May 14, 2026 by willedare

Boil A Frog Slowly…

Spring has finally arrived — in fits and starts — here in the northeast United States.

And we have two days of (much-needed) rain forecast to start later this morning!

I’ve been sitting on this blog post for weeks because I want my posts to be uplifting.

Yet so much of what is happening here on planet earth continues to be the opposite.

I find myself returning to recent elections in Hungary for hope.

If I understand correctly, Hungarians had a president/dictator for 16 years who did his best to hamstring/contaminate/eliminate their democratic institutions such as freedom of the press and judicial independence.

And yet, after MUCH courageous struggle, their president/dictator was defeated in April with a record 80% voter turnout.

Hurrah!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

I wrote the song included at the beginning of this blog post several years ago.

One of my favorite signs of spring is the hopeful sound of horny. peeper frogs who are looking for a mate and establishing their personal breeding territories.

In fact, I like this sound so much that I included it at the beginning and ending of “Boil A Frog Slowly.”

As readers of my blog are well aware, one of my main musical allies is pianist/composer/producer Doug Hammer, who lives with his beautiful French artist/graphic designer wife in a ranch-style dwelling on a suburban street in a city north of Boston.

Hidden in his basement is a recording studio with an impeccably maintained Schimmel grand piano and all sorts of recording equipment which Doug is constantly upgrading and updating, bless him.

And hidden behind his house is a little wetland which still manages to exist even though is has been surrounded by houses over the past few decades.

In the spring, melting snow and falling rain fill up the wetlands so that geese, ducks — including two wood ducks this year! —and other water-loving animals can do their thing.

And at a certain point, the peepers emerge from the earth/mud and start peeping!

It is such a lively sound — kind of like the aural equivalent of fireflies blinking on a summer night…

I spent a week in upstate NY last month, and most evenings I went for a long walk on country roads wearing a safety vest with ever-changing, multi-colored lights on it.

Whenever I passed a damp area — a pond or a stream or a drainage ditch — the sound of peepers filled the night air!

Somehow they manage to survive a changing mix of sun, rain, snow and hail with temperatures fluctuating from the 20s (overnight) to the 60s (during the day).

Astounding!

I learned from Wikipedia that “the spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer) is a small chorus frog widespread throughout the eastern United States and Canada.”

Peepers “prefer permanent ponds due to (their) advantage in avoiding predation; however, (they are) very adaptable with respect to the habitat (they) can live in.”

I was happy to read that they are not currently considered to be an endangered species — perhaps due in part to their adaptable natures (mentioned above).

I also learned that “in northern regions, the frog is able to endure below freezing temperatures due to the capacity of its liver to exude and flush the bloodstream with a glucose cryoprotectant which acts both as an anti-freeze in its blood, and allows organs like the heart to enter into a state of protected dormancy.”

Wow!

That certainly helps to explain their resiliency during our weather/temperature swings.

Wikipedia continues: “The peeper earns its name from its chirping call, which marks the beginning of spring.”

And its formal name, Pseudacris crucifer, “is derived from the Latin root meaning “cross-bearing”— a reference to the cross-like pattern on the spring peeper’s (back).”

Their “chirping calls are significant for communication…as females choose their mates based on the frequency and volume associated with them.”

Yes, indeed… the passionate songs of spring.

Chirp, peepers, chirp!

I released “Boil A Frog Slowly” two springs ago, and I have been collecting information since then about how out of balance, out of touch, and out of control our billionaire class —what some are now calling “The Epstein Class”— has become.

For example, the Americans For Tax Fairness Action Fund recently reminded me that:

“The United States was founded on a rejection of monarchy ie: no tiny elite ruling over everyone else. However, our current president “has embraced a governing philosophy that rewards extreme wealth and concentrates power in the hands of the richest people in the country: America’s roughly 1,000 billionaires” — which includes himself as well as many of his friends and family members.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

This statistic is particularly shocking to me: “During (our current president’s) first year back in office, U.S. billionaires increased their wealth by an astonishing $1.5 trillion, pushing their combined fortunes to more than $8.2 trillion.“

Yowza!

As I am sure most of us are well aware, billionaires and giant corporations hold enormous influence over our economy AND over our political system…

It was this emerging realization which inspired me to write this song.

But now as I listen to it, I am also reminded about our ongoing climate challenges which our current president plus all of the greedy and cowardly media/entertainment conglomerates (which continue to provide an awful ot of people with theira daily dose of “news”) are now downplaying and/or ignoring even more than in recent years.

Recently I watched a weather report on the CBS morning news/entertainment show.

As part of their reporting of record-breaking levels of heat in the west and southwest of the USA, there was NO mention of steps each and every one of us could take to decrease our carbon footprints.

Instead there were many segments on things to buy, places to fly (the most carbon-intensive way to travel) and ways to continue to consume more than our fair share of the natural resources on this amazing little planet which we all call home.

The message seemed to be “Keep living your consumerist lives exactly as you have been doing for the past few generations” — which, of course, is how we have ended up in our current terrifying environmental disaster situation.

Yet another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

But back to the billionaires…

As I wrote above, I do not want my blog posts to increase anyone’s daily burden of hopelessness.

So I will end with two bits of positive news.

In 2022 Massachusetts voters — of which I was one — approved a “millionaire’s tax,” and since then it has added more than a billion dollars per year to our state budget.

Revenue from this surtax is mandated to go toward education and transportation initiatives — including more free lunch programs, implementing “clean energy” in schools, making community college free for students 25 and older, and increasing the number of child care slots for low-income families.

And rather than decreasing the number of millionaires and billionaires wanting to live in MA — as nay-sayers and their lobbyists had warned — that number continues to rise..

Adding an extra 4% tax on annual income exceeding one million dollars CAN be accomplished!

And in New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani — along with governor Kathy Hochul — has recently proposed a pied-à-terre tax which would target luxury secondary homes worth over $5 million which are NOT primary residences.

This annual surcharge would raise $500 million annually to fund public services and bridge budget gaps.

And it would also begin to chip away at our much-lobbied tax code which currently allows super rich individuals and corporations to pay few — or no! — taxes while using all sorts of public services such as public education, drivable roads, tunnels and bridges.

Although “Boil A Frog Slowly” was written from a place of concern and despair, I do find ways to experience little patches of hope and optimism these days (such as the recent election in Hungary mentioned above).

The most recent “No Kings” day lifted my spirits and reminded me that there are millions of other human beings in the USA — and abroad — who are stepping up to help tip the balance of power/life back in a more healthy direction.

And the smaller political races around the country — in which Democratic candidates continue to over perform when compared with our most recent presidential election results — also give me hope.

People ARE daring to step up!

May each of us continue to find (and re-find) a healthy balance of active engagement — demonstrating in person, writing postcards/letters, giving money, volunteering on phone banks, etc. etc. etc. — with restful, rejuvenating, joyful activities.

And may the resiliency of the spring peepers give us hope and inspiration!

Thank you for reading this blog post.

We’ll see if I can increase the frequency — and upbeat tone — of them in the weeks/months to come.

Although I have not been very active as a writer, I DO continue to read many of my fellow bloggers’ posts.

And people continue to visit my site in increasing numbers — although my rising traffic statistics may be the result of bots having invaded WordPress?

Who knows…

I also remain grateful to the wonderful and generous photographers at Pixabay for their beautiful images.

And to Doug Hammer for his musicianship, collaborative skills, careful archiving of past work, and technical savvy.

And to Stephen C. Fischer for his graphic design skills and patience.

If you have time/energy/willingness to play “Boil A Frog Slowly” on your favorite music platform — and then “like” it — that will help increase the likelihood of it being shared with new listeners by the mysterious algorithms which influence/control more and more of our online lives.

You can connect to a bunch of streaming links by clicking here.

And you are always welcome to visit my website, willsings.com.

June 28, 2024 by willedare

‘S Wonderful, part 2

I hope you are well as you read this blog post.

Summer has begun here in New England, and I would like to share an upbeat blog post — setting aside terrifying political and environmental challenges for a few moments — in order to savor some BEAUTY!

For example, these roses grow in a friend’s backyard.

They have a delicious, old-fashioned scent — and epitomize summer for me.

My friend also has a small vegetable garden AND a new dog — a Norfolk terrier — who likes to stand with his nose glued to one particular corner of her fenced-in backyard and sniff for rabbits.

Earlier this week she and I and another friend recorded six songs (five originals plus one cover) at Doug Hammer’s studio north of Boston.

Stryder overseeing rehearsal (photo by Molly Ruggles)

My friend’s new dog is extremely well behaved (he didn’t bark once during a two-hour rehearsal we had at their home), but we did not bring him with us to the studio.

Here is a photo of him making sure that we are all singing the correct parts of our vocal arrangements.

He is a very good boy!

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Chicken coop and sky (photo by Christianne McMillan)

The song in the player at the top of this blog post is an upbeat 1927 gem which pianist Doug Hammer and I recorded when I was putting together an hour-long program of songs by Ira and George Gershwin.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that I wrote a blog post about it almost four years ago.

Longtime readers of this blog may also remember that I used to camp each summer for two weeks with family members in North Truro near the end of Cape Cod.

Here’s a blog post I wrote six years ago about that annual experience.

Rooster with catnip (photo by Christianne McMillan)

I created a lot of songs at that campsite; so it was extremely wrenching when we stopped going there due to the arrival of COVID in our lives.

This summer I am trying something new.

My sweetheart and I will be camping at my sisters’ family farm in the Finger Lakes region of upstate NY for almost two months.

One of my sisters is a gifted photographer who documents moments of beauty as she is moving from point A to point B to point C during the day.

It’s wonderful to get these glimpses into her life (she shares them on Facebook and Instagram) when I am living six hours (by car) away from her in Massachusetts.

Here is one of her Australorp roosters passing by some roses and catnip.

I am looking forward to spending time in my tent each day with a ukulele + a rhyming dictionary + my digital recorders + lots of binders full of song ideas + birds singing all around me.

Tasso contemplating a swim (photo by Christianne McMillan)

I am also looking forward to daily walks with my sisters and their rambunctious dog.

Tasso likes to swim in their irrigation pond, and I may end up swimming there, too, as long as I am not intimidated by the water snakes who (according to my sister) live there.

We shall see…

There is also a lovely state park with a great swimming area — featured in a recent TV commercial encouraging people to visit New York State — which I can walk to.

And there are probably water snakes there, too!

Here are a few more of my sister’s photos.

Her sheep are Icelandic and very smart.

They are also very opinionated about where they prefer to graze and do not hesitate to let her know if they would prefer a different location.

Roosters returning to barn (photo by Christianne McMillan)

Most of her chickens sleep in a coop overnight and roam around a penned-in area by day.

The coop and penned-in area get moved to different fields during the year.

But my sisters ended up with a lot of roosters when they hatched some eggs earlier this year.

So now a few of the roosters roam around the barn — where the horse lives with her own paddock area and where the sheep return each night to sleep.

One of my great grandfathers oversaw the creation of this barn ninety years ago. I do not remember the exact details, but I think it was constructed from two other pre-existing barns…

At one point it was full of horses plus a cow or two.

Tasso eating berries (photo by Christianne McMillan)

Now it is home to many swallows, a friendly Clydesdale-Morgan mare, and the sheep (who usually just sleep there overnight…)

I am very excited because I have been told the black cap raspberry harvesting season is about to begin..

They grow in the hedgerows and are delicious to pick and eat.

And put into pancakes.

Delicious bread (photo by Christianne McMillan)

And make into jam.

Some dogs even like to pick and eat them!

One of my summer goals is to learn how to do the morning and evening chores (taking care of the chickens and the sheep and the horse) because, if all goes well, my older sister will be riding the train to Virginia next month to welcome her first grandchild onto planet earth.

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

The circle of life!

My sisters believe in eating well.

Even though they have their own gardens, they also belong to a local farm share AND a local bakery share.

Black caps (photo by Christianne McMillan)

And my younger sister happens to be a wonderful chef who once worked in restaurants in New York and Massachusetts.

When I helped her and my nephew pack up and move east from California a few years ago, I learned that she has an extensive collection of recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines (remember when we used to read newspapers and magazines?)

She is a fearless cook who will prepare anything which attracts her curiosity and interest.

She also is happy to make old favorites like Eggs Benedict.

Yum!!!

Eggs Benedict (photo by Christianne McMillan)

Another one of our great grandfathers was a professor of poultry science at Cornell University.

There’s even a building named after him — Rice Hall.

So eggs and chickens have a historical resonance for our extended family.

Thank you to my grandmother and grandfather who bought this farm almost 100 years ago.

Thank you to my grandmother and father and great aunt and great uncle and cousins and aunt — along with an ever-changing constellation of helping hands — for keeping it going after my grandfather died.

Thank you to my sisters for daring to move to the farm and raise their children.

Thank you to all of the birds and animals and insects and trees who also call the farm their home.

Thank you to my sisters’ wonderful neighbors who help in myriad ways — small and large — on a year-round basis.

Thank you to my older sister for letting me use her photos in this blog post.

Thank you to my younger sister for all of the delicious things she creates for all of us to eat!

Thank you to Pixabay for a lovely summery image of a notebook with roses which evokes a spirit of creativity…

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his exuberant piano playing and patient engineering/producing chops.

Thank you to Gretje Ferguson for taking the photo which Stephen Fischer incorporated into a fun graphic design for this song (and thank you to him as well for his creative handwork!)

Thank you to the long days and short nights of summer.

And thank you for reading another one of my blog posts.

What are YOUR summer plans?

ps: You can find my recording of “‘S Wonderful” on your favorite streaming service by clicking here.

June 8, 2018 by willedare

Catch Me…

Recently I read a small but devastating article in The New Yorker about what our new Secretary of the Interior has already accomplished in the first year of his service.

It immediately reminded me of the song “Catch Me” (which opens with a few seconds of silence after you hit the play icon at the top of this page…)

“Catch Me” is another song by David Friedman (about whom I wrote recently) which Bobbi Carrey and I recorded with pianist, arranger, and engineer Doug Hammer for our If I Loved You CD.

Although Ryan Zinke held much more conservationist views when he was a Montana state senator — acknowledging climate change as a significant threat to US national security, for example — now that he is Secretary of the Interior, he is working hard to remove burdensome regulations to industry on public land and in our coastal waters.

He even reversed a recent ban on lead ammunition in wildlife refuges designed to protect birds that eat carrion.

The article concluded by saying that — while it is possible future elections will nudge our leadership back in more sustainable and respectful directions — the damage already being done to our public lands and wildlife will take decades to re-balance or repair (which, of course, is not even possible when a plant or animal becomes extinct…)

Somehow this article has thrown me into what I trust is a temporary tailspin of depression and hopelessness.

As lyricist Fran Landesman once noted, spring can really hang you up the most…

Obviously there is SO MUCH that we human beings need to do to reduce and re-balance our patterns of consumption and destruction as soon as humanly possible.

And yet so many of us — me included — are unable to change a lifetime of habits and assumptions and behaviors in order seriously to address the coming environmental challenges/catastrophes/opportunities.

For example, many of us who are blessed to live in countries such as the United States continue to think, “Of course I deserve to travel as much as I can afford.”

Yet according to a recent article on The Conversation web site, “no other human activity pushes individual emission levels as fast and as high as air travel.”

Yikes!!!

And even if we can’t afford a plane trip to someplace warm (or intriguing or affordable or colorful) we are strongly urged by our morally bankrupt financial institutions to pay for it using a credit card…or two…or three.

How many of us are basically indentured servants to our credit card companies, making minimum payments yet never paying off all our accumulated debt?

Another assumption I find odd is that most of us continue to think that we deserve to have one — or more — cars.

Of course, this is often related to the fact that many of us think that we deserve to live wherever we like — places which may not be located anywhere near public transportation, for example — so, of course, we have to have a car in order to get to work, to shop, to visit friends and family, to drive to the gym (the practice of which I truly don’t understand… why not ride your bike or walk to the gym? Or ride your bike/walk/run instead of joining a gym and donate what you used to pay for your gym membership to a deserving non-profit group?) etc.

And how about those of us who feel that we deserve to own vacation homes — sometimes built in very unwise locations?

Many of these structures sit uninhabited for weeks or months at a time, consuming fuel/electricity so that the pipes don’t freeze, or so that the house doesn’t get too humid, or so that the burglar alarms are functioning…

The list of possessions and privileges to which many of us aspire is loooong — and has been extremely well-marketed for at least a couple of generations here in the USA.

Yet so few of us seem to be able or willing to pause and ponder the consequences of our consumption…

And global greenhouse gas levels continue to rise.

And weather becomes more erratic — affecting wildlife habitats as well as human agriculture (and thus the ability of more and more countries to feed their citizens).

And plastic — some of it visible and some of it in tiny fibers — continues to pollute the waters of planet earth and contaminate aquatic life on all levels of the food chain.

Sadly — depressingly — tragically — hubristically — the list of human pollution, deforestation, and environmental degradation goes on and on and on…

I often feel — as I watch TV or listen to the radio or use the internet — that I have entered a frantic cocoon created solely so that we human beings can hide (for couple of hours or for an entire lifetime) from the terrifying realities of the larger patterns/feedback loops which are unfolding/unraveling right now on planet earth.

And I want to say — to myself and to most of my fellow human beings here in the USA — WAKE UP!!!

Often this is when I catch a cold.

And I stay home and write a blog post like this…

I am aware that I am extremely blessed to live a life where I can moan about larger environmental challenges because my basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, employment, love, and respect have already been met.

And I have a job — leading Music Together classes — to which I can walk or bike or take the bus.

However, I am also aware that anyone writing or reading a blog post is using electricity and some sort of magical electronic device which contains metals mined all over the planet by human beings under inhumane conditions as well as plastic from fossil fuels — and which have most likely been assembled by human beings working under inhumane conditions.

And my other job — sharing one-hour programs of beloved standards at retirement communities, assisted living facilities, and public libraries — involves driving many miles per month in a trusty, high mileage Prius belonging to the jazz pianist Joe Reid, with whom I do 50+ gigs per year.

So I am utterly complicit.

And I wonder what the f–k I am doing with my one precious life here on planet earth.

Yet I also know that music matters in some way — that it can touch our hearts and even inspire us to do unimaginably courageous things.

A documentary I watched recently about James Baldwin reminded me that there was a lot of singing by heroic non-violent protestors as they were marching… and as they were being beaten… and as they were being thrown into police vehicles.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

What do you think/feel about any of this, dear reader?

What do you think/feel about the sad news that Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain — two people who have achieved international success, wealth, fame, influence, celebrity, and in theory the happiness which success/wealth/fame/influence/celebrity are alleged to bring — have taken their own lives during this past week?

Another deep breath in.

And deep breath out.

Thank you to David Friedman for writing such compelling songs.

Thank you to Bobbi Carrey for her musical collaboration over the past 15 years.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his piano playing, engineering, production wizardry, patience, and humor.

Thank you to Mike Callahan for his vocal arrangements.

Thank you to Pixabay for the images in this blog post.

And thank YOU for making time so that you could read and listen to another blog post.

October 31, 2017 by willedare

In Praise of Doug (and others!)

I have been blessed to make music with a terrific array of musicians during my musical life here in the Boston area.

In recent years I have worked mostly with pianists, including Doug Hammer, Joe Reid, Tom LaMark, Mark Shilansky, Joe Mulholland, Mike Callahan, and Steve Sweeting.

Joe Reid fortuitously called me four summers ago — a few months after I had been laid off from my day job of sixteen years at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education — and asked if I might like to do a gig at a local retirement community with him.

This first gig — an hour of songs co-written by Harold Arlen plus a few stories about how they came to be written — has led to over a hundred performances together at public libraries, coffee houses, and retirement/assisted living communities with programs featuring the songs of Dorothy Fields, Oscar Hammerstein II, Larry Hart, Cole Porter, the Gershwin Brothers, Jule Styne, Jerome Kern, and Hoagy Carmichael as well as a program of songs written (by the Gershwins, Porter, Berlin, Styne/Sondheim, and others) for Ethel Merman to perform and a program of winter holiday songs written or co-written by Jewish songwriters.

It has been a fruitful collaboration with no end in sight. Soon we’ll be debuting a one-hour program of songs co-written by Sammy Cahn, and 2018 will bring a program of songs written (by Porter, the Gershwins, Berlin, Kern, Fields and others) for Fred Astaire to perform.

But so far Joe Reid and I have no recorded evidence of our collaboration because we have not gone into a recording studio together…

Tom LaMark, Mark Shilansky, and Joe Mulholland have all been a pleasure to work with as well, but I similarly have no recordings to document our time together.

Mike Callahan is now a professor at Michigan State (and the person conducting and/or playing piano in the Pops concert clips on YouTube — which he also arranged and orchestrated!) I hope to make music with him some day in East Lansing…

Steve Sweeting currently lives in NYC; so I don’t get to make music with him as much as I would like. I have, however, included many recordings that he and I have made together in past blog posts.

Which brings me to Doug Hammer.

Doug in his backyard with trees and water…

I do not remember exactly when I started working/playing with Doug.

It may have been when Steve Sweeting moved from Brighton, MA to the upper west side of Manhattan (in the mid-1990s?)

I was living as an au pair with a wonderful family on Spring Hill in Somerville, and Doug and his wife were living not far away on the Somerville/Cambridge border.

If I am remembering correctly, Doug had a very intimate but functional recording studio near the back of his apartment — as far away from the traffic of Beacon Street as possible.

He’d come from Chicago to Boston to study at Berklee, had played piano in other countries (which is how he met his stupendous wife, who is French), and then moved back to the Boston area to build a life as a pianist, composer, accompanist, engineer, and producer.

I think our paths crossed because he played with other singers I knew from having taken a class with Mike Oster in the South End.

Maybe some day Doug can read this blog post and correct or fill in some of missing details…

In any case, I loved the way he played the piano and accompanied singers and built a life with his wife (who is an artist and graphic designer).

And I loved that I could walk or ride my bike to his home studio.

But as many wise texts remind us, life is full of changes.

Doug and his wife decided they needed more space and moved to a new home on the north shore of Boston — where Doug built a recording studio in the lower level of the house and where he and his wife began raising a family.

Luckily it is accessible by public transportation (a surprisingly scenic bus ride from Haymarket T station), and Doug has also been kind enough to drive me to the nearest T stop, Wonderland, when the weather is horrible or the hour is late.

And his family is willing to be quiet upstairs when someone is recording downstairs with Doug.

There are two isolation booths to the right of the piano (which you can’t see in the photo above) which is where I usually stand when we are rehearsing/recording.

This is what Doug looks like when we are rehearsing/recording.

One of the many great things about working/playing with Doug is that we are able to record all of our rehearsals in high fidelity.

He is not only a terrific, playful pianist, but he is also a super competent sound engineer and producer.

Over time he has invested in high-quality musical tools — a Schimmel grand piano, great microphones, and endlessly upgraded recording software and hardware (including an Apple computer which almost never misbehaves) — and he is able to switch effortlessly from being an engineer/producer to being a collaborative pianist/accompanist/co-creator and back again.

The songs at the beginning of this blog post are from a show we did called Will Loves Steve, which featured all songs written by people named Steve, Stephen or Stevie. “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” is by Stevie Wonder, and “Everybody’s Got the Right” is by Stephen Sondheim from his extraordinary show Assassins.

They demonstrate how imaginative and improvisational Doug’s accompaniment often becomes when we work together.

He and I have been operating on a very simple guideline — familiar to improv comedians among other creative beings — for many years.

We always say “yes” to each other’s ideas.

Sometimes I have a specific set of images I share with Doug: “Let’s imagine that we are next to the Charles River and someone has started a fire in an old oil drum” or “We’re in a piney woods on the Cape, and a downy woodpecker is hopping up and down one of the tree trunks.”

Sometimes Doug starts playing something interesting on the piano while he is familiarizing himself with the sheet music for a particular song, and I encourage him to pause and hit the record button so that we can start with his fresh idea before either of us has had much time to think about it.

After each take we usually offer each other feedback about what we liked, what we might retain, and what we might like to explore further (“Let’s try going into a Latin feel on the bridge…” or “How about we do it twice as long so that you can take a solo and then we’ll end it with a triple tag at the end?”)

By the third or fourth take we often find ourselves in completely new and unexpected musical terrain.

Then we let that particular song rest and move on to the next one…

I don’t remember what ideas led us to this thoughtful version of “In My Life” by John Lennon.

I think we recorded it when we were rehearsing for a benefit concert (or maybe when we were rehearsing for a show I did at my old high school in Connecticut?)

Doug’s solo on this take is one of my favorite things that we have ever recorded together.

In the past decade Doug has been devoting more and more of his time and energy to composing and recording CDs of original piano — and increasingly orchestral —compositions.

You can click here for a link to his YouTube channel if you are curious.

Those of us who love to perform with him have been both excited to see his star as a solo artist rise and also sad because it means that he is less available to perform with singers…

Ahh, yes.

Life is full of changes.

But so far he is willing to continue to work/play with singers in his recording studio.

Hurrah!

He and I are slowly but surely working on a CD of my original songs — which I write using a ukulele and are then transformed by his inspired piano playing.

I do not know when this project will be finished, but I am enjoying the process — one song, one session at a time.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for being born, pursuing a life in music, and working/playing with me on various undertakings for over two decades.

Thank you to Doug’s web site for the photos (probably taken by his talented wife) I have included in this blog.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to yet another post!

August 17, 2017 by willedare

This Moment

I love this song by John Bucchino.

I thought of it often as I was carrying boxes from my sister’s apartment in Laguna Niguel, CA to a 16′ Penske moving truck parked about 100 feet from her front door.

A monarch butterfly would appear every few hours — flapping from flower to flower before drifting away on a gentle breeze.

And I would find myself singing this song.

I don’t know what inspired John to write it, although I am guessing that he must have some sort of meditation practice.

I first heard it sung at the Yale Cabaret Conference I participated in many years ago… and immediately wanted to learn it.

I practiced the lyrics over and over again one summer as I walked up and down a sandy path through a scrub pine forest en route to Head of the Meadow beach in North Truro, MA.

Pianist Doug Hammer and I have performed it several times since then (that’s Doug playing in the recording at the beginning of this blog post), and Mike Callahan did an arrangement which I got to perform with him as part of a Timberlane Pops Orchestra concert in New Hampshire.

It is a perfect example to me of a “wisdom song” — which helps me to re-align with my better, wiser self whenever I sing it.

Writing this post inspired me to search on Pixabay for some butterfly images, and I was astounded by what I found.

The idea that earthbound caterpillars can transform themselves into winged butterflies — that they can literally dissolve themselves and re-form their molecules into a new type of being — has fascinated and inspired us human beings for millennia.

I am also inspired by the paths they take — paths which do not travel in a straight line from point A to point B yet manage to cover vast amounts of mileage none-the-less.

Butterflies have a inner sense of where they are headed, but they also follow and respond to whatever flowers and breezes appear along their journey.

This seems to be how I, too, am moving through my musical life here on planet earth.

I looked online to learn more about the current health of our butterfly populations.

First I was directed to a relatively new company called “Butterfly Health” that seems to specialize in adult diapers…

Then I found a lovely story about vineyards in eastern Washington which “stopped using harmful pesticides and created natural habitats with native shrub-steppe plants around the vineyards to keep out harmful insects (e.g., mealybugs) and attract beneficial insects (e.g., parasitic wasps) that feed on pests.”

These vineyard saw a significant increase in butterflies — from an average of five different species to more like twenty different species!

The article noted that “butterflies don’t protect the vineyards or provide wine growers with economical benefits, (but) they are pollinators and an important element of the ecosystem. Furthermore, having butterflies flutter around a vineyard increases its aesthetic appeal and provides proof of earth-friendly pest control practices.”

Amen.

I also found articles that were more discouraging, such as one in the great English newspaper, The Guardian.

It reports that “more than three-quarters of Britain’s 59 butterfly species have declined over the last 40 years, with particularly dramatic declines for once common farmland species such as the Essex Skipper and Small Heath…

‘This is the final warning bell,’ said Chris Packham, Butterfly Conservation vice-president, calling for urgent research to identify the causes for the disappearance of butterflies from ordinary farmland. ‘If butterflies are going down like this, what’s happening to our grasshoppers, our beetles, our solitary bees? If butterflies are in trouble, rest assured everything else is.'”

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

What, I continue to wonder, will it take for enough of us human beings to wake up and take significant actions so that the extraordinary species extinction we are now experiencing on planet earth can slow down…and maybe even stop?

Why are so many of us seemingly oblivious to what is happening to our ecosystems and unable/unwilling to make wiser choices?

I recently visited a friend’s house (his/her second home, actually) and saw a small vat of RoundUp that I assume s/he is using to take care (??) of weeds in his/her lovely garden.

It was sitting alongside an aerosol can of pesticide to kill wasps.

This is an extremely well-educated person who loves the views of nature from his/her home overlooking a beautiful river.

Yet s/he is completely oblivious to the increasingly well-documented scientific research linking herbicides and pesticides to all sorts of profound disruptions in the overall health of a wide variety of ecosystems. And disruptions to our own human metabolisms — since we human beings are deeply rooted in nature from an evolutionary perspective and share many of the same biological pathways/systems as our animal and plant cousins..

I know that beautifully photographed and persuasively written advertising messages from the makers of herbicides and pesticides contribute to our human ignorance..

And lots of us think, “Oh it’s just a little bit of RoundUp or a little bit of wasp spray…”

But it all adds up and takes a cumulative toll on a wide variety of plants and animals and bacteria and fungae which we dearly need to be functioning in balance with each other.

Another deep breath in.

And another deep breath out.

Thank you to Pixabay for these wonderful photographs of butterflies.

Thank you to Doug Hammer and John Bucchino for their tremendous musicality and songwriting expertise.

And thank YOU for reading and listening to another blog post.

What steps — small and/or not-so-small — have you taken in your life to help keep life in balance here on planet earth?

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