At present I answer about 100 letters a month, and read 300 emails. I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative. And when I've been away from my family and friends, I have felt good hearing some of those old songs. You've got to stop dividing yourselves. You got to organize. You can't look in the face of adoration and be cruel. When I watch TV, I'm embarrassed by some of what's on. Even within the last three or four years, I have a greater ability to communicate, I think. I have more courage to show the stuff... And it does take courage. So, once I get writing I really try and put five to eight hours a day in my room with a guitar to really try and come up with stuff that feels interesting enough to me to keep it. All June I bound the rose in sheaves, Now, rose by rose, I strip the leaves. Those who are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. I have written on all sorts of subjects... yet I have no enemies; except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians. I plan to stay in music. I plan to keep making records. Finally, we should help developing nations like China and India curb their exponentially increasing consumption of oil and natural gas, which is driving world prices higher. I've had women tell me that when their daughters see them taking care of themselves, and being defined from within, and thinking for themselves instead of thinking about that silly culture out there, it's powerful modeling. Since the goal of my programs is to show audiences how humor can both help them heal as well as deal with not-so-funny stuff, I decided to discuss the events of the previous week, the pain all of us were feeling, and how humor and some laughter might be beneficial. I don't limit myself. The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life. No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster? You have to find the peace and patience within yourself to be a model and an example to others and not judge. I had never, ever drunk beer in high school, and by the time I got to Tech we were having these parties out in the cotton fields and getting so drunk. I was the champion beer drinker; suddenly I was pouring it down my throat... Insane! Insane! They are imaginary characters. But perhaps not solely the products of my imagination, since there are some aspects of the characters that relate to my own experience of a wide variety of people. No, I like being a role model because I know how much comfort my musical idols brought me. Donald and I still really wanted to be together, but I was fighting to keep what we had privately, and once the world gets involved in your life, little by little it breaks it down until you forget what it was in the first place. I'm not sure you can do anything quickly or easily with the North. While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying. Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. For an Italian peasant a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be disregarded. One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. I never walked the streets of New York hoping to be a musical comedy star. For one thing, they would have thought I was too tall, because l was five feet eight and a half, and they were all little bitty things running around in the studio at that time. Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow. There are certain stars who are not actors. I don't want to be that type.