This Machine Kills New Year's Resolutions
I’ve got an ailment that flares up every year at this time.
My affliction? Woody Guthrie, his life, and his enduring New Year’s Resolutions, or as Woody called them, New Year’s Rulin’s.
Some of you are aware of my condition as I return to Woody’s 1943 resolutions each year by sharing them here and elsewhere.
They’re simple, nostalgic, touching – an example of turning an everyday (every year?) exercise into a master class for creativity. (And no, AI did NOT insert that em dash.)
Beyond these scribblin’s, Woody has been one my heroes going back to my infatuation with the Great Depression Era’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which started in my high school social studies class. As part of the WPA’s Federal Art Project, he used his art and his voice to plead the cause of the everyman, of natural wonders as in the power of the Columbia River.
As it says on the Woody Guthrie Center website, “Woody Guthrie spoke for those who carried a heavy burden or had come upon hard times — giving voice to their struggles and giving them hope and strength.”
I mean, how can you not love someone who wrote “This Land Is My Land” as a response to what he felt was the overplaying of “God Bless America” on the radio?
(Well, I guess there are a lot of people who wouldn’t love him because of that, but that’s another story. These same folks might take issue with Woody’s guitar, iconically emblazoned in hand-painted lettering, “This Machine Kills Fascists.”)
Beyond my annual lovefest with Woody’s resolutions, he’s been showing up in the zeitgeist of My Own Private Idaho this year; over the holidays my wife gifted me one of my favorite birthday presents ever, Woody Guthrie: Songs and Art, Words and Wisdom, and as I am writing this, the algorithms have made me aware that U2 (another all-time fave) was honored recently with the Woody Guthrie Prize for exemplifying Woody’s social consciousness and musical legacy. Past honorees have ranged from Pete Seeger to Pussy Riot. If you’re of a mind – and I always am for this – you can listen here to Bono and The Edge play an acoustic set at the honors ceremony.
As well, you can dig deeper into his bio here – and while you’re there, don’t forget to check out “In Woody’s Words”; his homespun quotes like that below are equal parts pure genius and inspiration.
“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.”
As for me, I haven’t yet landed on a resolution for the year and might just not. But I can promise you that I will continue to help and exhort those who are using their business for good to take pride in yourself and in your work.
It’s a hard path, social entrepreneurship, and related to what Woody once said: “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”
In parallel, the same applies to our work for social and environmental impact – harder by a measure, but imminently more worth it, and when pursued successfully by positively changing lives or saving a wild place, there is a bit of genius to it.
Godspeed, friends – and Happy New Year to you.
Russ