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.