Think of songs you may know: Where Have All the Flowers Gone, We Shall Overcome, The Coming of the Roads, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos. The first frames questions about war and sacrifice in terms both gentle and direct, the second is a gospel song adapted to civil rights and other causes, the third is a story about greed displacing people and landscape, the fourth a ballad which frames questions about identity and compassion in a news story about migrant farm workers. 

Connection with place, with landscape, with well-loved and familiar things often comes with connection with each other. That's an idea we've explored from several perspectives in this series. In shifting times, physical place, whether you are present geographically or you are visiting through imagination or through memory, can offer a sense of comfort, of connection, of hope.

Light to dark and back again, times and news and stories shift. Music for Shifting Times is what we decided to call this series about music. It proved more prescient than we could have known back when we began.

What lights the path, where and how to draw strength when darkness closes in and challenges rise is one of the ideas that is a constant in what I share with you.