At Cornell University in 1959, a nineteen year old student named Lenny Lipton sat in the library at Willard Straight Hall and read a poem by Ogden Nash about a “realio, trulio, little pet dragon“. As anyone who has ever been nineteen knows, it is a serious and sentimental age. Lenny later found himself thinking about dragons and lamenting the end of his childhood as he walked down the hill to the city of Ithaca to meet a friend for dinner. No one was home at his friend’s apartment, so he just let himself in (remember, this is 1959) and while he was waiting, sat down at a typewriter that belonged to his friend’s roommate, Peter. Lenny wrote down his own poem about a dragon and lost childhood fantasies and left the sheet in the typewriter.
Peter, a performer and concert organizer at Cornell, found the poem, added some words, and set it to music. A few years later, when Peter joined the emerging folk music scene in Greenwich Village, he founded a group with two other friends and that piece quickly became part of their repertoire. Peter tracked Lenny down to give him co-writer credit before the group recorded and released the song on vinyl. By early 1963, their record reached #2 on the popular charts and has been sung thousands of times since. Why, you probably know most of the lyrics yourself…
Peter Yarrow is an amazing man. Both as an accomplished solo performer and as part of the legendary folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary, he has been an advocate for and organizer of progressive causes for over 40 years. His current venture is called Operation: Respect, an effort to bring character education to children and reduce the emotional and sometimes physical battering that too many youths endure through bullying and other forms of peer ridicule. The centerpiece of this undertaking is a program called Don’t Laugh At Me, a series of curriculum guides, songs, and videos aimed at developing empathy, personal pride, and conflict resolution. As part of this project, Peter Yarrow comes to towns, works with school administrators and teachers, and meets with and sings for the children. Wherever he can, he also performs a free concert for the rest of the community, so those who could not see him at the school still get a chance to hear his message. I took advantage of this opportunity and brought my entire family to hear him sing and speak last Friday night.
Even on a stage in front of several hundred people, Peter performs very openly and honestly, speaking to all assembled as though they were simply a very large group of friends gathered together for an impromptu sing-a-long. In addition to “Don’t Laugh At Me“, a plaintive tune about peer tolerance and the desire to be accepted, the audience joined him in “Blowin in the Wind“ and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?“. More significantly, between the songs, Peter spoke about what it means to not be accepted, to be bullied or ridiculed. He asked those adults who remembered being made fun of as children by other children to stand up (most did), and asked the same of the children present. Nobody who had ever gone through the experience had to feel alone, and everyone now had someone with whom they could talk.
All my children are performers and creators in their own right, especially my eight year old daughter. She loves to sing, though like many artistic types, she is terribly sensitive and can suffer terrible stage fright. She was very impressed with Peter Yarrow and the fact that he marched with Martin Luther King and so leapt at the opportunity to take her little brother by the hand and join him onstage with many other children to sing Peter’s signature song.
With memories of childhood injustices and war looming in our near future, it was already an emotional event, but the height of the evening for us was when Peter Yarrow handed the microphone to my daughter and her pure sweet voice filled the auditorium as she twice sang the refrain to “Puff the Magic Dragon“:
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee…
As she sang, her five year old brother stood next to her and beamed with wonder and awe. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house.
After the performance, there was a rush of people to the stage to meet Peter Yarrow. My daughter wanted to give him a little origami-type animal that she had crafted from her ticket. I joined her because I feared, correctly, that she would get too timid at the last moment without my support. Many other people crowded in front of us, most bearing pens and scraps of paper for his autograph. As far as I could tell, we were the only ones there to actually give him something (in fact, it never even occurred to us to ask for anything). After several minutes, we finally made our way to him, and he appropriately gushed over my lovely little girl (note to Peter’s adult children: this man really needs some grandkids). She handed him her paper creation, and as he admired it she piped up “I think you should make a CD of all your songs and send them to George Bush!” Peter smiled broadly at her, winked at me, and replied “young lady, someone is bringing you up right.” He called for his assistant to bring his laptop, brought a document on screen, and handed the entire thing for me to read. It was a petition that he was creating to send to the ‘President’, beseeching this administration to recognize that the many citizens who oppose this war with Iraq are still committed and loyal Americans. I wish I could reproduce the whole thing here, but as you might expect from a man with a history of expressing important ideas in words, it was very well written. I told him that I was impressed and asked where I could sign. “It’s still a draft…” he replied.I felt honored by his trust and touched by his eagerness to share. All evening long, he had been entertaining and educating us with songs of hope and goodwill. As we spoke about current world events, though, I could see the light in his eyes flash from optimism to sadness and fear. Here was a man who has been an integral part of every progressive cause for more than forty years. Here was a man who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to civil rights, women’s liberation, and the environmental movement, a man who has spent more than forty years devoting his talents to improving life for others while George Bush was busy nursing hangovers and driving his oil companies and our country into the dirt. This sweet, caring, important man looked at me, shook his head sadly, and sighed. “I’ve been through some bad times, but this is the worst I’ve ever seen. These men running this country frighten me, should frighten us all.”In the long silence that followed, no one could disagree.
On the drive home, I wanted to talk to my children about what they had learned, but they were too excited and wanted only to sing. Whatever else they may recall of these strange days that make up their childhood, I am certain that they will never forget the night they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” with the magical Peter Yarrow.
A dragon lives forever but not so girls and boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cavePuff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee…(words by Lenny Lipton, lyrics and music by Peter Yarrow)