the
truth-tellers, and where the lightness begins.
To save some trees, we didn't put blow-in cards in this
issue, but we still—very much—need the subscriptions that make a magazine like
this possible. There are two groups of you that we urge to follow-up on this:
those of you who have said you were going to subscribe, but haven't quite
gotten around to it, and hopefully, those of you who are new to this magazine
and haven't been asked directly, until now. We need you. Please subscribe, and
encourage your friends and families to as well.
