You're wise, Ron:

This really isn't a good forum for "unloading." Unless you have a
good shipment to unload. That's always welcome. I talk very differently to friends in e-mails, less so in PMS, because it's not clear to me who can read my PMs in here. Besides, with e-mails, I can always delete anything after I've written, or read it. That's a lot better than in the old days when I'd have to quickly eat a letter, if someone was coming in the room.. :-)

You know, I was just thinking this morning, how good my life is. Not that I can take any credit for it. "Exuberant" isn't an every-day word in my vocabulary, but it's the best word I can think of about these days. And that's said, realizing that the next phone call I receive could be my sister telling me that my Mother has died.

I'm preparing for a workshop that I'm doing with Barbara Shaw (of Mudcat) and her husband Frank. It's titled Songs In The Attic. There's something odd about being a performing folk singer for so many years. A notch up from being a performing bear. Most of us have a great love for traditional music. I surely do. And yet, because we're performing there is always the subtle pressure to do new material. If all folk singers in the past were performing constantly, they would never have preserved all the wonderful songs that were sung a thousand times. That's why I'm doing the Songs In The Attic workshop... asking Barbara and Frank to dust off some of those old, wonderful songs that we still love but never sing. One that I'm dusting off is one of my own that I wrote in my callow youth. What is "callow?" Isn't that they make candles out of? The chorus applies to my life, these days.

"For the good old days are still to come
Though the hard times are not over
For we must wear that thorny crown
To walk the fields of clover"

Funny thing is, sometimes the good old days come disguised as hard times. It's only later that we realize that the times were so hard because we were being ripped out of patterns in our lives that were denying who we are, and were meant to be. Change hurts.

These days, I'm finally completing a new CD of Songs From The Attic, and will be putting Handful Of Songs out on CD for the first time.
And through the encouragement of a friend, I am finally doing some focused writing. The writing is coming together because my mind is very much on my Mother and her life. That's leading me to write about her life, interweaving letters, songs, photos and reflections I've collected over the years. It's the pain of anticipating the loss of my Mother that is producing something very positive.

Why, I am so exuberant that I even crawled under my computer knee space and cleaned the floor! I was so happy! I didn't find anything dead, back there.

Life is good, but rarely easy.

Jerry