I was looking through the Malvina lyric site this morning, couldn’t find the song with the line “This is the day the world turns over” but here’s another one:

BUSTING AT THE SEAMS

Words by Malvina Reynolds, Music by Pete Seeger; copyright 2004.

Everything is busting at the seams,
No more seams, no more binding.
Even in my dreams,
A golden glow is shining.
My dreams are breaking through
Into the everyday.
And every day the world is new.
Don't be afraid, don't be afraid,
The world is being made all over.
It will be good enough then
For the lover, for the mother,
And the father, and the child.
Don't be afraid if everything seems wild
Cause everything is busting at the seams.

As he was going through some files in 2004, Pete Seeger found this poem Malvina had sent him years before. He changed the words very slightly and wrote a tune to go with them. If you want a lead sheet for “Busting at the Seams” write me at                               nancy[at]sisterschoice.com

I was at writing class last night. Things were looking good for Obama when we settled down to listen to the night’s reader. The first thing I said in the feedback was “I didn’t think of the election once while you were reading.” But before the feedback part, at our usual twenty-minute break after the reading, we all trooped upstairs to watch TV in our teacher’s bedroom and, luckily, got to hear Obama’s speech. While drinking champagne. It was a good place to be. We were Black, white, Chicano, old, young, gay, straight, and we were all happy.

This morning, our happiness is tempered by the evident victory of California’s Proposition 8, putting a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. So we have a long way to go—but we knew that.

Ending on a small but happy note, our bond issue to earthquake-retrofit and upgrade our branch libraries in Berkeley squeaked through (it needed a two-thirds majority). So better libraries AND construction jobs when housing starts are, so to speak, in the basement.

©2008 by Nancy Schimmel