In My Heart this night

Dear E. Don,
I was watching Willy Nelson's Farm Show. I thought of you right away. How you still play music, are never still. A force.

How very old I am getting! When Arlo Gutherie came on and sang the City Of New Orleans, well..there he was in white hair. You know that all those songs are in my heart forever. Something about the music that stays with you for a hundred years, but the remembering of old friends is always as you left them, not a day older.

This week some people came here that I had not seen in 20 years. They were a shadow of their former selves. Well, actually they were twice or three times the size of their former selves. Their eyes were still the same. They made me feel downright healthy!
Love,
Betty

Betty, I totally cherish my old friends, and when the Rinky Dink book was released last September and I went back home for the book signing, I found that they felt the same. Many of them have been my friends since the first grade or maybe even before that. Sadly, many of them are, as you said, shadows of themselves, but I found that when I put my arms around them and closed my eyes, I saw us as we were in 1959, young, full of life, and ready to face anything that the world threw at us.

I remain active, I write as much as I can, and I do as much physically as my heart will allow. I can't play ball anymore, but I can teach my grand daughter the fine points of several games. I don't sing as well as I once did, my pipes aren't what they were, but when I was on the stage in September, it was if I'd never stepped off it. I looked out at an older audience than those that once attended our shows, and I knew that the ones that seen me perform in days gone by might be comparing those shows with this one, but the music flowed, the guitars filled the room, and I stood there and wailed away. I learned that I am not yet old, I am merely aging, and that my friends see me as I see them, still young and still ready to face whatever the world throws at me.

In the last couple of years I have encountered a few people on these message boards that I think I would really like if we were to meet. Some have shown that age is just a number, and that health is something we aspire to but may never have again, and yet, they go on. I so admire some of the people here, and I realize that I am in the company of great talent. I cannot imagine better story telling that can be found in Woofer, or Peas and Parkinsons, or Keetchie. To each of you, let me say that if I were still writing songs, I'd surely write one that has all of you in it. And then I'd sing it everywhere I went.

I am truly in great company.

E.Don and Betty,

We are honored to know you. We are in great company with you here.

I saw Arlo Guthrie a few days ago on a PBS special about Pete Seeger. Arlo's father and Pete were great friends so Arlo grew up with both.
I first heard of Pete Seeger about 1940 when an aunt living in New York gave my dad a 78 r.p.m. album by The Almanac Singers. Wow! These were not songs you'd hear on radio.
Pete still lives in a cabin he built on the banks of the Hudson River. Along with singing and composing music, one of he greatest accomplishments was getting the Hudson clean again from industrial pollution when everyone said it couldn't be done.
That is an example of some people saying a thing can't be done and others just going ahead and doing it.
How different those people and their associates were from most folk and country music singers today.