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Girls Like Us is a delicious book, at least for a person of my generation (which I know is not most of you). I had already been getting absorbed in women singers like Eva Cassidy, Nina Simone, etc., but Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon also wrote ther songs--to be a creator and a performer just amazes me. They were the first women of their kind, on such a popular level at least. And so many of the songs I love, but more than that, these women lived my life (well, except that they were famous and talented--minor details that don't concern me!). They lived the change from the incredibly constricted fifties, when women were decorations and support staff for men's lives, to the bizarre sixties, when women suddenly became earth mother/free spirit incarnations, to the seventies, when they/we became people, maybe. And on and on. It's a fun read--occasionally I question a detail, but the sense of the music and the times is perfect. And it has pictures.

It turns out that Sarah Lee Guthrie, daughter of Arlo and granddaughter of Woody, lives in my town. We went to hear her sing tonight at a little cafe. Nothing spectacular--I wasn't ever sure even Arlo made it on his own talent and not his father's name, and this maybe even be more so. But she's a dear, pretty girl, and her husband, a local guy, isn't bad on the guitar.

The thing about it was the night. A warm summer night, even though it's April, sitting outside. The cafe's in an old mill village house, with a small patio. A litte crowd of people who know each other, the street lights shining through the leaves and the warm wind occasionally brushing our hair. A little beer, some hugs and laughter, the guitar and the sweet young voices. Not far away the river tumbles over the rocks, and we can smell the fresh honeysuckle. It seems like the best parts of my life have been nights like this.