it’s been a while since I’ve been in touch.  No newsletters or posts lately because Scott and I have embarked on a new journey and have been completely focused.  When he proposed to me in 1983, my acceptance included an agreement to move to the east coast for just a short time.  One year – long enough for him to finish his graduate degree and for us to have our wedding close to family.  Somehow, and it’s a long story, one year turned into forty.  We were blessed with great career opportunities and so we stayed and built a beautiful home in the mountains of Massachusetts.

As we look toward retirement, we are using Scott’s last sabbatical to fix up a small rental/retirement home that we were lucky to get eight years ago before the market went nuts.  We’ve been in Arizona now for a month, painting, plumbing, and fixing everything in sight.  Cue Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken.” We look forward to taking a break soon and hiking up in the red rocks and canyons.  I’m excited to have booked a few shows here and to connecting with a new and wonderful musical community.

Somewhere along the way, my body decided to rebel and I woke up with a bad case of sciatica.  So far from home and so much pain, I’ve had to re-focus my energy on healing and finding help.  Perfect timing.  The universe sent us visitors last weekend, even though our AZ house was devoid of furniture and all the things that make a house a home.  One lovely guest had her own struggles to share with lots of good advice.  And the other, a friend and fellow traveler, was recently retirement from a career in PT and brought her magic hands.

So, these days, instead of looking for gigs and practicing licks, I’m spending lots of time scraping grease off of old oak kitchen cabinets, taping trim, combing Craig’s List and making endless runs to Home Depot. I’m staring past the dirty windows at a poor man’s view of the sun bouncing off of distant red cliffs.  Because irony abounds, we are having one of the coolest winters in recent years here, and back home in New England they are having spring like conditions and desperate for snow.

Years ago, when I studied with Roseann Cash, she often said to us “You must change your life.”  So, here I am, 40 years later, cashing in on an old promise.  We look forward to spending the summer and fall back in New England. Here’s my promise to you…once we have this place in shape, I’ll be writing songs, poems, playing more gigs, and maybe even doing some hosting. Thanks for sticking with me.

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