From nodepression.net:
"between the worlds of men and make-believe...."
by Peter Blackstock

December 21, 2007

News of Dan Fogelberg's death earlier this week hit me a little harder than I expected, given that it's been a long time since I really held the guy up on any sort of personal pedestal. But the thing is, he definitely did rank very high in my book at one point, and without question played a fairly significant role in the evolution of my musical taste and my appreciation for singer-songwriters.

For me, the graduation process went like this: Barry Manilow led to Dan Fogelberg led to Jackson Browne led to Bob Dylan. (Really nowhere higher to go once you get to Dylan.) That progression occurred when I was between the ages of 10 and 20.

"Mandy" hit when I was just about to turn 10, and immediately made me an unabashed fan of Mr. Manilow -- which I still am, despite the ridicule that inevitably accompanies such an admission (or the chuckles that invariably follow the acoustic-guitar arrangement of "Mandy" I've been known to deliver from the stage on occasion).

My older brother Si was a pretty good early guide to music that was a little bit beyond the Top-40 AM-radio staples of the mid-'70s, and one of the first artists he led me to was Fogelberg. He and his wife included "Longer" in their wedding ceremony in 1980; I'd heard that song and "Heart Hotels" on the local FM pop/rock station by then, but soon afterward I took the time to delve into Fogerty's earlier records, via dog-eared LPs at the used-vinyl store.

Souvenirs (his second, from 1974) was probably the best, with a minor hit in "Part Of The Plan" and a lot of country-rock accents/influences on songs such as "Illinois" and "Morning Sky". Captured Angel (1975) and Nether Lands (1977) had their moments, though the fact that the sixteen Fogelberg downloads I purchased this evening included just one song from the former and two from the later suggests those were overall somewhat lesser of the bunch, at least in my memory.

Phoenix (1980) was more or less his pop breakthrough, with not only "Longer" but also "Heart Hotels" making the singles charts. A more ambitious artistic statement was 1981's double-album The Innocent Age, which pretty much marked the peak of Fogelberg's career creatively. Its yuletide-chestnut-to-be ("Same Old Lang Syne"), while probably his best-known song, wasn't really representative of the full depth and breadth of the work. I was rather amused and heartened to discover a few years later that one of my late-'80s undeground-rock-obsessed musician roommates also had a real soft spot for The Innocent Age.

I went out and bought Fogelberg's subsequent album, 1984's Windows And Walls, upon its release, but I sensed a pretty clear dropoff in quality. Or maybe it was just my own perspective: I was headlong into Jackson Browne by then, and Dylan was waiting just around the corner. For whatever reason, none of Fogelberg's subsequent releases ever connected with me, though the bluegrassy High Country Snows from 1985 seems probably worth revisiting at some point.

The record I do still go back to on a regular basis, though -- seems like I pull the old vinyl copy off the shelves and put Side One on the turntable every couple of years or so -- is Fogelberg's very first album, 1972's Home Free. The songwriting's pretty green, really, but endearingly so, and quite good considering that Fogelberg was just 21 when the record came out. (He was 56 when he died this past Sunday of prostate cancer.) Musically there's real beauty in the arrangements, from the swinging country twang of "More Than Ever" to sweet swelling strings of "Hickory Grove" to the soft, simple piano touches of the opening track "To The Morning" -- one of the best first-songs-of-a-career that any artist ever had, from where I sit.

As it happens, today is my brother Si's 51st birthday, so I suppose this blog-entry can be considered an acknowledgment of thanks to him for helping to lead me down the musical path I wound up following all those years ago. And, also, an acknowledgment of thanks to Fogelberg, for making music that was such a significant step along that road.


Response to: "between the worlds of men and make-believe...."
Posted by: Ed Pettersen | December 22, 2007 5:52 AM

A few years ago a good friend of mine who is also a musician and I were watching a popular cable TV country music program called “Crossroads” which blended a country star with someone from the pop or rock world (Think Martina McBride and Pat Benetar). Anyways, My buddy asked me if I was the country guy who I’d pick to be the pop/rock person. I answered without hesitation, “Dan Fogelberg”, to which my friend screeched out “WHAAAAAAAAAT?????”. I wasn’t insulted however, buffered from years of this abuse amongst my friends. But I’m here to tell you that there would be no Ed Pettersen the recording artist and therefore no Song of America either if it wasn’t for Dan Fogelberg. Let me explain:

My first instrument was piano, not guitar. We had an old piano in our house growing up, with a lot of broken keys, but no money for a guitar. But it didn’t matter. I was a natural on the piano and I was almost able to play it from the first time I set hands on it. In fact, it came waaaaay easier than guitar for me. I soon took up Jazz, even taking some lessons from a Jazz legend before his untimely death, and started getting way up my own ass in prog rock (Now wouldn’t I have looked silly in THOSE outfits!!). But when I heard the music of Dan Fogelberg all that changed. Suddenly, I had a voice. Though I knew I could sing at that point I wasn’t moved by any particular one style. But Dan was different. I not only related to the smooth yet soulful sound of his voice but I could identify with his lyrics and youthful enthusiasm. He was speaking for me! And if that wasn’t enough he not only played guitar really well he played piano great too. Man, I had a lot of work to do!!! I really started working much harder of my guitar playing and soon starting concentrating more on some fledgling ideas for songs that I had. And it all started with Dan.

Sure, I got lost along the way in the 80’s, I guess we all did, and I lost touch with some of Dan’s recordings. I remember “High Country Snows” and I remember liking it and learning a few songs but nothing to this day will ever compare to the feeling I had that day I brought home my brand new copy of “Netherlands” in 1977 and ripped the plastic off with total disregard for the precious vinyl platter and put it on my crappy little desktop LP player as fast as I could. I had heard it at my high school’s radio station, WKWZ, “88.5 on your FM dial”, and ALL the seniors at the station had it (I was a lowly sophmore at the time). You just HAD to get it. It was the new Fogelberg! I remember running as fast as I could to my local record store after school that day the half-mile across the train tracks to the small store next to the pizzeria. I must have flew home ‘cause all I remember next is…..Crackle, crackle, crackle….then…piano…duhn, duhn, dum, dummmmm, etc. …then….ba da da, DUHN, DUHN, DUHN DUHN….the first few orchestral notes--BAM! Holy Christmas…..What’s THIS?!?!? It literally took my breath away and even though Dan has much, much bigger albums this one, from start to finish, is my special place. I love all the songs and the richness of the recordings even come through on my crappy little IPod. I love the first three albums too and like my friend Peter Blackstock Dan Fogelberg also led me to Jackson Browne and eventually Bob Dylan, another reason to be eternally grateful to Dan, but those woods in the Nederlands (intentional spelling; that’s the actual name of the place he was writing about in Colorado I’m told) occupy a mythical place in my heart. I still pull out that record when I’m feeling my lowest like this week with word of Dan’s passing. Rock on Dan, you’ll always be my first choice for a musical sidekick and I’m sorry I never got to meet ya’ but somehow I feel like I did.

Anyways, that’s why Dan’s important to me.

From Goldmine:
Folk singer-songwriter Fogelberg
remembered as 'consummate artist'
Peter Lindblad

While walking with his wife one night on Lookout Mountain Avenue in California’s Laurel Canyon area, famed rock photographer Henry Diltz “heard the most beautiful piano music coming from a little house that was right across the street” from his.

“In that place, music just hangs in the air,” says Diltz.

He didn’t know it then, but he was about to meet folk singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg. It was the mid-’70s, right around the time Fogelberg’s Souvenirs, one of 20 albums — many of them platinum or gold sellers — he released in his career, was due for release.

“He had come to town to do the album, and on his list of things to do, I guess, he wanted to get Henry Diltz to do his album cover,” says Diltz. “One day (actually, the day after Diltz’s walk with his wife), there was some girl watering flowers, and (Dan) came over and said, ‘Hi, I’m Dan Fogelberg.’ And she said, ‘I’m Elizabeth Diltz.’ And he said, ‘You’re not Henry’s wife, are you?’”

So began a long-lasting friendship between Diltz and Fogelberg, who died Dec. 16 in his home in Maine at the age of 56 after battling prostate cancer. Fogelberg’s music had an effect on Fridays Music owner and music-business veteran Joe Reagoso.

“Dan Fogelberg was the consummate artist: Beautiful melodies, heartfelt lyrics, first-rate musicianship, powerful vocals, plus songs that have truly stood the test of time,” says Reagoso, who worked for Fogelberg’s manager, Irving Azoff, when he was a promotions man for MCA in the ‘80s. “He will be sorely missed. Most of the world will continue to recognize his biggest hits, like ‘Leader Of The Band’ and ‘Longer,’ but the deeper fans remember his masterwork ‘Netherlands’ and his un-forgettable tunes like ‘Make Love Stay,’ ‘Same Old Lang Syne,’ ‘As The Raven Flies,’ ‘Sketches’ and ‘Dancing Shoes.’ God bless Dan.”

While the softly spun, acoustic-folk honey Fogelberg produced was winning the hearts and minds of ‘70s and ‘80s soft-rock listeners, Diltz and Fogelberg grew close. For years, Diltz would annually trek to Fogelberg’s ranch in the Colorado Rockies.

“It had stables and a chicken coop. It looked like a Russian church — I even think it had a minaret,” says Diltz.

Ultimately, Diltz says Fogelberg was a modern-day Renaissance man.

“Not many people know this, but he was an excellent painter and a very good photographer.”

And he was a gourmet cook, who also loved skiing and sailing.

Unlike most rock stars, Fogelberg avoided the limelight. Often, Diltz recalls, Fogelberg would play a concert, and then, instead of signing autographs or meeting with fans afterward, he would gather his friends and take them out to dinner. Fogelberg enjoyed his solitude.

“He enjoyed his fan base, but he didn’t want to stay around and lap up praise,” says Diltz. “He was not a recluse, but he did like to stay in his own environment.”

Born in Peoria, Ill., the son of a musician father, Fogelberg took to music early. In the early ‘60s, he was exposed to rock ‘n’ roll and performers like Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins and Little Richard, and later, The Beatles. In his teens, he fell in love with the folk-rock of The Byrds and the Buffalo Springfield, but music wasn’t his first calling. He attended the University of Illinois at Champaign as a drama major, intending to become an actor. He later changed course and studied painting — all while the Vietnam War was going on.

Fogelberg began his music career playing at a local club called The Red Herring. Word spread and Fogelberg caught the ear of Azoff, manager of REO Speedwagon. Thinking Fogelberg would hit it big, the two moved out west to California. A demo tape he made started attracting label interest from heavyweights like A&M Records and David Geffen’s Asylum Records. But, it was Clive Davis and Columbia Records who won out.

In 1972, Fogelberg released his debut, Home Free. A beautiful country-rock album, along the lines of that produced by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young or Graham Nash, Home Free didn’t produce a hit single. Two years later, however, Fogelberg’s partnership with The Eagles’ Joe Walsh yielded Souvenirs, the album that catapulted him to stardom.

Through the ‘70s, Fogelberg would develop as an arranger, incorporating more classical influences and ornate touches into his music. Unexpectedly, a collaboration with jazz flutist Tim Weisberg called Twin Sons of Different Mothers in 1978 resulted in the hit “The Power Of Gold.”

It was all prelude to 1981’s The Innocent Age, a grandiose production that was bigger and more daring than anything he’d done previously. It was a smash, containing some of the most beloved songs in the Fogelberg catalog, including “The Same Old Lang Syne,” “Run For The Roses,” “Hard To Say” and “Leader Of The Band.”

Wandering in less-accessible directions, Fogelberg’s popularity began to wane. Bluegrass experiments and more introspective albums, like 1984’s Windows and Walls, failed to impress critics or generate massive sales. Fogelberg would drift away from music in the succeeding years, allowing him to pursue his many hobbies. It was his escape from the pressures of the music business. Still, Fogelberg would emerge on occasion with new material. His last album was 2003’s Full Circle.

“What a good guy he was,” says Diltz. “A lot of musicians want praise, they want applause. He wasn’t one of those guys.”

From The Weekly Standard: Dear Diary, I Think I'm in Love The confessions of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. by P.J. O'Rourke 12/31/2007 Journals 1952-2000 by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Penguin, 928 pp., $40 This is a bad, vain, dull, repulsive book. Don't read it. I didn't. Oops, have I committed the previous sentence to print? I've just broken the most sacred vow of book reviewers. I've confessed to not reading the book I'm reviewing. Jonathan Yardley will stalk me through the streets armed with his razor-sharp critique. The Library of Congress building will come crashing down upon my head. My career is over. But before I go to my doom, let me try to explain. You see there was this fellow, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died early this year and is on his way to being forgotten but who, unfortunately, isn't quite there yet. Schlesinger spent some of his time being a Harvard historian and all of his time kissing the behinds of rich people, famous people, and people who were powerful in the Democratic party. He accomplished only one thing of note. (If you don't count his unfinished, multivolume history of the FDR administration and his A Thousand Days buncombe about JFK, and you certainly shouldn't.) In 1945, Schlesinger went back in time to retro-behind-kiss Andrew Jackson. He wrote The Age of Jackson, glorifying the ignorant backwoods thug who perpetrated genocide upon the Indians, created the spoils system in Washington, and fathered that bastard political party of rum, rebellion, and Hillary Rodham. The rest of Schlesinger's life was spent engaged in such activities as being a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson and in doing things even less important than that, if you can imagine any. So this Schlesinger fellow kept what you and I would call a diary but what, when Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Harvard professor, special assistant to President John F. Kennedy, and winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize (twice each), does it, is called Journals. He scribbles away from 1952 until 2000, producing some 6,000 pages, which his sons Andrew and Stephen--and bless them for it--have condensed. The resulting tome is no thicker than the average skull on the current generation of Kennedys. And honest, I meant to read it all. I did get through the entire first paragraph. Here's an excerpt from it concerning the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner of March 29, 1952: I borrowed a black tie from Phil Graham. .  .  . Making our way to our table, we became entangled in one of the head table lines. In quick succession came the three nicest men in public life--Wilson Wyatt, Adlai Stevenson, Averell Harriman. Averell suggested that we go out for a drink afterward. Ouch! Ow! Those are big names being dropped. Do not read Journals standing up in your stocking feet. Any given hundred words of Schlesinjournaling loses its grip on enough weighty monikers to break every toe. But I limped on. I made it all the way to page 12 before I was stopped cold by this sentence about Adlai Stevenson: "He is the one man in politics today who strikes an authentically new and fresh note." And that note would be? Ah, the note that was passed to Adlai in every classroom of grade school, high school, and Princeton--the small, crumpled piece of paper upon which was written, "LOSER!!!" Meanwhile, in the preceding 11 pages of type, our boy Artie has been subtly, carefully not quite taking all the credit for getting Adlai Stevenson the 1952 Democratic nomination. This raises several questions. First, Huh? What a load of baloney. Second, Why would anyone want any of the credit for that? And third, why doesn't Schlesinger just lie? It's his personal journal. If you can't fool yourself, who can you fool? Come on, Art, go for it. Say, "Without me Adlai Stevenson would have been nothing but a footnote to the history of wooly-headed liberalism!" It's not as if anybody's going to call you on it. But Schlesinger dare not tell an outright lie. In one respect, Journals is a diary like younger sisters used to keep, with the key to the little lock on its pink vinyl cover conveniently "hidden" so that if big brother happens to read certain passages aloud to a particular handsome athlete .  .  . The handsome athlete (well, sportsman, anyway) that Arthur had a crush on was JFK. Thus we see Kennedy in the middle of the 1960 Democratic primary campaign: "Jack seemed tired, but was obviously in good spirits. His lack of pretense was refreshing; for example, he kept answering ringing phones himself." He answers his own phone! We see Kennedy on his yacht shooting at floating Coke bottles with "Prince Radziwill": "Jack is plainly an excellent shot .  .  . Then we drank Bloody Marys, swam from the boat and finally settled down for an excellent lunch. After lunch, cigars and conversation." He spoke to me! And we see President Kennedy summoning some piece of speechwriting crap that he'd dumped on Arthur: "The next morning the president called to ask about the paragraph. I brought it to his bedroom about 9:30. He was eating his breakfast in bed. He had only his pajama pants on." Ooooooo! Yet Journals is so much more than gush. Its pages also crack open a hellgate to give us a peek at the eternally consuming fires of egotistic solipsism to which the soul of a liberal is forever condemned. Not even the undying love that Arthur Schlesinger felt for Kennedy money, power, and prestige could redeem poor Art from the perdition that awaits the bien pensant. His is the sin of pride, such that produces the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society. It manifests itself in the deeds of the mighty. Or in the case of Arthur Schlesinger, it manifests itself in mighty bad taste. This, this, is his private reaction when his friend, his mentor, his beau ideal is murdered: November 23 I heard the terrible news as I was sipping cocktails with Kay Graham, Ken Galbraith and the editors of Newsweek. Kay and I had flown in from Washington; we were there to discuss the future of the back of Newsweek's book. A man entered in his shirtsleeves and said, a little tentatively .  .  . A man in his shirtsleeves--in the presence of Kay Graham, Ken Galbraith, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.! Let us skim forward to June 1968, and see if Art is better able to keep his composure when Robert Kennedy is killed: It is beyond belief, but it has happened--it has happened again. On Tuesday, June 4, I went to Chicago for a conference on Vietnam sponsored by the Adlai Stevenson Institute. Saul Bellow and I had met at the airport [blah blah blah] .  .  . He had suggested that I come over to his apartment Tuesday evening [blah blah blah] .  .  . I took Frances FitzGerald over there [blah blah blah] .  .  . Then Dick Wade, who was there, dropped Frankie at the Center for Continuing Education [blah blah blah-blah-blah]. We are fully 140 words into the journal entry before we get to "Kennedy's been shot." And even here, in his brief quotation of a phone call from Dick Wade, Schlesinger manages to drop another name, "Steve Smith too, I guess." Okay, Art, that's two wrong. But you're still eligible for a posthumous consolation prize--free shredding of all remaindered copies of Journals. Just turn to the 1969 chapter and tell us your deep feelings when you learned about the political assassination (albeit self-inflicted) of the third Kennedy brother: The last few days were, of course, shadowed by the distressing news about Ted Kennedy. We heard about it first on the yacht on Sunday afternoon and learned more details when we reached Paris. On Wednesday night in New York, I called Jimmy Wechsler, Joe Rauh, Ken Galbraith and others and found general gloom. On Thursday I sat after lunch with Scotty Reston and Tom Wicker at the Century. They were both sympathetic .  .  . And I feel sorry for you, too, Arthur. Naturally we cannot expect a man with credentials such as Arthur's to be merely a jerk; he's an idiot, too. The quickest riffle through Journals is enough to prove it. Said Arthur, after a 10-day visit to the USSR in 1982: "I fear that those who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic and social collapse are kidding themselves." It just so happens that I was in the USSR myself for about 10 days in 1982. I was an ignorant, neophyte foreign correspondent on my first overseas assignment. But I did notice that the Soviet Union was on the verge of economic and social collapse. Schlesinger's ability to make people look like cretins is by no means limited to himself. He visits President Truman and emerges from the Oval Office with this unlikely quote from the former haberdasher: "The professional politician, he said, is the straightest-shooting man in the country. [Alert readers note foretokening of JFK on the yacht.] I don't mean the city machine type; but the man who makes a career of elective politics. The biggest crooks in the country are the businessmen." Even Jack Kennedy doesn't escape. JFK visited Dwight D. Eisenhower in California in 1962, and when Kennedy got back he (according to Schlesinger) told Schlesinger, "You know what he said to me? We were talking about Laos. Eisenhower said, 'A State Department man told me--and it was odd coming from him--that Laos is a nation of homosexuals.'" Schlesinger then goes on to say, "The President repeated the phrase I have italicized with a kind of wonder." I have parsed and parsed this passage, and for the life of me I can't figure out who comes off as the biggest idiot. Bigoted Ike? Hopelessly hetero naïf JFK? A certain striped-pants cookie-pusher? Or long-bow-pulling Arthur? Then there is a splendidly stupid entry about a get-together with Mick Jagger that makes one wonder if Schlesinger's whole life wasn't spent on some moron preserve or nincompoop reservation: We .  .  . made our way to the west side for a party at Mick Jagger's. The whole thing was rather mysterious--especially why we were asked. But Jerry Hall .  .  . is an amiable, very pretty, tallish Texan [blah blah blah]. We expected a packed house with a lot of drinking, cocaine, noise, etc. Instead, it was a party of only moderate size and, so far as we could see (we left shortly before 1 A.M.), entirely seemly. Most people were young, except for Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Jean Stein and Ahmet Ertegun (who could not get over the fact that we were there--actually we met Mick Jagger first at his house). .  .  . [blah blah blah] Mick Jagger appeared from some upstairs retreat and sat down and talked for half an hour or so, mostly about communism, war, the threat of Cap Weinberger and so on. He is alert, funny, intelligent (Alexandra told me later he had attended LSE [the London School of Economics]--can this be so?) .  .  . [blah blah blah] But I still could not understand why we were there. Ditto for reading this book. In fact, ditto for writing this review. I'd like to escape from further comment on Journals. I'm looking for a way out of this article. I consult the notes that I took as I flipped through the opus. "I cannot bear to read it, partly because of the vulgarity of the diction, partly because of the nakedness of the self-exposure, partly because of the frustration over not being able to review it. I cannot recall any political autobiography in American history which has represented quite such an orgy in unconscious self-revelation," I wrote. Except I didn't write that. I figure, as long as I've admitted not reading this book, I might as well go the whole hog and be a plagiarist, too. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote that. He thought he was writing about Six Crises by Richard Nixon. But as usual, Arthur was wrong. P.J. O'Rourke is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

From The Boston Globe:
Frank Schaeffer's roundabout journey to find faith
He was raised in evangelism, then he raised the Right.
Now Frank Schaeffer sees the other side.
By Joel Brown, Globe Correspondent

December 18, 2007

SALISBURY - The front lawn of Frank Schaeffer's 1835 house ends abruptly at a wall of tall reeds marking the edge of the Merrimack River salt marshes. You'd think they'd offer protection, he said, but after a storm he sometimes finds a log floating in the front yard. With the publication of Schaeffer's new memoir, "Crazy for God," all sorts of other things are washing up at his front door: painful memories and funny ones, religious and political controversies. This time he invited them.

"The e-mail and the blogging has been intense," Schaeffer, 55, said on a recent morning. "Surprisingly I'm hearing from a lot of evangelicals taking a second look at what they believe and their place in the culture, but then maybe that's a self-selecting audience."

That "Crazy for God" isn't just another James Frey-style memoir of personal dysfunction becomes clear with the subtitle, "How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (Or Almost All) of It Back." It's an alternately hilarious and excruciating look at Schaeffer's life with his Christian missionary parents and after he left their orbit.

Francis and Edith Schaeffer were noted evangelists who welcomed seekers of all kinds to their Swiss compound, L'Abri, while their Calvinist rigor made them favorites of the likes of Billy Graham. Frank was a deep thinker with a bad temper; Edith enforced day-to-day piety with a steely smile. In "Crazy for God," Schaeffer lays bare his parents' troubled marriage, his own randy adolescent adventures, and his eventual disgust with fundamentalist leaders.

"My daughter says to me, 'I love this book, it's the best thing you've written, and I can't think of one person that I know that I want to have read it,' " Schaeffer said, laugh ing.

He doesn't have to worry about his parents' reactions - his father died in 1984, and his mother is 93, her memory failing - but his sisters are split on the topic. He had already aired much family laundry in his comic novels "Portofino," "Zermatt," and "Saving Grandma," in which a hormone-addled adolescent pointedly named Calvin wrestles with temptation and the darker side of his dysfunctional missionary family life.

"Crazy for God" goes further, as the teenage Schaeffer finds himself coping with the oddities of living in an increasingly popular evangelical enclave that's part "Heidi," part hippie commune, with Billy Graham and Timothy Leary both passing through its alpine chalets.

"We were this fundamentalist little cult-ic group in Switzerland, and yet that's how powerful the 1960s were," he said. "By the time it was all done, we were all sitting there listening to the Beatles and Bob Dylan and having lectures on Fellini and Bergman. . . . You have parents who are telling their kids they are totally against premarital sex and even dating on one hand, and yet in all the fields above the mission, you have couples pairing off by moonlight."

Advances and retreats

One of those teenage couples was Frank and his "hippie princess," Regina Ann "Genie" Walsh. In an interview, she recalled the first time she met Frank. "I thought, what a forward guy!" she said. "He was so extroverted at that point, it took my breath away. He was kind of pushy. Usually people who are that flagrantly friendly make me a little suspicious. But I quickly got over it. He was very charming."

Charming enough that she soon became pregnant with their daughter Jessica. They married, and among fatherhood's profound impacts on young Frank was his immediate adoption of a zealous anti-abortion stance. A documentary series he was making about his father's teachings veered into pro-life tract and became popular with American fundamentalists. Books, speeches, sermons followed. The Schaeffers were a hit.

Even Schaeffer's father said the powerful preachers they hobnobbed with were "not our sort of people." Schaeffer goes further in "Crazy for God": "In public they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. [James] Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement."

Schaeffer worked with them for more than a decade, preaching in their churches and helping them solidify their empires, while growing ever more disenchanted. When his father died, he was offered even more opportunities but walked away instead. Still in his early 30s, Schaeffer lived out a Hollywood dream, directing four secular movies including "Baby on Board" with Judge Reinhold and Carol Kane. In the middle of blowing his chance at Hollywood stardom, Schaeffer decided to write "Portofino." When it was published to solid reviews, he at last found a new calling.

He and Genie had moved their two children to the Salisbury retreat in 1980; their third was born a few months later. Genie said she doesn't mind seeing the intimate details of their life on the page. "Actually it comes as a relief," she said, "because we have gone through so much together that - I'm not sure if this is a result of age or having so many random experiences or what - but it's nice to see it given a shape and a narrative."

The Right and wrongs

In 1999, the Schaeffers' son John joined the Marines, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. A novel ("Baby Jack") and four nonfiction books arose from Schaeffer's experience as a soldier's father. That experience also added depth to his anguish over helping to build the religious right.

"To put it very mildly, I've been very invested in what's been happening to our country, because my son was getting shot at. Those were the toughest periods in my adult life," Schaeffer said. "And I can tell you I think George Bush is the worst leader this country has had, ever. And that his failure of moral leadership after 9/11 will go down probably as the greatest missed opportunity in American history.

"Alex del Rio, my son's bunkmate from boot camp, is missing two legs and most of one arm because of this president, for no reason . . . and that could have been my son John," he said. "And to the extent the religious right empowered the domination of Republicans in Congress and the White House, there's a direct line between this failed presidency and the war we're in, and the people my dad and I helped empower and stir up in the 1970s and 1980s. . . . So this is a disaster for which I and a lot of other people bear a direct responsibility, and in that sense I'm very sorry."

That sort of talk has made the book a hit with the left, including a long review from novelist and onetime L'Abri tourist Jane Smiley in The Nation. But Schaeffer emphasizes that he was trying to tell his own story, not simply become a culture-war turncoat. And he has not turned away from religion, having joined the Greek Orthodox faith.

"At one point in your life, you think faith is an actual thing in itself that you've made some conclusion about. You say things like 'I believe.' I think what Mother Teresa woke up to maybe at some point and that certainly would describe my own journey too, in terms of faith, is that you can't really say 'I believe.' What you say is, 'I hope' something. 'I hope this is true.' And to me that's what faith is."

Writing for redemption

Charlotte Gordon, a writer from Rockport, met the Schaeffers in the mid-1980s and became their friend. "I think Franky is far more reflective now and far less reactive," said Gordon, who is an assistant professor at Endicott College. "I think that he's very introspective now and very independent, thinking back on the mistakes he's made. And the one thing that's very much on his mind is redemption, and I think he sees writing as a form of redemption, as a form of confession . . . and so the most important thing to him is the truth."

Frank's sister Deborah Middelmann is no longer affiliated with L'Abri but still lives nearby and teaches at a local boarding school. She said she approves of the new book. "I thought Franky did a really wonderful job of being very honest and yet coming across as what I considered very compassionate toward his parents, toward his childhood," Middelmann said by phone from Switzerland. "The one area in which if I had been writing the book I probably would have emphasized things somewhat differently would have been in the area of my father's ideas. My father and I were very, very close."

These days, L'Abri is still going strong, though his parents are no longer there, Schaeffer said.

"It's just a straight evangelical retreat center that would be just horrified if the guests from the late '60s showed up," he said with a laugh. "They'd throw them out in a hot minute."

Sandro Botticelli, The Mystical Nativity

From www.spiked-online.com:
Mankind is more than the janitor of planet Earth
I am avowedly atheist. But listening to the bishops' drab,
eco-pious Christmas sermons,
I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Bring back God!’
Brendan O’Neill

Thursday 27 December 2007

He might be the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus guardian of the Anglican faith. But every time I see Dr Rowan Williams’ smug face or hear his social-worker voice, I feel like breaking at least one of the Ten Commandments (I’ll leave it to readers’ febrile imaginations to guess which one).

They say we get the leaders we deserve. We also get the bishops we deserve. And in an age of petty piety, where relativistic non-judgementalism coexists with new codes of personal morality, giving rise to a Mary Poppins State more than a Nanny State, it’s fitting that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a trendy schoolteacher type who dispenses hectoring ethical advice with a smarmy grin rather than with fire-and-brimstone relish.

In his Christmas sermon, delivered at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Williams finally completed his journey from old-world Christianity to trendy New Ageism. His sermon was indistinguishable from those delivered (not just at Christmas but for life) by the heads of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. Williams did not speak about Christian morality; in fact, he didn’t utter the m-word at all. He said little about men’s responsibility to love one another and God, the two Commandments Jesus Christ said we should live by. Instead he talked about our role as janitors on planet Earth, who must stop plundering the ‘warehouse of natural resources’ and ensure that we clean up after ourselves.

Williams has clearly been reading the Good Books – not the Bible, but those Carbon Calculator tomes that are clogging up bookshop shelves around the country, and which instruct people on how to live so meekly that they leave no imprint whatsoever on the planet or human history. He said that Earth does not exist only for ‘humanity’s sake’; it also exists ‘in its own independence and beauty… not as a warehouse of resources to serve humanity’s selfishness’.

Williams warned that our greed – presumably our insatiable lust for warm homes, cars, cookers and other outrageous luxuries – is killing the planet. He welcomed the fact that mankind is ‘growing in awareness of how fragile [the planet] is, how fragile is the balance of species and environments in the world and how easily our greed distorts it’. In 2008, we must take more seriously our ‘guardianship’ of the Earth, he declared (1).

Williams isn’t the only leading Christian who has sold his soul to Gaia and traded in Christian morality for the pieties of environmentalism. The Reverend John Owen, leader of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, said in his Christmas sermon that everyone should remember his or her ‘duty to the planet’. He urged people to recycle leftover food, and ‘redouble [your] efforts to take action and campaign against climate change’ in the coming year (2). Meanwhile, the Vatican is taking steps to become the world’s first carbon-neutral sovereign state by planting trees in a Hungarian national park to offset the CO2 emissions of the Holy See. Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, says that in 2008 there should be the ‘dawn of a new culture, of new attitudes and a new mode of living that makes man aware of his place as caretaker of the earth’ (3).

The reduction of man to an eco-janitor, a being who creates waste and thus must clear it up, is more than a cynical attempt by isolated Christian leaders to connect with the public. Yes, Williams, Owen, the Holy See and Co. no doubt hope and believe (mistakenly, I’m sure) that adopting trendy Greenspeak will entice people to return to the church. But the move from focusing on love for God and one’s neighbour to focusing on ‘respect for the planet’ represents more than a rebranding exercise: it signals a complete abandonment by the Christian churches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. And in this sense, it is not only God that is being downgraded by the new nature-worshipping priests; so is humanity itself. And that’s enough to make even a committed atheist like me worry about the current direction of the Christian churches.

Christian teaching was once concerned with man, meaning and morality, with questions of free will, inner life and human destiny. As it happens, atheists, at least progressive ones, were concerned with exactly the same things. The chasm-sized difference between atheists and Christians occurred over the question of whether the moral meaning of man came from within or without; whether, as some atheists believed, the purpose of humanity was to be found within humanity itself; or, as Christians believed, humanity achieved meaning only through an external deity, God.

Where Christian morality granted man a diluted form of free will – underpinned by the idea that, yes, we make free choices, but God is the ultimate arbiter of our destiny – progressive atheists emphasised complete free will, arguing that only through full freedom of thought and a human-centred morality could humans remake the world in their own image and according to their own needs and desires.

Christians and atheists may have spent much of the past 200 years at each other’s throats, but they inhabited the same moral plane. Theirs was literally a struggle for the soul of humanity. Today, by contrast, Christian leaders have abandoned questions of morality and free will. They now view people as little more than waste managers, ‘caretakers’, eco-binmen, whose job is to sweep up after themselves and keep the planet in good nick. Instead of remaking the world in anybody’s image – whether it be God’s, man’s, Buddha’s or L Ron Hubbard’s – man must simply adapt to his surroundings like an amoeba; indeed, he must minimise as much as possible his impact on the planet. Old Christians taught us that ‘the Kingdom of God is within you’ (4), which was their flawed way of saying that man is a sovereign being, free and morally responsible. Today Christians say: ‘You are merely guests in the Warehouse of Resources. So be quiet, don’t get any ideas above your station, and please shut the door when you leave.’

The cult of environmentalism embraced by the Christian churches does away with morality altogether. Some sceptics claim that environmentalism is a new form of moralistic hectoring; it is better to see it as amoralistic hectoring. In judging everything by how much CO2 or pollution it creates, environmentalism dispenses with questions of moral worth and judgement. So a flight to visit a newborn nephew in Australia (5.61 tonnes of CO2) is as wicked as taking a flight to Barbados to lounge in the sun; and the transportation of delicious food from Africa to Britain is as unforgivable as the transportation of weapons and drugs from Latin America to Los Angeles: after all, both involve exploiting the ‘warehouse of resources’ and upsetting the ‘fragile balance of species and environments’, as Williams put it (5). When human actions are judged by their levels of pollution alone, the issue of meaning – of why we do things, who we do them for, and how we might do them better – is implicitly downgraded.

This is why in his Christmas sermon, the Archbishop of Canterbury quoted extensively, not from the Bible, but from Richard Dawkins, who is considered by many to be the Rottweiler of the New Atheism. What today’s eco-Christians and New Atheists share in common is a view of man as animalistic and degraded, as a ‘mammal’ (as Christopher Hitchens describes us in his book God is Not Great) which ought to take its place alongside other mammals on this mortal coil. On the way in which religion distorts people’s minds, Hitchens writes: ‘What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees?’ (6) Where Williams and other eco-Christians see mankind as merely a cog in the planetary wheel, Hitchens and other New Atheists see mankind as only the sum of his genes, still, in essence, a monkey.

If yesterday’s Christians and atheists inhabited the same moral plane, fighting tooth and nail over the purpose of mankind, today’s eco-Christians and New Atheists inhabit the same amoral plane, bickering with each other but also frequently agreeing that man is a bit of a shit.

‘Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves round man as long as he does not revolve around himself’, said Marx (7). Many of the great atheists of old were concerned with making man the centre of his moral universe; with freeing him up to become the ‘superhuman’ that he aspired to be, but which he could only glimpse in an illusory God (8). Today, by contrast, both eco-Christians and New Atheists want to bring man and God crashing back down to Earth… so that we can set about cleaning it up like the good little earthly janitors we are. At a time of such low horizons, is it any wonder that some people still do cling on to God, and seek transcendence from mundane everyday life through a belief in divinity? There is more humanity in their ‘superhuman’ delusions than there is in the monkeyman realism of eco-Christians and New Atheists.

Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked.

From www.southtownstar.com:
Dan Fogelberg said it all for this restless teenager
By Donna Vickroy

December 26, 2007

Music has been an important part of my life, but never more so than when I was a teenager.

Music gives voice to feelings, fears, even rage. Music is the release that so many of us desperately need. That's likely why music fans embrace many kinds of music.

When I was growing up, I was as much a fan of Led Zeppelin as I was of John Denver, as much a follower of Pink Floyd as Dan Fogelberg.

Each artist's work served a different purpose, filled a different void.

Fogelberg died last week of prostate cancer. And as it is whenever an icon of your youth dies, his passing left me sad and feeling old.

Say what you will about the native Illinoisan's celebrity - Lord knows he was not a fan of the media - to a teenage girl and her guitar-playing best friend, his lyrics meant everything.

He spoke to our pain, our self-doubt and our longing to make sense of the crazy, often cold, world around us. I saw him in concert several times.

"Woke up one morning
The wind through the window
Reminded me winter was just 'round the bend
Somehow I just did not see it was coming
It took me by surprise again"

If I am sensitive today as an adult (as I'm often told), I was even more so as a teen.

I circulated petitions among my high school classmates to stop the clubbing of baby seals in the Arctic.

I was an avid reader of poetry.

I was a vegetarian.

And I spent countless hours alone in my room with my music.

No one longs for affirmation more than a restless, angst-ridden teen. Happily, many artists lyrics' seem to provide it. Fogelberg was foremost among them for me.

"Love when you can
Cry when you have to
Be who you must
That's a part of the plan
Await your arrival with simple survival
And one day we'll all understand"

Music often speaks your mind, without you having to say a word.

While Steely Dan, Pink Floyd and Joe Jackson sung the praises of my anger at and ridicule of life as I lived it in homogenous suburbia, Fogelberg offered a more sensitive insight into other deeper emotions: a need to belong and to feel loved. Somehow, he was able to mesh all that emotion with an appreciation for nature - something that has become very trendy of late.

"Once in a vision I came on some woods
And stood at a fork in the road
My choices were clear yet I froze with the fear
Of not knowing which way to go
Oh, one road was simple acceptance of life
The other road offered sweet peace
When I made my decision
My vision became my release"

Fogelberg is perhaps most famous for "Another Auld Lange Syne," a song about revisiting unrequited love at Christmas.

The first "wedding" decision I made after getting engaged was that Fogelberg's "Longer" would be played during our ceremony.

My personal favorite is a song called "Souvenirs." To me, it is the past tugging at the present, asking the kinds of questions one doesn't want to answer, about what might have been, what should have been. That kind of stuff.

"And down in the canyon the smoke starts to rise
It rides on the wind 'til it reaches your eyes
When faced with the past the strongest man cries ... cries
And here is a sunrise to set on your sill
The ghosts of the dawn moving near
They pass through your sorrow and leave you quite still ...
Sitting among souvenirs"

Dan Fogelberg was 56.

Donna Vickroy can be reached at (708) 633-5982 and dvickroy@southtownstar.com.

From www.postindependent.com:
He had a musical gift that touched many
By Bill Kight

Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
December 24, 2007

Sometimes an artist touches us, perhaps arousing a kindred spirit from deep within, sharing a feeling we thought was our own private emotion. And for a brief moment we come full circle to what it is to be human.

Then we go on our way with our lives. Forgetting. That's human, too.

I had forgotten how the music affected me, not hearing it much these days.

Then the song played on the radio while heading home, "Same Old Lang Syne" from the '80s. It was a tribute to Dan Fogelberg who had died at his home in Maine from prostate cancer. He was only 56.

It hit me hard. Instantly the thought came, "That could have been me. Why did he die of prostate cancer? Why am I a survivor from the same cancer?"

Getting out of the car and going into the house, a great burden lay heavy on my heart. Those same feelings from years ago that he had stirred within me while listening to his music were back.

My thoughts raced to a couple of years ago when I was fire information officer on a fire near Pagosa Springs.

My job was to visit people living in the woods and backcountry close to the fire we were managing. I gave handouts to the folks who were home and talked with them if they had any questions.

It's right up my alley. I enjoy meeting people.

While out and about, I stopped at the road to Dan Fogelberg's ranch and turned off the key. It took only a minute to make the decision not to go further.

Someone who knew had told me he was not well, was sick. Not wanting to disturb him, I headed back to the Incident Command Post in my Jeep.

No one told me it was prostate cancer, or I may have decided to visit him and to try and offer encouragement, though his disease was terminal by the time it was discovered.

Chances are he may not have been on his ranch anyway. I've been told that what time he had left was spent at his home in Maine with his family.

It wasn't about being part of the sick cult our nation suffers from, worshiping at the altar of fame. It wasn't about getting an autograph, or being able to tell people I met Dan Fogelberg. It was about respecting the privacy of someone who had reached "me" through his songs.

The legacy of his words is enough. To know someone had felt similar emotions and made those feelings into songs. What a gift.

The album has stopped playing on the turntable as I write in silence, interrupted only by the wood popping in the old stove.

I'm at a loss for words as I read the lyrics of Dan's songs.

"Pecos Mountains in the fading light ... She wraps the foggy night around her like a warming shawl ... His song is in my soul ... "

And best of all ... "I thank you for the music.

From danfogelberg.com:

From Jean

Dear friends, I'm so grateful to all of you who wrote to Dan through The Living Legacy website
with your stories of how his music touched your lives; with your uplifting words of encouragement; with your declarations of admiration and friendship.

Dan was a strong and private man, but even the mountain must tremble, and during the toughest times he gained solace and comfort from reading your letters and learning that his music had been a source of light in your lives.

Greatest of all though, was the feeling you gave him that his time here had served a purpose.

I hope you will find some peace in knowing that the joy and comfort you found in his music
winged it's way back to him through your words, prayers, and good wishes.

Thank you,
Jean Fogelberg

"There is no darkness in this place that we're bound
Love is the only thing that matters" ~ DF

From The Lompoc Record:
Singers' legacy has local roots
By Bo Poertner/Managing Editor

Former Lompoc resident Jean Marie Mayer was playing guitar and singing in a restaurant in Santa Fe, N.M., in the early 1980s when a handsome young man began showing up to watch her perform.

Soon the mellow-voiced singer and the man from a mountaintop ranch in Colorado began dating, and before long it was time for Mayer to tell her parents.

“She said she met this nice guy and he came in a couple times and listened to her sing, and they had been dating. ...,” said Leslie Mayer, from her home in Bowling Green, Ky.

“I was into art, not music. I said, ‘What's his name?' She said, ‘Dan Fogelberg.' I said, ‘Who?' And she told me.”

Fogelberg, of course, was the introspective singer-songwriter who launched a career of soft-toned songs with powerful lyrics in 1972, and cultivated a loyal following. Songs like “Same Auld Lang Syne,” “Leader of the Band” and “The Power of Gold,” were credited with helping define the era of soft-rock.

Fogelberg died Dec. 16 at their home in Maine after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 56.

“They've been fighting this for three years,” said Gene Mayer. “It's been especially hard on Jean Marie. The problem was by the time they detected it, the cancer had already metastasized. You don't get symptoms until it's too late. Dan had a tough time of it.”

Jean Marie Mayer declined to be interviewed.

“It's been a tough three years. She hasn't left his side. She'd drive him to the doctor in Boston and back home again,” Leslie Mayer said.

The Mayers moved to Mission Hills in 1960 just before Jean Marie's fifth birthday. Her father had left the Army and taken a job with a government contractor at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Her mother had lived in Santa Barbara, so they were familiar with the Central Coast.

Leslie Mayer, an artist, helped found the Lompoc Arts Association and taught art for the school district. She sold one of her paintings to buy her daughter a guitar.

She also designed Mission Hills' floats for the Flower Festival parade and painted murals. One of her murals, a history of Lompoc, occupies a hallway in the Lompoc Public Library.

“It was a great place to raise kids,” Gene Mayer said. “It was just wonderful - this almost pastoral place, thousands of acres of flower fields. The kids used to play out in the street.”

The Mayers' three daughters - Jean Marie, Leslie and Andrea - graduated from Cabrillo High School. It was at Cabrillo that Jean Marie befriended a new girl.

“She was kind enough to bring me into her circle of friends. She was kind enough to make sure I was comfortable,” said Wendelin Van Draanen, an author of children's books who lives in Pismo Beach.

The young women shared a love of music and became close friends. Van Draanen attended Jean Marie's wedding to Fogelberg in Santa Fe in 2003.

“He was very personable, very nice. He had this group of friends he had known for a long time.”

Jean Marie, who was Lompoc's 1973 Flower Festival Queen, launched her music career on the Central Coast in the 1970s, playing with various bands, such as A Touch of Glas. By the time she and her parents moved to Santa Fe in 1983, she was performing solo.

Fogelberg's career was well established when he began stopping in to catch her act, coming down from his beloved Colorado ranch, where he wrote many of his songs.

“We saw a couple of his concerts. We saw one in Tulsa and one in Mississippi - Biloxi,” Gene Mayer said. “He's got some very emotional lyrics. He's a very good artist.”

Leslie Mayer recalled the Biloxi concert.

“We had some good times. We had a private suite. An entourage of body guards took us through the catacombs to where he was to perform. You would have thought we were celebrities,” she said.

Fogelberg was disinterested in the celebrity side of the music industry.

“Dan just never wanted to do this whole paparazzi thing,” Gene Mayer said. “He was a very private person.”

Among the private Dan Fogelberg's joys was sailing and cooking.

“He loved to sail - big sailor and he was good,” Mayer said. “We went out with him two or three times on that boat. A lot of fun.

“He liked to cook. He probably cooked as much as Jean Marie did.”

“He told me once that he figured out a long time ago that putting stuff up your nose and drinking a lot - he'd seen his friends do that - wasn't a way to live your life.”

The announcement of Fogelberg's death, posted on his Web site, reflected the privacy he valued, even at the end.

“Dan left us this morning at 6 a.m. He fought a brave battle with cancer and died peacefully at home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. ...”

Bo Poertner can be reached at 737-1053 or bpoertner@lompoc

From content.times-herald.com:
In the 'Run for the Roses' some things shouldn't change
Sports Column
By Tony Jones

If you've paid attention to this column over the last eight years, then I imagine you are familiar with my passion for thoroughbred horse racing.

If I had a dime for every time I've been asked about the sport, I'd have nearly enough coins to fill up a Wells Fargo truck.

The adoration I gained for the sport initially started with what little I could see on network television, primarily during Triple Crown season. Then a few other things and factors came to my attention and my feelings for the sport ballooned.

ESPN did a respectful job of promoting horse racing in the late 80s and early 90s. Eventually I was old enough to visit different tracks and was blessed with an understanding of the sport.

At an early age I was fortunate enough to possess a peremptory command when it came to handicapping. I knew how to make money at the track.

While Saratoga is my favorite track, I've been to Churchill Downs the most, including four trips for the Kentucky Derby. My first visit, back in 1994, is the one I most fondly recall.

My college friends and I left Churchill Downs with thousands of dollars, enough money that made us look all around the parking lot for thieves as we searched for our vehicle. In reality, it wasn't much money. But to poor college kids, each having about 17 extra Ben Franklins, made us think we were on top of the world. Our eternal thanks to Go For Gin, the 1994 Derby winner.

Quality Derby tickets are not easy to come by, especially for college kids. We had no choice but to watch from the infield.

The infield at Churchill Downs. It's one of the top spots for higher education in all of Kentucky. People think a NASCAR infield is wild. I've never seen such behavior.

Every soul is seemingly intoxicated and all searching for a good time and most importantly, for the winner of the biggest race. The rainy weather on that afternoon made the experience even more memorable.

The rain pelted down and since we had nowhere to hide, we got soaked. That morning and day we were repeatedly serenaded by a song called "Run For The Roses" by the late Dan Fogelberg.

And it's Run for the Roses

As fast as you can

Your fate is delivered

Your moment's at hand

It's the chance of a lifetime

In a lifetime of chance

And it's high time you joined in the dance

It's high time you joined in the dance

From sire to sire

It's born in the blood

The fire of a mare

And the strength of a stud

It's breeding and it's training

And it's something unknown

That drives you and carries you home

I knew little about Fogelberg, except for his hits "Longer" and "Same Old Lang Syne", the latter an extreme favorite of mine this time every year. As a teenager in 1989, the only thing I requested at Christmas was a home stereo with a CD player and double tape deck.

Christmas morning I turned the FM radio on and the first song I ever heard on that stereo was Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne". I've never forgotten that.

I went through a number of changes in more than a decade with that stereo but I still get chills when I hear that song more than 20 years later.

The depth of emotion in "Same Old Lang Syne", written and performed by Fogelberg, has an inherent sadness that speaks to what might have been, but will never be.

Prostate cancer took Fogelberg away from us last Sunday at the age of 56. If Fogelberg had this one song to be remembered, it would be enough, for it qualifies as an absolute classic.

I have a 14 year-old nephew, Taylor, whom I have attempted to groom to appreciate all things ancient. All things but music and black and white movies. He doesn't budge in those departments. But he's got to give a little.

I still have that old stereo, although it hasn't been turned on in years. Taylor wants that stereo and I agreed to let him have it.

On one condition. The first song he must listen to is Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne".

Some things just shouldn't change

From www.theadvertiser.com:
Growing up in a care-free time with Dan Fogelberg
By Jan Risher

My mama was the baby of her family of 11 kids, which is why most of my cousins are older than me. The truth is, some of my cousins are older than my mother. But that's the way it is when families grow beyond the logic of a small house on a small farm in the middle of nowhere. The generations overlap.

And older cousins can teach you things.

Mine certainly did.

I'd credit one cousin or another with introducing me to or teaching me about nearly every major aspect of life - good food, good drink, good music, good conversation and more.

Not necessarily in that order.

Because they were older (or because their parents were more indulgent than my own), my cousins had all the cool stuff like stereo turntables and album collections and lava lamps and almost anything that was too cool for a dorky kid like myself. But I took advantage of my time with my cousins, I tried to brush up on the cool factor they knew so much about.

I turned on (and off) their lava lamps and watched in fascination.

I rifled through their album collections.

I carefully placed the needle on the 33s.

I listened to their music.

And that was how I learned to love Dan Fogelberg long before he hit the big-time with Longer, Same Old Lang Syne and Leader of the Band.

I was either 10 or 11 when I discovered his albums, Souvenirs and Homefree.

In all sincerity, his early music changed my life. Whether that's because the profoundness of his lyrics or my impressionable age, I can't be certain. But a three-chord progression of any of those songs can zoom me back to a different time and place.

For the last six years I lived in my parent's home, Dan Fogelberg was my alarm clock. I woke up to his moody melody of To the Morning, every single day.

Yes, the repetition of his tunes didn't wear nearly as well for the rest of my family. My younger brother still refers to him as Dan Eatabooger.

Even still and though my brother, Robin, won't admit it now, the best time the two of us ever had together was the one time we propped the giant stereo speaker beside the front window of our house and blared the Fogelberg tune, Live in the Country, loud enough until the neighbors complained. But before they did, my brother and I danced like crazy children.

The song spoke to both of us. My brother only wanted to live in the country and though, it certainly wasn't my choice of the albums, I was happy that, even if just for a moment, someone else could share in the joy the music brought me.

To where the sky meets the land

And the living is not planned

And the children can laugh just cause they're living

I spent most of last weekend with my family, including many of the cousins who shaped so much of my youth. On Sunday night, when I got home, I learned that my man, Dan, had passed away after a three-year battle with prostate cancer.

The news took my breath away. I spent the weekend with so many cousins - all so alive and vibrant. Somewhere in my convoluted mind, Dan Fogelberg and his music played a role in the relationships I had with the very people who introduced me to him and listened to him with me. That was the me they knew best.

Moments after I learned of Dan's passing, I shooed my family away and sat and listened to the music of my youth. I cried for a good hour. I was happy the songs weren't totally cheesy. I was happy that I still liked the music and understood why it mattered so much to me.

Love when you can

Cry when you have to

Be who you must

That's a part of the plan

Jan Risher is managing editor of The Times of Acadiana. Her column appears on Sundays. E-mail her at jan. risher@timesofacadiana.com.

---

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From www.timesonline.co.uk:
December 18, 2007
Dan Fogelberg
Melodic singer-songwriter
known for his lush, romantic orchestrations

When the parents of two youths who had attempted suicide after listening to Judas Priest filed law suits against the heavy metal band in 1990, the American comedian Denis Leary joked with typical black humour that he was going to sue Dan Fogelberg and James Taylor for turning him “soft”.

Anybody who had heard Fogelberg's music knew exactly what Leary meant. His songs ranged from the soul-searching to the sentimental and in the 1970s and 1980s he came to epitomise the sensitive and concerned American singer-songwriter.

His tender troubadourisms and laidback-but-caring persona made him a patron saint of the movement for men to “get in touch with their feminine side”. It also gave him a huge following, particularly in America, where he enjoyed muchloved hits such as Part of the Plan, Longer and Leader of the Band. He was also a committed supporter of social and environmental causes, themes which came to dominate much of his later work.

Born Daniel Grayling Fogelberg in Peoria, Illinois, in 1951 to musical parents, he learnt the piano and guitar as a boy. Much influenced by the Beatles, he formed his first band, the Clan, at the age of 14 and recorded his first records — two unsuccessful singles — with the Coachmen in 1967, when he was still at school.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign he studied art and theatre but he never wanted to be anything other than a musician and he began performing solo in local coffeehouses. Singers such as James Taylor, Carole King and Joni Mitchell were ushering in the era of the gentle, sensitive singer-songwriter, and Fogelberg slotted readily into this mode.

After being discovered by Irving Azoff, who became his manager, he was persuaded to move to California. Azoff's priority at the time was the launch of an unknown group called the Eagles, but he secured Fogelberg a support slot on a tour with Van Morrison and by 1972 had landed him a recording deal with Columbia. Fogelberg's debut album, Home Free, was recorded in Nashville and mixed his folk-tinged songs with country-rock influences and tasteful string arrangements. When it failed to sell, he was dropped by Columbia, but Azoff, who had by now hit pay-dirt with the Eagles and become a significant force, had little difficulty in signing him to Epic.

The Eagles' association was beneficial in more ways than one, and the band's guitarist, Joe Walsh, was shipped in to produce Fogelberg's second album, Souvenirs, in 1974. Overall, it was probably a less impressive bunch of compositions than on his debut but the production was more contemporary and there was at least one great song in Part of the Plan, which gave him his first hit.

The following year Azoff put him on the bill as the support act on the Eagles' “One of These Nights” tour, which further enhanced his visibility.

His third album, Nether Lands (1977), was a near-perfect manifesto of the long-haired, stone-washed denim soft-rock style, alternately lush and poignant but always melodic, with elements of country and folk and dreamlike orchestrations. Some found his romanticism overblown and lyrics such as: “We have loved on distant beaches where the winter never reaches; there we fell, dying swan” were never going to appeal to the emerging punk hordes, but many long-term Fogelberg fans regard it as his finest album.

On his next release, Twin Sons of Different Mothers (1979), he teamed up with the flautist Tim Weisberg, mixing instrumental tracks with potent ballads such as The Power of Gold. But it was the album Phoenix in 1980 that took him to the peak of commercial success, particularly with the sentimental ballad Longer, which made No 2 in the American charts and has become a wedding standard.

He followed it in 1981 with The Innocent Age, an ambitious double album song cycle that chronicled highly personal events in his own life — the subject of Leader of the Band was his father, Lawrence, who had directed a high-school band; Same Old Lang Syne was about an accidental meeting with an old girlfriend. Both gave him American Top 20 hits.

An early champion of environmental causes, as a founding member in 1979 of Musicians United for Safe Energy, he participated in several high-profile “No Nukes” concerts alongside Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt and in 1982 he left Los Angeles for the solitude of the wilderness when he bought a 600-acre ranch in Colorado.

He continued touring and recording, and his new surroundings were a strong influence on High Country Snows (1985), a collection of traditional and acoustic country material with a strong bluegrass flavour. In 1990 came Wild Places, a collection of songs about the environment and the pressing need to save the planet. River of Souls in 1993 found him breaking new ground by exploring world music themes. Portrait, a four-disc career retrospective released in 1997, served as a reminder of what a versatile, as well as prolific, songwriter he was, and his final album, Full Circle, appeared in 2003.

He is survived by his wife, Jean.

Dan Fogelberg, singer-songwriter, was born on August 13, 1951. He died of cancer on December 16, 2007, aged 56

From www.cdispatch.com:
Dan Fogelberg 1951-2007

The death of singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg Sunday from prostate cancer at the age of 56 is sharply saddening. Some people have Elvis, Cobain or Lennon. It was Dan Fogelberg who nursed me through the wonder years, and the attachment survived the next 35 years.

I first saw the Illinois native live in 1973 at the “cow barn” - the old gym - at Mississippi State University. He was only 21 and left most of us speechless with peerless pure vocals and ethereal melodies.

I saw him last in 2003, at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, with sister Bev and friends. He wasn't 21 any more, and I wasn't an impressionable kid. But I can tell you I was not the only one in that packed house who misted up that evening.

If I could somehow sum up the decades between those two concerts - the sweet people, places and things his songs are so closely associated with - I'd try. I'd maybe include humorous snippets Charlie Rich Jr. shared back in May when he was in Columbus ... glimpses from early days when he, “Danny,” Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Chris Hillman and that circle were all starting out.

I'd tell you of a favorite Native American artist we know who played flute for Dan's wedding to his bride, Jean, in 2002.

I'd be sure you knew of his deep love for the mountains and for the sea, the inspirations for some of his most poignant pieces. Maybe I'd even confess that once upon a time, I sang his lovely ballad, “Longer,” at weddings.

But I could pound away at the computer keyboard all night and not get it right.

Those who define Dan only by hits like “Leader of the Band,” “Same Old Lang Syne,” or “Part of the Plan” sometimes overlook a recording career spanning 31 years and 20 albums, including the “best of's.” The body of work he left as his gift overflows with stunning harmonies, heartache, insight and hope.

I'm so very glad we made that trip to Biloxi four and a half years ago, for that turned out to be Dan Fogelberg's last tour. His cancer was diagnosed in 2004, and we've anxiously tried to follow his health ever since.

All I know is, what with this and that, I've been fortunate over the years to meet my fair share of musical artists. It's my regret that the one I would have liked to say “thank you” to the most was never quite within reach.

Jan Swoope can be e-mailed at MSJANS113@aol.com or reached at 327-7820.

From www.pjstar.com:
'It's a memory that I cherish'
By Phil Luciano

Saturday, December 22, 2007

At Woodruff High School, Jill Anderson had a typical teen romance: on-again/off-again with the same boy over several years.

He'd write a lot of poetry and share his insights with Jill. But as they went to separate colleges, things cooled off. They tried to stay in touch, but he moved out West and she headed to Chicago.

And that might've been the sum of a sweet memory, if not for a chance reunion one Christmas Eve at a Peoria convenience story - one music fans know well.

Jill's old boyfriend was Dan Fogelberg, who memorialized their convenience-store encounter in "Same Old Lang Syne." Since the song's release in 1980, Peoria - as well as the rest of his fans worldwide - has wondered about the "old lover" referenced in the song. Fogelberg never would say, and only a handful of people knew the ex-girlfriend's identify.

Jill, now Jill Greulich of Missouri, feels she can finally share the story.

"It's a memory that I cherish," she says.

She says she had kept publicly mum because Fogelberg was such a private person.

"It wasn't about me. It was about Dan. It was Dan's song," Jill says.

Further, though she and Fogelberg only rarely had communicated over the past quarter-century, she feared that her talking about the song somehow might cause trouble in his marriage. But in the aftermath of his death - he passed away of prostate cancer Sunday at age 56 - she has been sharing her secret with old friends in Peoria.

"I don't want this to overshadow Dan," Jill says. "When I heard the news that he died, I was very sad."

She and Fogelberg were part of the Woodruff Class of '69. They would date for long stretches, break up, then get back together.

Often, they would head to Grandview Drive, take in the vistas and listen to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Fogelberg often would pen poetry, some of which he gave to Jill.

"I still have some of those in a drawer at home," she says.

After high school, Fogelberg went to the University of Illinois in Urbana to study theater, while Jill attended Western Illinois University to major in elementary education. They stayed in touch, even continuing to date for a while. But the romance ended for good when he left the U of I early to head to Colorado and pursue his music career.

After graduating college, Jill relocated to the Chicago area, where she worked as an elementary teacher and flight attendant. Not long after college, she married a man from that area, and her connection to Fogelberg faded to memories.

But on Christmas Eve 1975, Jill and her husband visited her parents, who still lived in the Woodruff district. Also at the home were some friends of the family.

During the gathering, Jill's mother asked her to run out for egg nog. Jill drove off in search of an open store.

Meanwhile, a few blocks away, a similar scenario was playing out at the Fogelberg home, where Dan Fogelberg was visiting family for the holiday. They needed whipping cream to make Irish coffees, so Fogelberg volunteered to go search for some.

By happenstance and because almost every other business on the East Bluff was closed, Jill and Fogelberg both ended up at the Convenient store at the top of Abington Hill, at Frye Avenue and Prospect Road. She got there first, and Fogelberg noticed her shortly after arriving.

They bought a six pack, sipped beer in her car and gabbed away. "We had some laughs," Jill recalls.

As two hours flew by, Jill's family and friends grew worried.

"We were like, 'Where is she?'" says a laughing Eileen Couri of Peoria, one of the friends at the gathering that night.

When Jill returned, she simply explained that she had run into Fogelberg, and the two had caught up with each other. No big deal.

Five years later, Jill was driving to work in Chicago. She had on the radio, and a new song popped on. First, she thought, "That sounds like Dan."

Then she listened to the lyrics, about two former lovers who have a chance encounter at a store. "Oh my gosh!" she told herself. "That really happened!"

They would not discuss "Same Old Lang Syne" until years later, during a conversation backstage at a Fogelberg concert. Two parts of the song are inaccurate. Blame Fogelberg's poetic license.

Jill does not have blue eyes, but green. In fact, when they dated, Fogelberg called her "Sweet Jilleen Green Eyes" - a combination of her full first name and his twisting of a song title by Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Fogelberg explained that he took the easy way out for "Same Old Lang Syne." As he told Jill, "Blue is easier to rhyme than green."

Also, her then-husband was not an architect but a physical-education teacher. Jill doubts Fogelberg knew what her husband did for a living. She thinks Fogelberg probably just thought "architect" sounded right for the song.

But those are minor details. The heart of the song hangs on its most chilling line: "She would have liked to say she loved the man, but she didn't like to lie."

Still, even decades later, she declines to discuss that line of the tune.

"I think that's probably too personal," she says.

But the song had no impact on her marriage. By the time of its release, she had divorced.

"Somebody said he waited until I was divorced to release the song, but I don't know if that's true," Jill says.

In 1980, the same year of the song's release, Jill married Chicago-area native Jim Greulich. Eventually, they would move to a St. Louis suburb, where she now teaches second grade.

A few of her school associates have known her secret about the song. So has Fogelberg's mother, who still lives in Peoria and exchanges Christmas cards with Jill.

This week, Jill sent e-mails to a few old pals in Peoria, lifting the lid off the "Same Old Lang Syne" mystery. One of the e-mail recipients was Wendy Blickenstaff, a Woodruff classmate of Jill's and Fogelberg's.

"I had a big suspicion" it was Jill, says Blickenstaff, now the head counselor at the school. "I'm happy for her. It's really cool. ... That's a memory that she treasures."

Jill agrees. Yet her memories of Dan Fogelberg stretch far beyond "Same Old Lang Syne."

"I'll always have a place in my heart for Dan," she says. " ... Dan would be a very special person to me, even without the song."

PHIL LUCIANO is a columnist with the Journal Star. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, 686-3155 or (800) 225-5757, Ext. 3155.

From Niles Daily Star:

Returning to a time of hope and expectation

By Jan Griffey

Friday, December 21, 2007 7:13 PM EST

I'm not a fan of repeat columns, but Dan Fogelberg's passing this week brought this one to mind. I wrote and published this column in July 2002, after seeing him in concert at The Morris while on his 30th anniversary tour. I was 40 at the time. I'll be 46 in early January.

This column says all I was feeling this week when I learned about his death. Here's hoping it will rekindle in you some of the person you were when you first learned to love his work.

"Just for a moment,
I was back at school
and felt that old, familiar pain.

And as I turned
to make my way back home,
the snow turned into rain."

- Dan Fogelberg,
"Another Old Lang Syne"

I was so surprised to see her - never thought I would again.

I recognized her immediately, like it had only been yesterday when last I looked in a mirror and saw her staring back at me.

There she was - a freshman in high school, bright-eyed, a dreamer, full of hope and expectations, eager and happy.

Here I am, 26 years later at 40 - perimenopausal, layered, jaded, fading.

OK, maybe not as bad as all that, but certainly lacking her perspective.

It was wonderful, even if it lasted only a couple of hours, to be that young, fresh, full-of-life-and-all-its-potential girl again.

I have his music to thank for it.

I saw Dan Fogelberg in concert the first time as a freshman in high school. That young girl thought of life as a wonderful, exciting journey just waiting for her to be of an age to take it. She was bursting with enthusiasm, could hardly wait to begin that magnificent trip.

Days were filled with friends and school and daydreams of the future and what my life would be like, all set to music - Fogelberg and The Eagles, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, John Denver, and, of course, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

And, Heart, John Cougar, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan.

But Fogelberg was the man who made the music which set young girls to dreaming of the mysteries that await them. At least he did that for me.

Music was such an important part of my life when I was young and bright-eyed and hopeful.

Why did that change? When did that change?

Today, I'm lucky to catch a full song on my five-minute drive to work.

I saw Fogelberg in concert a second time as a junior in college. Still young, full of hope, bright-eyed. Not as innocent, reality nipping at my heels.

I listened to him play his music again Wednesday night in South Bend, when he swept away almost three decades and let me feel like that young girl again.

Fogelberg was at the Morris performing his 30th anniversary tour.

How strange it felt to be at a concert again. How strange it was to be surrounded by an auditorium of mostly 40-ish people and realize - that's me.

He sat down at the piano, played less than a full measure of "To the Morning," and the entire place at once let out a gasp. It came flooding back, all of it, to all of us.

I'll bet I haven't had my "Home Free" cassette in a player in more than 20 years, but it took only a note or two to bring it back, lyrics and all.

The passage of time can be cruel. A wise Niles woman, Eleanor Drew, would never tell her age. I asked her why that was. She said age is just a number of years which has nothing to do with who a person is. The tragic thing about aging, she said, is your body wrinkles and sags and you are filled with aches and pains, while inside you are the same person you were at 19.

So true.

Wednesday night, after that bittersweet experience, I vowed to myself not to lose that girl again, at least not so completely. I want to keep a little of her with me, like her enthusiasm and hope.

And I'm going to find a place in my life again for music.

And daydreams.

If through the years you've lost your way, too, I hope you make time this weekend to turn off your TV. Shoo the kids out of the house. Maybe call some friends. Grab that stack of old LPs and turn on the turntable.

Even if it's for only a couple of hours, I hope you get to visit with that part of yourself you thought lost forever, the part that was bright-eyed and full of life.

And, I hope you convince them to stick around for awhile.

Jan Griffey is publisher of the Niles Daily Star. Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication. Comments? jan.griffey@leaderpub.com

From independentmail.com:
Dan Fogelberg, musician and inspiration, will be missed.

By Jeanne Malmgren

Friday, December 21, 2007

Last Sunday, before dawn, from an island house off the coast of Maine, a poet spirit left this earth.

His name was Dan Fogelberg and he was 56 years old. His death was not unexpected.

Wealth and fame, platinum records and sold-out concerts, a musician’s ear for beauty — none of it could protect him from the prostate cancer that stalked him the last three years of his life.

If I sound overly dramatic, a little too worked up over the untimely death of a 1970s folk/rock icon, so be it. My heart is bruised.

Dan’s songs, full of angst and the unearthly ache of new love, got me through my twenties, as they did for many of the baby boomers now swarming blogs and message boards with heartfelt tributes.

“When I was in college in the ’70s, I listened to Dan almost every day, sitting on the floor of my apartment,” writes one.

“His music has reverberated throughout my life,” says another.

He was the son of a high school band teacher and a classically-trained pianist who sang opera. As a teenager, he sat on a river bluff, playing Gordon Lightfoot songs on the guitar. He listed Mozart and the Beatles as some of his musical influences.

Once he hit the big time, he collaborated with many of the best-known names of 1970s and ’80s rock. Joe Walsh of the Eagles produced Dan’s second album, with Graham Nash providing background vocals on the breakout hit, “Part of the Plan.” Mr. Walsh and Mr. Nash eulogized Dan a few nights ago on CNN.

Despite his fame (or maybe because of it), Dan was reclusive. He lived on a ranch in the Colorado Rockies, where he had a home recording studio. He was a painter and a poet. He used his music to plug environmental causes, long before that was Hollywood haute.

Except for a handful of hits (one of them the holiday staple, “Same Old Lang Syne”), his songs weren’t the kind that got heavy radio play. “Too soft,” said his critics. Too introspective. Not commercial enough. Which is exactly why his fans love him.

That, and the poetry of his lyrics.

“Off in the nether lands I heard a sound like the beating of heavenly wings,” he sings on Nether Lands, his 1977 album that is my favorite.

One of his instrumental pieces, a minute and 19 seconds of shimmering strings that sounds like sunlight on new-fallen snow, was going to be my wedding processional. It never happened. But to this day, I can barely stand to listen to it, for the raw place it touches inside me.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that he was gorgeous, with a mane of long dark hair, strong hands and magnetic eyes that blazed from album covers. Even so, I don’t think I was in love with him — more than a bit, anyway. It was his music that seeped into my soul like a coldwater spring from the depths of the earth.

I realize now that many of my values — a reverence for nature, a preference for solitude, a deep attraction to mountains — came to me through Dan Fogelberg’s music.

For that, I’m grateful.

And sad that he’s gone.

Taken flight to the Nether Lands.