This blog started a few years back when I was feeling rather depressed. In what had become an unhappy relationship, I started blogging again as a way to keep me at my art, anything to keep me writing instead of turning inward again– to those times when friends and relatives would email and leave messages, “Are you dead?” I chose to structure the blog around the three major things in my life that brought me joy, because joy was what I needed to remember. Those things were of course, my incredible children, my poetry, and nature, particularly of the flight feathered sort.

I don’t post much of my own poetry here or on Youtube right now, but that’s mainly because I am working on the old fashioned printed form, submitting for publication. But eventually more and more of them will find audio visual release here as well. I also don’t post enough music, though I do love it, and my beloved is a musician whose videos you might have seen here before. Yes, this blog needs a tad more of that, as well as a tad more of my own journal-ly stuff.

I have been back to school, pursuing my art and my desire to teach (in one form or another), and while I have felt more than a bit discouraged in the workplace lately, a new-found Youtube friend has reminded me that I really do love and care about hospitality. I think I am currently burnt out on it though. The combination of spoiled Americans who sit at the table and create their own menu and are too easily apt to be rude or ungrateful, and the experience of caring more about someone else’s dream than they do… well, frankly I need to get away from this for a while, and concentrate on having more time to feed and please the people I love around my own table. Perhaps later in life I could come back to it as a profession, on my own terms, in a better economy. But for now, dear friends, why don’t you sit with me, pour a glass of wine for yourself from that bottle there, and then come to the kitchen. We’ll cut onions and cry and laugh, and make a rich sauce out of this life.

This week I’ll post some favorite musicians who inspire me in hopes that they inspire and encourage you too. First off, because I was just listening to this song for the tenth time today, here is that friend from Youtube, Mary Cigarettes performing his “Bootcamp for the Broken Hearted.” Coming up later today, a performance by my favorite musician of all, my own beloved Mr. BPK. Stay tuned (and yes, I’m a poet, so I intend that phrase to be understood on multiple levels)! 🙂