Just Because I'm a Woman (Dolly Parton)

I had meant to record the Ken Burns Country Music documentary series when it aired on PBS a while back, but then totally forgot.  Linda mentioned it when we were in Pensacola, so I came home and searched OnDemand.  Two episodes were available for free, and the remainder to buy ($2.99 each).  I viewed one and am now thinking seriously about purchasing some of them.  That's how good it is!

The one I saw was: “The Sons and Daughters of America” (1964 – 1968)
Episode 5 | See how country music reflects a changing America, with Loretta Lynn speaking to women everywhere, Merle Haggard becoming “The Poet of the Common Man” and audiences looking beyond race to embrace Charley Pride.

[ Actually, now that I'm researching, it looks like I can watch it on my laptop for free, so I will give that a try over the weekend. ]

So, the time frame of the above episode is 1964-1968.  I was 10-14 years old, and my father was a country fan when country was most definitely *not* cool.  I vividly recall his love of Merle, his admiration for Cash, his pride in Charley (see what I did there?) in breaking the race barrier.  He introduced me to the Carter Family, Loretta, and Tammy.  Twang was spoken in our house (although it drove my mom crazy).  I purported to dislike it as well, yet I knew all the words to all the songs (I still do).  When I began, in my late teens and early 20s, to appreciate the music of Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, and Townes Van Zandt, I realized it was a full-circle moment.

Now I'm just as likely to listen to John Prine, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and The Avett Brothers.  Thanks, Dad (albeit belatedly!).



SONG:  Just Because I'm a Woman by Dolly Parton

BOOK:  Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives by Holly Gleason

POEM:  A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country by Barbara Ras

Because those cows in the bottomland are black and white, colors
anyone can understand, even against the green
of the grass, where they glide like yes and no, nothing in between,
because in the country, heartache has nowhere to hide,
it's the Church of Abundant Life, the Alamo,
the hubbub of the hoi polloi, the parallel lines of rail fences,
because I like rodeos more than I like golf,
because there's something about the sound of mealworms and
leeches and the dream of a double-wide
that reminds me this is America, because of the simple pleasure
of a last chance, because sometimes whiskey
tastes better than wine, because hauling hogs on the road
is as good as it gets when the big bodies are layered like pigs in a cake,
not one layer but two,
because only country has a gun with a full choke and a slide guitar
that melts playing it cool into sweaty surrender in one note,
because in country you can smoke forever and it'll never kill you,
because roadbeds, flatbeds, your bed or mine,
because the package store is right across from the chicken plant
and it sells boiled peanuts, because I'm fixin' to wear boots to the dance
and make my hair bigger, because no smarty-pants, just easy rhymes,
perfect love, because I'm lost deep within myself and the sad songs call me out,
because even you with your superior aesthetic cried
when Tammy Wynette died,
because my people
come from dirt.

QUOTE:  "Of emotions, of love, of breakup, of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does." ~ Johnny Cash

My Friends (Dar Williams)

Last night, a friend sent me the quote below... which felt like the perfect follow-up to yesterday's post - somehow, another Dar song seemed appropriate... :-)

SONG: My Friends by Dar Williams

BOOK: Blue Peninsula: Essential Words for a Life of Loss and Change by Madge McKeithen

POEM: by Barbara Ras ~ You Can't Have It All

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands

gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger

on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look

of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite

every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,

you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,

though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam

that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys

until you realize foam's twin is blood.

You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,

so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,

glowing occasionally in priestly vestments,

never admitting pettiness, never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you

all roads narrow at the border.

You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,

and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave

where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,

but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands

as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful

for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful

for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels

sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and

for deeper thirsts, for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,

the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.

You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,

at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping

of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.

You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd

but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,

how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,

until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,

and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind

as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,

you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond

of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas

your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.

There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,

it will always whisper, you can't have it all,

but there is this.

QUOTE: "Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together -- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." ~ Dinah Mulock