Greetings on a late summer day!
As regular readers of my blog may remember, I have been away from home — and spending a minimum amount of time on my computer — during July and August.
But now it is September, and I am home and getting back into the swing of A) leading Music Together classes, B) doing gigs at retirement communities, and C) donating time + money to various political races + Get-Out-The-Vote undertakings.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I am writing this post in the middle of the night while drinking eight ounces of a somewhat vile-tasting liquid every fifteen minutes in preparation for a colonoscopy later this morning.
Yesterday I drank liquids (water, veggie broth and chicken broth) all day long — ending with the first round of vile-tasting-liquid drinking before bed.
The three days before that I ate the opposite of a healthy diet — including lots of refined white flour products (although I WAS allowed to potatoes and sweet potatoes as long as their skins were removed…)
It’s kind of funny that one is NOT supposed to ingest fiber before a colonoscopy when ingesting lots of dietary fiber is one of the best ways to promote colon health.
Ahh, the paradoxes of life!
THANK YOU to everyone who has continued to visit my blog during the past two months.
It is very heartening to check my stats and find that 5-15 people have been dropping by on a daily basis even though I have shared no new content since the middle of June.
I first featured this song — written by Harold Arlen (music) and Yip Harburg (words) for Ethel Waters to sing in the MGM version of a musical called CABIN IN THE SKY — in a blog post on November 8, 2020. You can click here to skim it if you are curious.
The Biden-Harris ticket had recently won the presidential election, lots of people were dying due to COVID, and I was learning what it’s like to surrender to Western medicine as I began chemotherapy to treat a rare medical condition which first appeared to be multiple myeloma but was eventually diagnosed as PGNMID.
Almost four years later I am still very much alive and was even able to take a break from my two somewhat experimental drugs over the summer because they had worked so well during the preceding months.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I will end this blog post by quoting Simon Rosenberg, a political strategist who has been offering a sense of hope and possibility to many of us in recent months.
“When the dust settles, and the Russian-backed MAGA movement fades, America will come to understand how lucky we were that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election.
His Day 1 as President was among the most challenging in our history — pre-vaccine COVID, economic collapse, (the former president’s) disastrous management of the pandemic, an insurrection, the first time America failed to have a peaceful transfer of power… just unbelievable levels of chaos as far as the eye could see.
And today, almost four years later, America’s economy is ‘the envy of the world.’
Growth here has been far above the growth in other advanced economies. We’ve had the best job market in 60 years. The lowest uninsured rate in history. Record levels of new business formation. Wage growth has outpaced inflation. The stock market is setting records.
Joe Biden has made historic investments in our economy and workers that will be creating jobs and opportunity for the American people for decades to come.
We’ve dramatically accelerated the energy transition necessary to keep the planet from warming.
We’ve beaten inflation – a global phenomenon – and interest rate cuts are coming now.
We are more energy independent today than we’ve been in decades.
Crimes rates which had gone up under Donald Trump have come down under Joe Biden.
The deficit which skyrocketed under Donald Trump has come down under Joe Biden.
Despite reckless Republican obstruction, flows to the border are lower today than they were under Donald Trump.
Joe Biden passed the first major gun safety legislation in 30 years, retired hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt, reinvigorated the Western alliance and has now landed a serious and long overdue blow against Russian influence operations here in the United States.”
And — behaving in the exact opposite manner from a dictator — he has chosen to pass the political baton to Vice President Harris, whose candidacy has catalyzed a new wave of enthusiasm and political engagement here in the USA.
Thank you, President Biden, for your decades of leadership, public service and compassion!
Yet another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Thank you to Pixabay for great photos.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his grounded, creative piano playing and sublime engineering/producing chops.
Thank you to all of the pollinators who work tirelessly to help our ecosystems function AND to all the folks who are working like busy bees to help elect the candidates of their choice.
And thank YOU for reading another one of my blog posts.
Onward to autumn!
ps: You can play my recording of “Happiness Is A Thing Called Joe” on your favorite streaming service by clicking here.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 
A lot has happened, but I’m glad you’re here. And I’m glad the chemotherapy worked well. Sending you blessings.
THANK YOU for your blessings and good wishes! This morning’s procedure went well, and I’ll find out next week what my next treatment steps might be for the rest of the year…
Good morning, Will, and good luck with the colonoscopy. I’ve had the same thoughts about having to eat low fiber foods before it. I wish you continued good health and good news about your treatment.
Biden has done a great job, and we must elect Harris now. I still have a bunch of postcards to write!
Thank you! My colonoscopy went smoothly this morning (no polyps found and I need to come back in seven years for another one). And I will hear from my research doctor at Dana Farber next week about what has been going on metabolically in my body during the past summer months… Deep breath in. Deep breath out!
You’re welcome, Will. Good news!
Let’s keep those postcards flowing!
💙
Welcome back Will. It’s nice to hear your lovely voice again, and hear about your life updates. Kudos on the progress with your treatment and yes, the liquid prep for a colonoscopy is vile! I appreciate your enthusiasm for supporting Harris and Get Out to Vote. I’ve grown weary and cynical about politics. I think the system is corrupt by big money and mostly a show to keep us divided and distracted. And still, I’d much rather have Harris win. Deep breath in, deep breath out…
Hi, Brad! I think there is a lot of potentially soul-numbing truth in your analysis regarding corruption by people + companies with a lot of money and power. I am currently finding hope in the fact that many of the recent Harris-Walz donations have been small amounts from actual human beings (many of them donating for the first time…) rather than big money gifts from shadowy donors/PACs/etc. And your description of our current political situation/discourse/norms having become “a show to keep us divided and distracted” is very insightful (as well as depressing and disturbing!) We shall see what unfolds in the next few months… Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Thanks for “hearing me” Will. I would love to be wrong and reclaim our democracy. We shall see.
Yes, we shall see…
I hope your procedure shows an all-clear on your colon! Welcome back! Great songs…”Happiness is a thing called Joe'” and others on your playlist. Happy Autumn! 🍁🍂🎃
Thanks, Karen! I just was driven home from my procedure, and I had no polyps. I get to do it again in seven years…Happy autumn to you, too!
Oh good grief..What world are you living in..Joe biden is dead and the actor playing his part has no authority. Wake up.!
I am not sure how to respond to this (uncharacteristically for the WordPress community) disrespectful — or maybe it’s intended to be humorous? — comment. I guess I’ll simply wish you well, Beverly!
Pay attention to future events.please
AOK.
Love this post, Will! Your voice sounds stronger than ever. I didn’t know about your health condition, but relieved to learn that the regimen is working.
I hope you’ll try to get your tribute to our beloved President!
All good wishes,
Annie
I have no idea how one would send a link to the president and his staff. But it’s a lovely idea. Thank you for the links (in a previous comment) to some promising organizations. I haven’t investigated them yet. However, I just attended an hour-long presentation by Focus For Democracy (https://www.focus4democracy.org/). Do you know about them? Among other things they introduced me to an independent candidate in Nebraska who is polling surprisingly well in that state’s US senator race….
Will, Focus for Democracy is the group where I learned about and donated to the two orgs I linked to!!
I’ve been to several of their presentations and have been enormously impressed. Going on Sunday to see how much progress Working for America has made toward hitting their target registration numbers in Pennsylvania!
As for reaching the president, you can email to president@whitehouse.gov or
comment@whitehouse.gov.
Aha! And hurrah! Focus For Democracy certainly seems to be thinking very carefully on many different levels about how best to encourage/nurture/support engagement with our democratic processes.
Dear Will,
So happy your health is better and that you are musically, powerfully, intelligently awesome as always!
Sending much love!
Forward!!!
Adriana
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks, Adriana!!! Let’s keep doing what we can to help keep our democracy from tipping further into a kleptocracy while practicing more sustainable choices in our daily lives.
It’s good to hear your health is improving, Will, and let’s hope for a good outcome in November!
Yes, indeed! I just spent an hour listening (via Zoom) to a group of smart political folks who have created an organization called FOCUS FOR DEMOCRACY (https://www.focus4democracy.org/) which is focused on helping win races for the US House Of Representatives and also a few key states’ Supreme Court races. At one point during the call the moderator asked participants to pledge via the chat feature (only the FFD group leaders could see the amounts) what they planned to give to FFD’s efforts. He then read out (without identifying donors by name) the amounts… and there were a LOT of people pledging to give hundreds and even thousands of dollars to FFD’s efforts (in some cases maxing out donor limits for individual races!) I was impressed by the specificity of this group’s analysis and also by the generosity/enthusiasm of all the folks participating in this particular Zoom call. Let the vital work of participatory democracy continue! Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
That’s good to know, Will! Thanks.
Thank you for being you. And for the music. And the writing.
You are very welcome!
Hi Will. Welcome back! I’ll be watching the US election with interest…and a lot of trepidation. It appears we may also be going to the polls in Canada before the end of the year and I worry about the choices in front of us, and the potential outcome.
To quote a very wise friend…”Deep breath in. Deep breath out.”
Yeah. Sometimes all we can do is keep breathing in and out… Current polling data remains very close here in the USA, but if one looks at other data (such as recent election fesults involving individual political races on the state and national level since Dobbs was overturned — almost all of which over-performed in a blue direction by wider margins than the Biden-Harris campaign had in that political district in 2020 — plus get-out-the-vote organizing numbers plus fundraising totals) one can start to become cautiously optimistic… We shall see! Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
I’m glad that your treatment and the colonoscopy has gone well Will. (I’ve had a few colonoscopies and I know they’re not pleasant!) I enjoyed listening as well as reading 🙂
Thank you, Andrea, for listening, reading AND leaving a comment. I have been advised that I can wait seven years until my next colonoscopy adventure…
That’s good news!
Yea, indeed!
Hi Will! What a pleasure to start the weekend reading your wonderful blog post. I know how the colonoscopy prep goes. Not fun! On a side note, I think I read in a comment you made on a fellow blogger’s post that you are moving. Really?? Hoping this is a good thing for you.
Hi, Jennie! Yes, it appears that I may be headed to upstate NY as a new home base, but not for another 2 and 1/2 years… And after that I plan to return to MA 4-5 times per year (staying with a variety of friends) in order to continue performing at certain retirement communities and remain connected with my web of Boston area friends and colleagues. I am impressed with your attention to detail regarding the comments following other blog posts! Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Thank you for the update, Will. I dearly remember your post about visiting your family in upstate NY over the holidays. That was a while ago, but I’ve never forgotten the loveliness of that blog post. I wish you all the best ahead. I’m really not good about following blog comments, unless it’s from someone I care about. 🥰
Hi Will, glad to hear (after reading your post and then all the comments) that your colonoscopy results were all clear. What a relief. All the very best for your future good health and for your country. I agree and share Brad’s view with regards to world politics, I feel it’s a stage and it’s manipulated by power, greed and a need to control. But I’ll send my good vibes of love and peace out there for a good outcome. And yes, we’ll keep breathing in and out. 🙏🏻
Thanks, Miriam! I agree that a lot of politics — and lots of other human endeavors here on planet earth these days — are “manipulated by power, greed and a need to control.” I wonder if this may be catalyzed, at least in part, by the larger environmental/climate-driven changes we and our fossil-fuel-powered lifestyle choices have unleashed here on planet earth (which at this point may be uncontrollable/unremediable due to our all-too-human denial about same which the fossil fuel/plastics/industrial farming industries have, of course, gone to great lengths to downplay/deny…) Deep breath in. Deep breath out. I skimmed two articles this morning related to climate disasters. One interviewed folks in the western part of North Carolina — which is experiencing huge flooding, road/bridge washouts, no power, no cellphone service, etc. All the folks said some version of “we were prepared for flooding but what we are experiencing is of a magnitude never before seen… so we did a poor job of preparing for it.” The other article was about how the insurance industry changed their modeling about future risks due to recent climate change catastrophes (fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.) — which means that more and more areas of the USA are becoming un-insurable, or the premiums are rising so much that folks can’t afford to pay for insurance (which means that the pool of people paying for insurance is growing smaller just as the need to money to pay out when disaster strikes is growing greater!) Yikes. I do know that the elected officials on the local level where I live are very diligent and very responsive to their constituents; so I am not ready to give up on the ongoing experiment of democracy here in the USA. But these are indeed challenging times! Another deep breath in. And deep breath out.
Oh yes, challenging times is an understatement Will. What’s happening in North Carolina and surrounds is truly devastating and I feel for the people who’ve lost so much. And sadly, it’s happening everywhere, disasters, floods, cyclones, fires, in parts of Europe, Asia and even Australia. Insurance premiums everywhere are going through the roof. Tough times. What can we do, we keep breathing … 🙏
Yes! Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Holy cow. So happy the drugs helped you feel better. But who told you that a movement that wants to respect the US Constitution and Bill of Rights was Russian-based? That’s a new conspiracy theory hadn’t heard yet.