Fire and Ice –  this winter solstice time of year, this is everything. Everything in the world makes me want to listen to my sisters now. Nina Simone so real and shockingly improvising, speaking to right now December 2014 –  and the calmest and the fieriest performer alive – at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1976 in “I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free.” Joan Armatrading telling it so cooly for herself, her sacrosanct love, but for us all: “Peace in Mind” and “Cool Blue Stole my Heart.” Emily Dickinson saying a hundred years before:  “We – Tell a Hurt – to cool it – ” with her syncopated jazz timing in “Black Berry – Wears a Thorn in his side -“.  Clara Ward and the Ward Gospel Singers, spanning the gap, every gap – leaping right over it, telling us how, how to get over – how to use your light and how to keep on your traveling shoes.  I haven’t even gotten to the beautiful fire and ice of those sisters right in my own time, my own family. Lead on, sisters – I will listen, follow, very carefully! I give tearful, frozen, fiery thanks that these women and these messages exist across space and time.