| I don't know if I mentioned this ever in my blog, but in 1999 I managed to be ignorant enough to somehow, contact Christine Lavin's then booking agent, Jim Fleming of Fleming /Tamulevich Agency, [she now is with Ann Patrice Carrigan of Poetry in Motion] and booked her for a mere pittance, to come to Whidbey and perform (the venue was the south end High School -- it's quite modern and lovely) while doing a simulcast of testingtesting, the virtual house concert that came to *your* living room from "ours" [read: Gordy's] via the magic of the net. Chris was amazing, and the show fantastic, and the web-audience as enthusiastic in the on-line guestbook as were the folx who showed up that Tuesday night, if I remember correctly. From there, Christine embraced me by letting me take over her web site when Tom M. chose to stop. I rebuilt the whole thing from scratch, and it was HUGE, with all those links and pieces and bits of Lavin Trivia and gems that just didn't seem ok to eliminate. So I tried to restructure it, make it more logical and navigable (is that a word? meaning people could navigate more easily through the plethora of information and gems). I changed the entire look of it too. Christine gave me complete freedom with it from the banner to the link colors to the fonts. It took me a very long time to convert every page and get it up and running, about two months of long hard hours, but I did it. It was a labor of love for me. The transition was completely revamped, bug-free, christinelavin.com and on the new host machine in 2000, just in time for the new millenium. I loved being a part of her world, to field questions, to know what was happening in Chris' world, to meet other musicians, to be able to create and go the extra mile to make a simple post be more colorful with appropriate links and photos. It was a hoot. Unfortunately, about the time Gordy moved in, I had to hand it off to him to work on. I was overwhelmed by life and health issues. The stomach thing being one of the major factors. I still miss not being "in the know", and Gordy doesn't "share" when Chris sends a post, so unless I stop at her site, I have no clue as to what is happening now. I do still field questions and email, since Gordy did not put his e-addy on the site, so I get some connection, but mostly I am out of the loop. Soon, Christine will be doing yet another site that will supercede this one, so I will have absolutely no contact any more. BUT, this is not the case. Today, Christine sent the most amazing note to us. Gordy is to put it on the site, so you can check it out there, but I can't resist, I have to post it here. She's my gal, my Christine, and this is such a fantastic story about how deeply she impacts those she comes in contact with, by LP or concert, or when she hosts a show and promotes other artists. I am using my own words to paraphrase what happened, but will use the actual quote from the book: Christine started knitting before her shows in late 2002 [I was till her webmaster and I remember it well, and how hard I tried to create a realistic printable pass (FYI only Chris' signature is real) for folx to be admitted pre-show]. She invited her fans to stop on by before the show and knit with her. I am thrilled to say that I am a recipient of two very different pieces of hers, one full of blues and greens [Gordy got one too that Christmas], the other, the palest of pinks and whites and lavenders, with these marvelous sequins and sparkles scattered throughout. My "sister-in-law", Madelaine also was a recipient of a scarf hand knit by Christine when she and Gordy went to DC then NYC [over my birthday - ahem] and during dinner with Chris, her honey and Dave Van Ronk's wife, Andrea, she gave Madelaine the scarf off her neck. They truly are art. But, I digress. So, as Christine says, in September '04, the presidential election year, she was working on a scarf that she was going to give to Elisabeth Edwards, John Kerry's running mate's wife. She thought it would be a super congratulatory gift for Elisabeth...but, alas, history goofed and they didn't win. Shortly after, it came out in the news, that Elisabeth Edwards had been diagnosed with breast cancer prior to the election. I remember that she still campaigned and it was one of the few secrets that were kept in the politial arena. This news changed the soul of the scarf being made. Christine started to have the fans help knit rows on it, while praying for her recovery and good health while they stitched. Later, when it was finished, she sent it to her, and there were some stories attached with that, but you can read it on Christine's site, but ultimately it reached her. Well, Christine is reading Elisabeth's book, "Saving Graces", and on pages 333-334 she found the following:
p. 333 - 334 of SAVING GRACES: Finding solace and strength from friends and strangers
by Elizabeth Edwards
©2006 Broadway Books, NYC"As the treatment drew to a close, I was also closing our life in Washington, packing and labeling and throwing out. I packed away some of the gifts I had gotten from strangers and from friends, from supporters of John and supporters of other candidates, from survivors and from the families of those who had lost their fight. One present -- one I wear today -- encapsulates all of these people, all that I believe about the innumerable, amorphous, wonderful "us." It came from Christine Lavin, a singer-songwriter to whom we had listened for years. I heard her once on NPR -- it may have been 1992 -- and I did what we all do, I went to the CD store and I said I think they said Christine Lavin. Lavin, could that be right? Can you help me find something by her? From that point she became one of the constants in our family. She is funny and poignant, and she wasn't a stranger to finding grace in an unpretentious gift. I remember reading a liner note somewhere about the pleasure she took when Andrea Marcovicci -- whose voice I also love -- sang one of her songs. I already liked a woman who would take pleasure in this. In the package from Christine Lavin was a scarf. I've gotten lots of beautiful scarves, and this is certainly a beautiful scarf, but more wonderful is the story of this scarf. Christine had taken it with her on tour, and she had asked women in her audiences to work on it, to knit a little. John and I had seen her sing at the Cat's Cradle in Corrboro once, and as I read her letter, I imagined that scarf making its way through an audience like that Carrboro audience. This scarf was everything I believed in. It was a gesture -- not a difficult gesture, but a thoughtful one. It was the counterpart to including the bag boy in the conversation. It was remembering to say hello to the child, not just the adult. It was thanking the referee after the game. It was pulling people in because you believe in the grace a community gives each of us. Anyone who thought to do it, to reach out to others and bring them into this gesture, could have done it, but too few know the blessings a simple gesture actually brings. This scarf is Christine's gift at the same time that it is the gift of all those women whose names I'll never know. And it is, also at the same time, something in which I can literally wrap myself and something in which I can figuratively wrap myself, this huge community of people -- spread out among the towns she toured -- people who were pulling for me and who believed in the strength of that tiny knot they tied."
[Wow!]
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