The Protest Singer,' a bio of Pete Seeger

BOOK REVIEW

'The Protest Singer,' a bio of Pete Seeger

BY PETER TERZIAN | Special to Newsday

2:23 PM EDT, May 7, 2009

THE PROTEST SINGER:An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger, by Alec Wilkinson. Knopf, 151 pp., $22.95.

When Pete Seeger was younger, Alec Wilkinson writes, he sang with precise pitch. "His phrasing was subtle but resourceful enough to inflect meaning and character and to enliven a narrative, but not so much as to divert the listener toward the singer's personality." The passage is one of those instances in which a writer inadvertently describes himself.

Wilkinson is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where "The Protest Singer" first appeared in condensed form in 2006. He draws a picture of the folk singer not only by summoning up his history, public and private, but by giving us the man observed, in small swatches of manner and conversation. In one scene, Seeger's wife, Toshi, admonishes him: "Pete, you didn't have any breakfast." "I had a cookie," he replies - a tender portrait of a marriage in two sentences.

It's hard to identify Seeger with one particular song, and it's likely that he'd prefer it that way - he considers himself a conduit for music rather than a commercial performer. As a member of the 1950s folk group the Weavers, he popularized Leadbelly's "Goodnight, Irene" and the African pop tune "Wimoweh." His own compositions are arguably better known in versions sung by other people - "Turn, Turn, Turn," by the Byrds, and "If I Had a Hammer," by Peter, Paul and Mary. Seeger is happiest when he hears his voice among other voices, rather than solo, Wilkinson writes. In concerts, he encourages his audiences to accompany him.

Seeger, who turned 90 this month, comes from an intellectual background. His father, a musicologist with radical politics, wrote a collection of tenets that reflected his belief that "music . . . is a means for achieving larger ends" - an ideology that has formed the basis of Seeger's life's work. Seeger picked up the banjo at an early age; through his friendships with Woody Guthrie and with folk music historians John and Alan Lomax, he became familiar with the American vernacular song tradition. An early dalliance with the Communist party, however, led to his confrontation with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

His subsequent blacklisting allowed him to focus on performing for the people he cared for the most. In the process, he has become a kind of folk hero. Seeger continued to play for schoolchildren and at demonstrations for political, social and environmental causes; in the 1960s, he participated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s march from Selma to Montgomery.

"People ask, is there one word that you have more faith in than any other word," he tells Wilkinson, "and I'd say it's participation." Wilkinson peppers his narrative with moving anecdotes of listeners transformed by a Seeger performance. At a concert a few years after the Vietnam War (which Seeger opposed), he was approached by a veteran who told him, "I came here this afternoon to kill you." "As he sat through the concert, laying eyes on Seeger for the first time, and singing with the rest of the audience," Wilkinson writes, "his antagonism dissolved." The veteran and Seeger sang a song together, and when they finished, the veteran told him, "I feel cleansed."

Georgia Seeking International Investment From BIO Conference

Georgia Seeking International Investment From BIO Conference

About a third of up to 16,000 attendees at the upcoming BIO conference in Atlanta will be from outside the U.S., and Georgia is aiming to turn these global visitors into investors, officials said in a briefing on May 7.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual convention will bring professionals and companies from 48 states and 60 countries to the Georgia World Congress Center May 18-21.

Some 70 percent of the attendees will be top-level executives, the kinds of people who make decisions about where to locate offices and facilities, said Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

"Our goal here of course is to position Georgia as the premier location for bioscience company investment," he said.

At the business-focused conference, Georgia will have ample chance to present itself as a gateway for overseas companies looking for U.S. partners, said Charles Craig, president of GeorgiaBio, a statewide consortium of about 300 life sciences organizations and companies.

"This really is a meeting where companies do business," said Mr. Craig, who is working with the international BIO group to organize the conference. "They're here from all over the world to do deals, and it's really an opportunity for our Georgia companies to make global connections with the life sciences industry and also to see what their counterparts are doing in the rest of the world."

Mr. Stewart said there would be about 14,000 business meetings among representatives of the 1,700 companies attending.

Targeting the bioscience sector is vital to the Georgia economy.  It already employs 62,000 people in the state and has an annual economic impact of $16 billion. 

Thanks to strong research universities and a favorable climate for innovation, bioscience is the fastest growing of any economic sector in the state since 2000, Mr. Stewart said, citing a University of Georgia study.

Bioscience is a competitive global industry.  State and local governments do all they can to attract companies in this sector because it's a clean industry that creates high-paying, high-tech jobs and encourages innovation without huge infrastructure requirements.

The state's dogged efforts to attract the conference and ensure that it comes back show that Georgia is "putting our money where our mouth is," in attracting bioscience business, Mr. Stewart said.

"I would think that any state would salivate to have a conference of this stature," he said. "In fact, any city in the world would, so the fact that we have it shows something about Georgia and about Atlanta."

The state has reserved a 5,100-square-foot booth that will house 32 exhibitors and is holding a drawing to give away a new Kia to highlight the Korean carmaker's decision to build a plant here.

Georgia has hosted two tours for international delegates and one for foreign journalists to show them the state's bioscience advantages.

Bio-electricity may offer better mileage for cars than ethanol

Bio-electricity may offer better mileage for cars than ethanol

WASHINGTON: A new study by scientists has suggested that biomass converted into electricity could be more efficient than ethanol. 

The study was conducted by University of California, Merced, Assistant Professor Elliott Campbell and two other researchers. 

In the study, Campbell, along with Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and David Lobell of Stanford University, the scientists found that biomass converted into electricity produced 81 percent more transportation miles and 108 percent more emissions offsets compared to ethanol. 

In other words, according to Campbell, vehicles powered by biomass converted into electricity "got further down the road" compared to ethanol. 

"As a result, we found that converting biomass to electricity rather than ethanol makes the most sense for two policy-relevant issues, transportation and climate," he said. 

The scientists based their study on two criteria: miles per area cropland and greenhouse gas offsets per area cropland. In both cases, scientists considered a range of feedstock crops (corn and switchgrass and vehicle types (small car, midsize car, small SUV and large SUV). 

First, they looked at how many miles a range of vehicles powered by ethanol could travel versus a range of electric vehicles fueled by electricity. 

Second, they examined offsets to greenhouse gas emissions for ethanol and bioelectricity. 

Land use is an important factor to consider when evaluating each method. Globally, the amount of land available to grow biomass crops is limited. 

Using existing croplands for biofuels could cause increases in food prices and clearing new land, or deforestation, can have a negative impact on the environment. 

The researchers are careful to point out their study looked at two criteria, transportation and greenhouse gas offsets, but did not examine the performance of electricity and ethanol for other policy relevant criteria. 

"We also need to compare these options for other issues such as water consumption, air pollution and economic costs," Campbell said.