My Friends (Dar Williams, cover by Kirsten Maxwell)

Checking in, and surprised myself that I haven't posted since Sunday, November 8.  So much (still!) going on in the world, which I will address next week (Trump refusing to accept election results, Biden's coronavirus task force, Supreme Court kept Obamacare in place, etc.).  In the meantime, I needed a bit of a palate cleanser, a feel-good factor, a smile-inducer... not that I don't (still!) have a sh*t-eating grin on my face with the presidential election results, even bigger now that they called Arizona for Biden last night... 😁 )

Above are my local ride-or-die peeps (from L-R:  Eileen, Nancy, Melanie, me, SusanP, Judi, Laurie).  There are a handful of others who live across state lines, and were not in attendance at this event, my Heart's Desire Last Hurrah, the final house concert in a long line of performers gracing my living room since January 2001.  Jennings & Keller (Laurie and Dana) and Nick Annis agreed to sing us out in April 2018, before we moved from the house we had lived in for 26 years (since March 1992) to the condo we currently occupy (and still!) love.  The encore was Our House, and we of course all sang along, not a dry eye in evidence... 😍

Which segues to...

There were a few years in a row the powers-that-be of the South Florida Folk Festival asked me to be one of three final judges of the Singer-Songwriter Competition.  I had served as a preliminary judge a good many years back (multiple times), which entailed listening to over 200 songs and narrowing the artists down to a Top Twelve; final judge is much more fun and less stressful, because it means choosing three winners from the aforementioned dozen.  January 2016 found me sharing the duties with Aaron Stang and Louise Baker (an honor and a privilege).

When Kirsten Maxwell (you may already be aware of her), one of the twelve, stepped up to perform her two songs, there was no doubt she would be one of the winners; upon deliberation with Aaron and Louise later, we all looked at each other and said something to the effect that Kirsten was a slam dunk... now, who were the other two?

I chatted with her after she won; such a lovely, articulate, talented *young* (maybe 27 now?) woman, and we connected immediately.  I asked her, John John Brown, and Larry Mangum (the other two winners) to kick off our next Labyrinth Cafe season (September 2017).

I saw Kirsten at Falcon Ridge in August 2016, and she made a few other trips to South Florida over the next few years (another festival, another concert series, and a Heart's Desire house concert with two other guy friends), staying with me every time (always leading to wine and vegan food on my patio!), and I am now lucky and grateful to call her friend.

A year or so later, Kirsten did a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for her next CD, and one of the levels was $100, whereupon she would record a cover of any song the donor chose.  I gave her the choice of Arrival, The Blessings, or My Friends (all Dar Williams tunes, of course)... and told her to surprise me.  My intention was/is that she keep the song in her proverbial back pocket and incorporate it into her setlist every once in a while.  It's definitely a deep track that will be well-regarded in the folk community, along with her stunning originals.  I have her permission to share it... 💖

NR:  Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

SONG:  My Friends by Dar Williams (cover by Kirsten Maxwell)

BOOK:  Humans by Brandon Stanton

POEM:  Still by Marc Alan Di Martino

There are still birds, still things coming to life

in unexpected ways. Still nights and days.

Nocturnal, diurnal. Circadian rhythms

scratching an itch at the back of the throat.

Still family, still friends. Still love

slapping you silly with its rubber tongue,

salt that makes your stomach sing a psalm,

palettes of rusted foliage, stray bees

in November, still buzzing in the lavender.

[Marc Alan Di Martino, 11/10/20: “For four years our attention has been kidnapped by the fiasco of this administration. For several days and nights, the world has done little else but watch as each vote is tallied in a handful of states that will determine the course of the next four years, maybe longer. This morning I opened the windows. The world is still, somehow, there.”]

QUOTE:  "What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine." ~ Thomas Moore