At Last

I love Etta James, and I will miss her. I was fortunate to be able to see her perform live and up close. I am grateful for that opportunity and for the friend who gave that to me.
I had to go searching for these photos today, and I am glad I did. This brings back some really awesome memories.

Thank-you Etta
Thank-you Sordal.

Reflections on America

I saw this today, and it started me thinking about the U.S.:



This song, written by Woody Guthrie and sung by millions of school children is considered subversive by many for all of the lyrics you probably don't know. And in looking it up I've found that it was sung, with all of the verses, by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez during Obama's Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial just two days ago, which I just watched:



I teared up and got the chills just watching this, I can't even imagine what it must have been like to actually be there. Amazing. Woody wrote about what he saw and what he knew, and this song was written as an alternative to America the Beautiful. Woody was watching people starve to death, and not be able to feed, house or clothe their families. Farms were going under, there was no work to be had. Any of this sounding timely and familiar?


Obama is standing for hope and unity, and I will work toward that end as well. I want our country to be the United States again, I'm really tired of being the divided states. In fact, I remember on 9/11 saying to one of my coworkers that the simple goal of terrorism is to divide the nation. The fact that we were only united to save our own bacon, yet divided on everything else leads me to believe that they met that goal. I hope now we can turn that around.

I heard that Beyonce is going to sing an Etta James song, "At Last" for the Obama's first dance. Why wasn't Etta herself invited? I know she's still around - I saw her in concert a few years ago, and she was AWESOME! Of course, that was before her gastric bypass, and I think she's lost some of the lower end of her range since then. But still, she is around and still performing.