Hey, welcome to the website today.

Beautiful Spring weather here in New York City. I've got a lot to take care of before we get out to Central Park to begin another summer of sharing music and laughs. I'm bringing a bunch of new songs out there this year... some original and some new cover tunes. And, we'll be doing video-Podcasts from out there that you will all be a part of. (More about that later.)

Today, my buddy Ainsley and I will be finishing up the construction on the sound booth we're building so that we can do most of our recording right here in my apartment in Manhattan. This is where I'll do the audio-Podcasts as well.

Just to catch you up... if you're new here, take a look around. Browse the "Archives". There are FREE songs to download, original political cartoons, all kindsa stuff. If you feel like emailing me, there is a "Contact" button right over there. (I can't answer all the email I get. But, I promise I read every single one.... eventually.) And, there is a "Forum" (message board) over there that the webmaster (James Marino) put here for you guys to register in and talk about whatever you want.

Podcasting! Coming soon!

Maybe as soon as next week!

It's gonna be great! And, its gonna be fun! I'm gonna be able to promote other people's shows that I think are worth a listen. And, I'm gonna introduce all of you to new artists, and not-so-new-artists that you might not get to hear anywhere else. I'll do interviews with some of the finest musicians and songwriters in New York... and authors and friends. Gonna be cool. (It's also gonna cut down on my typing, which will be a very welcome change!) Sometimes, we'll even do "unplugged" jams and songwriting sessions... and once a week, we'll shoot video in Central Park or in Hudson River Park that you can all be a part of. Will be very cool.

Many of the Podcasts will feature an "in-the-news" segment... which I will dedicate to basic common sense and Reason. (If you're not interested in those things, you probably won't dig the show.)

Stories like this.

Just a thought.

While it's good, good, wonderful news about the release of Jill Carroll, (the reporter who was freed in Iraq today)

...there is more to the story. And behind that, there is a thought that is often on my mind. I wrote a song, the title track from my most revent album, called "Common Ground". I think the first verse and the last lines of the song might hold hands with this thought.

We are all about to be inundated and assaulted with stories in the American mainstream "news" media about Jill Carroll. We will likely hear from her parents, her friends, her co-workers, the guy who took her to her prom. CNN and MSNBC and the networks will scramble for every tidbit of information they can find on this young woman. And of course, FOX will try to spin it into some wonderful, pseudo-patriotic news about the very real nightmare that is the Iraq war.

It is a wonderful thing that Jill was released unharmed and is coming home.

But, who's telling Allan's story? Allan, who dreamed of being a music producer.

Just a thought. Just a question.

Um... Allan? Allan who?

Allan Enwiya was working with Jill as her translator. He was with her during the attack in which she was abducted. But, he was shot and killed. He wasn't released. He is dead. He was a human being. He was a good man. But, he wasn't an American...

My nagging thought is always, "Why is an American life worth so much more to people like George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld than an Iraqi life?"

(Maybe to many of us on one level or another.)

I mean, we look with indescribable sadness as the number of Americans killed in this misguided war climbs higher every day. (2,327 so far. 30 more Americans this month.) Yet, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis being killed and horribly wounded each day goes by with hardly a glance or a mention on the news. We become numb to the numbers.

Here's a little bit about one man.

A little bit about Allan Enwiya... who loved music, and dreamed of being a music producer one day.

Allan was one of 82 journalists and media assistants who have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war, according to the international organization "Reporters Without Borders". Of that number, 25 were media assistants killed, like Allan, while doing their job.

Often their stories, even their names, are not told.

Allan had kept a music store open in Baghdad until last summer, when conditions made selling CDs too dangerous. Still needing to support his young and growing family, Allan Enwiya turned full time to interpreting for American reporters, a job that he had dabbled in since 2004. And it was while doing that job with Jill on a Saturday morning in January that Allan was shot and killed.

Omar Fekeiki, an Iraqi who had known Allan since the late 1990s, was a college student when he first walked into Allan's music shop. "Allan needed to provide for his family, and what he was good at was the English language," he says.

Now a special correspondent in Baghdad for The Washington Post, Mr. Fekeiki says, "For some of us, it's the chance to be a journalist that brings us in, but Allan wasn't like that. Like the doctors and pharmacists and engineers you see doing this job," he adds, "he used his skill to have a job and make a living."

People say Allan dressed most often in jeans and a T-shirt that looked more Western than Iraqi. And while he was interested enough in the deteriorating politics and the fragmenting of Iraq, he saved his passion for his young family and music. One man that knew him well said, "For Allan, the job (interpreting for the Americans) as interesting as it was to him, was a means to an end. He was not a daredevil, not even really a newshound. Which somehow makes his death all the more tragic."

Allan closed his music shop in Baghdad after receiving death threats and having an unexploded hand grenade tossed through the front window. But he kept the dream of being a music producer.

Today Allan's wife and children, and Allan's father and wife have left the country. They await word on their request for visas to go to the United States. Their lives have changed drastically, but they watch home videos Allan had made, even the ones he isn't in, just to hear his voice.

"I won't let his children forget him," Allan's father says.

Y'know?

I make music. Allan Enwiya loved music.

The world is getting smaller. That is a good thing.

One of these days, I hope we start to get it right.

Hah?

But, it's gotta start with "paying attention". It's gotta start with the Truth.

Just a thought.

Thanks for stopping by today.