Hi everyone! Oh yes! I have a theme up my sleeve for this Sunday's Mulberry Tree, September 23rd. I hope you will tune in to hear something truly beautiful...every single song on the Mulberry Tree was written with the subject of beauty. As a matter of fact, every song has the word "beautiful" in the title. I got this bee in my bonnet to do this show at this particular time because I got rather tired of tuning in to catch up on world news and ended up feeling so drained of energy afterwards. So my way of turning that around was to focus on music and lyrics that speak to us of beauty. I crawled inside the minds of songwriters to see what they found beautiful. For some it was just simple things. For others it was boys, girls, valleys, dreamers, dawn, the world, a road, a mess, a tree, people, and a country called America. It will be a truly special show, so please join me in my one-hour attempt to shift our thoughts away from any negativity and back to a beautiful state of mind. Here are the songwriters and performers who will help us feel real good: Slaid Cleaves Gordon Lightfoot John Lennon Don Conoscenti Wailin’ Jennys Suzy Bogguss Eliza Gilkyson Kate Taylor (James’ sister) Ellis Paul William Fitzsimmons Ferron Rain Perry Melanie El McMeen I also thought I'd call attention to the fact that this Saturday marks the first day of Autumn! We were all challenged with this past summer's heat and drought, so maybe we can all find a small way, or a big way, to celebrate the change of seasons. FCC regulations prohibit the posting of full playlists prior to airtime, so that is why I am only able to let you know the names of featured musicians in advance. I will try to do for you every week. You can view Mulberry Tree playlists in their entirety after the show is over by going to this link: http://ksmu.org/show/mulberry-tree The Mulberry Tree airs on Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. CST on KSMU 91.1 FM, Springfield Missouri's NPR affiliate station, and also at the following locations: Branson - 90.5, West Plains - 90.3, Mountain Grove - 88.7, Joplin - 98.9 and Neosho - 103.7. AND we also stream live at www.ksmu.org. Meet you on the airwaves! Emily