More interesting stuff arrived today in email.

Rob Kall posted this crude little video (below) in OpEdNews, of Joan Baez recently singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” It was taken with an iPhone.

She’s 70 now and her voice is a lot more tentative than I remember it in the seventies when we lived on the Peninsula in the Bay Area and our son went to the same day care center as her son, Gabe (Thacher Day Care at the Unitarian Church on East Charleston Street in Palo Alto). They were fast friends, and we “baby-sat” Gabe on one occasion.

Joan was always the fierce peace activist, and some people found her righteous demeanor intimidating.

Our son — then probably about age five — told us one evening, after we picked him up from a day full of fantasy games with Gabe and fun at Thacher, that he and Gabe were going to be cops when they grew up and “shoot each other.”

I thought this was such a hoot — considering Joan’s dedicated peace work — that I couldn’t wait to tell her this anecdote, which I finally did a day or so later as we were dropping our kids off at Thacher.

She didn’t laugh.

Funny how music can bring back such a  flood of memories.

Here she is — a couple of nights ago — singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a song — like so much of the sixties idealism — that now makes me wonder if we ever really did believe these dreams.