Good To Be In Woods Hole

My kids just left the house with Alen at 4 am to fly to Woods Hole for a month.  This trip was planned since last summer and though I am going to miss them a great deal until I join them in two weeks, I could not be happier that they are going.

Growing up I had two anchors:  Judaism and Woods Hole.  I had the enormous privilege to spend every summer in Woods Hole, and it really was almost like another, non-competing, religion.

The values of Woods Hole began with reverence for Nature.  Louis Agassiz said, "Study Nature, not Books," and that was the motto of the Children's School of Science where we learned each summer.  During the day time the town is criss crossed by groups of kids with buckets, nets, and sometimes cameras, learning from the sea, earth and sky.  Seashore Life, Marine Biology, Oceanographic Electronics, Invertebrate Zoology, Advanced Marine Biology were some of the courses I took.  I'm grateful I had a great biology education before I met my sexist high school biology teacher Mr. DeMarco (maybe I'll write about him one day).  If you know Alen and her work you can understand how deeply I "get" what she does from this amazing aspect of our Woods Hole education.

Woods Hole, of course, is home to adults who study science as well, but my experience was from a child's perspective.  Adults worked in labs, attended lectures, spoke on the beach about their research.  Kids went to science school.

Though there was no synagogue in Woods Hole, there was a "rabbi", Phyllis Goldstein.  She was my childhood hero and even as an adult I held her in awe.  The religion she taught was democracy and human rights, reverence for all cultures and for history, and of course the joy and value of music.  She taught it through folksinging every Tuesday night, each summer for forty years.  She was a living role model who had lived through tragic loss and risen.  She was incredibly charismatic - at times stern (to keep kids quiet) and almost always smiling and laughing.  She seemed like a walking encyclopedia of history and music.  She taught us about the evils of slavery, the music that accompanied the fight for freedom, the labor movement, the history of whaling and New England, songs from Africa and elsewhere around the world, languages and more.  We used to sing "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in about 20 languages.  The message of her songs was that all people have value, all people have songs and stories, all people can care for and about one another.  It's a message that never grows old.

(I wrote more about Phyllis here when she passed away in 2011.)

So now a terrible war is on, and my kids are getting on a plane.  I smiled and hugged them and reminded them that although they are leaving, they are going to be "mini-me".  With tears in my eyes I remember how we traveled to Woods Hole in 2002.  We had made aliyah during the intifada, and for 20 months had not returned home.  We went back to the US at the end of a year we had spent in Jerusalem when 200 people were killed in terror attacks in Jerusalem and the death toll from the intifada on all sides climbed over 2000.  I remember seeing Phyllis and talking to her, and I remember the look in her eyes when I told her I was living in Israel.  It was a look of incredible compassion, and a moment in which I understood that she felt the pain of what I was living through and she believed in me to continue to stand up for the values she had taught me, even when their realization seems hidden.

Jeremy Korr continues to sing Phyllis's songs in Woods Hole with a new generation of children.  And my kids (who met Phyllis when they were young) are going to sing and to feel the earth, ocean and sky.  And just maybe, they too will find their an anchor.

"I Come for to Sing"

Folksinging in Woods Hole always began the same way:

Some come to dance/some come to play/others come just to pass time away
Some come to laugh/their voices do ring/but as for me/I come for to sing

Some kids join in/others do not/
some like to talk about what I ain't got
But I don't care/it don't mean a thing/I'll keep on coming, coming to sing


Phyllis Switzer Goldstein z"l led folksinging at the MBL club in Woods Hole for 45 years. She was a shining light in my life, and living proof of how much influence one person can have through song. January took three wonderful Jewish women who loved singing from the world - Debbie Friedman, Felice Yeskel, and Phyllis. Phyllis was the one I knew longest - from my childhood through the incredible privilege of taking my daughter to sing with her in 2006 and 2008.

The photo is of her in recent years - take off 40 years or so and you'll see how I saw her as a child - she was beautiful. She always wore the same outfit to folksinging when we were kids - a navy blue shirt and white pants. The other place I would see her was on the tennis court - tanned and athletic, looking anything but femme in one of those cute tennis skirts women wore (wear?). I saw her with the adoring eyes of a child - she was larger than life - funny, charismatic, brilliant.

Phyllis taught us American History through music - sea shanties, spirituals (like Follow the Drinking Gourd), union songs, along with lots of humor. And she made up songs about Woods Hole. This is an old favorite of mine that she stopped singing the last 15 years or so:

Good to be in Woods Hole (to the tune of 'Tom Dooley')

Good to be in Woods Hole/I will never roam
Good to be in Woods Hole/I'm never ever going back home

Every day that's sunny/reckon where I'll be
Down at a beach called stony/swimming in the wide wide sea

The MBL club is our place/we make the rafters ring
On Mondays some of us come to dance/on Tuesdays we all come and sing

Last night I went to Joe's to eat/I wasn't wearing shoes
The sign said no bare feet allow/now I'm singing those fried clam blues

Another old favorite:

Take me back to Woods Hole, Take me back to Woods Hole, Take me back oh take me back oh take me back to Woods Hole
Oh to be in Old Woods Hole, that's where I'd rather be, than be bound in New York, suffering from humidity

One I've been thinking of lately that came with a story
A way down south in the yankety yank/a bullfrog jumped from bank to bank
just because he'd nothing better for to do
Well he stubbed his toe when he fell in the water
You could hear him yell for a mile and a quarter
Just because he'd nothing better for to do

Like much of Phyllis's teaching, that story came with a moral, which was about the pride of the bullfrog and how it got him into trouble.

Phyllis did a story and song Abiyoyo - I only later found out it came from Pete Seeger. This also had a moral, one we kids loved, that a boy with a guitar causing trouble could wind up saving his community.

When I was very young, we got to choose if we wanted Abiyoyo or Stewball. Here's one version of Stewball - there are a bunch online.

With my kids, I find myself singing more of the silly songs Phyllis sang in the last 2 decades: Black Socks, Slam the door on the doctor's nose, There was a man who had a goat. There were also gospel favorites like Good News, Chariot's a comin We sang this in a bunch of parts. And there were nonsense like songs or songs in languages that we did not understand - a ram sam sam

Phyllis directed musicals in Woods Hole and Falmouth for a number of years. You had to be a certain age, 8 or 9 maybe, to audition. When I finally reached the age I went to the audition. I had to sing something for Phyllis and I was very nervous. The song I chose to sing was one we sang at folksinging: Hey Ho, Nobody Home. I guess I must have seemed very nervous - afterwards Phyllis asked me how old I was and shook my hand. It was a big let down because I really wanted to be in the play but she clearly thought I was too young. And after that she stopped doing the plays, so I didn't get another chance. I remember though the production of Iolanthe she put on - it was beautiful.

Folksinging always ended with This Land is Your Land. There was a special harmony the cool teens sang: This land is your land, this land is mine, from Maine to Montana, desert to the shore, we sing that this land is your land, this land is mine, this land is made for you and me. And then "one last time"!

I had occasion to reflect on this song in one of my "driving questions" meditations, when I heard Bruce Springsteen on the radio singing it as I was driving home through the West Bank a few years back. The few times I was with Alen at folksinging, this song kind of stuck in our throats as we made our way into exile from the US. Phyllis taught me so much about the American dream and about how America could be a country for all of us - for Jews, for African Americans, for New Englanders.

I was surprised when I grew up and Phyllis treated me like an adult - I always felt like that small child in her eyes. I remember seeing her in 2002 and telling her I was living in Israel - it was the height of the intifada. I don't remember what she said but I remember her look - I came away with a sense of her pride in and love of Israel and understanding of the difficult and complex situation here. When I was a pulpit rabbi, especially when I got to work with children, I always felt that she was one of my true role models for how to be.

If you are reading this, don't hesitate to be someone in the life of a child. I read in recent years that people who consider themselves successful in life know who their role models are. Phyllis Switzer Goldstein was a role model for me, my siblings, and countless other young people. May her memory be for a blessing.