I’m always waiting around to feel Harriet Tubman’s hand against my back, pressing me forward; I’m constantly sinking into the landscape at the John Brown Farm hoping to feel Captain Brown’s breath in my lungs. Always wanting to feel the spirit. Digging, planting, sewing seeds, harvesting later. Sometimes, this is a personal practice; much of the time, we get to join hands, share tools, and garden together.
Each year, we open the door to the deeper side of purpose on John Brown Day. On the Saturday that falls closest to John Brown’s May 9th birthday, we come together at the John Brown Farm through gratitude, grit, grief, and a collective willingness to do what this moment calls for. We carry on a tradition that began in the 1980s, laying wreaths at the graves of our moral ancestors in honor of the lives they gave with us in mind.
At the same time, we look with clear eyes at our world today. We look ahead, and we thank those who carry these legacies forward into the world we’re building. The passion-provoking kernel of John Brown Day lives in the Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award – each year, we honor three people who embody the spirit of John Brown. This year, we acknowledged Peggy Shepard, Founder and Executive Director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Diane Noiseux, North Country Immigrant Resource Coordinator at the Office of New Americans, and Kelly Metzgar, Founder and Executive Director of the Adirondack North Country Gender Alliance. The Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award is our way of saying thanks for your gratitude and grit; thanks for your willingness to work in a time of such impossibility.
On May 10th, the Farm shifted from sacred, sleeping meadows to a place of gathering at around 10:30am. A tent not far from John Brown’s grave offered moments of shelter from a Celtic rain – gentle, lush, green, and anticipatory, a reminder that our best is yet to come. Seeds sown by our ancestors may yield fruit tomorrow. (Phrase borrowed from farmer-saint-philosopher-master of language Adam Wilson. I first experienced Adam’s unique magic at a Gratitude Feast hosted by Sand River Community Farm in August of 2024. Find out more here.)
From 11am-1pm, dedicated volunteers listened to impacts being felt by federal cuts, freezes, and cruelties. Founder and Executive Director of John Brown Lives! Martha Swan has spoken with insight and care about JBL!’s new initiative called Loving Our Country. (The curious and creative David Escobar spoke with Martha about Loving Our Country here.) Loving Our Country is “a person-to-person listening project…designed to bear witness, chronicle and disseminate the impacts of current federal policies on individuals, families, communities, businesses, non- profit organizations, and others across New York Congressional District 21, and to repair the rupture to our social fabric through empathy, active listening, artmaking, and grassroots organizing.” (Language borrowed from JBL!’s Loving Our Country project description.) The John Brown Lives! team gathered early to listen to stories on John Brown Day, modeling the sort of intimate listening and aspirational, neighborly loving that all people so desperately need today if we are to sustain in this nation and beyond. (It is rare for a day to go by that I don’t reference Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again.” I’ll let the work speak for itself here.)
Later in the afternoon, a people’s chorus came together to learn “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” a ballad of love, loss, and hope from The Sound of Music. Martha Swan and I have been particularly moved by the lyrics, “A dream that will need / All the love you can give / Every day of your life / For as long as you live.” (Find context, credits, and more lyrics here.) Visualize the von Trapp family loving and leaving their homeland, holding fast to their core values in spite of a rising dictatorship. It is song that keeps the von Trapp family and their sense of hope alive.
Expressing a similar sentiment, these beautiful words are attributed to Pete Seeger: “Song, songs kept them going and going; / They didn’t realize the millions of seeds they were sowing. / They were singing in marches, even singing in jail. / Songs gave them the courage to believe they would not fail.” (Admire artist Rob Shetterly’s moving portrait of Pete Seeger, American truth teller, here.)
The people’s chorus offered our simple song back to the John Brown Day congregation at the end of the program: 12 core singers, lyrics shared with all, and an invitation to stand and come together in melody and in harmony. Our music was well-received.
John Brown Day reminds me that there is an essence to life. A beating heart, a nectar, a sweetness, a rhythm. (The language of “rhythm” is borrowed from Bon Iver’s 2025 album, SABLE, fABLE. This past February at the On Air Fest, Justin Vernon spoke beautifully about his guiding questions and his incredible body of work with the prolific and prophetic Krista Tippett from On Being. Read or listen here.) Our days of this “devotional life,” as Lou DeCaro calls it, begin with a willingness to be of service, to yield and fold into the mist each morning, to become slow and quiet with a profound recognition for those who came before and those who will come next. In Fire From the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown, preeminent John Brown scholar and historian Lou DeCaro writes, “For him, God was speaking afresh on the enslavement of the African, and this was the ongoing theme of his devotional life. It guided his actions, guarded his values, and gave him strength. His piety was inseparable from his deeply felt call to destroy slavery.”
That is our work at John Brown Lives!: to honor our moral ancestors and to dream forward, bending the moral arc of the universe back toward justice and liberation. As Martha put it one day during a road trip, the arc of justice doesn’t bend unless people bend it. Who are we, then? What is our task, if not to bend the arc?
Artists Indë, Ailey, and Hazel came to the John Brown Farm from Northampton, Massachusetts to bring song, too, embodying the sense of ancestral devotion that John Brown Lives! enlivens. The trio was tasked with weaving musical interludes throughout the program. They opened with the soul-stirring prelude “Snow White Truth.” (Martha and I traveled to Northampton, Massachusetts in April to experience Self-Evident Education’s Fourth Annual Power of Truths Arts & Education Festival. We saw Indë present a painting they created of Marsha P. Johnson, and heard about their process of turning history to visual art to color to chord progression to song, and we knew instantly we needed to invite Indë and their band to the John Brown Farm. Learn more about Indë and their interdisciplinary art here, learn about Self-Evident Education and their team of superstars including founder Michael Lawrence-Riddell here, and read about the Power of Truth Arts & Education Festival here.)
Then, JBL! Board Member Chef Lewis Sheridan Hughes shared a few words. Lewis is a descendant of the Leary and Copeland families who fought with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. In my eyes, Chef Lewis is one of those rare beings who truly understands what life on earth is all about. He sees, feels deeply, works with his hands, embodies humility, and radiates devotion and purpose. Chef Lewis carries incredible strength, authenticity, and virtuosity, and he sees with clear eyes that feeding people is the gift he offers back to the collective. Chef Lewis is preparing an incredible feast for The Welcome Table on August 2nd this year. Come sit at The Welcome Table with us: more information here.
Alice Keesey Mecoy, great-great-great granddaughter of John Brown, shared with the congregation her lens and her experience with John Brown Lives!, too. JBL! board members Jeff Jones, Garrett Marino, and Hadley-Kruczek Aaron spoke about their impactful and in some cases long-standing involvement with John Brown Lives!, along with our vision for the next 25 years.
With blessings and encouragement from Martha Swan and loving soul Helen Demong, who is Director of the spirit-lifting Northern Lights Choir, I sang “Meet Me Here,” a piece of music with a Celtic, folky, hymnal, call-and-response kind of feeling, written by Craig Hella Johnson in remembrance of Matthew Shepard. (Read more about the moving musical tribute here.) Another round of thanks is in order for Spirit of John Brown Freedom awardee Kelly Metzgar for her work with the queer community in the North Country.
John Brown Day put my open-ended questions about the way things are on pause for a few hours, displaced by heartfelt hugs, thankfulness for presence, and visions of the future. (The language of “the way things are” is again borrowed from the gorgeous and evocative writing of farmer-philosopher Adam Wilson.) I’m reminded of Bob Dylan’s sentiment that sometimes, one glance from another human being is all we need to feel affirmed and to continue our work for years to come. (From Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan. Wrestler Gorgeous George looked at a young Dylan in an affirming way that would change his life forever. I experience moments like these often, a sort of seeing and cracking open.)
We come together on John Brown Day, at the literal and metaphorical Welcome Table, to see ourselves through these tumultuous times toward a place of peace, equality, and freedom. We believe in the goodness of our neighbors, we open opportunities for trust, we seek refuge in the kind eyes and loving arms of another, and we recognize that the journey to collective liberation is won the moment we decide to find comfort “in the shelter of each other.” (“In the Shelter” is a beautiful song performed by Kim & Reggie Harris and folk duo Magpie. Listen here.)
John Brown Day stokes the spark that lives within. We speak truth to our morality, our passion, and our “ferocious love,” as Naomi Klein describes it. (Hear Naomi Klein speak on empathy in our current moment here.) Loving is resistance. Living well is resistance. Practicing empathy is resistance. Art and expression are resistance. Joy, music, laughter…the goodness, from which Life springs forth. There must be a world beyond the resistance. To quote my sister, “John Brown Day was alive with the unseen.”
With soul,
Anna Forsman
John Brown Lives!
Arts & Cultural Programming Director
