Sad

From the San Fran Chronicle: Linda Ronstadt rolled her fingers into a fist, forming a pinhole at the center. She held this improvised telescope up to her eye and trained it on a seascape by Eugène Isabey, on view in the "Impressionists on the Water" exhibition at the Legion of Honor.
"I love to do this," she said, squinting into the painting's deep space. "Look at the way the water glitters. And those men on the boat. There's a world in there. This makes it really sharp and bright."
Ronstadt, who lives near the Legion in San Francisco's Richmond District, has been doing a lot of close looking recently, and not only at this Impressionism show she loves so much she's been back to see it seven times. In a new book to be published Tuesday, Ronstadt revisits, with a mixture of fine-grained insight and personal modesty, one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging singing careers in the last century of American popular music.
As her career retrospective arrives in bookstores, Ronstadt at 67 is peering forward into a life dramatically altered by the diagnosis of Parkinson's disease she received nine months ago and made public in an interview last month. "I can't sing a note," she said.
The announcement, though not a surprise to friends, stunned the large and devoted legion of fans for whom "Different Drum," "Heart Like a Wheel," "Blue Bayou," "When Will I Be Loved," "Cry Like a Rainstorm" and numerous other hits cut a treasured groove in their memories. The singer's lustrous and brilliantly controlled tone, which married vibrant power and open-hearted vulnerability, remains, for many, a signal voice of their generation.
 http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Linda-Ronstadt-now-voiceless-singer-has-been-4815335.php
I never liked Ronstadt's politics but enjoyed much of her music.  Too bad she is now silenced.