Surrounded by cartoons and brush drawings of dancers, in his distinctive style, Pulitzer Prize-winning satirist Jules Feiffer, 80, was interviewed Wednesday at Jacob's Pillow. Curated by Norton Owen and spanning over a half-century, the free exhibition, "A Dance to Jules Feiffer," is in Blake's Barn for the summer.

Followers of Feiffer, when he became known (to me, anyway) through his cartoon strips in the Village Voice starting in 1956, know that his dance drawings focus on gesture — Fred Astaire (Click HERE), who worked hard to look as if he were improvising — became a symbol to Feiffer, and Gregory Hines (Click HERE) fascinated him, Feiffer said, because of the different way African-Americans use their bodies in tap dance.

But his strips of the woman who dances "To Autumn" and other seasons poke fun at her explanations, many of which turn political and end with tantrums or discouragement.

Feiffer's memory of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) recalls a dark and perilous era. While he was not personally touched ("They could kick you out of your job, but I had no job"), he was in Foley Square at the infamous questioning of Jerome Robbins, one of those who named names. When Robbins stated his profession as choreographer, committee members made a show of stumbling over the word: "They wanted to make it sound foreign, or inconsequential," said Feiffer. "It was hilarious and shameful."

Two hours after Feiffer's talk, PBS showed Pete Seeger's Madison Square Garden 90th birthday bash (Click HERE). His battle with HUAC, threaded through the tributes, was much rougher than Robbins'; Seeger refused to answer questions and endured an extended period of blacklisting.

When Pete was 30, singing with the Weavers in the Village Vanguard, he took a day job teaching, and became our grade school music teacher. We adored him, and when we graduated he drew banjos in our yearbooks. (After that the Weavers made the 78rpm record of "Tsena Tsena," with "Goodnight Irene" on the sleeper side. Imagine how proud we were.)

Later, after his dustup with HUAC, I asked him at a small concert — we often attended his concerts and many were in odd locations because of the blacklist — why he had left the Weavers. "They weren't ready to do what I wanted to do," he replied.

It took years, but it's one fight he won. We saw him sing "Big Muddy" on the Smothers Brothers. If HUAC had asked us, we would have told them to save their breath, because Pete would never say anything he didn't feel like saying. He was skinny but strong as steel. PBS knows that: that's why his birthday was on a series called "Great Performers." He's still one.