Hello Friends,

Over twenty years ago I became friends with John Stewart. It changed my life irrevocably, and for the better. I recorded his song "Runaway Train", and it happened to become a big hit record. When we met, around the time of the recording of the song, John had been in the business for a very long time--nearly as long as I had been alive. He was a tremendously successful songwriter ("Daydream Believer", "Gold", "California Bloodlines") and had been a member of the Kingston Trio for six years, beginning in 1961. He had toured endlessly and had met everyone and done everything. I was a neophyte, with a seven-year career and a handful of hit records. I was enjoying a hot streak at the moment and was pretty full of myself the afternoon we met in my office on Music Row in Nashville. John and I were sitting on the sofa becoming acquainted and he was talking to me about music and art, pulling out photos of his paintings, and other people's paintings, and talking excitedly about obscure artists and musicians. He asked if I liked Ladysmith Black Mambazo. In 1986, I had never heard of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, but I didn't want him to know that.
I said, "Yes, I like her."
He paused and looked at me seriously and said, "Never say that outside of this room."
Then he pulled out a CD and showed me that LBM was not a woman, but a group. I squirmed uncomfortably.
We decided to take a walk.
We were strolling down the sidewalk of 17th Avenue South when we passed a guy standing in the front yard of an office building.
He nodded at us and said, "Hey, I love your records!"
"Thank you!" I said, somewhat too gratefully and magnanimously, after my previous musical humiliation. "Thank you so much!"
We walked another block in silence. John turned to me. "He could have been talking to me, you know," he said. I froze, and then broke down laughing.
We have been close friends since that day.

John always used to say to me when dissecting a song, or a painting, or a book, 'Where's the madness, Rose? Where's the MADNESS?' If it was too perfect, too thought-out, too rational, he could be withering in his criticism. But never with me. With me, with my work, he was always respectful, always gentle. If he didn't like it, he didn't say much. If he did like it, he was effusive, he would call back later to discourse further on WHY it was so good, he would expound and deliberate, he was generous to a fault. He was so, so generous. There was a line in my song "The Wheel'" that he loved: 'the truth moves through us, even when we sleep'. When he first heard that line, you would have thought it was one of the lost Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, I said to him timidly, 'But John, I'm not entirely sure I even know what it means.' Oh, then he loved it even more. The line had moved through me in the same way that the truth moves through us when we sleep. All was perfect.

There are songs of John's that I sing to myself to comfort myself. "Remembering the Sun" is one of them. The verse about the future is so dark, and so bleak that it actually soothes me:

"Looking to the future
I see myself alone
in the desert, in an Airstream
with a mantra and a phone
you'd come by to see me
and we'd play the VCR
and stare at who we were
and not at who we are

so be ready and be steady
the future, it will come
but we can survive the darkest night
Remembering the sun"

John struggled with depression-- his 'black dog'--and facing the black dog, and naming it, and singing it into submission was essential. Once, when I hadn't heard from him in a long time, I sent him a post card saying only 'Black dog?' Another time, out of the blue, he sent me a card with just a drawing of the black dog.

Years ago, I went to his house in Malibu and we set up easels outside overlooking the ocean and spent the afternoon painting. At the end of the day, he tore up his paintings. I asked him why, and he said with disdain, 'What do you want me to do? Frame them? Hang them? Save them in a drawer? I just wanted to paint with you.'

We wrote a song by fax once, before email. It was called "Dance With the Tiger". He asked me to write the music to his lyrics, as he wrote them. It was the first time anyone ever asked me to write just the music-- I was the little golden girl lyricist, and no one would have even thought to ask me to write music. But John did. It changed my whole self-image. That one song gave me more confidence than writing an entire album of lyrics. I recorded it on my album "Interiors", and it remains one of my favorite songs of that period of my work.

If he wasn't critical of my work, he could be critical of my behavior, if he thought it was warranted. Once, on the "King's Record Shop" tour in the late 80's, I played the Roxy in Los Angeles and it was a major event-- there were a lot of big shot guests in the audience, including John, and music critics from Rolling Stone and the Los Angeles Times, among others. I invited Benmont Tench to come up out of the audience to play with me on a song he had written, but I only barely acknowledged that John wrote "Runaway Train" before I performed it, and I didn't ask him to play. It wasn't entirely my fault; the band started playing the song before I had a chance to properly set it up, so I had to squeeze in a rushed acknowledgment during the intro. But he gave me quite a dressing-down after the show. I'll never forget it. And he was right. I should have taken care to give him the respect he was due. Another time, he also gave me the best, most liberating performance advice anyone ever gave me. I did a 'Songwriter's in the Round' show in 1993 at the Bottom Line in New York with Lou Reed, David Byrne and Luka Bloom. After the show, I was wildly disappointed in myself. I thought I performed so badly that I couldn't sleep that night. I tossed and turned and squirmed and went over every word and note until I nearly drove myself crazy. The next morning I called John. "I was terrible last night," I wailed, and I went into detail about how bad I was and how, in detail, I had failed so miserably. I thought John would be sweet and solicitous and infinitely kind, as he usually was when talking about my work. I was settling in for an hour of obsessive complaining on my part and coddling on his. He listened for a couple of minutes and then interrupted me and dismissed me out of hand. "So you had a bad gig. What are they going to do? Re-align the PLANETS?" He shocked me out of the self-pity, maybe not permanently, but enough that I can always refer to that moment. Now, whenever I have a bad night, and I am tempted to indulge in some self-flagellation, I think, 'So what are they going to do? RE-ALIGN THE PLANETS?"

I have a file of letters, faxes, homemade books, postcards and photos of his paintings that he sent me, as well as a couple of important paintings. One sheaf of correspondence is about a play we were writing. We intended to paint, in real time, during the performance of the play. It never came to fruition but we had so much fun talking about that play. It was deliciously terrifying to think about doing something so artistically dangerous. I often turned to him when I was consumed with fear about taking artistic risks, or revealing myself as a writer. I have a beautiful letter from him in which he says that the terror is a beautiful thing to have, and he writes to me in his role as a painter:

"Dear Rose,
I know the feeling of terror when your art is about to be hung. I think the terror is part of the process that keeps us creating. I think as long as we're creating from the right place, that is, that place where there is something that has to be said, not because we want people to think we're great or wanting a reaction. Because we just have to say it, is the reason to say it. It is Sent. I think we're OK as long as we work from that place. Technique, form, color, etc. are always going to be improving and need improving. You can have great technique and if your work just lays there, so what? I think inspired work transcends technique."

After I moved to New York in 1991, I didn't see John as often. He came and stayed with me a couple of times, and I drove once to Piermont, across the Hudson River, when he played at The Turning Point, to sing with him. Once I went to the Birchmere in Washington, DC. to play with him at a benefit for Buffy, his wife, after she had been ill. And we talked about projects that didn't pan out, and we traded songs, and emails. And time went by. And sometimes too much time went by between phone calls and letters. I have a feeling I disappointed him by not being more assertive in our friendship, which grieves me deeply. If he only knew how much I cherish him, and the tremendous debt I owe him. That afternoon in the mid-1980's when I met him, I thought I was giving him a gift by recording his song. I had no idea that he was about to give me a far greater gift of teaching me how to transition from talented dilettante into real artist, from puffed-up and shut-down, to wildly curious and wide-open.

John died on January 19th, 2008, with his beautiful wife, Buffy, and his children, Mikael, Jeremy, Amy, and young Luke by his side. I got out a box of his letters and drawings that evening and looked for messages, and there were many-- about art, truth, beauty, persistence, America, destiny, friendship and songs: all the keys and colors and timbre and depth of John's soul.

John said to me, "God gives us all different messages, hoping we'll talk to each other". In his song "Strange Rivers", one of my favorites, he said 'there are strange rivers, who know our destiny, and we are sailors, you and me". I am only grateful I got to sail on the same river for the same short time with my dear brother, friend and mentor John, aka Angelbravo, Johnny Diego, Johnny Rocket, Johnny Dreams, the Lonesome Picker. I love you, John Stewart.

Mrs. L

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the good wishes, cards, prayers, kind messages and gifts. All the love and support gives me a buoyancy to almost float through a difficult period which, truthfully, is still not over, but getting better all the time.

The brain surgery I underwent on November 27th is already a defining moment in my life, and I think anyone who has had their skull opened would say the same. (By the way, my neurosurgeon said I had the hardest head he had ever tried to get inside. I'm very proud of that. Metaphorically speaking.)

I am at home, resting and recovering, which will continue for a couple more months, most likely.

I hope you will forgive the truncated version of Mrs. L's Best Of list this year, but a nap awaits.

Mrs. L's Best Of 2007

BOOK: a difficult choice. I read dozens of books this year and so I am dividing this category into sub-categories.

Best Medical Book: "Final Exam" by Pauline Chen. Dr. Chen is a liver transplant doctor and she writes about medical school, her decision to specialize in transplants, what she learned from her patients, and how she didn't become hardened in the face of so much death. It's beautifully written, and full of great details about med school. Runners-up: "The Anatomy of Hope", by Jerome Groopman and "When The Air Hits Your Brain", by Frank Vertosick, Jr. These two doctors could NOT be more different, and I like them both for just that reason. Dr. Groopman has a deep spirituality, and writes from the center of his beliefs and has great respect for his patients and the disease process. Dr. Vertosick is a neurosurgeon and he is incredibly irreverent and thoughtful at the same time. It did give me pause, and perhaps I shouldn't have read so much about the mistakes that are made in the OR during brain surgery, so close to my own brain surgery, but it was a deliciously unsettling experience. (I am positive no resident scratched an insult about another doctor into the underside of MY skull, which Dr. Vertosick claims he observed during his own residency!)

Best Fiction: A tough choice as I loved both Kurt Andersen's 'Heyday' and 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini. Both are epic novels in very different ways. "The Kite Runner" has a grander arc of redemption threaded through the story, but the redemption in "Heyday", although more contained and quieter, is no less satisfying. The great detail of Old New York was particularly exciting for this New Yorker. I declare a tie. Runner-up (with apologies to Miss Wharton, who is never a runner-up, in my opinion) "Old New York". Four novellas, each set in a different decade of the 19th Century in New York City. Wonderful detail, and stories that pierce the heart in odd littleways.

Best Non-Fiction, Non-Medical: Okay. I do like "Eat, Pray, Love" although initially I resisted it as being too chick-friendly and pseudo-spiritual. It is neither. (Well, perhaps I don't see a lot of straight men reading this, but it's not like "Bridget Jones Diary"). I give it up for Elizabeth Gilbert. Also, I loved the stories in Oliver Sacks' 'Musicophilia'. Dr. Sacks is one of my heroes. But my favorite non-fiction, non-medical book was John Hockenberry's "Moving Violations". I still think about this book, and John's integrity, and where he went and who he met along the way. A very inspiring book.

Music: I've loved Feist's '1-2-3-4' so much in the last few months. And I've listened to the New Radicals obsessively. For gloomier times, I've listened a lot to 'Misterioso', particularly the work by Arvo Part. I cannot keep from crying when I listen to 'Spiegel im Spiegel' by Part. "Elegy of the Uprooting" has also been deeply pleasurable. I was intrigued by Amy Winehouse, in the way you are intrigued by watching a train wreck. I really pray to God she pulls up—she's got a lot to offer. Springsteen was Magic this year, and Steve Earle compelling, as usual. Patti Griffin always pulls me in. For a fresh take on things, and for great artistry, I give the 'best of 2007' to 'Civilians' by Joe Henry—a great American writer, thinker and musician.

Best Live Concert of 2007 (from the p.o.v. of an audience member). Crowded House, Beacon Theater, NYC. What a great night: Mr. L and I in the fourth row, singing along to one of the greatest bands EVER, holding hands like teenagers.

Film: Hands down, "The Lives of Others". Lately, I have not seen many films that offer the kind of inspiration that great art can provide. This film does. It is ineffably sad that the wonderful German actor, Ulrich Muhe, died shortly after the completion of the film at the age of 53. For entertainment, I loved "Michael Clayton", and "Once". I was deeply unsettled by "Into the Wild". Good work, Mr. Penn.

Best Art: I really loved two shows this year: Maira Kalman's 'The Principles of Uncertainty' at the Julie Saul Gallery in Chelsea, and the drawings of Georges Seurat at the Museum of Modern Art.

Most Beautiful Venue I performed in: Sydney Theater, Sydney, Australia. Okay, I made up this category just so I could obsess about the Sydney Theater again, and ruminate on that blue, chocolate brown and gold combination, and figure out how to convince Mr. L that we NEED it in our bedroom. It's a sickness, I admit it freely.

Best Hotel Room of 2007: Again, Australia comes up on top. My suite in the Sydney Hilton had an unbelievable view of Sydney Harbor and the Opera House, and two giant rooms, and blackout curtains (absolutely essential after traveling through a hundred time zones), a well-stocked mini-bar, a huge shower and was impeccably clean. (The 'impeccably clean' part counts for 90% of the total points in this particular category.)

Most Fun Multi-Artist Gig: The Glasgow Festival, Glasgow, Scotland. Closing night, I got to play with many friends, old and new, and sang Robert Burns "Red, Red Rose", and the old "Forty Shades of Green" with tears running down my face. My daughter, Chelsea, was with me, which made it all the more special.

Most Unusual Gig: My April show at the Rubin Museum here in NYC, with Elvis Costello. We made up a show called "Magic Numbers" and only sang songs that had numbers in the title, or featured a number. We opened the show with Harry Nilsson's "One" and closed the show with Mr. Costello's "Less Than Zero". It was SO MUCH FUN.

Best Manager: Mine. Danny Kahn, who was at the hospital for the entire five and half hours I was in surgery. I wasn't making a record in there, but he showed up. Major points, forever.

Best Husband: Okay, I know I voted him best husband last year, but consider this: Mr. L could give lectures in neurosurgery at this point, has reams of notes about every facet of my medical journey, and has a digital photo of my exposed brain on his desktop. Now, THAT'S intimacy. Not to even mention the fact that he stopped working for a month to take care of me, and learned how to make a decent cup of tea, which was a steep learning curve for him, no pun intended. These are the times you find out if you married the right guy. I did.

I am extremely grateful for the restoration of my health this year, and I wish for all of you peace and good health. I also wish for you that things turn out well, that you keep your sense of humor, that you find inspiration in things great and small, and that minor annoyances just provide contrast for the great blessings that underpin the rest of your lives.

Love from Mrs. L

aka "Hard Head"

Hello Friends,
The best of my father's television show from 1969-1971 has recently been released on a two-disc, four-hour dvd, and it is fantastic. I wrote an article about it for my friend Eric Alterman's column at Mediamatters.org

I'm appearing at The New Yorker Festival this year, talking with my friend Hendrik Hertzberg. Here are the details.

I hope I see some of you at the Festival.

I've been enjoying a little time off with my family—only a weekend show here and there—and it's been so wonderful. I lost my feel for cooking over the summer, as I was moving around too much, and it was just too hot to think about being in the kitchen, but I've gotten back into it. My favorite cookbooks right now are Nigella Lawson's 'Feast' and a Williams-Sonoma book on braises and stews. I also have my perennial standby, "Joy of Cooking", at the ready. I like finding a recipe and then 'adapting' it to my needs and peculiarities. For instance, Nigella Lawson's recipe for roast chicken is unbelievable, but if you add some cut-up onions and sweet potatoes to the cooking pan, and then serve them as a sort of chunky mash with the chicken---well, we just have to call that Mrs. L's Roast Chicken and Mash, with Many Thanks to Nigella Lawson.

From cooking to outrage: I am horrified that Robert Gates has asked Congress for another $190 billion for the Iraq War, but President Bush wants to cut the Children's Health Insurance program. What's wrong with THIS picture? When is somebody going to ask for $190 billion so that EVERY child has health insurance? And while we're on the subject, the government's classification of 'poor' is a family of four who earns less than $20,650. Are you kidding me? A family of four is supposed to live on $1720 a month? Has anyone in Congress been to a grocery store or a gas station lately? Have they personally gone to buy school clothes for their kids? Do they all send their staffs to do these things and not bother to look at the receipts? Outrage gives way to complete disgust.

And so, with disgust and outrage, but also hope and inspiration, sweet potatoes and onions, I leave you with

love from Mrs. L

Dear Friends,

I have been thinking about religion and all the horrors associated with it, particularly of the violence and hatred endemic to radical fundamentalism of all kinds, all across the world, and have come to a new spiritual conclusion for myself. I plan to live henceforth as a devotee of the religion of Art, Music and the Divine Guidance of Small Children, a refreshing, ad hoc trinity in a world seriously gone awry in its ideas of what God wants, needs, believes and decrees.

What if God has evolved out of the need for religion?

What if our ideas about what God IS have been based on a wrong assumption from the beginning? (The ‘Beginning’ being a ridiculously brief period in the history of the universe).

What if God doesn't care what you do? How will you live in the de-fused, diffuse glow of Divine Indifference? Could we be more powerful, and less power-mad without the perception of a giant, punitive Watchdog in the Sky? For myself, the answer is a resounding Yes. Indifference doesn't equal lack of Love, necessarily. I believe we live in a Free Will Zone. I believe the need to define the mind of God, and to apportion that God firmly on one's own side, and to ascribe that God's benevolence and particular favor and inclination to one's own rigid set of beliefs, one's own community, one's own street and house and body, when the vastness of space and the endless potential of multiple realities exists just off the outer edge of our tiny blue planet, borders on the insane.

I lost a dear friend last month, to the disease of addiction. I am truly heartbroken over his loss. He struggled so much in his last year, and it got the better of him at the end of July. He killed himself, believing, I suppose, that no one could help him. He shut his friends and family out of his life, and descended the rabbit hole alone. And what happens to him now? Where is his soul, his spirit, and in what condition, if it, and he, exist at all? I talked to a few friends, who had widely diverging beliefs about the soul, the after-life, and the ramifications of suicide. Some were quick to state that suicide was unforgivable in the spiritual realm and that his soul would enter a sort of purgatory, and that any issues he left unresolved in this life would remain unresolved in the next. (It seemed odd to me that this conviction was mostly held by those who claimed the most spiritual ‘tolerance’ and who were more ‘New Age’ in affect than others). Another friend believed that if he died with drugs in his system that he would remain drugged and addled for some time in the spirit world, and his confusion would be slow to resolve. Another friend shocked me with her tolerance and acceptance, and, dare I say, Divine Indifference. She said, basically, that no one knows the larger story, that his life may have been a sacrifice in a complex plan that we couldn't possibly discern, that passing judgment or even opinion was arrogant and that the only appropriate emotion was compassion. Wow. Okay. I like to be reminded how little I actually know. It is intensely liberating. Which is the whole point. I cannot pretend to KNOW the mind of God, or even if there IS a God. There are ‘holy’ books in this world – the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah– all written by people. No, let me be more specific: all written by MEN, who comprise only half of the total genders in the world. Doesn’t this all seem just a little…. provincial, if nothing else?

I’ll go out on a limb even further here. I think the same divine intelligence that inspired these holy texts also inspired Harry Potter and Mozart and Georgia O’Keefe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. As my friend John Stewart says, ‘God gives us all different radio signals, hoping we’ll talk to each other’. I would add, ‘IF God is still in a phase of evolution where He/She/It indulges in such a prosaic occupation as hope’. What is beyond hope? Maybe Divine Indifference?

John Lennon said that God was a concept by which we measured our pain. I am beginning to think that currently God is a concept by which we measure our self-hatred. I am getting off that particular boat.

Please join me in some ritualistic worship of my own chosen trinity, if you will, or devise your own. See you at a museum or a concert, and keep your ears open for those stupefying jewels of wisdom which small children are apt to drop on you at any moment.

Ars, Music, Liberi, Consilium.

Love from Mrs. L, in the Free Will Zone.

Dear Friends,
I am working on a book, to be published by Viking in 2008. It's a memoir, although I don't think I am old enough to write a memoir. It isn't chronological, and it isn't full of facts and dates, but it's been a satisfying exploration into my own life, in a somewhat circuitous, curious fashion. I asked my friend Jane Siberry what I should call it, since the word 'memoir' makes me cringe a little, and she said, 'Call it a LIFE-oir! Or a LOVE-oir!' Okay, it's a LIFE-and-LOVE-oir.

I've had a lot of peripheral projects lately. I just filmed a BBC television show with my friend and sometime musical collaborator Phil Cunningham. He is hosting a new show about Scottish music, and we wrote a song together especially for the show. I borrowed a bit of longing and language from Robert Burns and dipped into some ancestral feeling for this. It was a lot of fun. He hasn't titled the series yet, but look for something from the BBC about Scottish music, hosted by Phil, and there you'll have it.

I also did an acoustic show at the Rubin Museum here in Manhattan with Mr. L and Elvis Costello last month. We did a show called "Magic Numbers" and every song we sang had a number in the title. Here is Sal Nunziato's (http://www.celebrityaccess.com/news/profile.html?id=32) review of the show:

"Rosanne Cash has performed acoustically 7 times at The Rubin Museum Of Art. Each program had a theme based around paintings and readings. I was one of the lucky 92 people who attended "Acoustic Cash #7 : Magic Numbers," this past Friday. Miss Cash's special guest this evening was Elvis Costello and their program was a "bit loose," songs with numbers in the titles.

Sounds good to me.

For 75 minutes Cash, Costello, and Mr. Rosanne Cash, John Leventhal treated this blessed crowd of a hundred and fifty or so people to some absolutely mind-blowing material, which was all put together through many e-mails. With just guitars and music stands, (ok, and some chairs) the trio did wonders to Nilsson's "One," Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings," The Bee Gees "N.Y. Mining Disaster 1941," Cash originals such as "Seven Year Ache" and "44 Stories," Costello originals "Less Than Zero" and the rarely played "Unwanted Number," which was written for the film "Grace Of My Heart," and my two personal highs, The Lovin' Spoonful's "Six O'Clock" and a most inspired version of "76 Trombones" from The Music Man." I am NOT making any of this up. Promise.

At one point early on, Rosanne turned to her husband and said, "They are all here to see him," referring to Costello, of course. But from my point of view, if it wasn't for Miss Cash's unpretentious and natural demeanor on stage, Costello may have just clunked through this material. Rosanne Cash is one of those rare artists whose presence and banter is just as welcome on stage as her music. When she sings, it's just cherries on the cake. And without her warmth and inspiration, I may not have been so eager to see just another Elvis Costello acoustic show.

This was one of the greatest nights of music in a long time. How I got in on a Friday the 13th,
I'll never know.

Sal, NYCD"

Thanks, Sal! (the check's in the mail)

The PAX gala was held in NYC this past May 15th, and I had two birthday boys at my table of ten: fellow board member and dear friend Tom Knowlton, and second dear friend Michael Rips, two gorgeous gentlemen now on the far side of fifty. The gala was an enormous success and the Young People's Chorus of New York City performed (with myself guesting on one song) and they were just beautiful. Francisco Nunez, the founder and director, is a brilliant and visionary young man. Read here about both PAX, and the YPC. School is about to be out, kids will be playing at home, so please, before you send your child over to play at someone's house, ASK if there is a gun in the house.

This year has brought its losses, as years are wont to do. The generation ahead of me just keeps falling off the planet. I wish them all, family and friends, and families OF friends, godspeed on the next road they travel.

Here's to an inspiring, turquoise-tinted summer.

An letter from Rosanne and PAX regarding the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech on April 16

It seems the travel gods have been angry in the last month. A journey that usually takes a couple hours takes twelve, a bag that has been with you since you were in another life suddenly disappears, flights get cancelled, delayed and rerouted, the rental car is in a spot about a quarter mile from the desk where you picked up your keys, the roads are closed, the tolls are heavy, the seat doesn't recline, the attendants are surly, and security procedures are lessons in tedium and humiliation. But someone's got to do it. It might as well be me. Recently, in a line for security at an airport I don't recall, a woman was staring at me as I did the circular weave and flow to get to the front to earn the privilege of taking off my shoes while being bleated at to take my laptop out of its bag. She finally leaned over and said to me, "Aren't you Rosanne Cash?" I said yes, and she said "I thought it was you but I kept looking around for your entourage, and when I didn't see one, I thought it just couldn't be you." I looked around and pointed to my husband, John Leventhal (aka Mr. L), in another line, and my manager, Danny Kahn, in a third line. (We try to lose each other in airports sometimes just to liven it up. It's always exciting to see who will make it to the gate on time, and who will come heaving and sweating onboard just before the doors close with a Starbucks and a sour expression.) "There they are," I said. "My entourage."

Was it Maya Angelou who said you could tell a person's character by how they reacted to lost luggage and rain? If so, the characters of my entourage of two are impeccable, beyond criticism, nearly godlike in their utter unflappability. I really don't know what I would do without these two men. They are bossy, opinionated, urgent, argumentative, smarter than anyone else in the room (unless Kurt Andersen is in the room), and the two pillars of my entire life.

So, friends, raise a glass to Mr. L and Mr. K, without whom I would be an errant messenger girl on the hard highways of music and life.

As some of you may know, Capitol Records underwent a massive re-structuring and I am changing labels. I loved my friends at Capitol very much, and it's always sad to end professional relationships that were productive and inspiring. I was there for eleven years, and I learned a lot and had a lot of fun making three records for them: "Ten Song Demo", "Rules of Travel" and "Black Cadillac". I am moving to another label within the EMI group, under the leadership of Bruce Lundvall, a gentleman I have known my entire adult life. In a way, it's like coming home. Bruce was at Columbia when I signed my first contract with them in 1979. I respect him tremendously. I will be under the direct guidance of the wonderful Ian Ralfini, who heads the Manhattan label, my new home. I am very excited about this move, and have made new friends and re-connected with old friends over at Manhattan. It's a very exciting time. New label, new friends, new record on the horizon. I feel like a beginner, which is the best of feelings.

I am reminded, in my own season of new beginnings, that it is the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. I look back at these four years in horror and grief. This war, and the violence that will reverberate for generations, is a mockery of what I hold to be noble about America, and Americans. It is heartbreaking to contemplate the lies, the hidden agendas, the compromise of ideals, the death, destruction and manifest destiny run amuck. I am simplifying my world view and personal philosophy to a legend on a bumper sticker, which I see more and more often of late: "God bless the whole world. No exceptions." Nothing else has worked, so why not try radical love, and relentless acceptance?

Happy Spring, new beginnnings, relentless love, radical acceptance, etc. See you in the security line, or the free-fall zone.

Love from
Mrs L

Well, as expected, I lost the Grammy to a guy who shares my birthday (May 24th). Apparently, his planetary aspects were better than mine for the date of the awards. I don't imagine the iPod commercial hurt much, either.

C'est la vie. I've been working like a slave and enjoying it all thoroughly. The music seems to hold up very well, a year and change after release. It's been a great ride this past year with Black Cadillac, and I still have a few more of the full shows, with films and narrative, to do through the Spring. I'm also looking forward to sharing the bill with Kris Kristofferson at the end of February, for three acoustic shows in Florida. I just worship him and lovely Lisa, so this is a real treat for me and Mr. L to join them for these concerts.

I had a fabulous time in Glasgow in early February, with old friends Phil Cunningham, Jerry Douglas, Aly Bain, et.al. The music was just transcendent at the Celtic Connections festival. I also did the Black Cadillac show at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and it was a beautiful night, with a wonderful crowd. My daughter Chelsea accompanied me to Glasgow and we drank a dozen or so cups of tea at the Willow Tea Room on Buchanan Street, and laughed ourselves silly and eyed many a handsome Scottish lad.

I also had a fantastic visit to Sydney early in January. The State Theater, where I played, is, hands down, the most beautiful old theater I have ever seen. I stood and gazed at the gold, chocolate and French blue intricacies of design on the ceiling, and the second-largest chandelier in the world, and completely redecorated my bedroom back home. In my head. Mr. L, happily, was none the wiser.

On January 25th, I performed at Merkin Hall here in NYC with old friend Mark O'Connor, and it was just a sublime evening. Mark's trio (himself on violin, Melissa Marse on piano and Arash Amini on cello, performed the first half of the show, a gorgeous composition of Mark's called 'Poets and Prophets', which he had written shortly after my dad's death, in his honor. For the second half of the show, I performed songs from Black Cadillac, including arrangements by Mark of my songs 'God is in the Roses' and "World Unseen', which his trio performed, with me singing. This was a phenomenal night for us--- I think we were all inspired beyond what we even expected. My own trio, which included Mr. L, Zev Katz and myself, rose to the rather high bar set by Mark, and it was just.....one of those nights. I hope to do it again, perhaps this summer. Mark and I are talking about it.

Today, I took my son to the indoor fields on the piers here in Manhattan for his Sunday soccer game. Yesterday we spent a couple hours turning a shoe box into a valentine letter-box for school. My life feels nicely in balance at the moment, and getting more so as I look at the next few weeks with not much on the calendar that doesn't include taking a small boy to and fro.

The only bad thing about time off is that it gives me too much time to think about the state of the world. I wake in the night and wonder if Greenland is going to stay frozen through the decade, and if not, will a rowboat suffice to get me out of Manhattan? Seriously, I have been religious about turning off lights, recycling and walking rather than taking taxis. I also offset all these jet flights by donating to carbon neutral organizations. (CarbonFund.org is a good one). I only use hybrid car services (Ozo here in NYC, and Eco-limo in Los Angeles) and I'm becoming more concious about consumption, in general. I think that too much material consumption affects the spirit like gluttony affects the body--- it makes you sluggish and thick and weighed down. My father had a great saying, which he got from a very elderly woman in the Deep South who owned an antique store he liked to visit. She would say (and then HE would say), 'Honey, every possession is just a stick to beat yourself with'. I've thought about that saying a lot. I think they meant that too many possessions carried too much responsibility, too much space was given up to them, too much energy wasted in acquiring and maintaining them. Of course, neither the old lady or my father followed the line of thinking to its natural conclusion by living a spartan life. My father was a bit of a pack rat, and he had a house stuffed with furniture and rugs and china and linens and paintings and books. And so do I. But I am moving in the direction of doing some space clearing. (I hope Mr. L reads this column; he will be beside himself with joy.) I'll start by clearing out the newspaper clippings from the 80's and work my way up to the Manolos. I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime, thanks for all your kind reviews of the live concerts. I do like getting the feedback.

We're off to a good start in 2007, even if that other guy who was born on my birthday took the cheese for the folk record of the year.

Love and Peace,

Mrs. L

Hello my friends,
It's time for Mrs. L's year-end synopsis and Best Of Everything list for 2006.

I look back on 2006 with excitement, horror, love, a shiver and a sigh. It was a good year, it was a tough year, I learned a lot, and much of what I learned I would have preferred to remain clueless about. (Does that count as a split infinitive?)

Here, for your consideration, are Mrs. L's Best of 2006:

Most fun live performance: (HOW does she come up with these bizarre, marginal categories?) Okay, if you twist my arm, I would have to say.... Paris, at the New Morning club, in June. For several reasons: one, it was in PARIS, and two, I got to sing 'Sleeping in Paris' to a crowd who really dug it because, well, it's PARIS, and three, it was one of those nights. Kind of transcendent. The voice was working well, the audience was rapt, the boys in the band were taking no prisoners. I'll never forget it. Runners-up: The foot of the mountain in Hailey, Idaho where a crowd of 2000 really healthy people had gathered to enjoy the music, St. Ann's (in May) and Zankel Hall (in October) here in New York, because it's fun to play in your hometown, the Napa Opera House, because it was like playing inside a jewel box, the women's expo in Madison, Wisconsin, and the wild country music festival in the middle of Bohemia.

Most fun live performance that wasn't me: There were a few standouts this year. I absolutely loved Wilco's set at the Ottawa Blues Festival last July. They were just dead-on, focused, passionate, raw and real. I became a diehard fan that night. On the other end of the spectrum, I heard a transcendent performance by the London Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in November. I am besotted with pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja, and it was the first time I was ever aware that she performed in New York in the 15 years I have lived here. It was thrilling. She played Prokofiev, but she could have played Heart and Soul and I would have been happy. I was also bursting with pride to see my daughter Chelsea perform with her band at The Basement in Nashville in December. She was very nervous, as both her father and I were in the audience, and SO compelling. Her band rocks, and her songs sound like the future.

Longest commute in one week that didn't bother me too much because it was fun: Prague to Paris to New York to Aspen to New York.

Longest commute in one week that just about killed me due to emotional stress: New York to Pittsburgh to Los Angeles to New York to Budapest to Prague.

Best manager, eleven years in a row: Danny Kahn, due to his unbelievable patience with the entire world, and endless tolerance of my obsessions, complaints and unorthodox business acumen, or lack thereof.

Most annoying recurring theme: Airport Security. Apparently, if I don't give up my Chanel lip gloss, the terrorists win.

Most respected charities: SOS Children's Villages, PAX, Children, Inc, Doctors WIthout Borders, OXFAM, The Reach Foundation, The Caron Foundation, Heifer, International, the Young People's Chorus and Emily's List. I have given to all of these organizations this year, and I encourage you to consider supporting one or more.

Best Husband eleven years running: John Leventhal, aka Mr. L. I can state with certainty that I could not put up with what HE puts up with. Also he's a really, really good guitar player. Also he can reach all the top shelves in my kitchen.

Biggest Peeve while traveling: People who groom in baggage claim. Can I point out that there are no mirrors in baggage claim, and that polishing, lasering, creaming, exfoliating, burnishing, shining, brushing and painting should be done in the LADIES ROOM?

Runner up to Biggest Peeve: Gum chewing by adults. Actually, this pre-empts public grooming. JUST STOP IT. Please. You look like you are eating the inside of your mouth, or like you are changing your mind about something you have recently digested. It's disgusting.

Favorite book of 2006: This is very hard. I have to choose between James Joyce and Joan Didion, and they don't even live in the same century. Okay, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man', and "The Year of Magical Thinking'.

Favorite non-prose book: Annie Leibovitz' "A Photographer's Life". This is such a beautiful, emotional, expansive and complex portrait of ANNIE. The juxtaposition of the personal photographs with the editorial makes for a very compelling collection. I adore and admire Annie, both personally and professionally. Being photographed by her several times over the last 25 years has inspired me, and even helped me refine my own work ethic. Nothing is impossible to Annie.
      Also, look for the PBS American Masters documentary of her in January 2007. It was directed with great insight, compassion and clarity by her sister, Barbara Leibovitz, and I am honored to report that they used music from "Black Cadillac".

Favorite record of 2006: There were so many things I enjoyed this year, from my friend Robert Burke Warren's "Uncle Rock Plays Well With Others", an adult-friendly kid's record, to Elisabeth Leonskaja's recording of Chopin's Nocturnes. And in between were Morphine, Damien Rice, Steve Earle, Patti Griffin, Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham (the new record "Roads Not Travelled" is lovely), Mike Doughty, Arvo Part, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, The Harry Smith Project, The Holmes Brothers, Dylan and Mozart. Music is my religion this year. (As opposed to last year...?) My current end-of-year favorite: the new Damien Rice.

Favorite meal of 2006: (how does she come up with these categories?) Mr. L and I were delighted to celebrate Diana Krall's birthday with her and her husband, Mr. C., at Babbo here in New York City. The combination of that lovely couple and the spectacular food made for a very memorable meal. What did we eat? I don't remember, but it was awesome. We rolled out of there at about 11:30 pm. I also have a very fond memory of looking across a table at two of my children in a tiny restaurant in the Rue Christine in Paris last summer. I also recall a fantastic meal in the Napa valley with my band and crew, child and nanny, where the appetizers were squash blossoms straight out of the chef's garden. Sublime. I went to many dinner parties this year with wonderful friends, and I remember the laughter and the stories and the faces of loved ones through candlelight, and it all runs together into a well-lived life.

Favorite interior designer: my friend Kein Cross, who creates beauty wherever he goes.

Favorite film of 2006: On second thought.... I have two favorites and they both starred Helen Mirren. The first is the HBO special "Elizabeth", which I absolutely ate with a spoon. Perhaps the most perfect mini-series ever. She was magnificent. The second is "The Queen", wherein Ms Mirren plays the current Queen Elizabeth, and one-ups herself. Would that the academy save us the nonsense this year and just give the Oscar to her by unanimous decision.

Favorite film about me: "Mariners and Musicians", which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and made me feel like a movie star for five minutes. Hats off to Flip Lippman for a gorgeous thirty minute prose poem, and please forgive my self-serving categories.

Favorite magazine, for thirty years in a row: The New Yorker. There were some great essays this year. One standout is the piece on stage fright, back in the summer. You don't want to know what Carly Simon does to give herself the courage to go onstage.

Most abstract and poetic bon mot delivered by a person under the age of ten: "I thought you were the night," said my seven year old son as I put him to bed.

Most Missed Mother in 2006: my mom. She would have loved the Madison Women's Expo and she never groomed in baggage claim.

Most dismal airport visited in 2006: Budapest. No air conditioning, full of cigarette smoke, and the Hungarian gate agents are nasty and impatient. But, let's cut them some slack. Eastern Europe has a right to be pissed.

Place with least air: Aspen. But it's pretty, and I had a lot of fun doing Kurt Andersen's "Studio 360" at the Aspen Ideas Conference.

Favorite radio show: while we're on the subject of Mr. Andersen, I would have to give the nod to "Studio 360". He navigates vast intellectual and emotional terrain with great elegance, grace and insight. I'm an NPR junkie, so I also have to acknowledge the great Scott Simon, Brian Lehrer, Leonard Lopate, Jonathan Schwartz, John Schaefer and Terri Gross.

Favorite theater experience: Oh, this is a great category as I did see a lot of plays this year. It's a tie, between two very different shows. Tom Stoppard's 'The Coast of Utopia' (Part One) was riveting and absolutely gorgeous. It opened with waves behind a scrim, and you felt you were on some vast and idealized sea. Ethan Hawke's and Billy Crudup's performances, in particular, were spectacular. Being Stoppard, it wasn't the easiest thing to parse as a listener, and in fact, Mr. L and I did some further reading on the subject of Russian intellectuals of the 19th century after seeing the play, but it was a rare evening of theater and I felt privileged to be a witness.
     The other play which felt nearly perfect to me was the revival of Sondheim's "Company". The set was so chic, the actors/musicians so gifted, and the music--of course-- was so wonderful. I enjoyed every second. I'm a gay man in a woman's body, I suppose.
     Runner-up: Nathan Lane in "Butley". A courageous and complex portrait of a man on the brink.

Most irritating and expensive instance of spacing out: Leaving my brand new laptop in a taxi. Did I scream and cry? Did I call the police to report my idiocy? Yes, I did. Did it help? How many laptops do you know that were returned from the back seat of a taxi?

Best tropical vacation: St. John, USVI, for the second year in a row. If I could eat turquoise water, I would.

Best non-tropical vacation: Upstate New York, for ten glorious days in August.

Most insane audience played to this past summer: Salt Lake City. This is not the first time I have noted this. Something about being Mormon.....?

Favorite new business: Hybrid car services. Ozo in New York City, and Eco-Limo in Los Angeles. Support them, folks!

Most heartbreaking vindication, three years later: my original stance against the Iraq War in March, 2003. Even though I was intensely, adamantly, passionately opposed just before the invasion, I could not have predicted the catastrophe it has become. I have no idea how we will get out of this, or for how many generations the karma will reverberate.

Best blog: Eric Alterman, on Media Matters. He can segue from some arcane political tangent right into why Springsteen is so great, with intelligence and grace.

Best City in the World: NEW YORK CITY. For all the reasons you know--the energy, the opportunities, the people working at the top of their games, the food, the art, the music, the Village, the cupcakes, the clothes, the anger and the love. And for all the reasons you don't know: the little moments that make a place a home. Running into Ethan Hawke in my neighborhood Mexican diner. Talking with the taxi driver about the pain of divorce, and the best way to raise children. Stopping tourists from killing themselves by nudging them out of the way of traffic. Central Park on a bright winter morning. The fabric flowers on the giant quilt that covers the outside of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. The changing colors of the Empire State Building, whose top I can see from my bedroom window. And more, and more, and more.

Runner up to best city in the world: Paris. If I need to explain, get on a plane.

Best job in the world and best fans in the world: mine. Thank you.

Love and Peace in 2007.

Mrs. L

October 14 , 2006

Dear Friends,

There is a wonderful new book out, published by the Country Music Hall of Fame, called Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America. I was asked to contribute an essay, so I wrote a rather smart-alecky article in which I get to use bad language and complain and compare the music industry to gas station restrooms. (You don't love them, but they do fulfill a societal need). For the full dose of attitude, click here. Do yourself a favor and check out the entire book. The photos alone are worth the price of admission.

Speaking of photos, I love the huge Vanity Fair country music photo spread in the November issue in which I was delighted to be included. Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakum, Lyle Lovett and myself apparently hold down the 'renegade' corner. That's fine by me.

The 2006 tour is winding down, and I have had a lot of fun. I have done the full Black Cadillac show, with films and narrative, about a half dozen times, and it has been incredibly satisfying. (Not to say that the straight ahead music-only show hasn't been a kick as well, but it's been fun to explore the multi-media world.)

I do apologize for the cancellation of the Fish Creek, Wisconsin show at the end of September. This is a very rare situation in my professional life, and I hope to re-schedule it, even if it's a year down the road. I was getting a lot of pressure to attend the Americana Awards in Nashville on the same night, which I did. The irony is that I lost both awards I was nominated for, but the good part is that I got to spend the evening with three of my daughters, who were dressed to the nines and made me feel like the matriarch of a small tribe of miniature supermodels.

Here's what I have loved on the road this year:

• the Carneros Inn in Napa
• the Scarecrow Vineyard, owned by my friends Brett and Mimi
• my band the Telstars aka Los Hedonistas (John Leventhal, Shawn Pelton and Zev Katz)
• running into my ex, Rodney Crowell, in Yosemite (my equipment got lost and Rodney was gracious enough to trade time slots with me in the festival in order to give my crew time to find me) and doing a duet with him of 'No Memories Hangin' Round', which was my very first single back in 1980
• my son's trip to Legoland when we played San Diego
• Minnesota Public Radio (MAN! are they ever well-researched when they do their interviews!)
• charity to help Katrina victims: http://cghc.org
• hybrid car services: Ozo car (NYC) and Eco-Limo (LA)
• Prague, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Aspen, Sun Valley, Burlington and all the places in between....

Here's what I have NOT loved:

• TSA. They are the proud owners of my Chanel make-up foundation, my Shiseido lip gloss, my Bumble and Bumble hair gel, my Lancome mascara and my Aveda body lotion.

Love from Mrs. L

August 2, 2006

Dear Friends,

I've started this column a dozen times in my head. I think of a sentence or two, and then, I feel overwhelmed and inarticulate.

I don't watch the news on television. I set my boundaries long ago about how much hysteria and media toxicity I would allow into my house and into my thoughts. We removed the television from the living room, we pulled the plug on cable on the tv my young son is allowed to watch, and I never hear the random sounds of commercials or histrionic newscasters waft through my living space. EVER. But lately it's been impossible to ignore the New York Times, and the dire reports that come across NPR in the morning.

I have a friend who is a reporter for a network news division. She sent me an email from Cyprus, where she had been sent to cover the current crisis in the Middle East. Her email vibrated off the screen with sadness and helplessness. All she talked about were the faces of the children who were streaming into Cyprus from Lebanon, and how their lives were permanently changed.

I grew up with the Vietnam War, as I know many of you did. I came home from school to turn on the television and see War, live and in color. I had a deep interest in the draft numbers of the older brothers of my friends, and I remember riding around town in the car of my aunt when I was about 12, flashing the peace sign to everyone I saw, in camaraderie with all the longhairs and counter-culture-ites, in opposition to war in general, and the Vietnam conflict in particular. Around the same time, my father spoke out against the Vietnam War, and then promptly went over to sing for the troops. This made a profound impact on me, and left me with a dual desire and outlook that is so deeply imbedded in me as to be a permanent feature of my character: Peace and Unity. Non-Violence and Patriotism. Many, many years later I sat with my father in his little study, in March, 2003, and we watched CNN together in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. He began reminiscing about his trip to Vietnam, almost forty years earlier. He recalled a sleepless night in Vietnam, lying beside June, listening to faraway, and not so faraway bombs. He said, "Once you hear the bombs dropping, you never want there to be war anywhere, ever again."

I have thought of that statement a thousand times lately. But does it take firsthand experience to reject the violence? I don't think so. I had a small taste of it myself on 9.11. I was in Lower Manhattan on that day, in a parent's meeting at my daughter's school, and the first plane went over our heads. It rattled the building and shook us in our chairs. We looked at each other, and one mother said, 'That plane is going to crash'. A few minutes later, someone came in to say that, indeed, a plane had crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center. I watched the towers burn from the street outside my daughter's school. I was standing with a friend of mine, while they rounded up the kids inside, and we stood shaking as tears streamed down our faces, holding each other's arms. She said, staring at the burning tower, "All this in the name of God". Incredulous, unbelieving. But I did not have a feeling of revenge. I did not have a feeling that I needed to vindicate my hometown. I did not have a sense that retaliation was the only option. What I felt was that it was possible that it could stop there. No one should ever experience this; hatred is a false illusion. Love, in fact, underpins the entire universe. But we don't see it. If we had had a visionary as a leader, the response to 9.11 might have been, 'We need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We need to sign the Kyoto Protocol. We need to mind our affairs at home. We need universal pre-school, and universal health care, so we can raise up some more visionaries."
Instead, we had a leader who spoke in cowboy rhetoric about 'gettin' em dead or alive' and decided to invade a sovereign nation on false pretenses, while the perpetrators of the crime remain at large, to this day, five years later.

Yes, Bono, I've come here to play Jesus to the lepers in my head.

It's been a hard summer, all around. The conflict abroad mimics the conflict in my own heart. And vice versa. But what do I have the power to heal, what is within my control? I meditate every single day, and every single day I say, "I surrender my will to the will of the Absolute". And then I go out and try to inflict my will on every damn thing I cross. Those stones I fill with my heartaches and toss in the ocean come back, as meteors.
But.
Something is shifting. I feel it. Aren't you sick to death of waste and misery, violence, hatred and UN-Love? As a nation, we revel in fear and vengeance, and a warped idea of our omnipotent power. We invade other countries in the name of high-minded principles, poorly assimilated, and turn right around and become the very thing which we revile. We are obsessed with the iconographic particulars of religion, and we pummel each other with what we THINK is in back of the symbols. We elect leaders who are telegenic, because we can't be bothered to think about anything but our own gratification for more than twenty seconds at a stretch, which is not long enough to peel away the layers of spin and polish and artifact. We want our Hummers and our Big Gulp at any price, even the price of the destruction of the entire planet. We do not think about how our actions will affect the next seven generations, as the Native American maxim dictates; we don't even think how they affect US.

My friend Dan Schwarz sent me a fantastic article about a psychiatrist who heals mentally ill people by first healing them in his own mind, by looking through their files and saying to each one that he is sorry, that he loves them.

Can I tell Hamas and Al-Qaeda and Saddam and Scott Petersen and Dick Cheney that I'm sorry, that I love them?
No, probably not. Yet.
I have to start smaller.
I can tell my husband, my children, my sisters, my brother, my dead parents, my friends, the taxi driver, the band and crew, the deli owner, the members of the board, the manicurist, the committee to re-elect, the dry cleaner, the police officer, the receptionist, the postal worker, the audience. Myself.

I'm sorry. I love you.
Nothing you have done is irreparable, nothing cannot be healed in the light of infinite Love.
Some day the rocks I toss, imbued with the concerns of my heart, will fall to the bottom of the ocean. They will stay put. Some day all 200 million of us will go into rehab. We will wake up. Sooner than we think.
Don't agree with me, it's fine. I don't need you to agree with me in order to say
I'm sorry. I love you.

Love from Mrs. L

I've just returned from Ireland and the U.K.
It's amazing how much work you can cram into seven days if you forego sleep, food and the society of normal human beings.

I did four concerts (in Dublin, London and Edinburgh), two radio shows and two television shows in this mini-tour.
One of the television shows was an hour special called "Sessions", which should be aired in the United Kingdom in the fall. I did a lengthy interview, as well as a full concert, and it turned out to be a lovely journey.

I lived in London for the first half of 1976, and it was a life-changing experience. One of the interview segments for "Sessions" was filmed in Soho Square, where the old CBS headquarters used to be, and where I worked so long ago. I revisited the experience, and the girl I was thirty years ago, which was both unsettling, gratitude-inspiring, and full of deep nostalgia. Ah, it's good to have your past come up to greet you sometimes, isn't it? You remember the dreams you had, and see the depth of your devotion to them.

On June 5th, I accepted an award from Mojo Magazine on behalf of my dad (for the "Legend" boxed set which came out on Sony Legacy last year) at their annual Honors ceremony. It was quite an evening. I saw my old friend Chrissie Hynde, who I had missed when we played the same venue at South By Southwest in Austin last March, and who I have known for over 20 years. We had a nice hug and chat. Then, I practically had the breath knocked out of me when Sir Elton John came up during the photo session after the awards to kiss me and tell me that he loved "Black Cadillac". Ah, Sir Elton. That will keep me going for a year. Thank you.

Speaking of the past rising up to greet you, I went back to the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland. I was playing in Edinburgh on the night of June 7th, and I arrived from London at noon, and went straight up to Fife for a few hours to knock around and soak up the ancestral vibes, and lend my support to the Big Tent Festival of Falkland, which starts on June 30th. (www.bigtent2006.co.uk)The festival has an idea which inspires me greatly: stewardship. Responsible attention and care of your particular corner of the earth, an obvious, but sometimes overlooked idea. I love this. I love Falkland, I love Fife. I can't wait to go back and re-connect with my ancestral home.

Rosanne with Ninian Crichton Stuart, the hereditary keeper of Falkland Palace in Fife, Scotland, June 7, 2006. Rosanne is holding the guitar she signed, to be auctioned off at the Big Tent Festival in Falkland, which starts June 30th.

It's a busy summer, my friends, and I look forward to meeting many of you on the road. I am enjoying performing the songs from 'Black Cadillac' SO much. It's remarkable how a song can transcend its own origins of feeling when it is performed, in the presence of people who bring their own lives to the listening, and their own toe-tapping, finger-snapping resonance to the moment.

I bow to you, you toe-tapping, finger-snapping, life-living listeners and talkers.

Love from Mrs. L, or as they say in Scotland, 'Miss Cash, are ye then?'

April 5 , 2006

Dear Friends,

I went on vacation to an island in the Caribbean, for six days, which is about a month too short. I'm not complaining. It was fantastic. It was beautiful and relaxing, and anytime turquoise water is part of the daily schedule, I am very happy.

But have you ever picked up a rock on the beach and asked it to absorb all the crap you don't want to take back to your normal life, then tossed it out into the sea as far as you can throw? I've done it plenty of times. I did it on this trip. But why do the very things you toss into the ocean seem to come back with renewed vigor as soon as you return to your regular programming? It is so predictable, and so frustrating. Perhaps the ritual itself stirs something, shakes something loose, forces you to re-examine whatever it is you are trying to toss away. That sums me up right now. Re-examining, shaken loose, stirred up.

I am approaching two milestones: the first anniversary of my mother's death, and my birthday, which fall on the same day. I am restless and anxious about this, and prefer to skip it, if truth be told. I prefer to go directly to summer, to short sleeves, to barbecuing in our tiny New York garden. There is no Around, is there? There is only Through. I don't like Through. I much prefer Around.

Aside from the inner wrestling, things are very busy and good. I went to South By Southwest, the music conference in Austin, and managed to be seven places at once. I told my sales rep from Capitol records that I wanted to see the memo that she had sent around proposing that they kill me with my SXSW schedule to get those nice posthumous sales spikes. She said that was very funny. I said, NO, I WANT TO SEE THE MEMO. The last night we were there I played at Stubbs with Lyle Lovett and the Pretenders. I wonder how it was. If any of you saw it, please write in and tell me how it was. I could not hear myself, I did not see Lyle, I did not see Chrissie, I got three hours sleep and went to Washington, D.C. I think I was okay. I was wearing a nice jacket.

My beautiful and funny and delightful stepdaughter, Hannah, gave birth on April 1st to a gorgeous baby girl. In the past month she, and my brother and sister-in-law, and my nephew and niece-in-law, have all had babies. This is the best thing ever. I want everyone to have babies. If I didn't have to do things like play at Stubbs at 11 pm with horrendous feedback in the monitors, I would consider doing it again myself. No one likes feedback.

I am very proud to announce that a documentary film about me, more of a film/prose poem really, called "Mariners and Musicians," is premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this month. It was directed by Steve Lippman, and it is quite beautiful. He did an amazing job. So if any of you are in New York during the festival, please try to make one of the screenings. (April 27, April 30, May 4 and May 6: info/tix)

Lots going on this Spring and Summer. I do hope I come to your 'hood. Bring rocks. I will throw them. No guarantees they will stay put.

Love from Mrs. L

I want to tell you how moved I am by the many messages you have sent me of appreciation for “Black Cadillac”, and the stories you have shared of your own losses, and meaning you have found in this record to address those losses.

This is exactly what I had hoped would happen: that people would bring their own lives to this record, not dissect it as a diary of my life. Loss is one of the things that connects us: the holes at the center of our lives where the missing people used to be. But, as Leonard Cohen said: “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in”.

Thank you for trusting me with your stories and for taking the time to send your appreciation.

Now, for something more mundane: copyright protection software. I’ve received a lot of complaints about this, and some people have said they will not buy the record if it is encoded with this software. I understand. I don’t like it, either. It makes no sense. When you could buy a blank cd for a dollar and copy it from a friend’s cd, why do they put this software on something which you are buying legally? Can I tell you that I have about as much chance of changing this corporate policy of the record labels as I have of getting shot by Dick Cheney? Wait, let me think of another metaphor. I have about as much chance of making them remove this software from my cd as I do of dancing the lead in the Nutcracker at Lincoln Center next Christmas. That’s better.

I’m sorry. I really am. Let’s just all take a moment to feel empathy for the entire major label system within the music industry, which is now akin to an elderly Allosaurus shortly after the meteor hit the planet. But until I get up the energy and capital to start my own record label, this is the way I have to put them out into the world, so there we are. And truthfully, my label is very good to me, and the software issue is balanced out by their commitment to promoting this record and letting me get my work out there. But keep writing, as we have a very active complaint desk here at Mrs. L’s, and we are mostly unfailingly sympathetic.

Now, on to religion.

My darlings, there is no need to worry about my immortal soul. Some of you seem determined to save it. But that’s my job, and I’m on it. If I express tremendous doubt in some of these songs, I also express profound faith. The record is a map of many things that surround loss: grief, confusion, anger, doubt, faith, transformation, love, despair and hope. There are a lot of questions, not a lot of answers. I love the quote from Rilke: “Try to love the questions in your heart...”

I do, I do. I love the questions, I am empowered by the search, I’m inspired by the exploration, all of which is fundamentally human. I really don’t trust people who say they have no cracks in their faith and never entertain doubt. That’s not faith, that’s fanaticism.

What do I believe in? I believe in a universe that supports our highest potential. I believe that love survives death, and can heal even the most grave damage, given time and trust in the process. I believe in a God that defies my understanding. I think that my mind is not even close to being large enough to understand what God really is, and this excites me. I believe there is something outside my own existence that is all-knowing, whose creative potential is so vast that I can barely glimpse even the smallest edge. I believe that when I am in my most creative zone, I am touching that edge, but beyond that, it is unfathomable to me. I also believe that some day I will understand this better. I believe that I chose my parents, and they chose me, for reasons that I only partially understand, and the same goes for my children. I believe that the frog in the rain forest inhales the same air I exhale, and that we are all connected on a level that is so profound, so complex, and so basic, that if we got even a momentary insight into this subject, it would transform us. I believe war is fundamentally wrong, and that at some point in the future, our descendants will look on us as barbarians for conducting ourselves in this way. I do not believe in Armageddon, which seems to be a popular belief these days. The idea that the world, which is billions of years old (sorry, Pat and Jerry, but you need to go back to third grade science class), will end in MY lifetime, because I am just so special that all things will come to an end once I have graced the planet, is just too narcissistic to even entertain.

I do not believe that any one person has a special hold on God’s ear, but that there are as many ways to God as there are people on the planet, and that God, in His/Her infinite understanding, is able to tolerate a multitude of differences in this regard, since He/She created those differences, partially through the exquisite, complex miracle of evolution. I don’t believe anyone needs to mediate with God on my behalf, and I certainly don’t believe God gives other people messages to give to me. My letter box is always open to receive directly from the Source, thanks. In turn, I respect your belief in anything, everything or nothing, as long as you don’t try to inflict those beliefs on me. Arrogance and ignorance are a lethal combination, and it seems to pervade some bastions of organised religion at the moment. A gentleman gave a review of my record on Amazon, and he said that I “dissed” the religion of my father and stepmother. I don’t challenge very many misinterpretations of my work or beliefs, but this one could not go unmentioned. This is absolutely untrue. The religion of my father and stepmother was tolerant, loving, powerful and personal to them, as was the very different religious faith of my mother. I have nothing but respect for that, and for them. My songs are about MY experience, and nothing else. And by the way, they are SONGS, not a diary. Open to interpretation, obviously, but for yourself only.

Gregory Lisenbee sent me this great quote, and for that I thank him:
“The unknown is the mind’s greatest need, and for it no one thinks to thank God.”

Love from Mrs. L

January 7, 2006

Dear Friends,

It's time for the year-end picks—my favorite column of the year!

Sorry I'm a bit late, but I've been yapping to the press every day about my new record, which will be released January 24th. You should be thoroughly sick of me in a couple months, as I will be surfacing in every known publication on both sides of the Atlantic. (French journalist: "But, zeeez record, eet is not CAUNTRY!" Me: "Mon Dieu! Is it NOT?")

This was a year divided in halves for me. In the first half I was finishing the record, going to my niece's wedding, taking a vacation, doing my series of shows at the Rubin Museum here in New York (which I absolutely LOVED) and a few other scattered shows, and planning my 50th birthday party and the PAX benefit, a combined event, on May 24th, 2005.

The second half began with my mother's death, which happened on that very same day. I think now about the months before May that she and I spent talking about what we would each wear to the benefit, and on which day she would arrive in New York from her home in California, and in what other ways we would celebrate together while she was here. She kept putting off buying the plane tickets, which was very unlike her. She was impeccably organized and always planned things far in advance. I think now that she must have known that I would be the one making the trip across the country, not her.

I was in a fog from May through the end of the year, and really didn't start to think coherently until mid-November, when I went to Paris with a friend to try to get some relief from the grief and disorientation. Paris was a wonderful balm. We went to the flea markets, and ate fabulous food and drank great red wine, and shopped and looked at art, and it revived my spirit. I thought of my mother a thousand times in those five days, but the thoughts of her began to be sweet, instead of excruciating. All those beautiful things in the shops that reminded me so much of her were like little messages of delight, instead of pain.

2005 was, again, a year of great extremes, which is exactly what I DON'T want anymore. Have you noticed as you get older that the drama of incredible peaks and devastating lows holds very little appeal? You know that you can't have one without the other, and the toll on the nervous system reaches a critical mass that plays out in all kinds of stress disorders. I am hoping for a year of gentle waves; not too high, not too low. I need it, I want it, I relinquish any vestige of my adolescent need for drama. Are you with me?

PICKS FOR 2005

Best Tropical Vacation: (March) I took my son to The Breakers in Palm Beach. Okay, I know. A bit.... pink and green. But it was fabulous, even though I own not a stitch of Lily Pulitzer and don't play golf. My husband joined us for the last couple of days, and it so happened that two of my best friends were also in Palm Beach with their children, and we had a fine time on that lovely beach, eating french fries, watching the waves and not playing golf. And I met a very nice woman who gave me a Lily Pulitzer key chain, which I am using at this very moment. It happens in increments, my friends.

Runner-up for Best Tropical Vacation: (January). When I played the Jamaica Jazz and Blues festival at the end of January, I took three of my kids. It was a beautiful few days, and playing the festival was a lot of fun, but it was fraught with a lot of memories and sadness because of the close proximity of our old family home, Cinnamon Hill, which was closed down. We have since sold it to our dear friend Michele Rollins, who plans to preserve the house, and honor the memory of my Dad and June in the place they loved so much.

Best Non-Tropical Vacation: (November) As I mentioned above, I went to Paris with my friend Kein (an amazing designer) and we went to the flea markets, where I spent hours meticulously going through stacks and stacks of antique fabrics, which became a zen meditation for me, and a survival experience for Kein. The whole trip was luminous in every way.

Best Live Music: (November) "Tristan und Isolde" at the Opera Bastille in Paris. WOW. This was a new production by Peter Sellars, with a video installation by Bill Viola. The video alone was remarkable. The stage was very minimal, all black and gray, so the focus was on the singers and the screen in back of them. The video had the most evocative images; the one that moved me most was of a woman lighting votive candles, as you might see in a Catholic church. The shot was very long, perhaps three minutes or more, and she lit dozens of candles, very methodically. When she finished, she turned and walked slowly toward the camera, through a pool of water that I didn't realize was there in front of her. It might sound prosaic, but it was deeply moving.

Best Theater Performance: (December) "Measure for Measure" at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. "To die, and go we know not where...." Oh, the Bard always says it best, doesn't he? This production was the best thing I've seen in the theater since "Angels in America" (1993), with the possible exception and addition of "Mnemonic" (2002) and "I Am My Own Wife" (2004). The Globe Troupe, whose performances are exactly as they were in Shakespeare's day, was absolutely stellar. The stage was breathtaking, with huge chandeliers of candles hanging over the simple, almost empty stage. The costumes were meticulous in period detail, and the actors were incomparable. I was so inspired that I plan on going to London this summer to see them perform in the Globe Theatre itself.

Best Film: "No Direction Home". I just can't resist this. A great American filmmaker reveals a great American songwriter. I am so anxious for the sequel.

Best Art: (November) "Melancolie", at the Grand Palais in Paris. I don't even know where to begin to describe the profound effect this show had on me. It encompassed 800 years of art depicting sadness, grief, madness, melancholy and despair. The exhibition ranged over several large rooms, and it began, predictably, with Bosch, Blake and Durer and all the paintings of hell and the agonies of the saints, religious torment and damnation. It moved on through madness and grief, in both sculpture and paintings, and was quite overwhelming. But it was not depressing, at least not to me. I had just finished my record when I saw this show, and I humbly felt, and hoped, that I belonged in some small way to this great tradition of art and music (there was a cd playing throughout the exhibit, which was also wonderful) which is not afraid to address the most painful aspects of being human. I saw that through the centuries the darkest impulses of the psyche were given free expression in art, and in fact, were managed and understood by being held in enough esteem to warrant being painted or drawn or sculpted or sung. It seemed to me that the very fact of giving these difficult emotions expression helped to create a space in the soul to accept them as part of us, instead of something alien to us. It is only in the 20th century that melancholy has been classified as an illness, and the pressure has arisen to marginalize and medicate those dark feelings. Before, there was more room for great art to express the inexpresible, the unthinkable, and the unbearable. And so those things became bearable. I have a little piece of that kind of art to contribute, my record "Black Cadillac", and after seeing this show, I do not feel awkward about standing behind the darker elements of it with my whole heart. There is a rich tradition it belongs to.

Best Book: I enjoyed a lot of books this year, and I particularly enjoyed my own little seminar on the 18th Century, which began with "Sex With Kings" ( a review of royal mistresses throughout history) and went on through two biographies of Madame de Pompadour, and ended with Antonia Fraser's biography of Marie Antoinette. I thoroughly played out the obsession, and I am considering other centuries to obsess over at this time. The 16th is a likely contender. But I have to say my favorite book of the year was Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking". It was comforting, when it should not have been. She was poetic in the most mundane descriptions of illness and death, and she was elegiac in the expression of her regrets. Everthing was so personal, and so universal. Her attention to detail is art itself. I loved this book and admire her greatly for writing it.

Best Record: I was very moved by Arvo Part, a new discovery for me. Just when his music starts to irritate you, it changes into the most liberating elegy. Hard to describe, and hard to stay away from. I loved Sam Phillips "A Boot and a Shoe". What a great songwriter she is, with such a cool, restrained voice. Any record that opens with the line "I was broken when you got me" gets my attention. I was also moved by various Patty Griffin records, and a lot of Dylan, a bit of Coldplay, and the summer was filled with the melancholy and lovely David Gray.

Best Non-Classical Live Performance: One: Nellie McKay, at Lincoln Center, in March. Oh, what a great little bird she is. So strange, and funny, and so gifted. I root for her with all my heart. Two: Me, at Lincoln Center, in February. I root for me, too.

Best Purchase: A New Kitchen. Finally, finally finally... we renovated our 1970's era kitchen. A gut job. A lot of dust, a lot of drinking tea in the laundry room with an electric tea kettle, a lot of vacuuming and plastic curtains, an unexpected hidden 19th century wall that had to come down, but voila! It is gorgeous. French limestone floors, white oak cabinets, antique blue tiles, fabric from the Paris flea market..... you get the picture. The purchase was perhaps a little more dear than anticipated, but would I rather have the kitchen or the money? The kitchen, thank you.

Best Charities: My favorites are PAX, the movement to protect children from gun violence, SOS Children's Villages ( I sponsor a child in Burundi), and Children, Inc ( I sponsor two children in Bolivia). Hey, for the price of a pair of Manolo Blahniks, you can save a child's life. It's a no-brainer.

Best Meal: Oh I love making up these categories. I love ruling my own universe. But I digress. There were four or five best meals of 2005. One: Gael Towey and Stephen Doyle's dinner to celebrate Christo's The Gates in Central Park, back in February. I still remember the fish in saffron broth and the dense chocolate cake. Would that Christo erect those Gates again, and Gael and Stephen think up more dishes with saffron. Two: soup gratinee, grilled dorade and chocolate mousse, along with a nice Bordeaux, at Balzar in Paris, with my friend Kein, last November. It could have been the dorade, or it could have been the woozy walk back to the hotel, past the gorgeously lighted medeival Cluny museum, that made it all so perfect. Three: the birthday dinner for John, aka Mr. L, at the Strip House here in New York in December. We have a tradition of going out to a steakhouse on his birthday, since I am a longtime semi-vegetarian, and never cook meat at home. Well, this year I said to hell with it and ate a steak for the first time in seventeen years. I am appalled to admit that I loved it. But was it the steak, or the fact that I love looking at Mr. L across a table, or the fact that he shared his spicy corn chowder with me, that made it all so perfect? I don't know, I'm a carnivore again, and I don't care. Four: (do you notice that this is the longest category?) The dinner party to celebrate my friend Michael Rips' book publication. It was at a very, VERY nice apartment on Park Avenue, and the food was Indian, the company spectacular, the wine incomparable, and Michael was very charming, to say the least. Five: I went back to Paris in mid-December, for a two day press blitz, and the one moment I had to myself was spent at Le Procope, the oldest restaurant in Paris. Robespierre and his gang used to hang out there. I had coq au vin, the real deal, and it was spectacular.

Best Child Bon Mot: My six-year-old son, upon hearing a prayer, said, "Why do they say 'a-MEN'? Why don't they say 'a-PEOPLE'?"

Best Family Reunion: My niece Jessica's wedding, in February. It was in Ventura, California, where I grew up and where my mother and step-dad lived (where he still lives), and I arrived from New York at 3:40 for a 4 pm wedding, and was dressed and there on time. All my children were there, all my sisters, nieces, nephews, my mother and stepdad, my aunt and so many old friends. It was so sweet to see my sister, who raised her daughter alone, walk my niece down the aisle. It was such a beautiful day, in every way. I treasure the photos from that day. The next time we were all together was for my mother's funeral, three months later.

Best Immodest Moment: At Les Bains du Marais, in Paris, in November. I was fine with the naked steam room. I was fine with the naked scrub, next to the other naked women. I was a little taken aback by the massage. Let's just say that if I were a lottery ticket, and the winning number was buried in my thigh bone, or perhaps even in my ribcage, that the really cute Turkish guy would have been able to read it quite clearly. And cashed it in. No pun intended.

Best Reason to Look Forward to 2006: I made a really good record, the best work of my career, and I don't say that lightly. It was difficult and liberating, and deeply satisfying. It's a chronicle of loss and grief, but it's also an exploration of my ancestry, and a study of how relationships founded on love survive death. It's not a tribute record, it's not a 'death' record, but it's real, and truthful and sometimes cinematic, and I hope you bring your own life to it.

Wishing peace for the entire planet (it IS possible!), and love to all in 2006,

Love from Mrs. L

Dear Friends,

I have begun three columns and tossed them out. I hardly know what to say about the recent events in the Gulf Coast. Adding my voice to the dialogue seems redundant and not very useful. I am heartbroken at the images that came out of New Orleans. I can't help but feel that one underlying message is that Nature will always prevail. A city below sea level will eventually be reclaimed by the sea. I had thought that this would happen gradually--in fact, one of my daughters has said many times over the years that it was her dream to live in New Orleans, and my response was always, 'oh, no, honey, it will be under water some day'. I did not imagine the violence and destruction that would occur to make that happen. I feel sad, and angry at the response of our government. Apparently, the PTA at my son's school is run more efficiently than FEMA. What an eye-opener. I read a brilliant editorial by Chris Cooper in a newspaper in Wiscasset, Maine that perfectly expresses my feelings, and I want to print it here in its entirety. Get prepared--this is some serious righteous indignation, and he's not sugar-coating it to make us feel better about ourselves. I am doing some self-examination after reading this article. If we are 'rotting from within', how can we let the air and light in, and begin the healing?

Love from Mrs. L

Published on Thursday, September 15, 2005 by the Wiscasset Newspaper (Maine):

Sugar for Sugar, Salt For Salt
Go Down In The Flood Gonna Be Your Own Fault
by Christopher Cooper

This won't take long. And it won't be much fun. But duty and decency demand that we do it.

Sometimes you buy a cantaloupe because it looks good and you have enjoyed some fine ripe cantaloupes in your time, even though a buck and a half for a little melon that went three for a dollar within living memory seems pretty pricey. And you leave it on the kitchen counter for a few days, because it's a little green, but it softens and gets a better color so you slice it open, but it's mushy and rotten and smells like feet and tastes like vomit and you remember other, similar, corporate grocery chain cantaloupe experiences and vow as you heave the mess into the compost not to get fooled again.

Maybe you've bought a car. Reasonable mileage, no rust, convincing salesman who chatted you up about your hobbies, agreed with your prejudices, and made you feel you were a pretty clever guy for choosing this vehicle from his selection. But you couldn't keep it aligned, it ate tires, the brakes, exhaust system and radiator didn't survive the life of the payment book, and when you tried to sell it three years later every seventeen-year-old who looked at it was astute enough to reference the oil blown past the rear main seals as his reason for declining your "Best Offer Over $500 Dollars" prayer.

Some of you lady readers married men whose virtues are now no more apparent to you than they were pre-nuptually to your mothers, friends or even relatives of the groom himself. True, he was a successful inseminator but, sadly, the children look disturbingly like him. Of you, people say, "She could have done so much better." What were you thinking? What can you do?

Or let's say a whole country was riding a foaming crest of good times, new cars, low interest rates, affordable gas, electronic gadgets and a We're Number One world view that was maybe weak on history, geography and empathy, but sure did by God show the big stick to the heathen foreigners. Such a people might toss a coin in a contest between a dorky, dull Democrat and an insipid dry drunk Texas fratboy Republican whose every and many failures had been rendered moot by family money and connections. They might not be paying much attention.

Then, let's say, some really nasty guys from a country larded up with ugly, corrupt fat cats blew a great big hole in a part of that country. Suppose the new president "rose to the occasion" by starting a war with another country in the same part of the world as the one where the bad guys came from, but which, for political and personal reasons and reasons having very much indeed to do with very valuable mineral resources and very profitable corporations and some other complicated considerations having to do with weapons sales, it was not convenient to invade because those particular rich foreigners were personal friends and business partners of that new chief executive.

And further (stay with me; I know it's a weird trip), imagine that just as it was made startlingly clear that pretty much everything this president had advanced as a reason for that war was a fabrication, a misdirection, a deliberate under- or over-statement (well, hell, yes, I guess just a pile of tremendous lies, really, if we need to use such an ugly word), imagine that he got re-elected despite his manifest incompetence and venality and smugness because the same Democrats who had advanced the very dull, unappealing candidate four years previously selected this time a cipher who ran against his own finest, most decent history and tried to seem more and more like the dull incumbent until, finally, some voters stuck with the dummy they knew, and some voted against the sad-sack they'd come to not respect, and the rigged Republican voting machines in two critical states made up the shortfall.

Now what if the best-studied, most carefully-observed, best-tracked, most predictable-coursed hurricane ever seen, and one of the biggest, wiped out a major coastal city that, had the president in question not been so intent upon "drowning government in a bathtub" and reducing the unwelcome sting of taxation upon the richest people and corporations he knew (outside of his friends in Saudi Arabia, I mean), might have received enough money to fortify its dikes and seawalls in the true spirit of "Homeland Security", and maybe every old lady trying to board an airplane could have been spared the burden of taking off her shoes. (OK, I know it doesn't cost much to humiliate old ladies, and I know the money saved wouldn't have been diverted to New Orleans, but great craziness must be recognized and ridiculed and, when it is public policy, repudiated, and that's what they pay me to do here.)

You've seen the pictures. Twenty per cent of the residents of New Orleans lacked the resources, the vehicles, the health, the money to evacuate ahead of the storm. Too old, too sick, too poor to save themselves, and mostly, given America's great secret still, all these years after we thought we'd equalized these things, even after the token Scalia wannabe on the Supreme Court and the sad yes-man who abandoned the Secretary of State job after the lies he told finally began to curdle on his lips, mostly black. Poor blacks. Indeed.

You've seen the Superdome, the convention center footage. You've heard the first-person accounts of scores of hurting, hungry homeless (poor, black) persons trying to cross a bridge to dry ground but ordered back by white officials with guns. You've seen the misery, the neglect, the abuse. So has the rest of the world. We're Number One! Say it loud.

Is it time yet? Can we all just admit we made a stupid mistake? We weren't paying attention? We heard what we wanted to hear? We succumbed to slick advertising? The fruit was rotten; the car was a lemon; that bum was just piss-poor husband and father material and your momma was right. Stay the course? What course? Our country, its citizens, its principles have been reduced, abused, worked-over, bled-out, violated and humiliated. Not by terrorists or foreign enemies or tsunamis or tornadoes or an angry god. We have rotted from within.

Blame the Republicans? Nah, they're just "protecting their base." Like helping like. It is the party of wealth and privilege. Blame the Democrats? Sure, if you can distinguish 'em from the Republicans. It sure ain't the party of FDR any more. Or even Jack Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson or Jimmy Carter. I'll see your Tom DeLay and your Bill Frist and raise you a Joe Biden and a Joe Lieberman. Blame the press for avoiding or killing any story that wasn't a press release from the Pentagon, the White House or the American Association of Yellow Ribbon Manufacturers. Blame our stars. Blame ourselves; we weren't paying attention; we didn't do the work democracy demands.

Do I exaggerate our desperate straits? The man at the top in his own words and by his own actions. Add the smirk and swagger yourself; you've seen it often enough.

First response? Fly over on Air Force One; go play golf. Condi Rice shopped shoe boutiques. Dick Cheney bought a three million dollar vacation home.

While you and I watched the Superdome and convention center fiascoes? Lunch with Al Greenspan. "Hurricane Katrina will represent a temporary setback for the U.S. Economy and the energy sector."

As WalMart water trucks, Red Cross workers, TV reporters and Canadian Mounted Police forces tended the stricken city while FEMA and the National Guard waited for orders that didn't come? "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job."

Days after we'd all heard testimony from the engineers and planners who'd repeatedly sounded the alarm about Category Five storms and Cat. Three levees: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

With hundred of thousands homeless, uncounted dead, the poorest among us hit the hardest: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- the guy lost his entire house -- there's going to be fantastic house. I look forward to sitting on the porch." [Yes, rubbles, plural. I know it sounds stupid, but I got it right off the White House website. He's proud of it, for Christ's sake!]

There's more. You've seen it, heard it, been repulsed by it. But did you get this from his mom, the husband of one bad president, the mother of the worst one yet, a woman who you'll remember said she couldn't find the time to trouble her "beautiful mind" about Iraqi civilians we'd bombed to death by the tens of thousands? Of those who'd lost all they owned, including, in many cases, loved ones, to the flood and were now enjoying the hospitality of Texas shelters: "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [chuckle] is working very well for them."

Oh, those lucky, lucky homeless, sick people! What happy niggras we have here on our grand plantation. It makes a person feel dirty and disgusted and sick to his stomach. Don't you suppose a couple billion other people all over the world heard that chortle, you bloated, ignorant, overprivileged mother of a moron?

Hey, folks, things have gotten so bad that even the press is beginning to pay attention. Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan said at least fourteen times during two press briefings last week that now is not the time to "play the blame game." I say it's an excellent time, while the dead are still floating on the polluted tides and we are not yet distracted by the World's Series or the run-up to Christmas or another newly-discovered "Axis Of Terror" triumvirate.

Now, for pure, wholesome, refreshing local idiocy we have the Maine Republicans' brilliant plan to make us forget the screwing we're getting from Exxon by canceling the state gasoline tax for a few months and (this is really too perfect for me to have made up) forgiving the sales tax on home heating oil (struggling, low wage, two-job homeowners get ready for this!) for business use.

OK. I'm done. Gotta go wax the yacht and wind my Rolex. Jesus, I wish I could be homeless and eat some donated food in Texas while my wife rots in a drainage canal and my dogs starve to death on the balcony of our ruined home

Chris Cooper writes an editorial page column, Fixtures And Forces And Friends for the Wiscasset [Maine] Newspaper. Contact him at ckc2@prexar.com.

Dear Friends,

I've been in a fog of sadness and reflection, and disbelief, since the end of May when my Mom died, thinking about her and all she was, and is. I went to the phone two days ago to call her to get my niece's address, and then stood in shock for a moment, thinking of the vast repository of information my mother represented, and wondering who I would go to from now on when I needed to know someone's birthday, or address, or the name of their new wife, or when their baby was due, or where exactly in the world any one of my sisters or their children were at that moment.

My friend Larry Kirwan just wrote a beautiful column on his website remembering his own mother, on the fifth anniversary of her death. He says that, 'even the most searing of events settles into the broad mosaic of a life'. He sent the column to me as a gesture of comfort, and it was good to get that reminder. I know since losing my Dad that you can survive grief, that it gets easier after the first year, and that you start to take on the better qualities of your parents, if you want to.

I would like to take on some of my mother's better qualities. I have been thinking about her virtues. She was a fierce mother, protective, passionate and proud. She had four daughters, and she would have thrown herself in front of a train for any of us. She was loyal to her children to a fault, and her belief in our inherent goodness and in our potential as productive and creative members of society never wavered.

She created an exceptionally warm home. There was always food and flowers and friends in her house. She made an art of being a friend. She showed up if you were sick or in the hospital, or sad or lonely, or needed any little thing, and she was rewarded with a breathtaking amount of return loyalty and respect. On her last birthday, she got nearly 50 birthday cards--from close friends. She had friends of all ages, all walks of life, all income brackets and all personalities. She maintained friendships with several of my old friends from high school, some of whom I myself lost touch with, but she kept them in her circle and kept me informed of their lives. She was a flame of love and warmth, and many, many people flocked to her. She also had an innocence that was uncommon in the modern world. Her codes of behavior were simple, but well defined, and she could not understand the bad manners and lack of integrity in modern society. She had a deep faith, and was a staunch Catholic from birth to death. I admire that quality of knowing who she was, and acting in a way that served that knowledge, and her Catholicism was central to her understanding of herself.

She was a great hostess. She loved to entertain, and she hosted more parties than I can begin to recall. She created such a welcome environment, that when I was in high school, my friends preferred hanging out at my house to any other place. It was quite annoying at times. My mother was a genius in that way. She made home so comfortable that there was no need to go out, and most of the time she knew exactly where I was.

She was strict. She had no patience with the democratic parenting style that is so popular today. She ruled our home, and our young lives, and that was that. No back talk, no negotiation. The rules were clear, and transgressions were dealt with firmly. My friend Peggy and I once skipped school and took off for Mexico with a couple of boys when we were seniors in high school. I told my mother I was spending the weekend at Peggy’s house. My mother discovered the truth before the weekend was over, and I was grounded for months. It did not matter that I was about to turn eighteen. I was grounded until nearly that moment.

I wrecked my car once and she insisted that I pay for the repairs myself. So, I got a job as a waitress at the age of 16, and saved the money, and paid to get my car fixed. (My father, much more lenient, had given me the car for my 16th birthday, something that my mother probably disapproved of, but she was silent at the time--also very wise of her).

My mother could do just about anything with her hands—sew, crochet, knit, needlepoint, arrange flowers, make homemade chocolate candy (she was famous for this among family and friends), bake, paint and make her own stationery. She was a one-woman crafts market/bakery/candy store/flower stall/knit-wear boutique. I was cleaning out closets this past weekend and kept pulling out blankets she had crocheted for me. Whenever someone announced a wedding or a pregnancy, she would begin to crochet. She made doll blankets for my girls and a big blue and white quilt when I married John, and a blanket for every baby and special occasion. And she never stopped making things, up until the moment she died. A few days after she went into the hospital for her last illness, I received an enormous box of her homemade chocolates. She had spent the week before surgery making chocolates for my birthday, and she had my step-dad ship them out while she was in intensive care.

I could tell you more--about her love of a bargain, her 24-pound turkeys at Thanksgiving, her passion for Asian design and zebra prints, her love of music and dancing (both line and ballroom), her nervousness about weather and travel, her two tiny dogs named Rambo and Chico, and her kitchen full of bells and whistles.

She was quite a woman: full of life, with an easy laugh and a deep love for the people around her, particularly her grandchildren.

Her doctor told me after her death that there were some patients you just remember all your life, and he said that my mom would be one for him. He said he would never forget her and the intense, territorial love of her family. I don’t think he had ever seen so many close relatives—husband, daughters, sister, grandchildren, sons-in-laws, plus a few dear friends and the parish priest—crowd into one woman’s room day after day, following every tiny aspect of her care, and finally letting her go with so much overwhelming sadness that the nurses in the unit also broke down in tears.

Once I had a mother.
She was a force of nature, a lion queen.
They say that to have a child is to forever agree to have your heart walk around outside of your body. As a mother, I know that to be true. So I take some comfort in knowing that part of me is my mother’s heart, terrible seamstress that I am, careless user of store-bought stationery, klutzy ballroom dancer, Buddhist/Episcopalian cat-owner, blithely flying into snowstorms and turbulent weather, but as passionate as she ever was about family, friends, bargains and homemade chocolate.

Love from Rosanne Cash

July 4 , 2005

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your many kindnesses in this last month or so. I truly appreciate all the sentiments of comfort and love; the cards, emails, prayers and kind wishes. As most of you know, my mother died after a brief illness on May 24th, my fiftieth birthday. I was blessed to be with her when she passed away. I have not begun to understand or accept this newest loss. I am trying to figure out my new life without either of my parents, and, truthfully, I don't have a clue yet.

I want to write about my mother, what a beautiful, fierce, ALIVE person she was, how she embodied the word 'matriarch', how caring she was, and how passionate in her love for her children and grandchildren, but I don't know how to do that yet, either. I feel a vast space at the center of my life, which no words have formed around. But, I promise you, and her, that I will eulogize her properly in this space when my enthusiasm for language and my impulse for creativity return.

Until then, God bless.

Number one: Never, under any circumstances, in any location, not even in the privacy of your own bedroom, CHEW GUM. I have stood hypnotized with repulsion many, many times watching a Woman of a C.A. apparently chewing off the inside of her mouth while waiting for her bag to roll around on the carousel, her flight to be called, the plane to take-off or land, her car to pull up or, worst of all, her meal to be served. Please, I beg you. Do the rest of us a favor. Once your age contains two digits, stop chewing gum.

Number two: No mini-skirts. If you are not Tina Turner, and you are over 40, just stop it. Your legs cannot be that good.

Number three: No midriff revelations. I don't care if you've never had children and your stomach is still as flat as when you were twenty, if you are twice that age or more, then I am sorry, it is forbidden. It is beyond undignified. If you are on the beach and you have a phenomenal figure, I will consider overlooking a two-piece bathing suit (NOT a bikini), but otherwise, keep it under wraps. Do I even need to MENTION piercings? Good god.

Number four: When you shoosh your crying/laughing/screaming child, your shoosh is always louder than the child. Talk to them, rock, cuddle, look stern, threaten, WHATEVER. Just don't SHHHOOOOOOOSSSSSH. That particular frequency is probably the reason I have a slight hearing loss right around 4K, NOT the snare drum that's been in my right ear for the past 26 years.

Number five: Do not put on makeup at a table in a restaurant. A quick, discreet swipe of lipstick in the manner of the French is perfectly acceptable, but do not powder, color, rub, outline, scrub, laser, polish, moisturize or tone any part of your face or body while in close proximity to food or strangers.
I once had the great misfortune of sitting at a table in a very nice restaurant in Hawaii with a dozen or so people, some of whom I did not know, and one young woman took out a bottle of aloe vera and proceeded to squirt it all over her sunburned legs and rub it in methodically while we were waiting for our food to be served. As an added bonus, the bottle made a nice, loud farting noise every time she squeezed it. Needless to say, I lost my appetite.

Number six: As an addendum to number five, just in case I'm not getting it across fully, don't comb or groom your hair in public. Just last week, I was standing next to a sixty-something woman in baggage claim who was fiercely dragging a comb through her dried-out, over-processed hair as stray strands flew all around her (and me). (Baggage claim is clearly the front burner which holds the melting pot of all humanity). Leave the comb in the purse until you are in the LADIES ROOM.

Number seven: Shorts. This article of apparel belongs in three places and three places only: the golf course, the tennis court, and the gym. If you wear shorts in any public place outside of this Triumvirate of Shorts, you need to be put in time-out. With the other short-pants-wearing children.

Number eight: Do I even need to tell you that Women of a C.A. should not wear tight jeans that ride six inches below your belly button? Please, ladies. Loosen your pants, just slightly, and pull them up. If we don't give the girls an example, who will?

Number nine: It's time to stop obsessing about your weight. It's okay for the first four decades, but aren't you EXHAUSTED? Just let it go, for the love of God. You are what you are. If you want to lose ten pounds, lose them. If you can't, or it requires too much work, forget it. Don't talk about your weight, don't compare yourself, don't spend ONE MINUTE wishing you were a size 8 instead of a 10, or a 4 instead of a 6, or a 16 instead of an 18. It is the most incredibly boring topic of conversation in the entire universe. There is nothing more unattractive than a Woman of a C.A. who doesn't accept herself.
Love yourself and everyone else will love you, too.

Number ten: This goes under the category of the painfully obvious, but, ladies, please don't get drunk in public.
Restaurants, night clubs, bars, parties both private and non-, and any place outside of your own home qualify as 'public'. Someone will notice, you'll say something you regret the next day, you'll compromise your dignity, and it's just not worth it. If you need to tie one on, put the kids to bed and have a few with your husband, not the neighborhood, band, crew, audience or office.

Okay, I haven't said anything about iridescent blue eyeshadow or the lack of a bra and tank tops, but you get the big picture. You've lived a long time. Hopefully, you paid attention. Everything you learned in your twenties and thirties you have the ability, nay, the OBLIGATION to use. So use it. Don't mimic young girls. How will they know how to behave when they're our age, if WE act like THEM? You're amazing. You know a lot. You've been hurt, you've recovered. Embody all that you've learned. Wear a bra. Show some cleavage, get some real jewelry, don't fuss with your hair or talk about your weight. See you in baggage claim.

I went to a surprise 50th birthday party for my friend and literary agent, Merrilee, and afterwards went to a restaurant with my friend and editor, Rick, and ran into a couple people I know who said they were both celebrating their recent 50th birthdays.  I told them that I, too, would be turning 50 this year. One sighed and said, 'yeah, there's a lot of that going around.'  I am frantically cleaning out dressers, closets, linen chests, kitchen cabinets and bathroom drawers. For some reason, I feel compelled to get rid of overflow, detritus and dead weight before the happy day; it seems that that particular birthday is a dividing line, and I really can't take more than the essentials into the future.  (Well, I'm not getting rid of the Manolo Blahniks no matter HOW inessential, but you get my point). I'll let you know how it goes.

In closing, I'd like to acknowledge two passings this month:  Joe Carter, who was A.P. Carter's son, and one of the last of the Carters of that generation.  He died in Virginia on March 2nd.  I imagine June was happy to see him on the other side.
Also, Ray Witherall, longtime fan club president of Dad's, passed away at the end of February. Godspeed to both.

And God bless to you.

Mrs L
Still blue, in more ways than one.

Now, I'm home, and preparing to go back in the studio to complete 'Black Cadillac', which should be out by September. I don't know what to tell you about it, other than I think the songs are good-- some of them are even important, or at least they seem so. They are truthful, some of them are even factual. They are sad and angry and defiant and redemptive. All the things I have felt of late.

I am thinking a lot about what Dylan said, about some things having to be overlooked. I am finding the answer to that in unexpected places. I wouldn't have predicted that what I want to overlook at the moment is my own sense of honor, or goodness. Or responsibility. That what I want to give attention to is the defiance, the volcanic feeling, and keeping my own counsel. What I want to overlook is the need of others to define me by my father. What I want to pay attention to is the sharp edges, the spontaneity, the resistance to narrow definitions, and my own careful observations of my own specific Truth.
It's all still under revision, all in formation.
I turn fifty this year.
There are a lot of habits, ways of thinking, and even people I don't want to take with me into the next decade.
I have a few months to make my decisions.

And then the record comes out. And it will reflect some of those changes, I can promise.