English teacher Kevin Cummins entertained the upper school at
morning meeting, singing two songs to pay tribute to Woody
Guthrie, the singer-songwriter born in Oklahoma in 1912. Mr.
Cummins introduced Woody Guthrie as a songwriting mentor.
“Mentor is a character is Homer’s The Odyssey,” Mr. Cummins
said. As Mentor is a wise elder to Odysseus and Odysseus’s son,
Telemakhos, so is Woody Guthrie a wise elder to songwriters’
Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Billy Bragg. Mr.
Cummins claimed all of these songwriters as his mentors. To
celebrate Guthrie’s centennial and honor him as a songwriting
mentor, Mr. Cummins sang two songs—one written by Guthrie and
one written by Mr. Cummins. Mr. Cummins sings Woody Guthrie’s
Ballad of “Pretty Boy Floyd” andhis own, “Uncle Henry."