Red Shoes

Pete Seeger penned this marvelous song made popular by The Weavers during their 1980 Reunion Concert at Carnegie Hall.  It’s a classic that speaks to Baby Boomers like me who may remember, if we still have memory, the political activism of our youth.

Get Up and Go 

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

Old age is golden so I've heard said

But sometimes I wonder as I crawl into bed

With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup

My eyes on the table until I wake up

As sleep dims my vision I say to myself

Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?

Though nations are warring and business is vexed

I'll still stick around to see what happens next

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

When I was young my slippers were red

I could kick up my heels right over my head

When I was older my slippers were blue

But still I could dance the whole night thru

Now I am old my slippers are black

I huff to the store and I puff my way back

But never you laugh; I don't mind at all

I'd rather be huffing than not puff at all

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

I get up each morning and dust off my wits

Open the paper and read the obits

If I'm not there I know I'm not dead

So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed

How do I know my youth is all spent?

My get up and go has got up and went

But in spite of it all I'm able to grin

And think of the places my get up has been

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

I always wanted to have this bumper sticker:

You never can have too many pairs of Red Shoes.

Why do I love red shoes? Maybe because…

-The Red Shoes Ballet as danced by Moira Shearer got stuck in my brain at an early age?

-I grew up in Echo Park near Downtown Los Angeles. A hot-bed of communist activity, Echo Park was called “Red Hill?”

-Red Shoes conjure for me Native Peoples who spoke of two roads: the Red Road (Life) and the Blue Road (Spirit). I’m fond of walking the good red road, preferably in comfortable red shoes?

-I want to hold onto my youth, like Ronnie Gilbert, female vocalist of The Weavers, whose slippers were red in her youth in the song above?

-The first pair of Capezio Spanish Dance Shoes I purchased, when I was an impressionable seventeen-year-old studying classical Spanish dance, were made in 1920 of bright red leather and I loved those shoes?

I love red and used to wear a lot of red clothing and, naturally, a girl’s got to have shoes to match!?

The Wizard of OZ probably always will be my favorite film and those Ruby Slippers have the power to move me to tears as I contemplate like Dorothy, I too always have had the power to “go HOME.”

No place like it, right?

Ram Dass says, “When it comes right down to it, we’re all just walking each other home.”

I like to imagine those times of red-slipper- wearing when I could kick up my heels right over my head. I like to re-member at the cellular level the certainty of conviction coordinated with muscular discipline in my more youthful body back then when it bent to my bidding. 

Not so long ago it seems, I walked, wrote letters, marched, and protested government actions I believed to be wrong. I marched with Congress Of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society, Progressive Labor Party, and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee against segregation in Los Angeles County and City Schools 1964-1966. I marched against the war in Viet Nam every year from 1966-1971, and was part of the Great Peace March send-off that started in down town Los Angeles with Holly Near singing us into an easy walking pace in 1986. A friend and I played guitars and sang songs at one of the early Earth Day Celebrations in L.A. 1972. More recently, like millions of women around the world, I knit and wore a bright pink Pussy Hat at the Women’s March and rally on January 21, 2017 and again in 2018. I’ve worn rainbow attire at nearly every Oakland Pride Parade since moving to the Bay Area from Los Angeles in 2014. For June 2018’s action of solidarity with families separated at our borders, I marched to and rallied around one of the detention centers in Alameda County. 

Marching feels right. Eighty percent of Life is just showing up, says Woody Allen. 

As I enter my seventies, I foresee that I will keep going for as long as ever I can to speak my mind, and use my will, voice and marching shoes for changing the world for better, if not for good.

Maybe, I need to buy some gently used red marching boots... that were made for walking, 'cause that's just what they'll do...

But that's another song.