The consolidation of the music business has made it difficult to encourage styles like the blues, all of which deserve to be celebrated as part of our most treasured national resources.

It's so thrilling. And not just the music. The Internet is changing the future of fund-raising. I'm thrilled by the potential.

In 1967 I entered Harvard as a freshman, confident - in the way that only 17-year-olds are - that I could change the world. My major was African Studies, and my plan was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere was creating a government based on democracy and socialism.

I'm glad people think I'm a badass. I'm a rock and roller, and I'm an R&B and a blueswoman. I don't do fairy music, although I love Celtic music and sensitive music. There's a balance between ballads and kick-ass songs.

It's incredible to see labor unions and environmentalists getting together to stop the corporate mentality that destroys both jobs and the environment.

Since I was 20 years old, I've been a kind of corporation. I'd wake up in the morning and my job was to be 'Bonnie Raitt' in capital letters.

Between the redwoods, growing up and enjoying nature, camping on almost every vacation, and getting to go to summer camp in the Adirondacks, it was really very apparent to me that we had to preserve what we had on the earth.