6/18/3

Hi Friends,

It’s been a while since I hunted and pecked my way through a note to you. My typing skills are being increasingly revealed to me as deficient now that I have two teenage children. Of course being a teenager implies superhuman proficiency in all forms of "digital" communication. Although my own "Typing 101" experience never got much past "the quick brown fox…", my kids can type faster than they (or at least their father) can think. It’s called I.M. and it stands for "Instant Messaging". From what I can figure out it’s kind of a party line for computers and it causes teenage fingers to fly so quickly over the keyboard that it sounds like bacon frying. I on the other hand have labored humbly over these last sentences now for several minutes and will ask the computer to remove most of my typos. Now you know why I don’t write more often.

So much has been going on.

Kerrville was wonderful. I don’t think any festival audience has ever been kinder and my new songs and CD could not have been more well received. My thanks to Dalis Allen and Rod Kennedy for conspiring to bring me to that audience. Kerrville has one of the most famous songwriter competitions in the world. Wonderful singer-songwriters from far and wide compete annually in their New Folk contest, vying for a chance to stand on the main stage at the Quiet Valley Ranch and RV Park in the hill country of Central Texas. I’ve been urged for years, by people much smarter than I am, to enter New Folk but I stubbornly refused with the silly (to anyone but the father of four kids) idea that one day they’d actually book me. Well fortunately for me they did. 

I can’t put entirely into words the difference between this festival and all the other ones. The musicians, the volunteers, the campers, - everyone! – was on the same wavelength. We were all there because of the songs, and the truth was that you were just as likely to hear a good one from the guy without a backstage pass or wristband at one of the many evening campfires as you were coming through the big stacks on either side of the festival stage. For a songwriter it was as good as it gets. Next year I may even try to enter the contest!

I’ve been trying to keep politics off this page recently. I know, I haven’t been totally successful but I have been trying.

It’s just that I find my self increasingly confused by the reactions of our nation to the decisions and policies of its leaders. We seem to be of the mind, as a people, that the we possess such unquestionable virtue that any "mistakes" we make, whether they be about WMDs or Al-Qaeda ties, are entirely forgivable, indeed, require no forgiveness whatsoever.

The main thing isn’t why we fought a war recently. The main thing is that we WON. ! ? (As if that could ever have been in the slightest doubt!)

Where is the outrage? That our country invaded another on blatantly false information; that our President offered forged documents in his state of the union address; that we remain stubbornly, almost criminally, under-defended against the kind of attacks we suffered on September 11, 2001 (see the Washington Post’s recent interview with former White House counter terrorism advisor Rand Beers).

A friend of mine named David recently observed that we will spare no expensed in excavating and exhuming the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein. Since these atrocities are being retrofitted to explain away our aggression, we will carefully and reverently count the bodies of the ones the dictator killed in the past. But we will never be told how many Iraqi citizens, let alone soldiers, were killed this year.

Why does one human being’s violent death mean less than anothers? Is the answer really our unquestionable virtue?

Er… Like I said, I haven’t been completely successful. But I’m trying.

My thanks to all who came out to support Camp Dreamcatcher at Steel City a couple of weeks ago. We had a great night of music and spirit and one of our best fund raisers ever!

Gilt edged certificates of gratitude go to Eileen Tipping, Gina Scipione, Michael Braunfeld, Spirit Wing and Barry Rabin for their soulful, enriching and (in Barry's case) insanely funny songs. When it comes to generosity, I've never been disappointed by the musicians of this community.

(Oh yes, and thanks again to the staff at Steel City for getting me a pair of pants to wear on stage. I think we all learned a valuable lesson. Repeat after me – No matter how logical it seems at the time, never let the waitress put your jeans in the microwave... long story.)

Peace and good,

John

 

 

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