Joan Baez Once Said…

Joan Chandos Baez was born on January 9, 1941. Joan is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and activist.

I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it? – Joan Baez

I have often said in talking to people, “…in my humble opinion.” but why I suppose I say it after something and if I gauge how someone is reacting to the thing I said I’ll add well, in my humble opinion and maybe that’s a flaw I have is I don’t just give my opinion, it is like I’m asking their permission for me to have an opinion. An interesting way to think about it and perhaps look at next time I find myself wanting to say humble. I think for the most part I am humble about things but at the same time I have a lot that I want to say and maybe I shouldn’t be so forgiving about it.

Nasty Man – Joan Baez

I thought this was fitting to put this in here. As many constant readers know I’m not a Trump supporter, nor did I vote for him in 2016 or 2020. I’ve been highly embarrassed for our country because of his ‘leadership’. I don’t know how many times in his time in office I shook my head at what he tweeted or what he said whenever. Then acting like a spoiled two-year old after he lost the election and wouldn’t concede and I definitely blame him for the ‘gathering’ at the White House we recently had which killed several people. This is the man many elected and I am very sad for those who think he was anything but bad. He didn’t make America great again. He didn’t even make it good. There have only been a couple things that have came out of his mouth that I’ve agreed with, one being that when he was arguing about signing the Hero’s Act recently that we shouldn’t be sending money to other countries or including it in a bill that was supposed to be helping the United States unemployed. Why can’t the government just keep it simple? Stick to one thing at a time, don’t put 5k pages of bullshit that no one will ever read. Why did a mention of abortion have to be in it? And about sending money to countries when we need to take care of our own. The world is fighting this pandemic and I don’t think China, England, Canada or any other is going to be trying to support us. First things first, help our own and then work on other things. Have priorities. And the 2k would’ve been nice, why even argue for less? Other countries have had way more and you all had to argue about what our citizens would get.


This is something that I have repeated in the past year. You control your life, not when you’re going to die or how… I suppose we could in a way choose both but it’s not usually what one wants to do. Yes you could choose to end your life and that would sort of control how and when but most of us do not want to do that. I’m not saying there isn’t people out there that have had a plan or haven’t thought of it. I’ve thought of it and I have had a plan and even tried. I survived and I think I did because of the way that I did it and how I did. I’m not going to get into that, I do not condone suicide but I do understand a bit about it. I understand the desperation behind it and wanting to stop the pain and I get how someone with cancer and other long term situations would choose to go out in their own way. Look at September 11th, there were people jumping out of office windows to their deaths, did that mean that they wanted to die? Did they think that it was possible to survive? Or were they so frightened and trapped in a burning building that they had a feeling was going to collapse and that was their only option other than get crushed to death, burned alive or something else. I get that, I fully understand and still the images of people leaping to their deaths is haunting.

As we know forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses. – Joan Baez

It is something that I will have to probably continue to ponder after I’ve finished writing this piece. Is forgiving yourself harder than forgiving someone else? I suppose it depends on what was done or what needs to be forgiven. As someone who has asked for forgiveness of others I know that isn’t easy to do but it can be humbling. It is a way that you allow yourself to let go of emotional suffering no matter the outcome if done properly. One has to know when to walk away from a situation. To ask someone to forgive you and have it be rejected because the other person isn’t capable of forgiving you or doesn’t want to likely because they wouldn’t be able to actually let it go. I know it is possible in life to do this with someone because I have and it turned out favorably. But it doesn’t always but you should try and if they’re not receptive the next step is to allow yourself to let them go. That’s all you can do.

Blowin’ in the Wind – Joan Baez

Joan and Bob Dylan had a relationship for awhile and even toured together. Here’s Joan covering Bob’s song Blowin’ in the Wind that she performed during the COVID-19 pandemic.