Playlist: Spring Freedom and Aries Fire!

I'm a wannabe DJ and over the years I've made hundreds of mixtapes and playlists. Here's one for the arrival of spring (finally!) and the ignition of (my) Aries fire. Let's dance and make love with life together!

Spring Freedom and Aries Fire!

1. Happy, Pharrell Williams

2. P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing), Michael Jackson

3. The Way You Make Me Feel, Michael Jackson

4. Ms. Jackson, OutKast

5. So Fresh, So Clean, OutKast

6. Sexy M.F., Prince

7. Money Don't Matter 2 Night. Prince

8. Diamonds And Pearls, Prince

9. Now That We Found Love, Heavy D & The Boyz

10. Family Affair, Sly & The Family Stone

11. Somebody Else's Guy, Jocelyn Brown

12. Best of My Love, The Emotions

13. Green Garden, Laura Mvula

14. Q.U.E.E.N., Janelle Monáe (feat. Erykah Badu)

15. Shame, Jill Scott (feat. Eve and The A Group)

16. People Everyday, Arrested Development

17. Gettin' Jiggy Wit It, Will Smith

18. Switch, Will Smith

19. Let's Stay Together, Al Green

20. I'm Still In Love With You, Al Green

By DJ Dancing Diva, April 2014

Bonus Aries Horoscope (by Rob Breszny):

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Freedom is the most important kind of joy you
can seek right now. It's also the most important subject to study and
think about, as well as the most important skill to hone. I advise you to
make sure that freedom is flowing through your brain and welling up in
your heart and spiraling through your loins. Write synonyms for "freedom"
on your arm with a felt-tip pen: liberation, emancipation, independence,
leeway, spaciousness, carte blanche, self-determination, dispensation.
Here's one more tip: Connect yourself with people who love and cultivate
the same type of freedom you do. 

Other playlists posted to this blog:

Passing Over into the Infinite

Oh Valerie, In Summertime 

Heading to the Big Easy 

Michael Jackson

Double Nickels

For the Cause/Protest and Peace

Barack Obama Inauguration Playlist

Birthday Playlist for Aging Baby Boomers

"Happy" as a protest song, woah

I hope you have listened to and watched the video of Pharrell Williams's song, Happy. If not, or you just want to watch it again (Yes, I love feeling like a room without a roof!), here it is.

Like most everyone else, I love this song. I first learned about it before I knew it was written for and connected to the movie, Despicable Me 2, when a friend sent me a link to the video 24 Hours of Happy. I loved, loved how it featured everyday dancers and the celebration of, well, dancing and being happy! I thought the song would come and go in a few months, like all snappy pop songs do.

But it didn't. Something remarkable happened. It became a global protest song.

The amazing post by Shan Wang on PolicyMic, "How This Became the Surprising Protest Song of Our Generation," breaks it down perfectly. Read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts: 

"The peppy neo-soul song is not in any way controversial. But something strange began happening to it a little while ago. It became a mega pop sensation and an unexpected global anthem for citizens living under troubled regimes.

The movement started slowly — first it was the soundtrack to a video of people dancing joyfully in Paris. But then the song began cropping up in videos from countries in political turmoil. One came from the Philippines, a country still picking up the pieces from Typhoon Haiyan. Soon, one followed from Tunis, still reeling from the aftershocks of the Arab Spring. And then another from Moscow. While not a "protest" song in its traditional sense, Pharrell's "Happy" has taken on a politically charged meaning as an anthem of international resilience...

...Pharrell's unironic and unequivocal call to positivity makes it a strange member of the protest music genre, which mostly targets specific injustices. The 1960s is teeming with examples. Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam," for instance, seethes at the killing of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and the bombing of an Alabama Church..."

There's more, so seriously, read the whole post. It includes many of the Happy-turned-protest-song You Tube videos and you need to watch them. Here's one, from Kiev.

Amazing. Wang says, rightly, "It is haunting to see protesters in Kiev dancing among barricades and answering frankly what would make them happy. "To be happy I need the Ukraine to be free," one woman answered."

I came of age with the protest songs of the anti-Viet Nam war and civil rights movements. So, so many amazing songs. Here's a post of a couple of protest playlists I made. And here is my favorite song from then, What's Going On, from Marvin Gaye.

It's theme of course is only love can conquer hate, and while it's a very deep song, the music is uplifting, even, yes, happy. We still dance to it after all these years.

It's a evolution across the generations. We protest the injustice, inequity, and hate around us. And a powerful weapon is rising above it all, with love and happiness. And, always, with dancing.

I'm not sure Happy could have made the leap a generation ago. But today, this generation can and does use social media, including You Tube, to spark a revolution, or to turn a sweet, silly song written for a kids' animated movie into a protest anthem.

Again, Shan Wang says it best:

..."that's the magic of this global music culture. Pharrell perhaps never intended "Happy" to be more than a catchy summer hit, but even a perfectly-oiled pop machine can't account for the creative capacity of the whole world. "Happy" came into the world apolitical, but it's something more now — it's a song of resilience and resolve under incredible hardship."

April 15 update: Check out Pharrell's reaction to watching the global You Tube videos made from his song on a recent interview with Oprah - happy tears!

Happy Spring!

Happy Spring! Finally! It's been a brutal winter. Let's celebrate with my favorite Laura Mvula song, Green Garden.

Jill Scott's "Shame:" An anthem for strong women everywhere

Dear Jill Scott,

I have loved you and your music since we first met through "Who is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1" in 2000. I've been jamming to your magnificence ever since. And you just keep getting better. Your new album, The Light of The Sun, is divine. And "Shame," the song and especially the video, is a new anthem for strong women everywhere. Thank you for what you bring to the world.

With love and respect,

Your loyal fan

I can 'fend on my own, I'm magnificent
I'm a Queen on my throne, I'm magnificent
I'm the magnificent (SAY WHAT! SAY WHAT!)
I'm the magnificent (SAY WHAT! SAY WHAT!)

P.S. If you don't have this CD yet, buy it, don't bootleg it. Support talented artists!

Double Nickels!

I turn 55 in a couple of days. Double nickels! I like to make playlists each year on my birthday that reflect both songs in current heavy rotation and the atmosphere of my life at that point in time. This year's playlist celebrates continuing to live life fully and bravely, having good fun always, and the eclectic musical universe that is my ever-changing soundtrack.

Double Nickels

by DJ Dancing Diva

1. Golden, Jill Scott

2. Wade In the Water, Eva Cassidy

3. Rolling In the Deep, Adele

4. (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding

5. Salala, Angélique Kidjo Feat. Peter Gabriel

6. Homeless, Paul Simon

7. Beautiful Boy, John Lennon

8. Closer To The Sky, Michael Franti

9. A Song for You, Leon Russell

10. As, Stevie Wonder

11. I Will Always Love You, Whitney Houston

12. Love Shack, The B-52's

13. Boogie Oogie Oogie, A Taste of Honey

14. Bop Gun (One Nation), Ice Cube

15. Sexy M.F., Prince

16. It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, Djay and Shug (this one kind of throws you, right?!)

17. Papa Was a Rollin' Stone, (DJ Jazzy Jeff and Pete Kuzma Solefull Mix) The Temptations

18. Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen

On iTunes? You can find this playlist on Ping, here.

We were just kids, too

A couple of weeks ago I finally read Patti Smith's remarkable book, "Just Kids." I captured my immediate reaction to the book in this brief review on my Tumblr:

READ THIS BOOK! 

Patti Smith has delivered a love song, a prose poem, a elegy to her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, and to a time and place when the word of possibilities was cracking open for those of us who came of age in the 60s and 70s. If you are of that age, this book will make your heart tremble with memory. If you are a young hipster, this book will tell you who the people are that you may see only as aging baby boomers, or your parents.

Read this review of the book, which includes a recent video of Patti Smith performing “Because the Night.” I love watching her perform this classic at her age now, being as authentic to her soul as she was 30 or 40 years ago. She looks fabulous — an older version of her younger self, not attempting in any way to be anyone other that who she is.

A friend, who is a young, queer hipster in her late twenties, responded with this:

[Just Kids] just totally made me lustful for living in the Chelsea Hotel while catching glimpses of boroughs and digging through used book bins and traveling to Paris with zero money.

Me too, my friend. But more than creating a longing for Patti Smith's time and place gone by, Just Kids cracked open for me with vivid clarity another time, not long after hers, when I was a young artist who was part of the art scene on the West Bank in Minneapolis during the mid- to late-seventies. So indulge me as I remember my own time and place gone by.


We were just kids, too. Many of us met as BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) students in the studio arts program at the University of Minnesota. Most of us, but not all, were recent arrivals from our white, suburban, middle class childhoods (one exception was a neo-Croatian, Iron Range refugee), which made it possible to romanticize our roach infested run-down apartments, our student loan-financed poverty, and the self imposed austerity of thrift store clothes and broken down furniture as artist's chic (I once dragged a mattress from a dumpster for my bed). We imagined ourselves bohemians, visionaries, artists, and activists. 


We were a decade too young to be hippies, born in the mid-fifties (Smith, born in 1946 is ten years older than me). So as we created and lived our own wannabe version of her New York art scene, we were copying the recent past.


We drank coffee by day and pondered the meaning of life and art, liberally quoting from Anaïs Nin, Allen Ginsberg, Nietzsche, and all the beat poets. We roamed the West Bank by night, frequenting the Viking, Palmers, and the 400 Bar where we listened to Koerner, Ray, and Glover and other local greats. We danced to Willie Murphy and the Bumblebees at the Mixed Blood Theater and in the old Dania Hall. Our Chelsea Hotel was the Holtzermann Building on Cedar Avenue, a block long string of storefronts with oddly shaped converted warehouse one-room apartments above them.


Many of the music influences Smith references were also ours, such as Jim Morrison and the Doors, but she was our influence, too. Horses was released in 1975. When I first heard Gloria on that album, which begins with Smith seductively, defiantly declaring "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine," before cranking into a punk rock cover of that old classic, she became my female artist/musician hero. When I later learned that line was from "Oath," a poem she had already written, I loved her even more and knew that in her art l could find inspiration for the art I longed to create. 


Like Smith, I knew I always wanted to be an artist and starting writing poetry and painting when I was twelve or so. I would walk from our suburban rambler to Southdale, where there was a bookstore with a large art section. I'd stand there with all the adults paging through arts books of Modigliani, Monet, Van Gogh, Matisse, and Rothko, astounded and inspired. I'd then walk home and paint feverishly or write poetry.


When I got to college my goal was to become a great artist. My urge was to mix mediums, genres, and to make experimental, performance art. In the seventies, the studio arts program at the University of Minnesota was housed in a run-down former warehouse and the professors were hugely influenced by abstract expressionism and the New York art scene of the forties and fifties. de Kooning was to be our model by which our own art should be judged.


There wasn't a lot of room for experimentation, but I gravitated to the teachers who encouraged it. I scribbled lines of my poetry into drawings and painting, blurred lines between paint, pencil, and oil pastel. But I wanted more. I wanted performance art. So when a visiting artist offered a course in just that, I leaped to enroll. I vividly remember my first attempt at a "performance piece." On an early spring day, I walked the teacher and class single file into the woods outside the studio arts building and near the Mississippi River to the discovery of a small pond I had fashioned with goldfish swimming (and dying) in it. Traffic's "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" was playing on a cassette deck and then as I turned down the sound, I read a poem I had penned about the environment, how "man" was destroying it, and how all the pollution would one day kill all living things. 


Really, really bad stuff. Forgive me for I was just a kid. But know this - without Patti Smith, I would have never imagined I could stretch the boundaries of what I could claim as art.


After finishing Just Kids and having this flood of memories open, I was wild for Patti Smith all over again. I downloaded Horses, played it on repeat in my car for a week, and watched a recent live performance of "Because the Night" on You Tube over and over. Most of all, I yearned to know more of who Patti Smith is now, in her mid-sixties. I imagined sitting down the two of us - me, a regular person, and her, the godmother of punk, famous poet and writer, and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of fame - and chilling and chatting about music, art, poetry, kids, motherhood. About our aging selves and that time really not so very long ago when we were both... just kids.

Patti Smith, then and now.

Upside My Head (Pay Attention Now)

Drum roll please....

I just changed the name of my blog from Embrace Your Age! You're Living! to Upside My Head (Pay Attention Now)

Why, you may wonder, why?

When I started this blog in late 2008, I had no plan. I just sat at my computer one day, great music rolling through my headphones, and made this blog. I was not really sure what I wanted to write about, but knew I had a few things to say. My inaugural post sums it up, and my anniversary blog says a bit about what I've learned so far.

I called my blog Embrace Your Age! You're Living! thinking it would mostly be about aging and about being fully alive. I was wrong. It is about all that and more. Much more. In fact, the best title for the blog is probably All Over the Place. Not so great for building a following, but it works for me.

So I've been thinking about changing the name to better reflect the array of subjects I meander through. Lacking inspiration, I asked my good friend, the brilliant and sly George Quotidian Hoagland, for some help on a new name.

George Quotidian Hoagland

Being the brainiac she is she broke it down for me. Below is her (slightly edited) response:

"I was just talking yesterday with my new 'teach me everything you know' friend about how the world does not need another scholar of race or gender or sexuality as representation (like tropes of black femininity in Toni Morrison's work, for example, or queer identities in Lady Gaga, or whatever), but what it/we do need are explorations of how we work to make and read race, age, class, gender in ways that may or may not map directly onto our bodies.

On the one hand, this idea makes people who think that white people will exploit any non-white experience really scared (unnecessarily so, I think). But the difference between saying you (or anyone) has a black experience in white skin and saying that you work to read the world in a way that explains the contingent experience of seeing and being in ways that accurately represent your complicated human circumstances is enormous and important.

Personally, I think that my saying that I am black, or queer, or poor (even though those labels are all sometimes really pertinent), negates my actual lived experience of benefiting from white privilege (in some sometimes insidious ways), of having some very traditional and awesome heteronormative romances, and having the luxury of buying whatever I need whenever I need it, even though that usually means I have to save up money or use credit in order to get it.

So, and this message is probably way deeper than you intended, but this is what happens when you ask somebody like me a question we take seriously, my ideas for a new name, in accordance with the above, are as follows:

1. Nothing is black and white
2. Homo-normal (although I bet this one is already taken)
3. Don't assume the position (my old blog, now defunct, was 'assume the position')
4. Trending towards awesome
5. Sharpie and Razor (this one comes from goz)
6. Complicated and Fabulous
7. Negrolicious! (Negro is my new favorite word)
8. Upside the head
9. Where's my drink?
10. Everyday ethics/ethnics

I could think of more but I'm starving and need food."

See. She is way way smarter than me. So many good ideas to ponder. "Upside the head" kept sticking, but it wasn't quite right. Then, with a burst of light (of the disco ball variety), a file drawer inside my aging brain flew open and out popped the Gap Band! Specifically the 1979 hit, Oops Upside Your Head. It was all downhill from there.

The lyrics are awesomely bland, but the song is just a great dance groove! The missing link! (I call myself Dancing Diva, after all.)

So there you go! A brilliant analysis (by George) combined with pure digression (by me) and a funk classic = new name! So edgy. So quotidian. So all over the place. So me!

Let's all get up and dance now!

Arthritis (Grandma's Hands)

Arthritis you scourge. You twisted my grandma's hands and destroyed her hips. And now you've found me.

But the ache of you this morning makes me think of my grandma, gone now for over 25 years. She was the one person who loved me for me -- the willful, sensitive, smart, adventurous girl I was (and still am) -- she adored me unconditionally. My grandma helped me get through. The ache of her absence is stronger, still, than any pain in my hands.

On this hot and humid morning, my sore hands evoke my grandma, which evokes Bill Withers and his haunting, soulful "Grandma's Hands."

My grandma holding my son a year or so before she passed.
  

Grandma's hands...

Here is a fabulous live performance of that song at Carnegie Hall (with an unfortunate negative comment relating to same sex love before he sings, but go on and listen to the song anyway). For all of us with grandmas who changed our lives for the better. Love.

Rachelle Ferrell!

I am going to see the amazing Rachelle Ferrell tonight at the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis, one of the most intimate venues to see this eight octave woman! Review coming tomorrow*! For now, a taste...



* May 6 Review:
Imagine yourself in an intimate night club full of music loving folks -- including a good representation of local music talent. The crowd is hip, brown, many ages, and in noisy adoration of what is unfolding on stage -- or more correctly, what is unfolding onstage and with the audience.

Rachelle Ferrell, her first time in Minneapolis, "brang it" in spite of a cold. Her off the chain multi-octave voice, playful engagement with the audience, and smooth band of brothers on guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums, transformed the Dakota Jazz Club in downtown Minneapolis from a place to an experience.

The music was a conversation between Ferrell, her musicians, the audience, and the universe. We were of the music, in the music, together. From amazing turns on classics like "Summertime" to a bluesy song whose title I missed about someone getting off her neck and off her back, the air we collectively were breathing was infused with music created, interpreted for that moment only, for us, for her. Simply breathtaking.

Rachelle Ferrell at the Dakota Jazz Club

Sade: Loving her for 25 years

My love affair with Sade began early in the 80s when I was a young mother with two young children. She was the music for making love in the beginning, but during those years she evolved into something much deeper - music for my soul. Read this old writing, circa 1986, when my daughter, now a mother herself, was a tiny, difficult baby and I was desperately trying to keep it together:

"She is crying constantly. Never napping. And it's been unbearably hot and humid. She is so tiny, so fierce. But we are finding a way to each other's hearts. I hope the worst is over. Last night was a turning point.

It was just me, my baby, the heat, the night, the whirl of the ceiling fan, her sobs. She wouldn't stop crying. I put on some music, Sade, to help me keep it together. It’s music that’s made for lovers, but last night it was music for a desperate mother and an inconsolable daughter.

I always hope that you remember / what we have is strong and tender / in the middle of the madness / hold on / it's about faith / it's about trust...

Barefoot on the wood floor, I held her close, my sticky skin pressed close to her little body. As the music swirled and the fan whirled through the night air, her cries slowly, surely subsided and even more slowly, she let herself fall into my skin, allowed her head to slide down on my shoulder, her damp curly hair to rest softly against my neck. I let the record play over and over and we rocked and turned and swayed and sighed and sweated and slowly, so slowly, deep into the night, my baby finally fell asleep."

Years later, when Lover's Rock was released, the magic of Sade saved me once again. I kept the CD in a little player on my night stand, and this time her music was for a broken heart - mine.

Every night I listened to the haunting and lovely music, the only thing that could soothe me to sleep.

The Dj's playing the same song/I have so much to do/I have to carry on/I wonder if this grief will ever be gone/will it ever let me go/I am the king of sorrow...

Now, a middle aged woman and grandma with more than half a century of living behind me, my love affair with Sade still burns brightly. I am counting the days until the release of Soldier of Love in early Feb. What will her music bring? Will it be the soundtrack for lovemaking deep into the night? What piece of my soul will it touch, healing the tender parts of me, once again? Listen to the title track:

Sade. Music for lovers. For mothers. For grandmothers. For a lifetime.

Birthday playlist for aging baby boomers

Since I am a self-proclaimed wannabe DJ, I thought I'd share this mix. I made it for my 50th birthday a few years ago, and have since burned versions of it for several other friends' 50th birthdays. Enjoy!

Half a Century!

Happy Birthday Stevie Wonder
Ngiculela - Es Una Historia - I Am Singing Stevie Wonder
I Just Want to Celebrate Rare Earth
Funkin' for Jamaica Tom Browne
I Love the Nightlife (Disco 'Round) Alicia Bridges
Pick Up the Pieces Average White Band
Dancing Machine Jackson 5
P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) Michael Jackson
Rock With You Michael Jackson
Boogie Oogie Oogie A Taste of Honey (my personal theme song)
Boogie on Reggae Woman Stevie Wonder
As Stevie Wonder
Love And Happiness Al Green
Let's Stay Together Al Green
Sweet Thing Rufus feat. Chaka Khan
For the Love of You Isley Brothers ("Our" song -- my wuzband and me)
Three Little Birds Bob Marley
One Love Bob Marley
Here Comes the Sun Beatles
Forever Young Bob Dylan

Playing for Change

Playing For Change is a global movement for peace through sharing music. One love. Peace. Beautiful.

"Playing For Change: Peace Through Music" available soon on iTunes and on CD/DVD on 4.28.09 everywhere music is sold. About some of this music:

"From the award-winning documentary, 'Playing For Change: Peace Through Music', comes an incredible rendition of the legendary Bob Marley song "One Love" with Keb' Mo' and Manu Chao. This is the third video from the documentary and a follow up to the classic "Stand By Me" and the incredible "Don't Worry." Released in celebration of Bob Marley's birthday on February 6th, this tribute to the legend is performed by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe."

Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution


One love

Don't Worry

Stand By Me

Barack Obama Inauguration Playlist

Here is my playlist for the inauguration of our 44th president. What's yours?

1. A Change is Gonna Come -- Sam Cooke
2. Sister Rosa -- The Neville Brothers
3. Up Above My Head (I hear music in the air) -- Ruthie Foster
4. Many Rivers to Cross -- Jimmy Cliff
5. People Everyday -- Arrested Development
6. Happy Birthday -- Stevie Wonder
7. Reconciliation -- Sounds of Blackness
8. Family Affair -- Sly and the Family Stone
9. Peace Sign -- War
10. Salala -- Angelique Kidjo
11. America the Beautiful -- Ray Charles
12. I Shall Be Released -- Nina Simone
13. Still I Rise -- Melky Sedeck
14. Mercy Mercy Me -- Marvin Gaye
15. Butterfly -- Mariah Carey
16. What a Wonderful World -- Louis Armstrong
17. Melodies from Heaven -- Kirk Franklin
18. Ordinary People -- John Legend
19. Three Little Birds -- Bob Marley
20. Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) -- James Brown
21. Strength Courage and Wisdon -- India.Arie
22. Strange Fruit -- Billie Holiday
23. Grandma's Hands -- Bill Withers
24. Black Diamonds and Blue Pearls -- Angie Stone
25. Rivers of Babylon -- The Melodians
26. Obama Ubarikewe -- Samba Mapangala
27. A Black Man in the White House -- Sizzla
28. In My Life -- The Beatles
29. Here Comes the Sun -- George Harrison and Paul Simon
30. Overjoyed -- Stevie Wonder
31. Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off that Sucker) -- Parliament
32. A Song For Mama -- Boyz II Men
33. Forever Young -- Bob Dylan
34. Stand By Me -- Ben E. King
35. Oh Happy Day -- Etta James
36. Don't Worry Be Happy -- Bobby McFerrin

Latecomer blogger -- let me introduce myself

Welcome to my brand new blog! Let me introduce myself. I am a 52 year old artist, connector and wannabe DJ. I am also a mother and grandmother and queer girl extraordinaire. Got legally married to my handsome wuzband in MA 2 1/2 years ago. I am the white girl in a brown family and a mostly brown community of friends. So my life crosses a lot of interesting intersections. I am going to blog about those intersections and more.

For example, I will surely be blogging about what it's like to be a whitegirl in my world, some of the things I've learned along the way, and how the world looks through the lens of my specific eyes -- which are near sighted, far sighted, and full of astigmatism -- so it's sometimes an interesting worldview.

I will likely blog about what it means for me that our new president is biracial, and was raised by a white mother and white grandparents given that I raised two biracial kids. I could say a lot about that. A lot. But not now, later. This is my intro blog.

I am very interested in blogging about getting older. That could be the topic of most of my blogs. I did not realize I was passing out of regular adulthood into older adulthood until I was almost 50. Seriously. I was still a regular club goer and general merry maker. I had no idea I was shifting into the young side of the golden years until I realized most of the people in the clubs were the age of my kids -- until I ran into my actual kids in the clubs. I'm just sayin. I was shocked into reality.

So aging has become a subject of endless fascination for me as I really have no idea what it means to be getting older but I do know I am extremely happy to be alive, having survived a lot so far. Aging thought for the day: Billions in advertising dollars are spent each year to tell women how to look younger. What if those same dollars went into telling us how to live better?

Oh, and I stay up on world events and feel compelled to opine from time to time. My favorite TV show ever is "The Wire." That's the kind of stuff you might find me blogging about here. Politics. Race relations. The media. Poverty. Prison reform. Father's rights. The needs of undocumented people. You know, light fluffy stuff.

I love music and am an armchair critic. So I'll tell you what I think about a musician, a concert, or an album now and then. Artist recommendation of the day: Ruthie Foster. Favorite song: Up Above My Head (there is music in the air).

Since I am an artist of sorts, you never know when a poem or piece of creative nonfiction might get posted here as well.

So an anything goes blog. We'll see how it goes!

Let me end this introduction by saying I try to live by this African proverb: Don't look at your feet to see if you're doing it right. Just dance!

And remember, embrace your age cause you livin'!

Welcome! I invite your comments!