The Year End of Traditions

The Snow is Falling---the Wind is Howling and if I were Cole Porter I would write a song and make a fortune.  I am not he so I will just add a few thoughts to the wonderful show that my co-host Ron Olesko put together after I called him and told him of my storm dilemma.  I thank him (who lives closer) to trekking in and doing our joint annual program (and ---as on the other posting---no joints were involved===hey---repeat a joke if you think of it--they all do.

Ron has been doing this program for some  30 years now---I would have said 30 odd years but some were not really odd--and for the past 17 years we have always done a year end show together---we missed this one but Ron tried to cover for us both.  My thanks===may I say--Mille Grazie (just love saying that) to him and also to the great 3 hours he created for us all.  I was, like you, and entranced audience member.

The one thing that was not covered and we would have done that was a remembrance of people we lost this year---and may I add at this point we lost Phil Ochs years back but on Dec. 19 would have  been is 70th Birthday---John Lennon was a tragic loss--Kate Wolf was a tragic loss---Harry Chapin was a tragic loss---all at young ages and, surely, we commemorate the past and the present losses.  It is the nature of things---of, perhaps, the cycle of life,  It can sometimes be tragic and sometimes full and fruitful.  It always ends.

So to memorialize--in this new era of electronic possibilities a few videos of  people I would like to remember (Kate McGarrigle can be seen on the Playlist page and in wonderful remembrance in the NY Times Magazine of 12/26/10):








Susan Reed passed away this past year and while this video shows her in a younger day I knew her as a charming person of talent in Nyack, NY who ran a wonderful crafts shop and appeared in local concerts with such luminaries as Pete Seeger. Her history is quite interesting and worthy of investigation

The next piece is about the late Irwin Silber---the founder of Sing Out magazine (publication) and a wonderful piece of documentary and history---he passed on this year and his achievements and history should be remembered---



Let us now go back to the one person that you may all well recall and who is also posted on the Playlist page---Kate McGarrigle---