Today is International Women’s Day:

I wrote Watch Us Stand Strong in 1994. I’ve shared it here before but felt today was a good day to share it again:

Watch Us Stand Strong

Long have we walked
Through the valley of our sadness,
Searching for a way
To end all the madness.
Long have we toiled,
Silent and unnoticed,
Suppressing our knowledge
And our gift to heal the world.
We are large by number,
We are small through the ages,
There are few that have spoken,
Few that dare to read
Our pages.
We are mothers,
We are daughters,
We are sisters,
We are friends;
We contain the lifeblood,
And the passion
Of all the universe
In our souls.
We are women,
Full of knowledge,
And beauty;
The Queens of our planet.
We are home now,
Watch us stand strong,
It is time to heal
Our world.

Check here for 10 Ways to Celebrate International Women’s Day. I spent a good part of International Women’s Day outside in my yard enjoying to 70 degree day here on the river. A little time communing with the Great Mother Goddess is always balm to the soul.

** Cross posted from The Democratic Daily…

Bruce Springsteen’s new single “We Take Care Of Our Own,” off his upcoming CD, Wrecking Ball was released today.

ABC News notes, “judging from the names of the other tracks listed on the singers website — “This Depression,” “Easy Money,” and “Death to My Hometown” — Springsteen is once again wading in political waters and returning his focus to working-class issues.”

“We Take Care Of Our Own” is a hard hitting rocker, in true Springsteen / E Street Band style. As longtime readers here know, I am a big Springsteen fan and I have to say this new single simply blew me away musically and lyrically.

Watch the video debut here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Springsteen’s long-time manager Jon Landau said of Springsteen’s new work, “Bruce has dug down as deep as he can to come up with this vision of modern life. The lyrics tell a story you can’t hear anywhere else and the music is his most innovative in recent years. The writing is some of the best of his career and both veteran fans and those who are new to Bruce will find much to love on ‘Wrecking Ball.’”

Washington Post’s Click Track blog notes, Wrecking Ball is the 17th album of Springsteen’s career:

The social commentary is evident on the lead single: “From Chicago to New Orleans, from the muscle to the bone/From the shotgun shack to the Superdome/There ain’t no help, the cavalry stayed home/There ain’t no one hearing the bugle blowin’,” he sings on the title track. It’s not hard to see a thematic similarity between the song and Springsteen’s work on “Someplace like America,” a recent book by Washington Post photographer Michael Williamson and writer Dale Maharidge to which Springsteen contributed a forward.

You can check out Springsteen’s reflections on “Someplace like America” here.

Springsteen’s new Wrecking Ball CD will be released on March 6. U.S. tour dates have not yet been announced, but it is reported will be a full U.S. tour with the E Street Band in 2012. Rolling Stone has more on Springsteen’s new CD here.

Wrecking Ball track list:
1. “We Take Care of Our Own”
2. “Easy Money”
3. “Shackled and Drawn”
4. “Jack of All Trades”
5. “Death to My Hometown”
6. “This Depression”
7. “Wrecking Ball”
8. “You’ve Got It”
9. “Rocky Ground”
10. “Land of Hope and Dreams”
11. “We Are Alive”

The so very troubled and talented Amy Winehouse is dead, at 27.

Amy Winehouse “found worldwide fame with a sassy, hip-hop-inflected take on retro soul, yet became a tabloid fixture as her problems with drugs and alcohol led to a strikingly public career collapse.” She was found dead today in her London apartment, the police said.

Although the cause of death is at this point “unknown,” the news of Winehouse’s death stunned me and made me feel a sense heartbreak that she had most likely lost her battle with drugs and alcohol.

With her “husky, tart voice and a style that drew equally from the sounds of Motown and the stark storytelling of rap, Ms. Winehouse became one of the most acclaimed young singers of the past decade, selling millions of albums, winning five Grammy Awards and starting a British retro-R&B trend that continues today.”

I didn’t want to like Winehouse’s music because the lurid details of her self-destructive, troubled life were such a turn-off. Yet, her talent could not be ignored. Her life was vividly portrayed in “Rehab” but with so much soul that you couldn’t help sing along and groove to the Motown-esque beat.

Born in Southgate, London on Sept. 14, 1983, Amy Jade Winehouse is survived by her mother, Janis, a pharmacist, and her father, Mitch, a cab driver “who nursed a love for music,” and her brother, Alex.

Ms. Winehouse showed an early talent for performing, as well as an eclecticism that would characterize her later work. She loved her father’s Sinatra records, but she also liked hip-hop; at age 10 she and a friend formed a rap group called Sweet ’n’ Sour that Ms. Winehouse later described as “the little white Jewish Salt-N-Pepa.” (Ms. Winehouse was the “sour” half.)

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School in London and later went to the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology, a free performing arts school there that counts several other recent female pop stars among its alumnae, including Ms. Allen and Adele, another young singer who is sometimes seen as picking up the neo-soul mantle from Ms. Winehouse.

In 2003, at age 19, Ms. Winehouse released her first album, “Frank.” Influenced by jazz, it established her as a rising star in Britain. But “Back to Black,” recorded with the producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, and the Brooklyn retro-soul band the Dap-Kings, made her an international sensation. With thick horns and club-ready hip-hop beats, the album was a darkly stylish update of classic 1960s R&B, and it was adored by critics and the public alike.

Nielsen SoundScan, a company that tracks music sales, reports that “Ms. Winehouse has sold 2.7 million albums and 3.4 million tracks in the United States.”

The true peak of Winehouse’s career was the 2008 Grammy Awards when she “was nominated for six prizes and took home five, including Best New Artist.”

Yet even days before the show, her appearance there was uncertain because of visa problems. In the end, she performed by satellite from London.

Although Ms. Winehouse has not made an album since “Back to Black,” she tried to revive her career several times. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Ms. Winehouse’s father, who released a jazz album this year, said she had been in good health lately. (Mr. Winehouse was scheduled to perform at the Blue Note jazz club in New York on Monday, but canceled after learning of his daughter’s death.)

Her most recent comeback attempt was a bust, as Winehouse canceled a European tour last month, “after a performance in Belgrade on the first night, during which she appeared to be too intoxicated to perform properly.”

Her death is a tragic loss to the world of soul music as Winehouse becomes another talented and troubled musician to pass away at 27.  Winehouse joins Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin as part of the 27 club.

R.I.P. Amy Winehouse…

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Cross posted from The Democratic Daily.)

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. — Kahlil Gibran

One day soon I hope I’ll find more time to post here… until then:

“The tools of creation are: thought, word and deed.” – Neale Donald Walsch – Conversations With God, Book 1

Did you hear the wicked winds

As they howled through the night?

Were they crying like the wounded child

Or screeching with delight?

I’ve started a new women’s blog: BohemianWomen.org.

The focus at BohemianWomen.org is to bring together women in the arts to share their work and their views on the arts, culture, lifestyle and the business of promoting arts and crafts.

Long winters are filled with the dark night[s] of the soul:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sometimes, some things prove to be logisitical nightmares. Making the dream reality may take longer than I hoped.