Pete Seeger enjoyed “…giving out bumper stickers reading “Gravity – it’s just a theory” and encouraging people to send them to anyone in Kansas, heartland of the anti-Darwinism, creationist movement.”
The president of Kansas Citizens for Science tells a story about getting an unsolicited phone call from Pete Seeger one day:
In a phone conversation with me, Mr. Seeger commented on how he had these b-stickers made when he heard about Kansas’ trouble with evolution challenges to our science standards in 1999. He had heard about the creationist mantra that evolution was just a theory, thus the selection of the saying for the bumper sticker. He shared how he used to give them away at his concerts explaining how everyone needed to support strong science.
When he was no longer giving many concerts, he contacted me, as KCFS president, to see if we wanted the stickers he had left. That was the first time we learned about what he had done and was doing to support strong science standards. It was only after we received he stickers that I saw that they had been printed by union labor in Kansas. Though I had no correspondence with Mr. Seeger on this, it is consistent with his support of unions that he used union labor in Kansas. That he printed them in Kansas we interpreted as ultimate support for the work we were doing on the standards issue.
AND he built his own electric truck, despite not knowing anything about electricity and being well past ordinary peoples’ retirement age:
Seeger drove an electric car, and charged it from his own solar system. According to the folksy Home Power magazine, in 1991 Seeger was intrigued by Ed Witkin’s battery powered 1969 VW Microbus, which was used to provide electricity for one of the Clearwater stages. Pete wanted his own electric vehicle, and Witkin helped him find a 1988 Ford Ranger, with both four-wheel drive to handle his mountain and a 26.4-kilowatt-hour bank of lead-acid batteries connected to a nine-inch Advanced DC motor.
That truck, which got named “Truxie,” is old-tech today, and (especially because it had to go up those hills) had a range of only 10 to 20 miles. It suited Seeger’s needs, though, and he used it a lot to haul the firewood he burned in his woodstove. He also connected his electric chainsaw to the truck.
In 2007 he had this to say:
“The real revolution will come when people realise the danger we’re in,” he offers in parting. “I’m not as optimistic as people think I am. I think we have a 50-50 chance of there being a human race in 100 years”.
But still, there’s this: