Everything Girl

In part one of our interview with Man of the Moment Peter Yarrow, we talked about his history with Peter, Paul & Mary, and about his activism. In part two, we talk a bit more about social justice, as well as about Peter’s children’s books, and his organization Operation Respect

You’ve spoken about the concept of Tikkun Olam. For our readers who may not be familiar with Jewish culture and traditions, or simply haven’t heard the term, can you offer a brief interpretation of it, as it applies to you?

“Tikkun Olam means that each of us has the responsibility to repair the world and heal the world, not alone by ourselves, but we each have the responsibility to do what we can, in our own individual ways, to help heal and repair the world.”

Tikkun Olam means that each of us has the responsibility to repair the world and heal the world, not alone by ourselves, but we each have the responsibility to do what we can, in our own individual ways, to help heal and repair the world. This is, for me, is the most important and inspiring teaching of Judaism. I firmly believe that if we all devote ourselves to pursuing Tikkun Olam as a central part of our lives, the world will get better and better.

In the words of the great moral leader Mahatma Gandhi of India, who changed the world and inspired so many of us, including Barrack Obama, we must “be the change we seek to make in the world”, which means we cannot work towards greater humanity in some organization and then go home to humiliate and mistreat our friends, our family or even our dogs, cats and farm animals. We must truly “live” and “be” the answer to the trials of the world we seek to heal.

I don’t mean that any of us can be one hundred percent in practicing Tikkun Olam, nor do I mean to say that I am successful in fully living up to the principles that I admire and respect in others. A good deal of the time, I fail to measure up to what I hold to be enviable and wonderful in other people. I am human, and faulted, as all of us are. But I do try, and I do make apologies and amends when I am aware of my mistakes, and I do realize that without my doing so I would be in a far less honest, balanced, healthy and happy place in my life. But I am also aware that I am one of the luckiest people I know because I am surrounded with so many advantages. So much that is wonderful in life, in my work, my friends, my singing, my ease and comfort in terms of a life-style that is beyond what I had ever imagined I might one day have. Certainly, my life is a far cry from one that keeps me in a state of fear of sickness, hunger of the absence of shelter as it does for a majority of civilization. I have much to be grateful for.

The inspiration and rewards of the work that I have done, so much of it with Noel Paul and Mary, have given me the chance to evolve into a person who is far more able to reach for the tasks, gifts and rewards of Tikkun Olam. Over the course of my life, I have become a person who is far less selfish and myopic, far less insensitive to other’s needs than I might have been had I not had music in my life and loving teachers, such as my own mother, my children, my friends and of course Mary and Noel Paul.

I have very serious feet of clay, but I am growing in heart and spirit every day, and doing so is completely allied to my continual ability to see myself as faulted, ask others for forgiveness when I transgress, and learn to forgive myself, rather than walking around trying to hide and justify my misdeeds, as does a “hit-and-run” driver I spoke of above.

Tell us a bit about Operation Respect. What was the inspiration for it, and where do you see it going? Do you have any advice for parents of kids who are being bullied?

The non-profit, Operation Respect, that I founded a decade ago, relates to all the things I’ve said above in this interview. Because I believe that children who have not yet “learned to hate” are the hope for humanity I also believe that the way in which they are educated (and educated to practice and embrace the concept of Tikkun Olam) is central to the way we ultimately deal with the problems we face in today’s world. Operation Respect’s school-based program, “Don’t Laugh At Me” (DLAM) provides the curricula and the tools to help change the environment of classrooms and schools so that they become more and more safe, ridicule and bully free and nurturing of all the needs of a growing child. DLAM is only one tool, though a good one that, in conjunction with others suited to the specific needs of a school or classroom, can dramatically change the classroom and school climate to one that is supportive of, and nurturing of, children and youth in their growth in all the dimensions of their development.

Through DLAM, children learn to be sensitized to the hurt of ridicule, to the pain of ostracism. They learn some of the basics in how to resolve conflicts creatively and non-violently. They learn to respect each other for the good things “inside” their friends, rather than the things their friends, or their friends’ families possess. They label their classrooms “Ridicule Free Zones” and create a “peace place” that reminds and teaches personal and interpersonal peace and understanding.

Most important, and this is why the “Don’t Laugh At Me” program is different from other similar programs, DLAM uses music, lots of music, to engage children and youth in ways that let them open their hearts and really talk from the “inside out”. Singing together provides a platform for doing all the things that are done in DLAM’s classroom exercises, all of which came from the amazing work of Linda Lantieri and her allied organization “Educators For Social Responsibility” that formulated the pedagogy, the classroom exercises and curricula, long before I began my advocacy efforts the field of educational reform in policy and practice.

If you go the Operation Respect website (OperationRespect.org) as a teacher, a school counselor, a school administrator, a person who works with children who have special needs/gifts, a person engaged in helping children and youth overcome problems or adversity, you can benefit from the free materials that will be sent to you by Operation Respect (OR), by virtue of the generosity of The McGraw-Hill Companies. You can download the “Don’t Laugh At Me Program” (DLAM) with its videos, CD’s, curricula for grades 2-5 and 6-8 and other materials. Additionally, all the songs that I’ve recorded for the books that have been published by Sterling can be downloaded FOR FREE if you will be using them to educate children and youth. Go to OperationRespect.org and make use of these materials and you will have the gift of the DLAM program and, as educators, the gift of the songs to use with the children and youth you are educating, nurturing or inspiring, that educated my heart and changed my life. You can share these songs with your students, listen to them and sing them with your students, and you will be enriched as much as they will be, I promise you.

You’ve shared with recent audiences a recording of the song “Don’t Laugh at Me” sung in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. What is the next evolution for that version of the song, and your work with Israeli and Palestinian youth? Do you think lasting peace is possible?

Yes, I do think that lasting peace is possible between Israelis and Palestinians, and I do think that a two state solution is all but inevitable, but I don’t think that peace can come from the wounded hearts of adults who are determined to resurrect the horror of the past, to renew the unendurable historic pain and fear, who are determined to never trust “the other side”, never move on from past horrors, horrors committed, in my opinion, by both sides in relation to the current conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Such people are too wounded and too frightened to even imagine trusting the other side, and we, unfortunately, can seldom if ever look to them to guide us through the courageous process of changing the current, tragic, hostilities and endemic gridlock – and the status of de facto, intermittent, war between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.

“The balance of the people on both sides must embrace the idea, the steps to, and the process of creation peace, and not only as a document signed by governments. Peace cannot truly happen, or hold, until young hearts are brought up without a commitment to hate the other side, to fear the ‘other’.”

But to create peace, we must somehow create peace in the hearts of both peoples or no negotiated solution will hold. The balance of the people on both sides must embrace the idea, the steps to, and the process of creation peace, and not only as a document signed by governments. Peace cannot truly happen, or hold, until young hearts are brought up without a commitment to hate the other side, to fear the “other”, or a determination to destroy the other.

To accomplish a small step in this regard, it is my dream to do my part (as in Tikkun Olam), not to make the whole change happen (of course, but would that I could), but to play the part I might play by bringing Operation Respect to Israel, both in predominately Palestinian schools as well as predominately Jewish schools, and even into the West Bank, and some day even to Gaza, We have started this effort, which goes beyond Operation Respect’s work that has brought DLAM in some form to over 22,000 schools in America, to Hong Kong in Mandarin and English, to Croatia in the Croatian language, to South Africa, to Bermuda and Canada etc. This past October, our Director of Education, Mark Weiss and his colleague, Lynn Hurdle-Price, trained the teachers and staff in four pilot schools in Israel, two schools with mainly Jewish students and two with Arabic students. I, myself, will be traveling to Israel with OR’s Board Chair, Dr. Charlotte Frank, in late January to sing at these schools and lay further groundwork for the expansion of this OR: DLAM work that is currently, and thankfully, underwritten in large part by the United States Embassy for its initial launch in the Middle East.

I know, from previous trips to Israel and the occupied territories of the Palestinian West Bank, that the children and youth of Israel and Palestine are willing and eager to move beyond the hatred and killing of the past. If these children, prior to their becoming entrenched in the habits of hate, before they irretrievably learn to be cynical and fearful of resolution of the terrible history of pain and anguish of the past conflicts, can be given the opportunity to lead the way, to engage with one another, to create and share their thoughts, their songs, their poetry, their hopes, their teen-age angst, their problems across national, ethnic and religious lines, then there will be a road to peace, and a lasting one at that.

Policy changes alone will not make the peace hold. Changes of the heart are necessary for that to occur, and that is where music, OR and DLAM have a role. Achieving this is one of my fondest dreams. I know, in my heart, that this is achievable, though I am also quite certain that I will not live to see the full realization of this dream. Simply to know that we are on the way, and that I have contributed in even small ways, will be quite enough for me, I assure you.

You’ve managed, with your children’s books Puff the Magic Dragon and Day is Done to create indelible visual images that also capture the essence of each song. What inspired those books, and are there more to come? What about the Peter Yarrow Songbooks?

The books that I’ve had published are also connected to all that I’ve mentioned, above. These books with CDs provide a new window for disseminating the kind of music that inspired me and changed my life, that being Folk Music, to reach today’s broad, popular, audience. At the age of 71, and being a folk-singer, if I had told you that I would have a million-selling CD, you would have laughed at me, and properly so. No folksinger today has access to the popular markets of music that have effectively been all but closed to folk music for over two decades.

However, I do have a million selling CD! It is the CD in the illustrated book, Puff The Magic Dragon, and this CD with three songs, “Puff”, “The Blue Tail Fly” and “Froggie Went A’Courtin” was recorded by me and my daughter, Bethany, a superb performer and singer in her own right, along with her musical partner, Rufus Cappadocia, a virtuoso cellist who plays the cello more the way Jimmy Hendricks played the guitar, though his background is in classical cello and he used to play cello in a symphony orchestra. This CD (that happens to be attached to a beautiful, exquisite in fact, illustrated book of the Puff song written by me and Lenny Lipton) will have sold a million copies by the end of the holiday season, 2009.

“At the age of 71, and being a folk-singer, if I had told you that I would have a million-selling CD, you would have laughed, and properly so. No folk singer today has access to the popular markets of music that have effectively been all but closed to folk music for over two decades.”

What does this have to do with DLAM and OR? Well, this music that has been “off the radar” now for decades in terms of a broad popular market, is now back in full force, as are the three collections of Folk Songs that have been illustrated, 12 songs to a book, of the three editions of The Peter Yarrow Song Book published by Sterling. The first released was Favorite Folk Songs, along with the second, Sleepytime Songs and the third, just released is Let’s Sing Together with all the songs recorded by me and Bethany, once again. (At least one more book in this series, Songs For Little People is yet to come, and will be released this coming spring of 2010.)

These books with CDs, or as I, from my singer’s perspective see them as CDs with beautiful, amazing and wonderful illustrated books attached, offer a treasure trove of the kind of music that has been somewhat lost, but is desperately needed in the lives of children, for all the reasons that I’ve stated above. The good news, of course, is that if you don’t have the money to buy these books, if you are an educator and you intend to use this music for the “education of the heart” and creativity of children, you can download all these songs at OperationRespect.org as well as download, or send for, the “Don’t Laugh At Me Program” Curricula.

So you see, these books, including the latest release of Day Is Done in illustrated book form, with CD, are all complementing the work of OR and DLAM. For me, this new success is a dream and a half, and I bet you can understand why. (Last month, Day Is Done went to the No.1 position on Publishers Weekly, a magazine for illustrated children’s books, as Puff… took the No.1 position for 16 solid weeks two years ago.)

You seem to have a connection with children that borders on the magical. What is it about young people that so delights you?

I have loved singing to and being with children ever since I was a counselor at a summer camp, Sprout Lake Camp for Cardiac Children, when I was barely 16 years old. I totally fell in love with being their surrogate “daddy” as a camp counselor, teaching them folk songs and painting (I was a young and hopeful painter then.) Magic happened to me that summer and that magic has remained in my life as the formulation of my relationship with my children. I would sing in both my children’s classes each week when they were very young, and now I sing for my grandchild, for her play group, and for all the children and youth that I encounter in the audiences of families when I travel to do concert at book signings and promotions for my books in bookstores, at book conventions, JCC’s etc.

And speaking of delight, after your recent performance/signing at the Dallas Jewish Community Center, several of us observed that we had never met anyone who so embodied pure joy. What inspires that bubbling energy that you share so (apparently) effortlessly? How do you balance it with the serious nature of so much of your work?

I’m blessed and fortunate in many ways, as I have explained above.

As to the reason for my being joyful when I am performing for families and children, that’s about all I can say. I’m fortunate, I’m really aware of it, I’m grateful in the extreme for my life, my work, my friends and my loved ones. The older I get the more grateful I get, and that applies to my having the opportunity to write these answers to your very astute and penetrating questions for this interview. (You did a great job, and I’m grateful to you for having been so thoughtful and gracefully provocative, giving me the platform to share my thoughts and feelings.).

We’re dying to know: when you’re playing music just to listen to (are you even capable of “just” listening?) whether it’s on vinyl, CD, or an mp3 player, what does Peter Yarrow listen to? Is there a secret rocker lurking inside you, or are you a jazz or classical fan?

I love opera, especially Puccini, and I have subscribed to the Metropolitan Opera for decades. It’s always a vacation to Europe when I go to the Met or City Opera in New York. I love classical music, mostly chamber music. I love R&B, the Blues, of course Folk, classic, historic, Jazz, World Music (MY DAUGHTER’S MUSIC which is roots music and Jazz combined, framed by “World Music” musicians is amazing, and I believe, some of the “music of the future”, internationally for sure, and hopefully nationally in the US as well.)

I also enjoy some pop, but not much from today, though I must say that my daughter has increased my appreciation of music that I previously did not know existed. As to a “secret rocker’, yes, there is one inside me, but I’m more a fan of the U2 kind of rock, and less of the hard rock such as “acid” rock or “punk” rock. As for “hip hop”, only in rare instances can I appreciate, or even follow the words, so I have to admit to being “generationally limited” in this regard. (However, having said that, there is a young “positive rapper”, Baby Jay, that has done brilliant versions of “Don’t Laugh At Me” and other songs that do resonate strongly with me, so I suspect that my aversion to rap music and hip-hop is more an inability to embrace the substance of many of the songs, rather than the rejection of the form. Remember, the “talking blues” were the rap music of the union moment of the 1940s and 1950s, so the idea of spoken word with music is not, inherently, either new nor offensive to me.)

True artists - like you - never seem to consider retirement; they just develop more care in choosing projects. What can we expect to see from you in the future?

More or the same, and gratefully so.

For more information about the “Don’t Laugh at Me” program, Peter strongly encourages you to visit OperationRespect.org. He also recommends his daughter’s music for those who like to try new things: BethanyMusic.com

Melissa A. Bartell likes strong coffee, red wine, and dark chocolate. She earns her living writing web-copy for an Internet marketing firm & dabbles in fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Managing Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page, check out her blog at MissMeliss.com, or follow her on Twitter: @Melysse

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