I was looking at an obituary notice for legendary golfer Byron Nelson (someone I want to spend some time with in heaven), when I noticed this item in the Milestones section of last week's Time Magazine:

DIED. Etta Baker, 93, influential blues matriarch whose music helped spark the folk revival of the 1960s; in Fairfax, Va. Baker worked for nearly three decades at a textile mill before taking up the guitar full-time at age 60. Her raw, soulful mix of bluegrass and Delta blues--starting with blistering renditions of Railroad Bill and One-Dime Blues on a 1956 compilation album of southern Appalachian musicians--won her a cult following and, in 1991, a folk-heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

You might infer from that text that Mrs. Baker didn't play guitar at all until she was 60, but that would be incorrect. She came from a musical family and started playing as when she was 3 or 4 years old, but she didn't play for the general public until 1956, when she made her initial recording at the age of 43. She wouldn't release another album for 35 years.

Instead, she voluntarily went back to a domestic life, working in a textile mill and raising nine children. Ultimately, as the Time snippet indicated, she made music her full time occupation, and the world was richer for it. She didn't do a lot of recording, however, releasing One Dime Blues in 1991 and Railroad Bill in 1999. Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (I think Taj was mostly listening to Etta) was released in 2004 when Mrs. Baker was 91. And she was, according to All Music Guide, working on yet another album, to be released this year.

I don't know about you, but all that kind of inspires me and gives me a little perspective.

And it adds one more person I want to spend some time with in heaven.