Tom Begich

January 29, 2012 - A Muezzin's call and beeping horns compete for attention on the streets of Cairo... A haunting sound that called into the streets thousands of Egyptians... Determined marchers slowly filled the squares and the bridges- from all corners of Cairo, from the neighborhoods or homes of those who were martyred, all heading to Tahrir again.  It is a year since the revolution and the revolutionaries have surprised themselves.  In commemorations that many believed would be celebratory acknowledgements of Mubarak's fall, the seeds of discontent have sprouted. And the harvest may well be a renewed revolution.  As people gathered on the 25th and then the 27th and 28th the cries were the same: down with the military, return our revolution... and no more of the past. Even the Muslim Brotherhood, desperately trying to drown out the cries in Tahrir on Friday by turning up their sound system with music and Quranic prayer were denounced as the country edges closer to a new moment in history.

Here in the Mideast and North Africa, history is unfolding. The revolution in Libya trembles, the Syrian regime struggles, the Arab League balances authoritarianism with reform... And all seems to cry "What will our future be?" Populations are growing here. Religious belief the opiate of those who are denied education or opportunity. This is a tinderbox of extremism that need not ever be lit.  Throughout the world desperate despots cling to power - their political position more important than whatever claim of intent drove them to take power.  For in the end so many have only one aim: their own gain.

We have made governance a contest and office a prize. We have lost sight of the purpose, which is to govern, to provide, to make this crazy assemblage of millions of people here and millions there function together. We hide behind nation and religion when we fail, instead of accepting that our path has not worked. We forget to change, to assert, to try something different.  We objectify those who care or who oppose us and we minimize them. We no longer see them as human, we see them as obstacles.  And then there is reaction and death.

There is a better way.  

None of us here are quite sure how this mass of citizens - angered by blocked streets and security crackdowns  - rediscovered this revolution, but they have.  Headlines in the English language dailies speak of it everyday - and sense its momentum.  The SCAF have disappeared from the airwaves and the streets and a tension seems to underscore everything... anticipation in part, fear in part. There is something in the air...  At first I wrote it off as the wishful thinking of friends, but now I have seen it for myself. And I wonder how it will turn out, half hoping I could be here to see that next step. But I leave tomorrow.

Yesterday one friend, Ahmed, said to me "It is a miracle - millions on the street in a city of millions and no police or military to be seen - and yet no crime!"  I warn him that this might be a prelude, a ruse, a hope by the SCAF that by being absent crime will erupt and the people will turn on the revolution.  But we talk about motivation and action and I learn that these revolutionaries have learned from their mistakes.

They are honing their demands - making them clear and simple, they are calculating their marches so as not to disrupt traffic and commerce too much, they are steady and calm and tolerate the Parliament, but do not cede that it was their power that brought that Parliament into being... It is as though there are two tracks - one, shaped by the SCAF that attempts to slightly remold the existing structure to pacify the rage that led to the overthrow of Mubarak one year ago February 11, and one that is demanding a free Egypt and goes forward now without regard to the efforts of the SCAF. They have learned that when one side plays this as a game, the other must rewrite the rules. And they are becoming very, very good at this rewriting...

Late evenings give way to magic... a poet, Mustapha, chants in classical Arabic and we are mesmerized by his hands, his eyes, his voice.  Passion for politics gives way to ribald joking only to snap back with the mention of a Salafi or the Brotherhood or the latest Coptic killing.... The smoky haze of Cairo obscures nothing. Inhaled it gives clarity, expelled it is the scent of change.

January 25, 2012, 2:45 PM - The sounds of Tahrir Square.

January 25, 2012 - Car alarms and the odd cacophony of horns wake me like a distant atonal symphony - backed by the haunting refrain of the muezzin calling believers to mid-morning prayers, voices below in the street talk in high-pitched Arabic, and the quiet thud, thud, thud of a tennis game echo from the courts nearby. The Revolution's Anniversary dawns in Cairo. 

I'd stepped off the plane two days before to the burnt smell of Cairo's air - caused by the torching of rice patties and the burning of coal. Its a smell that I will forever connect to that first visit some four months before, when this was new to me and the task daunting.  I arrived on the day of the first sitting of a nearly fairly elected Parliament or People's House.  Each member of the 508 person body took their oath to the constitution - though some Salafis added a line to their oath that said they swore it as long as it did not contradict the Word of God... A move that led to outrage and declamation from the more secular and liberal members of the body. Speeches honoring the martyrs of the last twelve months - over 800 dead over 6000 injured were contrasted with thank you telegrams to their executioners... the contradictions were manifest, but the promise still real.

Today its estimated that as many as a million people will attend events in Tahrir Square, on one hand celibrating the change to a new government, an overthrow of an old regime and the promise of a new beginning.  While still others will March for the unfulfilled promise of those first heady days of January 2011.  When anything seemed possible - even the imagining of a new, free future.

But power intervenes.  And personality ends u facing personality, party against party as those that once marched hand-in-hand (or as they say here: "on one hand") find themselves at odds - struggling.  So how did it all turn out after the House elections? The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and its allies gained roughly 47% of the vote. Their once allies and now adversaries on the Islamic front, the Salafi Nour Party and its allies came in second with as many as 29% of the vote. They were followed by a virtual tie between the Egyptian Bloc and the old Wafd Parties - the liberal stalwarts of this election - each with about 10% of the number.  The remainder of the seats fell to Islamic and revolutionary parties that split their votes and consequently their power in the first breath of an election. As many as 13 parties will be represented in the new Parliament: a prescription for inaction and chaos that serves the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) well.

About three weeks ago, as almost a metaphor for the liberals loss of hope, Jimmy Carter came to town to pronounce all is well in Egypt. His comments were perceived by many here as a thinly veiled bid to preserve his Camp David Accords from the potential rise of Islamic forces in the nation.  He exacted promises from the parties and in the end wrote a report and held a press conference where he legitimized for all the false claim of Tantawi, the head of the SCAF, that the photos of the women stripped and dragged through Tahir square was a fabrication. For those of us who saw the video rather than just the photo, it was a shocking travesty of leadership to hear this former Nobel Peace Prize winner say this.... For the Egyptian liberals who not only witnessed it, but who documented reliably over 500 cases of fraud and as many as 900 violations of election law, it was unconscionable.

The process of a revolution does not happen over night.  In Libya yesterday remnants of Gaddafi's old regime have fought back. In Afghanistan, the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban has ended in a stalemate of civil war and suicide bombing. In the United States, we fell into Civil War some 85 years after our Revolution and change is still a struggle.  In Egypt this Revolution or what Thomas Friedman has called an "uprising" is far from consolidated and very, very fragile. The military carefully steps forward trying to control its economic clout and preserve its members from prosecution. The play the Muslim Brotherhood off against others with a promise of power - for the MB have thirsted to rule for a long time - while at the same time ensuring fraud holds them in check by elevating their rivals the Salafis... Sidelining the liberals who would prosecute these so-called "heroes of the revolution" for their crimes against their people, their 12,000 political prisoners still held and their still extant emergency detention law.

And so today while some celebrate a Revolution others call for its completion and even some for its renewal. It is an auspicious day here, and the future can be found in Tahrir Square.  But will we see it?

December 3, 2011 - In State College there is a mural on a wall on Hiester Street.  Past greats, legends that have made this sports city a Mecca for college sports, images all found in "Inspiration", the work of artist Michael Pilato.  Where Jerry Sandusky once sat, here near the center toward the bottom of the mural, you now see a chair, empty except for a blue ribbon memorializing victims of pedophilia. It wasn't an easy decision, but one that had to be made. This blog has other references to those abused - a link below and in the links section to Karen Holt - but a link is rarely enough for a voice silenced by abuse.

Wrapped in the mountains of Pennsylvania, snuggled into the hills waiting for the coming winter, State College sits centrally in Pennsylvania and for much of the past month has been at the epicenter of sports talk.  One by one new revelations in other places slip out. Syracuse? Maybe. And where next?

It wasn't the scandal that had brought me there - though I seem to have a knack for finding myself in the midst of it. I'd come to State College to play a House Concert, hosted by my Kerrville friend Laurel Zydney, her husband Andrew and son Ben (my roadie for the show).  It was a soothing night, though the trauma was ever-present in conversations. Tired from too much travel, I was able to sit on a stool in their living room with thirty or so guests in attendance and together we embarked on a bit of a journey - reflection, humor, and a touch of sadness.  All taking us away form the reality of their past month. In the end the conversations - during the show, the breaks, and after - snaked into the late evening and early morning hours ending with a reconnect to an old Alaskan friend Michael Pelikan.  It is the nature of these evenings to remember the connections between each of us. And so it was with this night and has been with the others on this tour.  It soothes me, these moments of grace. These connections across distance, time and place.

I'm on the road again today after a brief stop in Kansas City and tonight it will be New York and more connections.  For now that is enough.

December 1, 2011 - I talked to a taxi driver from Iran last night.  Zoroastrian, he left in 1977. I said "Before the revolution there?" He answered, "We do not call it that"...  We drove from a bar here in Kansas City back to our hotel after an electrifying conversation with a bartender named Bo who gave our cynical view of America a hip-check of youthful enthusiasm.  We adjusted our thoughts accordingly and wondered if an American politics was still possible.

And, in that taxi, that guy's enthusiasm still seemed with us. Sitting twenty minutes in the cab after we had arrived at our destination, we were caught in a new conversation that always ended with a question: "Okay, good night.... But let me ask you one more thing..." he'd say.  My friend Randy and I would try and answer - not always from the same perspective - and that question would become another dialogue... a hopefulness for the Mid East, for America, for a future for his three daughters.  We parted ways with Sy, gripped by possibility.

Across the sea in Egypt a violent week had given way to peaceful elections that stunned even the Egyptians.  No one killed in the first of many stages... Millions voting in lines snaking back as much as three kilometers. Banter and dialogue among those who opposed each other not about hate or anger, but about pure politics and a process few had ever imagined they would see.  Was there vote buying and fraud?  Yes. Ballot irregularities and administrative failures? Of course.  But the papers are reporting them and the voters are documenting them in an unprecedented outpouring of hand held recordings and videos posted all over social networking sites and in the media.  It is in many way s a transparent election that, because it is drawn out, will likely end up more poorly than expected for those caught cheating. This is a people that will not quietly accept documented manipulation after waiting so long. I have faith in this outcome... I believe, in the end, the average Egyptian will be heard - regardless of the type of government they choose. 

Here in Kansas City the world suddenly feels possible again.

November 28, 2011 - I walked home in the quiet, warm Philadelphia air last night. Home, to Steve and Diane Rukavina's place.  The music and performance and the conversations of the Salon - Andrea Clearfield's child - now 25 years old...still coursing through me.  It was a good night. It reminded me of why I love to do what I do. The people - Jay, Cheryl, Jason, Charles, Elliot, John, Eric, Carrie, Connie, Richard, Jennifer - all coming together to make for a great evening... We must expose our world the creative invention that humanizes us. Without it we are less than human.

Though entertainment and performance was the currency of the night, there was also no shortage of good conversation to shape the evening that followed. We are all debating the state of things here in America. Occupation Wall Street - a spontaneous outpouring of angry and resolute desire for change, co-opted by those who seek disruption for disruption's sake. The Tea Party - a harnessing of that same anger by the very, very wealthy to be wielded as a weapon against any who would challenge the dominance of the wealthiest one percent.... Even when that one percent's representatives in elected office seek to systemically eradicate those same Tea Party members benefits, pensions, wages and even, ultimately their life style.

What do we make of a future of fewer and fewer choices, and a state dominated by the few? How do we reconcile a world of need with the evidence of privilege and the slow destruction of the very fabric of our culture? And how do we reconcile the killing of those who simply shopped to hard - such a stark contrast to those simply fighting for the right to vote in other nations... I go on too long, perhaps, over such things... 

I do not know, and tonight I am truly tired. I leave these thoughts for you to consider and, as always, welcome the dialogue at cwrecord@alaska.net or on my Facebook page (though I check it less).

November 27, 2011 - Last night was a treasure of intimacy...  Friends Thomas and Kathie Tallant did a great job of setting up their house for a great crew of friends - an evening that opened with great music (a recording of their Paganini will be found here or on Facebook soon!) and I even got a chance to play some unusual instruments (note the size of that lute.... called a Theorbo)

I woke up at 2 am and hit the road again - there truly is something magic about driving through the night - everything so unusual, masked, guarded. Ended up in Roanoke this morning now heading to Philadelphia and the Salon this evening. No great insights today... nervous about Egypt, elections tomorrow.  Violence simmers below the surface... The US comes out strong against the violence...  We shall see.... 

November 26, 2011 - The days are rushing past like a truck down a freeway at night. Surreal lights like ancient spaceships floating down rivers of asphalt...  Time slipping by, but full, so very full. Two lives really it seems - Egypt and the music.  Now for the music.

The music tour began October 30 in Manchester, UK according to my good friend Martin.  Played a song there for his magnificent wedding (accompanied there by the vocals of my girlfriend Sarah Sledge).  Then it was back to Anchorage for the official kickoff at Side Street Espresso November 5 and again on the 8th for Arctic Entries (as the featured artist).  From there it was to Cairo (see below) where I played for friends at the home of Naguib Abidar and then to Dallas, Texas for an amazing house concert at the home of Randy and Denise Renter - two Kerrville friends who made me feel as though I was always at home. It was an electric evening with Kerrville friends Jerry Earwood and his wife and Scott Ausburn (his photos of the event are on my Facebook page) along with many others. There Randy and Ron Isaacson connected me to the work of the late Karen Holt and her touching work around abuse, and Bill Nash joined me for a song circle to close out the evening.  Truly Magic.

Dallas was followed the next night by the generous hospitality of friends Mike and Carol Wofford who opened their magnificent house in Oklahoma City to friends and neighbors as a fundraiser for the Food Bank of Oklahoma.  The evening was a different as I could have hoped - a unique dynamic mix of people that made me feel as though music truly was our common language.  The evening went late, not just with the music but with conversations that stretched all of our boundaries. Absolutely electric.  After a week break in Florida with Sarah and her parents, I'm on the road again. Today in Knoxville where I am hosted by friends Thomas and Kathie Tallant. Another great evening?  I'm counting on it....

November 24, 2011 - An earlier entry may be found below for today, a memory of my Cousin Peter... I felt the two entries should be separate. This, then, some other thoughts for these past six weeks...  More to come about music soon.

I wrote last month about Egypt. About a world of burning wood and ordered chaos, of people struggling to build a nation from the remains of 60 years of authoritarian rule, of a people who cared enough about democracy to die for it... And so, this week, they have.

This is the last, best effort to build a peaceable national democracy in the heart of Islam. A democracy that could look after its poor and its minorities and afford the right to self-determination to all of its people, regardless of their gender or religion or who they know or who they are related to... A dream we are supposed to have been conceived in, a pursuit to which we as a nation are bound by history and purpose. And yet we watch as this experiment in democracy starts to descend into an unnecessary cycle of violence and repression - its pattern and progress almost predictable in its slow downward trajectory. But it need not be this way. We need not let it happen. It need not always be the choice of geopolitical imperative outweighing the lives of people.

It is not in the interests of our allies to ensure a free Egypt - whether run by the Muslim Brotherhood as some think, or the secularists like the Free Egyptians (those I know there) as others do.  In either case the repressive monarchies and authoritarian states we call our friends are threatened - whether from a repressed Islam, or a powerful secular voice.  In all instances, if Egypt were to succeed, it would indicate to others in the region that this country - this 7,000 year old symbol of culture and humanity - has found a different path than either repression or self-immolation upon which to build a society. These allies would never like that. So in Washington diplomats and experts whisper threats of what democracy might bring to those who know no better.  They haven't been there, or if they have, they have wined and dined with the military rulers who control 40% or more of the economy and repress their people in the name of righteousness, while threatening any who speak ill of them. No, they haven't been there, but I have.

Today the military has chosen to allow chaos to rule the streets by not protecting those who assembled and demanded civilian government. They've chosen to shoot them and tear gas them and use nerve agents to permanently harm them. They've lied about what they have done and been caught in those lies. They've cut a deal with the Islamists to avoid losing their monopoly. These are our friends - the allies that promote stability? Since when did stability look like a state that kills its people, and promotes a party that will threaten the rights of one of its nation's genders and its religious minorities? We cringe at pepper spray in California, sprayed in the eyes of peaceful students.  In Egypt the police have aimed at the protesters eyes when they shoot, permanently blinding those who survive.

These are grim thoughts. I was there a week ago, and I left with a different feeling. I was watching a democratic process unfold before me.  I watched a Facebook page turning with new "likes" at a rate of 100 an hour - not to find out about the latest casualties, but to discover who their candidates were, the latest political ad, the latest party statement. I left a country that hoped for a future - and planned for an election November 28th. I landed in the U. S. and saw on the news a country convulsed in the reality that the secularists just might do better than it was thought, that the alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), just might not succeed. The reality that the ruling status quo might be broken. And then all Hell broke loose.

As I have watched this all unfold, I have been on my music tour, set up well before I knew I would be in Egypt. And, while the tour has been good (kudos to Randy and Denise Renter in Dallas and Mike and Carol Wofford in Oklahoma City for throwing great events - more on them and their events in the next entry), I have been troubled by all of this and stunned at the surreal contrast of the world I've played for here and the one I played for there. But I have not lost hope. I have spoken to some in Washington and have been on the phone with friends in Tahrir Square and I believe it may still be possible for a new Egypt to emerge. And while I recognize that "Black Friday" will dominate the news in the States - as we run from bargain to bargain, that day will take on a whole other meaning in Egypt if we do nothing. As more than a million people crowd the streets again on Friday asking for the right to be governed by themselves, their rulers, the SCAF, will face a choice and will have to determine which side of history they will come down on. And, in what we say to them, what words our government whispers into the ears of the SCAF, we too will have to decide on which part of history we'll come down.

It is in our interests as a free people - and as members of humanity - to care.  We should. It is not just about Egypt, its about whether or not there will ever be a third way in those nations where a majority of the people practice Islam. A way that could well lead to the end of our never-ending war on terror. A world that promises a future for those who have no hope for one. 

In January, while visiting my Mom in Carson City, she turned to me as the people filled Tahrir Square.  "I wish I could go", she said... "I wish I could be there too" she finished. We were watching history unfold. And while she can't be there, she inspired me. I can't stand back and watch, I've engaged. Will you?

November 24, 2011 - An apology is in order.  It has been well over a month since I've written, but the lack of words is not for want of action. Much has happened in this past six weeks. It has been difficult for me to decide where to begin in this time of sorrow, success, peace and conflict.  It is now Thanksgiving Day and, for the first time in a very long time I am taking a moment to try and put some of these things into words. This will be two entries.

My younger cousin Peter passed away the week of the 7th of November. A heart attack, followed by attempts at revival and then, after a brief hospital stay, his passing. Traveling, I was unable to attend the funeral, but his death has been on my mind.  A life I had lost touch with, and yet one that formed a part of my youth - encapsulating those years when I first understood both how joy was found in the camaraderie of family, and how cruel children could be with each other. 

These memories echo a time that changed me, formed me.  When I was growing up, Peter was one of many cousins - sons and daughters of my Mother's Sisters and her Brother - that we distant Alaskans busted out with - 17 cousins of various ages that helped socialize us, in some instances perhaps criminalize us (though not Peter), and in all ways immerse us in the feeling and concept of family. I remember hanging with the cousins before "hanging" was a word used to describe that kind of activity. And in St. Cloud, it was the small Mom and Pop grocery down from my Grandparents that we visited. Ice cream or frozen pops, melting before we got back in the oppressive Minnesota summer heat. We were less close with Peter's family - Sheila, Timmy and Cindy...  Sheila, older, mysteriously teenaged running off with my sister Nichelle to things we guessed were "parties" or maybe off behind the house then returning with a hint of smoke.... Timmy, quiet, a loner, already heading down a path that would find him in the military and a distinguished career. Cindy  - always in her own world, walking to her drum...

And Peter, as with the others in his family, a bit of a loner, though not by choice.  He wanted to do things with his older cousins (us), but his family lived across town, rather than out of town. When they came to visit us at the Grandparents, the visits were shorter, as theirs was a short distance to go, and Uncle Tom always had an early morning wake up for work - and Aunt Barbara was always sure to get her kids home for an early day before bed. But it wasn't just the schedule. We older cousins were haphazard in our treatment of Peter. Alternately accepting and rejecting him in ways that only kids can do and kids can painfully feel.

But Peter survived that ribbing and wronging of youth, and married Nyome and raised four daughters. And like many, he was a metaphor for the working class life of America - struggling to eke out a living, supporting a family, looking for opportunity and missing a few as well.

I'll miss a cousin I could have known better, but now never will.

October 9, 2011 - The dust of the Sahara is on my shoes, and the smell of wood burning is in my mind as I return from a week in Cairo. The energy was palatable there and I left a group of friends and leaders who believe in a future, in the possibility of a better world.  It echoes the thoughts I've had over these past few years, the feeling growing within me that we have allowed ourselves to lose sight of what it is to be human, to aspire for something better. Instead we are learning to settle for something a little worse, a little more hateful, a little less than what we can be.  And so it is there as well, as I read how these peaceful efforts have been stoked to violence and now two of my friends - those I stayed with and worked with have been injured just moments ago, others have died.  For power is always reluctant to let go. And so it seems again.  I'm going back because we must make a difference.

Here at home I watch the mass dismissing of Occupy Wall Street by the same media that embraced the Tea Party and it is clear to me why, for this media is not threatened by the anger of the Tea Party, they are protected by them.  They ridicule the leaderless, powerless OWS, because that's how they win.  With a page out of Babbitt, they spew out the words of conformity to a public that has continually soaked it up. But will the people, our people, ultimately see that the real outrage is not a President or protester who wants health care, a fair wage and an end to obscene corporate greed; its a greedy, self-serving media that would rather reward the wealthy and damn the middle class. Are we smart enough to see this?  Only time will tell.

This entry is brief, a plane to catch, but I know this: there is a confrontation coming here and abroad that will shape us. Which side of history will you be on?

October 1, 2011 - At an airport, waiting on another plane.  Last week I played in Salt Lake City at Ken Sanders Rare Books.  Quite an evening.  The show was opened by Duncan Phillips, Utah's son. He was followed by singer/songwriter Shane Jackman and then Tim Mason and I performed as the Bone Collectors - our combination of original music and spoken word.  Good evening had by all.  I note though that for the first time my I Phone heated up to such a degree (pun intended) that a note saying "temperature" came up and i had to actually put it in the refrigerator to get it to work again! Ah the mysteries of technology..

The Fall tour is coming together well.  Many thanks to those who have offered to do House Concerts! Dates confirmed for Anchorage (2), Dallas, Oklahoma City, Knoxville, State College PA, Philadelphia, Rhinebeck NY, and Reno NV. Dates nearly locked for Boston, Washington DC, Port Townsend, Helena MT and Kalispell MT. Still trying to see if something in the old Northwest can work out (Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin?) and Carson City NV. Also looked at California, but not hearing a whole lot from there...  Still we'll see. Its a full Fall nonetheless!

This trip is different though - harkening back to my old life and new sensibilities. I'm heading to Cairo, Egypt to assist with helping develop enthusiasm for the coming elections there.  I am helping with the next phase of the Arab Spring....  It means something to me.  I grew up in a family steeped in politics.  While some may scoff at it, I know that myself, my Parents and my Brothers and Sisters all believed that it was a part of our obligation as humans to provide for others and to spend some time in the service of the public good.  But increasingly people have lost faith in that public good, as have I. I am unsure of what politics means in America anymore.  Behind the consistent spewing of hate and the words of battle lines drawn, I have lost sight of the good that either side is intent on - if they even see it.  There are fundamentals, as I have written of before, that ought to mean something - like caring for the sick and infirm, not begrudging that wealth obligates you to serve those who helped get you there, that education matters.  But we do the opposite. We slash our obligations, make the returning something to our society and evil and we do so with little or no debate - those still believing meekly cowing down to the bullies that shout at them, push them, pepper spray them...  Meanwhile, a world away, democracy begins to bloom, but at what cost and in what form?

We have the tools to engage people in a new birth of democracy, but will they be turned into tools that manipulate a promise to serve a theft of resources? A new elite? Will they fulfil aspiration or crash upon the shores of the haves at the expense of the have-nots?  A many with a computer degree is selling food in a stall and, harassed by the police one too many times, sets himself on fire. And the match sets a flame to Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and others... A single match, but will it set a world on fire, or light a lamp?  It is these moments that matter, and so I go to Egypt.

There are odd parallels worth considering. When Jimmy Carter tied Human Rights to arms sales, and refused to sell to South American dictators that were throwing their youth from planes above the Atlantic, Mothers were emboldened, people rose up and the military was shamed. Regimes toppled and democracy today is the norm in most of South America... Economies weathered the crisis, and democracy took root.  It has not always been an easy path, and we have not always agreed with those who have come to power, but the systems are intact and, even in Venezuela there is credible opposition to the leadership.  In Eastern Europe, when Gorbachev withheld the Soviet fist, democracy bloomed too.  I remember reading the essays of Valclav Havel in those heady days, and I remember the fear I felt when I heard opportunists talk about the money that could be made... Democracy, which had been the light that kept dissidents alive there was side-stepped for economic policy. We cast it as the triumph of capitalism instead, and planted seeds of greed that tear those nations apart to this day.  It was never capitalism that kept those believers hoping and willing to risk their lives, it was the concept of freedom - that people have a right to self-determination.

But we used that belief to cut those nations and bleed them dry - paid lip-service to democracy, when our goal was to extract wealth. We disillusioned millions, who have given up on this form of government now seemingly inexorably linked to capital. And now in the nascent Arab rebirths what will we do? How will we act? Will we support democracies that choose not to follow our desires? What is our commitment to the right of self-determination?

It matters what we do.  It matters who we choose to be and how we choose to act out our unique humanity. Democracy must be real. Must lead to change. Must right wrong. But it has become a tool that is used against the disenfranchised - denies them education, manipulates their fears and, consequently, weakens its very core. We must take democracy back and show that it can lead to a voice for those who have no power amidst those who ceaselessly jockey to manipulate and hold power.  It must seek an unswerving redress of grievance, and balance of moral good. That is why I'm going to Egypt.

September 14, 2011 - I'm writing this as the 14th dawns.  Some thoughts have been coursing through me as we start to smell the advance of Fall and Winter. Near my house there is a Steller Jay that knows when we are here.  Yesterday I heard him making his cawing sounds and, when I opened my door, he was on the rail waiting for me.  He knows we put peanuts out for him and he is no dummy.  He'd called me to the door.  When we first met him, he was reluctant to come around and waited until we were gone.  Then, still wary, he came closer and closer, recognizing that we meant no harm.  Surely I will hear from some of you about not making him (or her) too familiar with humans, and I understand that - we often destroy those who trust us.  But this bird had an affinity and certainly not a fear.  Yesterday I grabbed my camera and waited until he returned and then shot the video (AVI format), uploaded on Facebook.  Could not upload it here, but here is a picture of our friend...

A metaphor of sorts of trusting nature...

While a pleasant distraction, other thoughts bubble near the surface.  THe shouting, the anger, the hypocrisy of those who seek power and not public purpose, who use trust and good will to siphon off what is left of a person's belief in what is right... I read in a Harper's piece earlier this year about the misuse of Founding American's quotes - the making up of quotes that sounded as though they came from these historic leaders just to suit the purpose of gaining power and control.  I'm struck by the un-Christian attitudes of those who claim to lead churches and attack those with charitable attitudes claiming they are socialists or, worse, liberals, as though caring for others, helping the destitute, caring for their fellow man were not Christian-like ways of being. I guess Christ must have worn a business suit when he preached, read from a book of statements that were unchanging, persecuted any who strayed from the path, and collected money from the already desperate to pad his bank book... At least, if I were an outside observer looking in at the gruesome, predatory practices of many of our popular religious leaders I might think that.  I'm not willing to paint all with that brush, but would not be surprised that some of those mentioned below in an earlier blog were painted as anti-God for their support of the disenfranchised....

But I am not stuck simply on religion.  I'm driven again and again by the seeming incongruity of the two types (broadly speaking) of humans that we are around - political party, denomination, race, nationality not withstanding.  Those who believe in good faith that they should seek to improve the condition of all as a common goal of humanity - the essence of being human; and those who are driven by a desire to simply accrue more for themselves at any cost - often using the words of those who care in a way that gains them power, but who share little in the way of belief.  Two different views of humanity - you need not be religious to believe in the awesome gift of our humanity. You need not be a-religious to care for nothing but your own place of power.

Words control us, co-opt us, are used as weapons, and rarely as a defense.  It is this that troubles me and that I hope to write more of in the coming weeks.  We as humans thrive on our common words, though meaning evolves.  Words flow through us almost organically.  I have talked with many of my friends about this over the years - how certain words ebb and flow in our dialogue, almost taking on a life of their own.

In the mid-Nineties it was "wonderful", stretched out. Prevalent these days, though on the wane, is the phrase "I mean" placed before every other sentence.  Listen for it.  You do it yourself.  The bored or rushed person has a new way to move along conversation: "right" repeated again and again. Historians use of the word "narrative" picked up now by every social scientist and then the mainstream media was hardly uttered a scant two years ago.  The current beginnings of the use of "conceit" increasingly as a part of our diminishing of motive is the next step: "...it seems to be his conceit to believe that..." Once you know this, that words take over a place in our subconscious collectively, the next step is easy.  Control words.  Make "liberal" a bad word - forget that our Founders saw this as a word of revolution and change - of a break with monarchy and the embracing of government by the governed.  Now it is spat in a breath or whispered as a curse. Or that "media", once the bastion of freedom, has devolved into a synonym for elitism along with a college education and a university instructor.

I marvel at the success of those who are wealthiest and who seek to aggrandize themselves with more and more power, who are able to convince those who are poorest to vote for them, while those who struggle to improve wages, working conditions, and our twilight years are somehow vilified and held up as examples of un-Americanism.  I profess to not understand it, as others also do, but, in fact, I do understand it.

Ours is no longer a nation that reveres education or learning. Ours is no longer a nation that aspires for a common good, or a basis in fact and science that leads us there.  Instead we have set out on a new road, oddly a proto-Darwinian story - a "Lord of the Flies" like survival of the nastiest.  While those who would dumb us down and tear away our foundations of a just state may profess they don't believe in evolution and that they do believe in God, neither holds true.  Under their guidance we evolve, but into a more brutal state that has little left of charity.  We compete for everything, for everything has become competition.  We even watch the struggle of new releases of movies to see who is number one and who number ten...  It is all a race.  And here is the craziest thing about it those who do care, who fit the human condition I described above, accept this competition and dutifully play by the rules "of the game".  But the other side never does.  They don't need to.  They don't care about the game, they just care about the power, the winning.  If they lose, they change the rules. Or the words...

So listen you poets, and singers, and writers... Push through these thieves and steal back your words.

September 13, 2011 - Last week a friend encouraged me to keep up the blog....  I lose sight of time so easily as seasons pass (much as I think we all do). Again delay, and now September.  Much of the past weeks has been developing the Fall schedule - a number of House Concerts and other venues as I plan my "I need to get the next CD done" tour.  Hoping to concentrate activity in a way that helps me raise enough to get the CD out.  Not sure of the name of it yet, "Fulton Street", "Geography of Love"... other names may come and go.  Its a good collection of songs that need to be winnowed down, so the tour will help in a way. I'll watch for reactions, get feedback...  The songs span from the mid 2000's to now and may yet include some of the three or four that I am presently working on. In all, they represent a journey through many, many places and states of being. It is an ever-changing world and I suspect that these upcoming shows will be part of it.  Already on the schedule for sure are Oklahoma City, Dallas, Philadelphia, State College PA, Reno NV and Boston.  Waiting for confirmation include gigs in New Jersey, Rhinebeck NY, Helena and Kalispell Montana, Port Townsend WA, DC and Knoxville, TN.  I'm open to other ideas and look forward to your thoughts and suggestions. More entries coming this week as well as the start of the calendar update!

I should note here, and will note again in the next few entries that I am joining Tim Mason in Salt Lake for two gigs as the Bone Collectors, our poetry/music collaboration in late September.  More on those soon.

July 26, 2011 - I have delayed a bit in writing.  Houseguests and summer in Alaska are not very conducive to the creative spirit and often lead one down a path of quiet contemplation.  Years ago as a kid I read Dunsany's "Idle Days on the Yan", one of his many short fantasy pieces about a traveler drifting down a river and seeing the improbable sites on his voyage.  The story has a touch of lethargy and delay to it, a touch of the "perhaps I'll do that tomorrow..." refrain that can infect an Alaskan summer...  But the houseguests are gone and the page beckons.  New music is bubbling below the surface and, yes, there is work to do...  So I begin again.

All of these thoughts are in the shadow of the budget debate and the slow train wreck of the government's ability to either be civil or function. Was it ever worse? We think our times are always more dire, then read about members of Congress beating each other with canes in the 1850's - back when even firearms were allowed in the chambers. But it is true that these are different times.  Now more people are subject to our whims, and our actions can mark the dividing line of poverty for so many.  And still Congress dithers... more interested in re-election than right action. 

Most recently gay marriage was expanded to New York, and I was surprised at how quickly this US House seized on the coming Armageddon that loving marriage presented while ignoring their fiscal responsibility and the much more real crisis of the economy.  Here, in Anchorage, this battle was fought nearly twenty years ago. Our Anchorage Assembly struggled over the language of protection of basic rights for all citizens, including the addition of the words "sexual preference" to the City code as a prohibited reason to discriminate. Let me be clear (as the President is wont to say), not special rights, but the same rights a person of color or differing religion would have.  Simply put, their argument was should you have the right to discriminate against gay people. 

Needless to say a number of our high profile mega churches came out, Pastor Prevo's flock, misled and non-Christian in attitude, but only Christian in name, were driven like sheep to the Assembly chambers where they bleated their view of the imminent destruction of Anchorage, and they won that battle.  Ruined political lives, ended careers, drove a wedge through our community and then tried to hammer home their gains by explicitly identifying gay persons as an issue to be confronted and opposed. 

Finally, in the midst of all that, a number of churches rose up from their drift, their observation without comment, their "Idle Days...", and spoke out.  They hired me (for a pair of shoes) to help them facilitate a declaration of Christian love and rights.  Though I was not a practicing follower of a religion, they trusted me to help them develop their thoughts.  So week after week, leading up to the big vote, they worked on this statement.  Line by line, word by word.  Catholics, Methodists, fundamentalist Baptists, Lutherans, Jews, and many, many others. Brown bag lunches and discussions of conscience. In the end they wrote a manifesto and raised enough money to put it in the local paper - just in time for them to watch as those who fostered hate backed down and removed their proposed anti-gay language and the fight ended. No ground seemingly gained, none lost, but leaving a community that had honed their skill to hate just a little bit more - courtesy of our mega church.

Their ad never ran, but I kept the final print-ready copy and, while dining with my house guests last week and discussing how far society has moved, was reminded of it again.  I went up and found that print-ready copy in my closet (ok, ok, yes, I kept it in the closet...) and read it to them.  It occurred to me that this brave moment of these brave people had never been published.  So here it is in full below, paid for at the time by those signing below and their friends.

And so I too drift along the river and discover great things in decent people:

On Human and Civil Rights

Biblical faith requires from us a responsibility to all people. We are each others' teachers. We lead by example. We are bound by common values. We, as religious leaders, affirm these values:

• To honor the dignity and equality of all persons in the sight of God;
• To stand together against acts of hatred, violence, and the threat of violence in our community and in our schools;
• To stand in solidarity with those who are threatened and injured;
• To demonstrate respect for those who may think and act differently from ourselves
• To initiate healing in our community through compassion and mutual respect so that we may all act on God's command that we be reconciled with those with whom we disagree.

Through these shared values, we work, defend, and advocate for human and civil rights for all people, regardless of religion, race, or sexual orientation.     

Rev. Ronald R. P. Meyers,  Rev. Ron Martinson, Carol Ann Seckel, Rev. Fritz Youra, R. Kevin Seckel, Dennis B. Holway, Rev. Donald D. Parsons - Bishop, Steven Charleston, Rev. E. Wesley Veatch, Rev. Dr. John C. Bury, Rev. Steven D. Humburg, Rev. Bruce A. Engebretson, Rev. Frederick (Fritz) P. Laupe, Rev. Daniel M. Bollerud, Gaetana Cincotta - S. S. A., Rev. Allen P. Price, Danielle Griffen - OP, Karen Yesh - SMAH, Chaplain Dianne O'Connell, Sister Marilee Murphy - CSJP, Rev. James R. Fellers, J. Rose McLean, John R. Tindell, Rev. Robert W. Nelson, Rev. Jay P. OlsonKetchum, Rev. Glenn Groth, Rev. Rick Cavens, Fr. Steve Moore, Rev. Charles H. Eddy, Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld                                             

June 21, 2011 - It was a crazy fast ride home - but that road gets lonely when all you have to talk to is yourself. No cell coverage, disconnected, I found I had to... read.  Newspapers when I stopped (and Canada has great ones) or listen to CBC (great, real radio), where I learned that the Bush Administration (II) actually tried to dig up dirt on bloggers in an eerie reflection of the last days of Richard Nixon...  It took getting out of the country to discover this, though it finally made the news in America yesterday.  Not music, but worth reflecting on.  Will we remember? Will we care? 

I am struck by the age we now live in.  We correspond in 140 character bites (sadly, with photos as we have recently learned, not counting against the number of characters regardless of size - which in that instance doesn't appear to matter), we e mail and text. Finding ways to say things in shorter and shorter phrases and iterations. We dumb down the language, replace "you" with "u" and have to learn whole new social niceties (does no period at the end of the sentence in a text mean she does not care? Why does it take more than a day to get a response, have I done something wrong?).  I crave letters and once (have I written this here) wrote daily. Fortunate enough to go to Oxford, I'd wake up early and walk to a tea or coffee place, cards in tow, and write two or three in the morning and at least another in the afternoon after lectures or tutorials.  I received nearly as many (the envy of the mailroom) and felt as though I was in a golden age of thought and correspondence.  I wrote long letters often, exploring ideas that were budding in my head of the inherent nature of man, new music, politics and philosophy.  There is something about the written word - not subject to cut and paste PCs - that forces you to consider your words, craft them.  I miss that. 

I still carry a stack of cards with me, a concession to that past but rarely find the time to pick up a pen and write them...  I find excuses, and as often as not I call, e mail or text the intended recipient making my news old long before it gets there.  Perhaps I will try and write again, maybe there will be a few less texts, fewer e mails for a bit... We can write a revolution... Of course I'll put that off at least until I've posted this on line...

June 18, 2011 - In Ft. Nelson, British Columbia.  Heading home on the long drive.  The Alaska Highway before me.  There is a place in the middle - a moment when you are at your most lucid and most creative.  Balanced, as on a knife's edge - eternal and momentary. There was a time when I felt this feeling and I would relish it and consider all that I would create now. Savoring it, I would let it pass.  Gradually I learned that when I felt it, it was important to have the tools of the trade nearby - a guitar on or near the bed, a pen at hand.... But more often than not I would find a distraction instead - resolving to write, I'd head for the nearest coffee shop, only to pick up the advertising newspaper instead.  Or read the history of a restaurant on a menu, or, more recently, check political news on my I phone.  There is a discipline to creativity that must be cultivated, or the creative moment slips away.  Lost forever. Most of my best songs were written when I tapped that experience - at least those that were not coerced by a flirtation or discovered in a line scratched down in the past, finally liberated to form a song like an archaeological ruin unearthed and imagined in its beauty. But these are thoughts from the declining end of a knife's edge experience.  The road beckons, as does my home... 

June 17, 2011 - Different stories emerge from your consciousness.  Like the ebb and flow of an ocean, first rising to the surface, then down again.  It has been that way this week.  Stories I haven't told in years finding themselves at the surface, renewed in their remembrance and telling, all with the same basic themes: finding that which was lost; the good nature of people; the impossibility of chance; magic.

In Kerrville I repeated a story from my errant travels in South America when I was 17 and again at 22.  The story at 17, though, perhaps most set me on a path leading to magic and impossibility.  We had been there for two months already, climbing mountains in Bolivia and seeing the country.  Our team of seven had been slowly whittled down to three -- myself, my best friend from high school, Tuckerman, and his Father (our leader, loosely) Bill.  We had decided on the destination of Sajama, third highest mountain in South America and the highest in Bolivia.  Isolated in the southwestern Bolivian desert, the last stop in civilization would be the dusty city of Oruro, wracked in poverty and decaying.

We arrived in Oruro as the last days of an election campaign were ending. The Banzer dictatorship was giving way (or so they thought) to democracy and the cities were alive with rallies and drinking and the megaphoned voices of candidates desperate to win an election they never could. We stayed a night in a simple hotel, public showers and bath down the hall.  Eager to wash the dust of the road off of me, I headed for the shower. I remember it well -- the first hot water for days and for this 17 year old, a soapy oasis in a dusty trip.  I took off my two favorite rings -- both handmade.  One was gold with runes etched into it, the other turquoise and silver.  I set them in the soap dish, and settled into the warmth of the water coursing over me and then a long, good night's sleep.  We set out early the next morning for the three-day ride to Sajama in the back of various Toyota trucks - the cheapest and most regular form of transport.  It was early on the second day, now covered in dust, as I put my gloves on, that I realized I no longer had my rings and remembered that I had left them in the soap dish in Oruro.

I ranted for a bit and was despondent -- thinking: "if we just went back..." I would still be able to find them.  Bill knew it was useless, but told me we would return after the climb, but that we couldn't turn back now. Of course he never intended to go back.  Our route would take us in the opposite direction when we were done, back to La Paz and then home. Not consoled, I nonetheless agreed.  I was powerless to do anything else.  We continued to the small village of Tumarapi (sp) at the base of the mountain.

The climb was difficult. The mountain, deceptively easy in appearance, rose over 1,000 feet higher than Denali and created its own weather.  We managed to get up to near 19,000 feet over the course of a few days (all mountains in Bolivia already start at around 10,000 feet, so climbs take less time) and ended up bivouacked as weather closed in on the side of the mountain on a ledge of stones that we had made, with a tent barely big enough for the three of us.  Stuck on the ledge for that night and the next day, we grew bored as the night came on.  Bill began to tell ghost stories of the lost climbers of Sajama -- a story about a foreign embassy staff person who was lost on the mountain and was said to haunt the peak looking for other wayward climbers.

It was as he ended this story that we hear the first sound, like a distant "hello!" shouted over the incessant, non-stop howling of the wind outside our tent.  We all froze and I looked at Bill.  "Stop it", I said, "that's not funny". He look perplexed and denied he had said anything, as did Tucker. Just as I was starting to get angry, the three of us, now looking at each other, heard it again. "Hello in there..." and "Is there anybody there?"  A foreign accent, maybe German.  I think it might have been the only time I ever saw Bill, the inveterate teaser, truly stunned and maybe even frightened.  After a moment one of us unzipped the tent (not sure who) to see where the voice was coming from - this manifestation of the exact story we had just heard.  There, in the gale-force wind, was a man with a light jacket, goggles, holding what look liked a space blanket in his hand.  "Hello", he said.  "Do you have another tent or blanket?"

His name was Thomas Deskau, a teacher of German from Oruro.  He had come up the mountain thinking it was a day climb with only his light jacket and the emergency blanket.  He had become disoriented in the altitude and, when night fell (as it does quickly near the Equator), he had gotten lost only to stumble upon our tent.  Our tent was barely able to fit the three of us -- one on top of the other -- and the slope was too steep to allow for building another ledge and pitching another tent, so we gathered extra clothes and gave up one of our sleeping bags and set him up down wind of our tent to provide a little more shelter, half not expecting him to be there in the morning - a mirage from a ghost story.

But he was there the next day. His feet hurt, he said, but he insisted on joining us in a failed attempt to summit. We saw the summit flags, but wind and coming night forced us back down and we stumbled back to our tent in the dark. That night he told us something about Oruro and I, fully realizing that we would never be going back, drew a picture of my rings and wrote a description of the hotel down (I did not recall the name) and asked him if he could look for them when he returned.  He agreed to and the next morning got ready to leave, tucking my note in his jacket.  Still complaining about his feet hurting, we convinced him to take his boots off that next morning and saw that his feet were horribly frost bit -- probably from the first night.  Concerned, we asked him to stay with us and said we could get him out.  But we were burdened with all of our gear and he refused.  He took off down the mountain.  Faster and faster he seemed to walk, while we struggled after until he disappeared.

When I tell this story I shift here. I talk about getting back to Tumarapi, missing a bus by seconds and not seeing another for three days (due to the election).  I describe getting back to La Paz, the cold night sleeping on sheep carcasses and machine parts, the dinner celebration with Alaskans we stumbled upon, the coup and my first encounter with an Uzi.  I talk about fleeing the city and missing our ferry, thereby losing our luggage.  I talk about how we got the luggage back, after tracking the bus driver and how we bribed our way across the Bolivia/Peru border to get away from the devolving country that had closed its borders.  I talk about Peru and the return home.  It's a long story, full of the adventures that have been at the core of my life and that shaped my first real adult impressions of the world and which likely drive me to this day.  But those stories are for other times.  This story ends some seven or eight months later when the mail came to my apartment in Anchorage.

That day the mail included a box from someone named Tim Beale, a name I did not know.  There was a note inside which I still have (along with the box) that said that the contents of the box were given to him (Beale) by a friend of his from Europe who had been traveling in South America and had passed through Miami (where Beale lived) on his way home.  The friend had been to Oruro and met a German there who insisted he take the box and make sure it was sent to the address written on it - my address. When I opened that smaller box I saw both of my rings and a note from Thomas Deskau.  He had survived the return, his feet intact, and had gone, after his recovery, to the hotel that I had described. There he had asked about the rings and the desk clerk, beaming, brought them out and assured Thomas that he new the owner was bound to return.  It is of little doubt that those rings were worth at least half of a year's salary for that clerk, but he had held on to them.  Thomas had met a man traveling and thought it would be more reliable to mail the rings from the States, as he could not trust the Bolivian postal service.  This traveler was passing through Florida on his way back to Europe and entrusted the rings to Beale so the proper postage could be put on them.  And Beale had mailed them to me.

It is an odd story. Of coincidence and luck. Of the good nature of people.  Of ghosts and good fortune.  It is a true story.  It is a magic story and it shapes me.

June 16, 2011 - A long time has passed since I wrote.  Oddly, time without my car, left in Arlington, Virginia while I slipped back into patterns of life that pay the bills and keep my house in Anchorage.  Divorced from the road, an uneasy and volatile relationship at times, but reconciled now. Car in my hands, Kerrville and Minnesota in my rear view mirror, I head home again. Always heading home. As in past years, Kerrville was a reconnection to great friends and the meeting of new ones and then it was Austin for a night and then a lunch before landing on Interstate 35 and heading North to see family and for a music event for my Uncle Gene at my Cousin Jeff's - with all my Mom's family there (Bette, Barbara and Tom, Audrey, Cousins Kelly and John), Jeff's daughters Bri and Emily, John's son Matt and friends Trina, Jill and Pete as well. It was a good evening.  The previous evening was at Cousin Anna's and her husband Gary and lunch with Uncle Pete, visit with Cousin Barbara - Minnesota, my other home.

We are bound by the myths and magic that grow up around us, with us. I heard no few stories of my past in this past two days. One story still makes the rounds unchanged after all these years... I had been doing one of my many cross-country trips in my twenties (or was it my late teens?) and had stopped to visit Uncle Gene and Aunt Bette.  To protect my stuff I had parked my car in their garage in Minneapolis (Nordeast, as they say) and, after an evening of stories and dinner, ran out in a rain storm to unlock the garage padlock and set out on the road for somewhere that I don't recall - all I knew was that it was East...  I pulled the car out (the trusty brown Toyota), put the key on the top of the car while I re-padlocked the garage.  I bid farewell to the city of my summers in youth and headed East to Wisconsin.  It was in Madison when I realized I had forgotten to take the key to the garage off of my car...  Hundreds of miles later, I pulled over and, in a desperate panic, reached up on top of my car... and found the key. Stunned, I called Gene and Bette and let them know I had the key.  The next day I dropped it in the mail and the story became a bit of family lore, a bit of magic... There are others to tell and, one day they'll come out too.

I left after the show last night - family mostly still there as I extended my goodbye for an hour before climbing into my car and setting out West to Fargo.  I couldn't stay. A sadness, or a contemplation had its grip on me.  A moment.  A passage of time. Compelled to feel the road beneath me, where everything becomes timeless, where thought is therapy, where pasts and futures merge in a slow lane of thought, I set out. And so, with a full moon guiding me, then behind me, I drove into a fog in Fargo and the night.

February 12, 2011 - Suns out in Anchorage.  Going to see Guy Davis tonight (a Whistling Swan event).  Though reflecting on winters, and cold and my home for a moment...

I drive a lot - have since I was young.  I tell people its been 42 times up and back on the Alcan, but  think it might have been more.  Easily more.  But the miles roll under my car like time itself.  And I've watched time - often surprised when I look in a mirror and see a shock of grey, a line, or feel the weight of life or see it looking back at me.  We choose things - every day, every moment. We have before us the path of happiness, but will we take it?  We live in drama and regret, but always within reach of something else.  Will we reach?  These choices determine so much, and we don't get to rewind, or redo.  So we see the risk of life and many, fearful, settle for what they know.  What is before them. We may ache for what we leave behind us, and yet revel when we have the wisdom to see forward. A friend once told me "If you ever change your mind, let me know..."  and I loved that. For rarely are doors left open, whether or not we ever walk through them.  We cannot know who we will be or what we will face over years.  But the door is cracked even if, in time, forgotten.

When I was 19 one of my first powerful relationships ended. She was a singer with a voice that would melt any Alaskan Winter and I found myself tortured by a loss I could not comprehend - I had imagined a lifetime with her (but what can a 19 year old know of a lifetime?).  So, when I could no longer handle the searing pain of loss, I packed up my old Toyota Corolla, stopped by a holiday party (Winter in Alaska), bid a dramatic farewell to my old high school friends (oh, to make her feel the sense of loss, I thought - never a good idea when the old girlfriend has already moved on), and then I drove away in the middle of the night, the radio echoing my choice with Supertramps' "Take the Long Way Home". 

I had no clear idea of where I was going, but I knew it was to find my way out of this place that I knew had caused me so much pain.  I knew I would find solace in the road. I knew I was gone. Baby, I was out of there... I might have said to her.

I drove under a clear sky and, before the moon rose, I saw the Northern Lights, a necklace around the night and then the moon...  As the miles ticked by in that wasted subzero winterland, I grew more and more tired, eventually falling asleep and flaming out into a ditch some 240 miles North of Anchorage. Tok a ten mile walk away.  5 am.  No vehicles.  And so I got out and walked, and reflected and in that cold, as each step took me closer to that flashing amber light (visable from ten miles away), I thought of who I was, where life goes, how we choose...

Car towed out, I didn't head home.  I continued.  A resolve had come over me on that walk and I'm sure it changed my life.  I knew that I would always pull myself out of the ditch, and move on.  That knowing I could be at the party, or on the road was no choice at all. It had to be moving forward.  Reality bested metaphor, and I became my own music or poem. I drove that time through the states to DC and I was gone from Alaska for over five months.  In many ways I never returned, though I did physically come back.  I knew then as clearly as I know now that you live once (as far as you can know) and in that life there are few limits on what is possible. 

I recall at one point having driven past Crater Lake Park in the middle of the night and heading to Eastern Oregon.  The road was silent, cold, the night clear and, as I drove down from the park, I saw a flashing amber light ahead of me.  Experience told me it was at least ten miles away. And, with Fleetwood Mac's "Sara" playing full blast on my 8 track, I drove away from my past to somewhere only the road could show me.

February 9, 2011 - Airport in Minneapolis and the temperature is twenty degrees cooler than Anchorage. I wonder about this mythic anomaly of Alaska - the ice box, the folly.  Where you can walk across ice in the summer in sandals, or ski down mountains in shorts. We build myths and live them.  Had a friend once who adopted the garb of the supposed Alaskan.  He grew up in the Anchorage area - born in South America.  But when he went East for college he bought a Stetson and an accent, and played the tough Alaskan.  His parents had been hippies - escaped to Alaska from the East. Father a College Professor, Mother a postal worker.  But my friend?  He was John Wayne in "North to Alaska" and the folks in Connecticut ate it up. 

I came to visit him once during the Bush/Reagan Presidential Primary and he convinced me to come to the Connecticut College Republicans convention as part of his College's delegation.  Not only was I a tried and true Democrat, but I had the long hair of a person who was rarely comfortable with more than one fork or a name plate by my dinner setting.  I covered the Democratic Convention in New York City later that year as a reporter for the Alaska Public Radio Network (strictly voluntary, but I did interview Betty Friedan), but in March I travelled to the Connecticut College Republican Convention as part of his College's Republican delegation - under the assumed name of Hallowood Kaxlaxian (when asked I claimed it was British and Greek).  At one point the battle between the Yale Reagan and Bush delegations turned into a credential challenge, each side fighting to see which would be seated and secure the delegates for the State Convention.  I was selected to Chair as a "neutral" and practiced every trick I knew to get the Yale Bushies in - only to lose in the end.  A strange experience, to be sure, but revealing also. We so easily move to deception....

And so it is. We spend a lifetime crafting stories of who we are, who we want to be - sometimes knowingly making the details up.  But we risk losing ourselves in them.  A Stetson and a myth, isn't necessarily the truth...

February 1, 2011 - A short entry from here at DCA.  More I hope to follow - including a photo or two of the snow scape that is the East Coast these days (and this before the storm to end all storms gets here tomorrow!)  The Salon was a dream - great act after great act, and the good company of my friends Steve and Diane. The audience was amazing, the venue the best and I was invited back by the charming Andrea Clearfield to perform again.  It was a magic night followed by drinks among the musicians at Monk's Cafe just down the street.  So many things to say about it, but a plane awaits me...   In Alaska for a few days before bouncing back and forth between coasts this month....  

January 29, 2011 - I've settled into Harrisburg, PA for the night, Philly tomorrow. Last night I slept in Elkhart Indiana, but not before driving to Goshen and falling back into a dream, a strange trip from two and a half decades ago.  It was 1985.  September. I was taking a drive-a-way from Anchorage, Alaska to Marlboro College in Vermont.  A remembrance of a Mother for her daughter. I hadn't wanted to drive alone, so my brother Nick had connected me up with his friend, John Chandlar.  Later simply known as Crystal John. 

Crystal John and I went booming down the highway in that Subaru and I learned he was on a quest, into his past, for a Pink Cadillac - the last bit of his Father that remained now sitting in an old garage on the outskirts of Goshen, Indiana. He'd cruised in it in high school and after, and it brought a simpler life back to him. With his Father's death fresh, he needed to see it again.  Drive it.  Remember.

We drove through the nights from Anchorage, down the isolated beauty of the Alcan - and all along the way we were paced by the distant ring of the Aurora, like a guide or a protector.  John claimed it was the quartz crystal that he had that brought the lights out, and he wrapped that crystal in duct tape and stuck it to a stick, creating a magic wand of sorts that he would periodically wave into the air - blessing our trip, marking our way - while space music, the odd tonal sounds of synthesizer music, played in unending loops on the tape deck.  The duct tape came in handy.  We fixed a broken door handle, and a gear shift with it, and even water hoses in the engine, but John never worried about those things.  We had his crystal to lead the way. 

We finally stopped one night in Canada - we'd been driving non-stop for two or three days.  John wanted a drink, and he was sure that the crystal had told him where to find one. I can't remember the town, or the beer, but I know it was the rest we craved and we slept hard.  I remember coffee the next morning - we had to be in Alberta.  John lifting up the creamer and showing me that it said "a petroleum product" back when folks in Alberta were still proud of their oil.  He poured it into his coffee anyway, smiling and saying, "well, at least its organic..."

On the evening of the fifth or six day (after a brief Minnesota stop to visit relatives - all of whom found John to be a ...treat) we caught the exit into Elkhart off the Indiana Turnpike.  He regaled me first with stories of this birthplace of many a saxophone and tales of his time here when he'd been younger. But as we neared Goshen he asked me what day it was. "Friday" I answered.  He smiled and looked at me like a teenager might... "The streets will be packed" he said. "Cruising, its all there is to do on a Friday night here."  I didn't believe him for a minute.  We'd seen no traffic, it was near midnight. But when we hit Goshen, we came to a stop.  Lincoln Street - at least I think it was Lincoln Street - was impassable.  In the strange courting pattern of youth of a time, big cars, and bravado had turned the main drag into a parking lot - punctured by the flashing red and blue of police cars, the roar of unmuffled engines and the coy shrieks of girls ready for guys on the make.

We slowly worked our way through the pack, and down some side streets, stopping by a modest house of indeterminate age.  His Mother met us, and gave us a late night snack.  We slept and I remember awakening to the smell of coffee.  When I got to the kitchen, John was there. We quickly ate breakfast, and I packed up my few things into the car, and went back in to thank his Mom for the hospitality. John smiled when he saw me then. "Come with me," he said and headed out to the garage.  He lifted up the door and there, like a mythic beast, sat a light pink and white Caddy.  A beauty by any stretch.  Quest complete.  "I got a new plan," he said to me. "Gonna take this Caddy and head south.  Warmer territory - Arizona or Mexico.  Maybe I'll trade it for a Semi - and try running things back and forth between the two."  I wasn't exactly sure what he meant by "things", but I had an idea that it might not be all that legal.  Still, i wished him well and after a quick goodbye, headed out again, Crystal John and his Mom in my rearview mirror waving farewell. 

I never saw Crystal John again, but I got a cryptic note from him some years later - a folded up poster saying simply "Jake for Sherriff" and some photos of the Sandia Mountains shot from a moving car, I'm guessing the cab of a Semi, or an old pink Cadillac. I later used one of those to help create the cover to "Albuquerque Road". And Goshen? I hit it last night, Friday night, at 11 pm, and there was hardly a car to be seen. It had changed, or maybe it had always been like this and that night twenty-five years ago John and that crystal had simply summoned up his 1970's life one last time, just as he remembered.

January 27, 2011 - Lincoln, Nebraska tonight.  Talks with friends as day gave way to night. Talks with myself, once night had fallen.

Wyoming set in the heart of the Rockies, but flat as the Great Plains toward which the road flowed, pouring me into the endless windswept landscape of Nebraska. I listened to music by Philip Glass on Nebraska Public Radio as the sun set over Kearny.  He was a cab driver, even after he premiered his first major works.  An artist who actually was a "hack", funny. Art doesn't pay that well, and it never hurts to keep a foot on a paycheck to keep the house from blowing away...

Two sunsets. One from Nevada a week ago as I came into Reno, but the top one from tonight in Nebraska while talking to my friend Tim Marino...

January 26, 2011 - Rock Springs, Wyoming for the night.  Wind howling so loud it drowns out the TV, and the doors are rattling as winter threatens to break in and bury me in drifts.  Heading East to Philadelphia and thinking about the gigs I need to set up in Minnesota in April and the work before me... I drove in silence most of today, thinking of words my Mom has given me yesterday and years ago.  Words that echo in the heart of all of us - about loss and love and possibility.  Perhaps the song will emerge, though I'm never sure.  She writes about the rhythm of the road - that's where I get this wanderlust.  Years of youthful traipsing across the country in the back of a Buick or Ford station wagon (or a Plymouth or a VW Bug). Knowing that the fries tasted the same no matter where you went and that a pool was a summer necessity for parental sanity on the road.

I'm following a path tonight and I wonder where it will find me tomorrow. Rehearsing words I'd wish I'd known at every loose end of life, practicing for everything yet to come.  We practice for 90 years more or less, until perhaps we get it right.

January 25, 2011 - Lovely time visiting my Mother in Carson City, Nevada. Also had a chance to see an old friend, Laura Mathews (McNeil). Time to catch up on life, reflect on the passage of the past few years and months, have fun hanging out with my Mom and her friends Mark, Susan, Jo and Mark and Susan's Nephew and Niece (and her beau).   The trip across country was crazy. With tractor trailers strewn about the highway and temperatures dipping so low that even Alaska looked comfortable...  Songs eluded me, but not contemplation - the soil from where songs are grown. Where seeds first find root.  And so it has been this trip. 

I do often wonder how things change, how they emerge.  One day a thing is one way and then, when you look again, its something new.  A line around the eye, a feeling, the worn step once sharp, the weathered wood, once fresh. A memory that might have bitten, softening.  And closeness lost or distance covered.  What we cherish now, something we did not imagine or perhaps even know two years before. And so we discover the real mystery of life: that we live in the present and not the past, that we are in a constant state of renewal, that we cannot know our future except to know that it is a consequence of how we choose to live our present and that, in the end, we have choice - the ability to choose which path we will walk upon. Nothing is preordained, nor inevitable. 

I set out tomorrow for Philadelphia and join a private show at the Salon on the 30th, then see Keith Liles again on the 31st before returning to Anchorage for a few days. I leave the comfort of Carson City and dive back into Winter. I hunger for Spring.

January 17, 2011 - Croton-on-Hudson at the Home of Nenad Bach, Croatian musician and activist.  Hosted here by his charming wife Vera and daughter Lea.  It was a long two days these last - I popped up to Bearsville to appear in the filming of Marc Black's "No Fracking Way" video (the use of water to push natural gas that ineviatably harms the drinking water of a community) after a great dinner with David and Jeanne and an all night drive from DC (and a roadside sleep in Pennsylvania).  Old haunts in this New York journey.  Tonight its to the Cornelia Street Cafe to hear Keith K. P. Liles read as part of his New York Quarterly poetry success.  After that? Its off west to vist my Mother and other friends before returning to play in Philadelphia (and for another Liles reading) at the end of the month...  The journey continues.

January 13, 2011 - A night of live music here in Staunton, Virginia after picking up my oft-injured guitar.  A movie and a night walking. The last few nights were magical in New York - the snow on Tuesday night coating the ground as I talked into the night at St. Dymphna's with friends.  An evening catching up in DC and now here, with the news of the quiet demise of my old cat - Kitten (with a French accent), or Buddy, he'll be missed.

There's much to reflect upon, but no more for now...

December 27, 2010 - Just was sent an e mail from my friend Mark Stadsklev with this post of the eclipse which uses as background music "Twinkle" from my first CD "Such a World".  Thanks Mark!  It works well with the photo montage... Quite a lovely Holiday so far - hanging out in Alaska with friends, getting ready for the show in two days, plotting the next few months...  More on that soon.  Looking for ideas and gigs, so feel free to e mail me!

December 21, 2010 - Following a "blood moon" eclipse, solstice and the return of the Sun.  All full of portents these days.  Crisp and clear in Alaska and a House Concert to announce locally.  Steve Bacon and Andrew Norsworthy are in town so we have elected to put on a House Concert at my place next Wednesday, December 29th.  Songwriters in the Round with limited seating, fine wine and a suggested $10 donation to keep those guys in guitar strings... Steve will be joined by Kendra Kinsey.

December 10, 2010 - Over four months later - no entries as I slipped back into a bit of politics and found myself in Alaska at home for the better part of the year. I'm traveling now - in Edmonton, Alberta.  On my way to Baltimore and a private gig for JMATE.  I wanted to do the drive again - freeing my mind up for music.  Seeing the barren wilderness of the Alcan (pictures to follow), listening to the quiet, steady rhythm of the road.  Its all a bit releasing and I watch out my window and feel life change - as it so often does. From here I head through Saskatchewan then down at North Dakota, across Minnesota and Wisconsin Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Penn, DC then Baltimore.  From there I return (by plane - car stays in DC for a bit) to Anchorage for the holidays then back out in January for music and contracts in January before returning again to Alaska in February.  Not sure where this year will find me, but looking forward to the feeling of change I have begun to sense.... 

July 28, 2010 - (Three months later - no entries for The return to the states, New York, DC, Anchorage, Carson City, NV., Kerrville Folk Fest (another marvelous year there), Wyoming, Anchorage again, Austin, Carson City again (my Mom lives there... so I try to get there when I am driving), Oklahoma for WoodyFest, New Orleans, DC, Omaha, Nashville and Memphis (in Nashville as I write this).  Its been an amazing time and I am too far behind to say everything, but there are things to share - AT&T and I phones, for example, are useless on the road to conduct any kind of meaningful conversation in the west.  No service being the operative and of course the dropped calls - seems they built the I phone antenna (I do not have a 4, just a 3) s that it does not quite meet the range of AT&T cell towers (see picture below).  It sucks and I am beginning to believe those adds about coverage - not AT&T's.  But enough of that digression. 

Music is going reasonably well, and I continue to do a bit of my old day job as well - Juvenile Justice training as I travel. I've seen some amazing things lately - sunsets and sunrises, often sleeping in my car, feeling the roll of the road beneath me... The quiet of night.... Good music... surprising friends... and just time to think, which I may do too much of.  Its been a good journey, but tomorrow I pick up my Huss and Dalton in Staunton, VA (finally repaired) and head back to Alaska in my trusty Toyota.  Yes, a good journey, but as all do, this one finally reaches its end.  Need to pocket a bit more money, see my friends in AK, my house, my books.  A sense a season changing, time changing, the future emerging.  Its a good day to drive...

April 29, 2010 - (2nd entry) I took this photo in the Latchemere (Battersea Park Road, London) a few days ago - it reminds me of an old painting. I was in the pub a few times and these three are always at the same table doing a crossword....

April 29, 2010 - I must admit, for a while there I thought I might never get back on line and do an entry. Much frustration with the old Mac which was prompted by something now known as the "black screen of death" which meant I lost my ability to see anything on my computer.  Mac claimed it was user error and not covered despite the fact that the exact same thing is found all through the Mac forums and they said without an original receipt I could not get a refund on my Apple Care - so this is my way of saying a none-to-fond thank you to them.  If their platform was not so good for music, I said... and then when I get a new Mac and tried to migrate the website software I ended up with nothing but disappointment - that and the migration of e mails - how about a warning to all of us that you changed how e mail extensions end? and that it means they just come up blank when you migrate? or that address books don't smoothly move over? Well after days, and days, and days, here we are: an entry finally, most addresses (not all) restored, most e mails (not all) restored. Outside of a guy named Abe, nothing but disappointment from Apple support.

Well enough of the rant.  Back in the UK now after three weeks touring in the states - very successful gigs in Boston, Worcester, Portland, OR, Brookings, OR, Austin (as part of Paul Barker's SXSW deal), and Anchorage, AK.  Spent three weeks in Juneau working on some education issues (successfully) and visiting old friends Mark, Catherine, Arlo - my Godson - and Maddy, Shari P., Chris, many others and new friends too: Aurah and Mike, Michael, etc... A little time in Michigan visiting Matt and Louisa (check out his new book "Barolo" - I loved it!), and now here.  Many new songs and hope that all of this will become an album soon (as soon as I can afford it, that is!) Heading back to the states in early May for time with friends and family before Kerrville - (including former Alaskan and now New Yorker, poet Keith Keith K. P. Liles, who's own book, Spring Hunger, is also a great read!) Hope to see you all down the road! (picture from Brookings below)

March 6, 2010 - First gig at Hezikiah Stone's (see below) went well!  It was as though Tim and I had been rehearsing this past seven months. The Burren 8:30 pm tomorrow.  Had the good fortune to catch the Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight movie last night followed by good conversation and a stop for a drink at Richard's place. That is Richard Cambridge - a poet and performer.  He swears we are cousins separated by time. Judge for yourself from the picture below.  Good being back in the states, visiting friends and driving. Still a bit of jet lag... Distance is so weird...

March 1, 2010 - Last day in the UK for a bit - while Europe suffers under storms, London is actually warm and the sun is out. Some writing done, friends well met - now time to play a little music and do a little work.  Head to the states in the morning then to the Boston area on the 4th to play at Hezekiah Stone's Coffee House followed by another gig on the 7th at the Burren in Sommerville - both as the Bone Collectors with Tim Mason. From there its to Oregon, then Austin, then Michigan, then Alaska. Busy March.  In reflection, its been a good trip.  I came here less focused and perhaps a bit adrift (I called this my "Year of Living Aimlessly") but, with new songs and a plan beginning to emerge for the new CD, I am, if not moored, at least under rudder control.   I look forward to seeing folks along the road! 

February 24, 2010 - Manchester today heading to London tonight.  Was in Edinburgh over the weekend visiting new and old friends - all a good thing, though no access to wireless - always a problem when the bars close at 11 - creates havoc for communicating with the states.  Part of the journey was to identify studios for potential recording and had some success there thanks to my friends Ron Young and Linda Dewer. Also meeting up with new friends Simon Robinson (Robbo) and his wife Jenny - great time had by all though I did lose my favorite winter hat after 22 years...  Plan on posting photos and maybe another soundtrack later in the day/night at Facebook.  Having trouble on line though even here, so this entry will be short. But, before I go maybe someone knows why Scotland has three different currencies from three different banks all allowed to print their own money?

February 16, 2010 - Spent some time on the 14th at the Holy Drinker, a Clapham/Northcote venue that is high on good company, warmth and Guinness. Everyone there was dissing Valentine's Day - perfect company.  Great conversations with Claire and Katerina, with liberal doses of quiet time watching it all happen around me.  Feeling a bit restless here, and I have some work to do.  Songs almost bubbling out, but not quite.  This marks the end of the season of anti-decision making.  I always call from Thanksgiving to Valentines Day a time when one should not make major decisions about your life - if you live in a Northern clime. We are, to put it simply, impaired. Cabin fever, lack of vitamin D, cold - really not the best conditions for thoughtful analysis. So, decisions to come, for sure.

February 12, 2010 - Back in London, where I was greeted by the perfect cappuccino from Valentina at Il Molina, a local coffee shop.  What a perfect name for this weekend.  She and her compatriots have a tiny outpost of Italy here - with all the drama, boyfriends (they'd be on scooters if they could), and coffee adventures one might imagine. I sit amused often as the combination of new mothers, elderly Brits and hip writer/actors file in and out.  I grab my table in the back, write a journal entry, read a paper, work on projects, the book, or songs, but mostly just watch. Seeing friends tomorrow, but anticipating a quiet Sunday.  Time for a little reflection on the nature of love and relationships perhaps. Working on another new song. 

February 8, 2010 - In New York still and the wonder and magic of this place continues to fascinate me as it always will.  Some of my most difficult memories will always be associated with this place, some of my best songs, but also the constant reminders of magic here.  I am reminded of the opening of the book "Veronica" by Nicholas Christopher - one of my favorites - which describes where Waverly street meets itself (it winds around and actually intersects itself at its west end in the Village), and I associate NYC with the magic of that book - sort of a northern continent magical realism.  And so yesterday at brunch with friends Michael and Kyle, I mention it - the magic of always running into someone I know, or some moment (like yesterday's entry).  And as I wandered the street, looking for a movie or a place to plant my seat for a bit, I look up and see a man walking my way, ear buds in but looking at me oddly. I start to turn away, but he says: "excuse me, are you Tom Begich?" Stunned, I stop. After all I do not live here.  "I am..." I respond, only to have him say: "I'm Michael McHale - I knew you at Oxford."  (For those who do not know, I was there from 1989 to 1990) - twenty years on, we see each other again. Admittedly we had reconnected as avatar's over Facebook, but really, the odds are pretty crazy. I do love this place.  (Michael owns Michael McHale Designs - fascinating lamp structures. Take a look.)

February 7, 2010 - In New York for a few short days before returning to London.  Last night I went to the "Red Riding" marathon - based loosely on the Yorkshire Ripper story. Five and half hours.  A woman in the line, hearing I had been in London that morning (she had just come in from Florence) asked me if I had come all the way to New York just to see a British show... The movies were disturbing, a bit uneven but good - often described as a British "Godfather" without the laughs or "haunting".  It ended after Midnight and I stepped down to the subway to catch an A train Uptown, and was stunned by the sounds of a saxophone.  With I Phone in hand, I recorded it.  I may be able to post some of it on Facebook, but here is a link to what I am calling "Life as a Soundtrack".  The scratchy noise is my jacket against the phone - can't control for that when it is as cold as it is here! Its about ten minutes - sit back and just enjoy the ambient sounds of Sax in a Subway... Life As A Sountrack

February 5, 2010 - London has been great - working on setting up future music possibilities.  Posted new photos at Facebook, and have nothing but great things to report!  Cold? Yep, but not as much snow as DC today (or so I am told!) Been visiting old friends and writing music, as well as working on a few long distance contracts. 

Don't  Miss it! The week of December 7 - 14, 2009 CHECK OUT YOUR LOCAL LISTINGS! I will be on Tom May's River City Folk. The show will air on XM Channel 15, "The Village" and also be webcast if your local public radio station does not carry it. This is an hour-long radio performance/interview show with a few new songs and some old favorites. I hope you get a chance to listen - e mail me your thoughts!

January 20, 2010 - Did I really let almost two months go by?  Did I really not write about Buenas Aires? Or the Sitka Grind's 100th anniversary (what a great night it was - I wrote TWO spontaneous songs for them - though I have no recordings of either...)  Did I really not mention that I made it back to Anchorage for a day? That I am in New York now?  That I will be in Seattle tonight?  Really?  What an idiot.  I really need to learn to blog better.   London next week - maybe being away from things will help...  I am building my schedule for the coming years and am open to suggestions at cwrecord@alaska.net, so let me know about opportunities for music.  In the meantime, I'm still working on the private eye in Barcelona career goal.  Who knows? the world is officially an oyster.

November 23, 2009 - Played at the Lizard Lounge tonight with Tim Mason as the Bone Collectors - nice crowd and great talent out there.  I had not realized that it was a competitive open mic (hosted by Tom Bianchi) but we ended up in the final which was quite cool.  Stillwater was good - mostly relatives in the show, though Mike Mayer came up from Eagan and former Alaskan Barbara Korri showed up from the Twin Cities. It was good seeing cousins Jane, Barbara and Anna (who with her Husband Gary hosted me), though I blew it and missed hanging out with them after the show as i got lost in conversations after I was done.... Following Stillwater it was a mad rush East for Boston - visited old friends Jeff and Jodi in Chicago/Evanston (great food blog that they do here) and Matt and Louisa Frank in Grand Rapids (he's a fab poet! she a charmer). Went all the way from Chi town to Boston with a four hour break in Syracuse NY.  Little tired now, so this entry will have to do.

November 14, 2009 - Spent some great days with old high school friends up in Port Townsend but, as the rental money reaches its end, I am pleased to say that there may be a light at the end of the car repair tunnel.  Heard yesterday that the car might be done Tuesday, so I head to Vancouver BC by train tomorrow, by plane to Kamloops on Monday, bus to Cache Creek where I will overnight and ideally pick up the car and get back to Seattle on Tuesday to get my gear and head out to Stillwater by Friday.  After that? The road is open and I haven't quite decided where Thanksgiving will find me.  I have a bit of a worry about getting over the passes, but I think I will keep heading east.  Added some March dates recently, and hope to add more soon. 

November 10, 2009 - It has been a week in Seattle - being told by the folks in Cache Creek that the car will be delayed, delayed, delayed. It's a bit frustrating - wanting to head out.  Also found out that I bruised the bones in both feet during the accident so have to take it a bit easier to give them time to heal... Still, hanging out with Brother Paul is good, and I've gotten a bit of writing done (as well as many games of Jewel Quest!). I did get the word that the car may be done by Monday - and that means I will likely be playing at Dunn Brothers in Stillwater, MN on the 20th - (won't make it to Chicago I think for Keith's reading - too hard a haul).  No pithy post-election observations to offer, no witty review of world events.  Just a touch of impatience to head out and play some more music... (a Happy Birthday to my Brother Nick today!)

November 2, 2009 - After a day at a Juvenile Justice conference and visiting a number of friends there, I raced from Austin (within the speed limit for those wondering) to get to Seattle to meet a friend for my birthday on Friday (B day was Halloween) and ended up getting caught in Cheyenne, Wyoming in the worst blizzard in 13 years.  The roads closed, I found myself in the Laredo Hotel (at least I think that was the name).  If I can I'll post a photo from the outside of the room.  Snow drifts blocked the hotel room door and, when I opened it, the snow stayed in a berm about a foot high which I stepped over to get my luggage into the room.  After killing a cockroach, I settled on to the bed and began to search for alternate routes out of Cheyenne.  But the roads I 80 and I 25 - were both closed.  A friend suggested I look at some of the smaller routes, so the next morning I tried heading out US 85. No one on the road, huge blowing drifts and white out conditions made for a great chapter in the adventure book!  Using back roads I got to 85 (the freeway access was closed) and managed to get around the north end of the storm before roads were closed that far up (Douglas, WY) and had clear blue skies through Montana and clear sailing to Seattle.  On time for a Fridayarrival, I headed to downtown and three days to relax for my birthday. Saturday was a day spa and massage where I managed to burn my arm in the sauna and throw my back out on the massage table, but always looking for that silver lining, I noted that the burn was in the shape of a heart - boding well for the coming years! OK, not really.  It was a burn.  I spent Halloween at Kell's drinking Guinness, watching strange costumes fill the place up and having a great conversation! After that, it was wine tasting North of Seattle with my brother Paul driving, then finally settling in to rest and a World Series game that night. Through all of this I ended up discovering that the insurance company has elected to repair my car, so now I need to figure out how to get to Cache Creek when it is done.  And, when will that be? Ahh, that remains as the unanswered question. 

October 26, 2009 - So the thirty minutes at Artz was great - Christie and Andy Garbe (who also, along with their dogs Scout and Gromit, are putting me up) brought out their friends and family, Buddy Gill - an old friend from political days, Swafo (great new CD out), Cynthia and Laurie from the Kerrville Festival all madeit out as well - 14 on top of the usual crowd in all.  Afterwards Paul Barker invited me to join he and other friends at Donn's Depot where their Monday performer - Chris Gage - asked me to play a few songs.  It was a great night, played well, music was well received and I was touched by the generosity of my Texas compatriots. No news on the car definitively yet, though it looks as though it may be totaled by State Farm.  Waiting to hear... Tired tonight, need to sleep, but looking forward to more adventure...

                                  This is a photo from Austin at Donn's Depot, Shot by Winker

October 25, 2009 - Missed writing for a while, but been busy... Played in Worthington, MN on Friday night (thanks again Bruce Boldt and Ivan Harris!) at BenLee's.  Allison at the Three Stones (massage Therapist) gave me a quick chair massage before the show (very, very good) to help release a bit of the soreness from that accident and then she and her husband Devin showed up for the show.  The music went well, small but enthusiastic crowd - had a great time!  That gig had followed a trip across country in a rental car from Seattle to Spearfish, SD (where I visited old friends Kay Jorgensen and her brother Joe), and then to Minnesota.  Left from there to Texas on Saturday morning and made it south of Dallas on my way to a brief stop at Conroe county and the Camp C.A.L.M. folks (later today) then Austin tonight. Lot of time to think on the road - writing new music and thinking about some poems.  Need to head out now, but hope after all of the running around I can slow down a bit and reflect here.  Having a great time though, and the road is before me still.

October 18, 2009 - Over a month off of the notes here as I continued to plan my break from Alaska and my music plans for October and my coming year.  Trips to Michigan, Kentucky and North Carolina in September followed by a great last Alaska concert at Side Street Espresso culminating in a small gathering and farewells to my friends (Sarah S., Sarah K., June S., Julia H., George Gee and so many others) at my house on the 1st of October - the day I headed out to New York City with my good friend Poet Keith Liles (his first visit to that grand city!). He spent a week and a day in the City while I popped down to DC for a House Concert hosted by my Sister-in-law Deborah Bonito and a meeting of the Reclaiming Futures folk I have worked with in the past. The House concert was great - sound provided by my friend Steve Spellman who bailed me out at the last minute (He owns the Guitar Shop in DC). Had a nice reconnection and dinner with my friend Emily and friends Laura M., Winston (my ever-traveling friend) his brother Peter, Becky J. and so many others. Then it was back to New York and Springsteen shutting down Giants Stadium (thanks to my friend Justin Goldspink and his sister Sophie). Keith and I stopped in Seattle on the flight back to visit my Brother Paul, then were back in Anchorage on the 12th in time for me to finish packing up my car heading out on the big move.

Reporting on the past is easy to a point.  All seemed to be going according to plan - with the highway before me, I knew I had more than enough time to catch my gigs in Portland and Brookings, Oregon. So with my car, my few possessions, some contract work and music before me I headed into a change of pace that promised I hoped revelation, understanding and awakening.  In a way all of this has happened in the past few days and now there are few clear plans and a little bit of a sense of liberation. A brilliant encounter with a huge black bear in the middle of the night after a stop for a soak at Liard Hot Springs were highlights from the Alcan, but after Ft. St. John it all seemed to be settling into a well-known and perhaps comforting pattern. All that was dashed South of Cache Creek.

Earlier in the day I'd heard from my planned primary contract - the work I do that allows me to both continue to do the public service I enjoy and allows me the opportunity to music as well - The contract was not going to happen.  Untethered from income suddenly, I actually saw it as an opportunity to focus more on my music and writing and truly beginning to take the leap I often talked about, but which I always managed to cushion.  No cushion here.  Still with my car and my music plans in tow I was ready to forge forward.  Three hours later the car was gone.  Wrecked in an accident south of Cache Creek.  Faced with a choice on a curvy stretch of the Fraser River Canyon highway between a cliff, a semi and a retaining wall, after overcompensating on a curve, I chose the wall and snapped my tire rods and crashed the driver side of my car. Alive, but stuck in a fairly desolate area of Canada I kept traffic moving while waiting for the tow truck.  With the help of the driver and the RCMP I found my way back to Cache Creek and Robbie's Hotel and a night of sleep as I tried to figure out my next step.  The only thing I really knew as I fell a sleep is that for the first time in years I had no plan.

The next day - with no rental company in Cache Creek, I realized I had to get to the next closest town - Kamloops for a car.  My Brother Paul went to work from Seattle in trying to find a rental for me while i contacted my insurance agent (kudos to State Farm for providing great service so far!).  While talking to Denis from Montreal - the proprietor of Robbie's about my dilemma, he volunteered to give me a ride into Kamloops.  A few minutes later and a knock on the door and Denis hands me a modified WWI helmet and with a smile says "Hope on the Harley - its just like a car".  I learn that it is like a car - without a windshield.  Arriving in Kamloops I find Paul has set me up with a U Haul and I'm back on the road with a farewell to Denis and my stuff loaded into the U haul.  Leaving my car behind for insurance agents to determine its fate (to be or not to be totaled.... that is their question).

After an overnight in Seattle at Paul's and a short visit with my friends Jerry and Terry Holder, it was off to Artichoke Music for their songwriters showcase. It was a great evening joined by friends Valerie from Anchorage, Eric McEuen who set up the gig for me and Dan Lowe - who has helped me out in the past. It was a great night - I was last up of five and the audience reacted well - I think I'll be invited back in March to play...  I wove in the tale of the demise of my car and it all seemed to go quite well.

Following an overnight in  Coburg, I was off to Centre Stage in Brookings - a gig that my friend Howly Slim guided me to and that Kim Banfield and Perry Devine run. Joined by friends Fred and Susan formerly from Anchorage, now living in Trail, OR., it was another great evening.  A small audience, but singer/songwriter's that appreciated the music.  It was an evening worth remembering - and a place to which I will return in March also.

Now in Salem and needing to sleep before tomorrow's taping of Tom May's River City Folk....  GO to his web site to figure out when the show will air!

Thoughts and comments? e mail me at cwrecord@alaska.net

August 24, 2009 - Garden concert, two gigs at the National Museum of Dance, an amazingly wonderful crowd in Morrisville Vermont, a great birthday show for Tim Mason at the Burren (thanks for joining us on bass Tom Bianchi!) and today a radio show in Provincetown (WOMR) and a great concert at the Cape Cod Cultural Center. Ten dates in ten days.  The tour is done.  I wasn't always in the best of moods on the trip, but thanks to Tim and Shannon, things improved. A lunch with the charming Morgan tomorrow and then a long trip home...  Playing Thursday for twenty minutes in Anchorage at Out North (around 7) and then relaxing for a bit before the final concert (for a while) in Alaska - September 24th at Side Street Espresso (Mark those calendars, get those tickets!) Was able to complete a sonnet, two songs and a lot of therapy on the trip... Tomorrow I'll share the company of my good friends Keith and Sarah and just... build a fence. : - )   I did manage to carve my initials in wet concrete while on this tour - always a good thing to do!

August 21, 2009 - Getting ready for the Garden Concert - only severe thunderstorms are forcing it inside! A melancholy day - first draft of a sonnet to post:  

         Kate (revised 8/24)

         She stood with the quiet grace of a dancer

         Feet slightly turned - halfway between being

         And un-being... listening, eyes seeing

         a man with yearning words, for, by chance, her...

         Eyes closed now - she saw a young girl spinning,

         Round and round as his words sang counterpoint

         Tutu floating in a a ballet - a joint

         collaboration: song, dance. Beginning...

         For when she was young her magic danced free

         Though time had long stolen that sweet belief

         Now awoken, an unburdened motif -

         Of movement, sound, and possibility...

               But when the sound dies, will she still recall,

               That she believed in magic after all?

I am a bit undone today. The radio on the 19th (WBKM - Listen to the show here) was great, though the heat here is draining.

August 17, 2009 - Rushed up to Colchester VT this morning to film our 1/2 hour Television show for Rik Palieri's Songwriter's Notebook at LCATV.  Rebecca Padola did a great job of producing the piece - now we just have to figure out how to post it!  Four hours up, a great lunch with Rik and Tim's partner in crime (and wife) Shannon before dropping her off at a retreat outside of Montpelier and four hours back to Boston.  I'm tired but thinking about things - I was struck by a sign in the restaurant we stopped in: "Things happen for a reason - Just Believe".  So I was thinking about that on my way into the restroom where I was confronted by another sign: "Employees must always wash their hands". Just proving that there is little to be discerned if you base your life on reading signs. Seven more events to go (we added two just today). No more for tonight - its late...

August 16, 2009 - Just finished "The Culture of Lies" by Dubravka Ugresic'. Loaned to me by my friend Emily, it is a sobering series of essays written at the time of the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, with some postscripts from five years later.  I was most struck by her grasp of how we rewrite what we know - how we redefine our past. How memory becomes a fictional narrative or, in its truth, selectively interpretive. We believe what we remember because we keep telling ourselves it was so. Nation statelets breathe like living human beings.  They use the tools we've devised for overcoming our personal trauma, they slip into a belief in a past and the construction of a reality that never was.  She stubbornly refuses to give up her past and, in her glossary, defines that stubbornness. At her most pessimistic she believes this will never change - but perhaps it may be in some instances now some ten years further on...  But the lessons are all too real and applicable to us all: do we rewrite our own histories to conform to a more comfortable, livable present? And further, outside of us, how does our own dialogue as a nation - the shouting of truths that are less than true at each other - falsify our national past and damage our present?  Questions worth thinking about perhaps. Let me know your thoughts. cwrecord@alaska.net

August 15, 2009 - Performed tonight in Newton, Mass with Tim Mason. Disappointed that the crowd was small (guilt to those who could have been there!), but what a wonderful crowd it was!  Reconnected with old friend India Spartz and her husband Alex and really enjoyed the hospitality of Kathryn Breses - thanks Kate!  Looking forward to the shows coming up - taping community TV in Colchester VT on the 17th and then in the 19th listen for us on Burlington web radio WBKM from 7 to 9 on Tuesday the 19th.  Hope you can listen in  - I'll be playing a new song (at least I think I will). 

August 9, 2009 - Last night's House Concert here in Anchorage was amazing - what a great group of folks showed up to hear my music and Keith Liles' poetry.  Keith was on - hope he posts some of the recording - he had a handheld. If so I will link them in. Standing room only and I really felt the road opening up before me.  I introduced my two new songs "Fulton Street Rain" and "Looking at you", and people genuinely liked them it seems - so finally writing keepers again. Life isn't always easy, and if it could be about not having had the experience to write those songs, I'd have preferred a little longer dry spell.  Every songwriter's lament.

I'm planning on saying goodbye to Alaska for short while as I do a bit of a driveabout (in the grand tradition of the Australian walkabout). Got a crazy travel schedule emerging, but it brings a bit of solace to be out there.  I have a flexible October and November - so if you know of gig possibilities drop me note and lets see if we can set something up - have car will travel - and I certainly will need the cash : - )  Well enough for this rainy Alaska morning.  Time to say good day.  

July 31, 2009 - Tour is set - check out the gigs page!  Very cool, radio, TV, Internet and live performances with Tim Mason in Mass., New York and Vermont, but I am going to kick it all off with a House Concert at my place with myself and poet Keith Liles.  Limited seating, so send an rsvp to cwrecord@alaska.net if you want in...

Been a crazy week - I am not sure if I will ever quite recover from it.  Yin and Yang.  Success along side loss.  Too much really to describe, but I realize that you have to move forward.  Finally wrote a good new song - after quite some time - Fulton Street Rain. Watch for it.  Connected up with friends in NYC (thanks for putting me up Paul Schomer and Joel Berg/Lori Nazim!), visited my Brother Paul In Seattle and am in Idaho Falls tonight - heading home tomorrow.   That's all for now - have to get a little sleep...

July 12, 2009 - Been working on the new tour and spending the last few months working on big transitions.  I was in Kerrville for an incredible time in May/June, followed by Boise, Brooklyn, Wyoming, Salt Lake, Brooklyn again and a none stop ride.  Since Memphis I had been back east a few times both on the music and justice fronts.  Now Tim Mason and I are finalizing the gigs for our Northeast tour set for the 15th through the 25th of August.  We have shows in Boston, Saratoga Springs, Burington VT (TV) and out on the Cape set up already (I'll post those soon) and are trying to land just a few more gigs. All and all it should be a great time.  I soon will likely be closer to the east as well - looking at a move in the near future for a short time.  As a consequence I have fallen behind in all things as I paint my house and prep my life!  But not to do anything easy, my good friends Terry and Jerry Holder are coming up later this month (next week in fact) and I will be hosting a house concert for them to get their mid July Alaska tour started (email me if you are interested though as of today we are only taking folks on a waiting list).  It should be a great evening and a better tour - her tour dates are linked above - just click on her name.

On a sadder note - I want to mention the passing of my good friend Rob Nauheim this past Friday.  Rob was a wonderful friend, Father to his children, and Husband to his wife Beth. He was also a great music producer (the Emeralds) and was producing both my next album (a project we had been working on for a couple of years), and my first joint project with Tim Mason.  As a producer, Rob new how to listen and he had an innate sense for how to make a good song better and a great song memorable.  Beyond all that though, I will miss him for who he was - the way he fought his cancer (pancreatic), and held on for over three years when doctors said he wouldn't.  I ran into him after not seeing him in a number of years (his wife Beth sang on my CD Albuquerque Road, but I really had not seen him since that cd was recorded).  I ran into him three months or so after his diagnosis and we agreed to do the project together.  Between my schedule and his illness we weren't able to do a whole lot with it, but we did have great conversations and I got to know him again.  That  - and becoming friends again with his family - were a treat I will always cherish.  I'll miss you Rob.

Enough for now - I am off to my good friend (and Harmonica player) Rolfe Buzzell's and his partner Sharon Holland's House warming.  No promises as to when I will next write...

February 21, 2009 - Tim Mason and I are having a great time at the Folk Alliance - the X M 15 Village Radio gig was great and we play for a bit longer later tonight.  Should be good (at Help Me Ronda's Room - you can imagine...).  Yesterday caught Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers...  I know, I know, but they were great!  Also Noelie McDonnell and Emmet Scanlon & What the Good Thought reminded me of just how great the Irish can be (thanks Sheena)!  Great first experience of music for me hearing them. Saw old friends Kate and Bill Isles, James Lee Stanley and so many others.  Two that I failed to mention during my silent time on this blog were Joe Crookston and Randall Williams who, with Lindsay Mack, invited me to join a show with them at Caffe' Lena last May.  They were here also and playing up a storm.  Much more to write about, but it will not be as it is time to rehearse...

Another Sonnet:

Of Age

When will she notice my imperfection -

Each simple wrinkle or silver-white hair?

My course, rough skin or time-worn reflection

in lines echoing the laughter we share?

And how will she hold me when time is through,

and before us lies just a moment here?

Will her lips still touch me, her hand move to

mine, to hold tight, grasp and calm aging fear?

Or will she just laugh off these foolish thoughts,

hold my hand, touch my cheek with patience born

of passion years past?  Seeing that love, not

some shaddowed vision, unreal, fragile worn.

For age, or time, not even death alone

can erase what chance found and love has known.

February 16, 2009 - I mentioned the sonnets yesterday - done.  The goal is to help reimagine this form, not that it isn't still relevant.  To that end, you can hear some of the sonnets read live on the home page, but here is one in its written form (as yet, unedited): 

Grace

They were awkward lovers, stumbling into

grace.  Unsure how to match different strides -

or how to describe the pasts they'd been through.

But, with fingers gliding, pressing - sure guides -

they would slide into a dance or sweet tale

of two who were never meant to find this:

Where each breath - exhale, inhale - would unveil

one more irrefutable proof of bliss.

So it seemed as he sketched her with his hand,

drawing this perfection in air.  Or when

she slept and innocence framed her face - to

leave him breathless, knowing this would soon end.

He clipped a curl and held it to his face,

and inhaled this moment of awkward grace.

And this photo I took from the inaugural:

February 15, 2009 - Could I have really let 10 months go by without writing here?  Yep! I decided to send e mails, make some cash to pay for the never-ending remodel of the house (it nears its end now - perhaps two weeks away, though it started in November of 2007...).  And soooo much has happened since then.  On the surface, a new President, a new Alaska U. S. Senator that I happen to be related to (my Brother Mark was elected this past November!), I mentioned the house, deeper down lots of travel and reflection on the world, music, writing, love and life.  As some friends say, I smell an album there, and they may be right....  Tim Mason (whose new book of poetry "Feral Voices" was just released) and I have worked on a new collaboration of spoken word and music following a great gig up at Whole Wheat Radio this past September, while playing with Rolfe Buzzell again in Dillingham this past November reminded me of exactly why I do this (posted some radio clips from the two stories in Dillingham in the Press section). I not only travelled all around the states since that last entry, I managed to have my first Kerrville experience in May (won't be my last - worked theatre security!) and a second in the fall. Spent much of June in Idaho and August in Europe, September and October in Alaska and all over the East and West coasts, November in AK, December in DC, Idaho, Washington state and AK and January at all of the election festivities in DC (with a quick stop in New York and Boston).  There is probably much to say about the great folks I have met and the things that went on, but those will have to slip out over time.  More importantly, in the process of all of this, I rediscovered the meaning of love and happiness - something that has eluded me for a few years.  I suspect I'll write more on that over time, but suffice it to know it is there.

Also new for me - I finally (today) joined Facebook - so now my every word can be seen by all...  I keep swearing that I am going to reduce the technology vicegrip on my time, but keep failing.  Alas, more perhaps to that as I struggle with tech and the web over time.  In the meantime I am finally starting to re-book shows for the coming year and hope to have a full two year calendar up in the near future. Keep your eyes out for that! First up is Memphis and the Folk Alliance where I will be in the Club Passim Showcase with Tim Mason (later to be Broadcast on XM 15 The Village).  I would be remiss if I also did not mention that Saturday February 21st mark's the release of my good friend Terry Holder's third CD "Ticket to the Moment".  She and husband Jerry along with a raft of good musicians have made a great CD.  Do try to stop by if you get a chance and are in the area.

In the meantime it gets late, so I will sign off with a full intent to try and keep this blog up....

April 7, 2008 - So a day after what would have been my Father's 76th Birthday - April 6, 2008.  Unbeknownst to the Anchorage Press, they published their superb piece Into the Sky on my Father the same week as his Birthday.  Take a look, and maybe get a bit more into my head (not that this blog doesn't do that).  I often wonder how his life would have evolved - and, naturally, how ours would have (all of us children and my Mom).

Its been one of those months.  In Saipan playing for friends last month, now back home (still waiting for the house to be finished) and mixing a bit of that political and musical life of mine with a large dash of community.  The usual mix. On the music front, I will be playing here in town at Side Street Espresso on the 17th and Esther Golton is opening! Her Dulcimer and flute and my sound (hopefully joined by my good friend Rolfe Buzzell on harmonica) should be a great time to get out and celebrate (one hopes) Spring.  After the five inches that fooled us this past week - its time for the real thaw!

Nearly done with those Sonnets - just had one posted to DailyKos.  Du'a Khali Aswad was a Yazidi girl in Iraq who was "honor" murdered by her family for dating a boy of another sect.  The brutal killing was captured on cell phone cameras, by cheering members of her family as this 17 year old life was snuffed out.  It saddened me then and does so still.  Check out the blog and the Sonnet there.

Starting to book the end of the year, events coming in May, June, July.  Keep checking back, and I will see you down the road!

March 21, 2008 - Spring is a great thing - felt heat in the sun yesterday and attacked my driveway with the pick and shovel...  Remodel nearing its close... back at home after a GLORIUS week of music.  The combination of the SLOFolks concerts (thank you, thank you, thank you Elisabeth) and being joined by my good friend and mouth harp player Rolfe Buzzell and his partner Sharon Holland made it memorable in Morro Bay (thanks to Coalesce Books) and the Green Acres Lavender Farm - where we were also joined by the fine stylings of Claudia Russell and her fabulous band - Bruce Kaplan on mandolin and guitar, Mark Petrella on base. I slipped down to LA and, in the house built by his grandfather, saw Severin Browne and a number of my LA friends (hey Dana!), Severin's wife Melinda had a house concert/revue - great acts like Dan McFeely, Severin and so many others.... playing standards and original music.  Quite cool.  At the end of the night I played a few songs in the chapel with Dave Morrison, and Jaynee Thorne - that was cool. Also saw the dungeon... another story, that....  Drove up to Santa Barbara that night where I stayed at my good friend Anne Bussone's apt. - she was generous to put up with, er... put up Rolfe, Sharon and I in Santa Margarita at her house when we played up near San Luis earlier in the weekend.  Came down to Kulak's on Laurel Canyon Blvd. for a great open mic night ( I was #34 - essentially last, but it went well... Saw fellow Alaskan Marian Call there - she did a great a cappella song (her accompanist had already returned to AK, she was heading out at 3 am).  From there it was off to Garret Swayne's MSSS and a really good night of music on the bill (again) with Jeff Gold.  Rolfe and Sharon joined me again and a number of friends showed up - Russ and Julie Paris, Bruce Grossman, Tim O'Gara (love that CD), Michael Doman (can't wait for that cd!), Gene Lippmann and so many more.  Always a great time.  I usually get to stay and listen as the night goes on, but an airplane to New Jersey was calling so it was off for an 11 pm flight all night.  Returned from Jersey on Friday (after sleeping in Seattle airport) and headed up to Whole Wheat Radio in my old stomping grounds of Talkeetna on Saturday.....  What a night that was.... Lots of folks online, and the local crowd made it happen.  The music flowed and at the end I even read a few... Jim Kloss and Esther Golton were the best of hosts (okay and Beta too) and the next day we did a long talk on politics, philosophy and music - a great radio conversation while eating breakfast - loved it.  EVERYONE needs to listen to Whole Wheat.

As I drove back to Anchorage that morning, I couldn't help but think about how cool people are on the road, how important playing for a few or even a lot of folks is - in New Jersey I wrote a song for their Juvenile Justice Commission - and I thought about how much I love being able to do this.  Not possible with out all of you....

March 3, 2008 - March dawns with a brisk cold and finds me at home for a moment getting ready for the Southern California tour - San Luis Obispo Folk Society (SLOFolks) has me at two events: the first in Morro Bay the second in Atascadaro.  Following that I head to LA and Garret Swayne's Mainstreet Songwriters' Showcase for a repeat performance.  Hope to catch some of you folks there.  Still working on those sonnets - getting close now...  Much to do and little time it seems - Spring cannot be far now!

February 13, 2008 - Below a picture from our Tim Mason/Tom Begich Crazy Crow House Concert hosted by the wonderful Susan Mumma down in Seldovia on February 10.  What a great time and great photos from Savanna Lewis (she shot my MySpace photo).  Tim invited me to join him on his Alaska tour and we had a great time developing a set combining spoken word and music (listen to Gideon'e Bible and Midnight Run here).  I'll try to post some of that as time goes by, but all is available at Whole Wheat - thanks Jim Kloss and the audience there for really making that evening real. Tim and I closed his three venue tour here with two sets at Whole Wheat Radio where I will be playing on my own on March 15 (competing with the Talkeetna Oosik Festival, alas!).  It has been a busy two months and many, many thanks to Sharon Harrigfeld in Boise for the great House Concert, Randall Williams for being a wonderful guest and musician (and Caroline also!), Mike McCormick for allowing Randall and I to open for Ann McCue, Nora and the crew at the Anchorage Folk Festival (that was an amazing night!), Mike Huelsman at Out North (and Shotzi for allowing me to follow the play and Daniel for posting one of the songs...) for two January performances and as always George Gee and Deb Seaton at Side Street for hosting Randall and Tim on two different nights.  A whirlwind for sure!

Photo (c) 2008 Savannah Lewis

January 18, 2008 - I have just discovered that my tom@tombegich.com e mail address was drifting into the netherworld.  As recently as this week I sent some one to the web site to get a CD order they had paid for, and he probably sent it in, but I never received it. I think this might have been going on for the better part of the year.... If you are out there, e mail again, its fixed! Just this evening (late on the 17th, early on the 18th) I have recovered my computer after a series of fatal flaws. Still without my address book, all else finally seems to be working. Tough when you depend on these things....  Playing a lot this month, and a little next.  Jump on the gigs link and see what is up!

December 11, 2007 - It seems these may become monthly entries.... In Boston now after although bought of laryngitis, that did not stop the show from going on at the Burren.  Hugh was behind the bar and Brandon hosted for what was a great night.  I had the joy of listening to some great music, hanging out with friends like Tim Mason, playing a little then hearing from remarkable DC-based spoken word artist Chris Chandler who played Passim earlier that night -- he and his guitarist, Seattle's Paul Benoit, were an amazing way to end the night.  Really top notch.  Not only did Ray come down from New Hampshire and bring in Ian (a great music fan), and Julie, Cecely and Rob stop in, but the guy who taught me guitar and taught me how to teach, Bob Reid, slipped in by the bar. The first song I ever wrote I called the Bob Reid Blues, premiered it that night! After probably 25 years, it was a treat to talk with Bob again, though it was over way too soon.  Tomorrow night at Passim, opening for Kelly Joe Phelps and then Sunday in Morrisville, VT at Bees Knees.  Quite a week!  Stayed with old friends Tory and Wayne this last few days, and hitting the road soon to try and visit with those I can...  Note:  at home my house is torn up, a remodel job, so for once I don't miss that place!

November 8, 2007 - Late at night trying to catch up on music e mails after a great weekend at the FAR-West conference in Vancouver, WA. Got to see old friends, make new ones and play lots and lots of music. Still a little tired these days, but almost back to normal. Still pushing the deadline for the poetry book and just relaxing (when not working) in a snowless Alaska!

October 17, 2007 - Well the tour was going great -- Fun gigs with the Holders at Rose Street House of Music (with Emily Kurn too!), Cozmic Cafe in Placerville, at Nina Jo Smith's house, and at Ordinary Miracles in Cotati, but in the midst of it all I took ill.  On my way to Las Vegas for our Garage Mahall gig, I stopped at my Mom's in Carson City and she convinced me to go to the hospital to check out what was ailing me (all kinds of indigestion-like pain and other things).  Before I knew it I was in the emergency room and, five days later, walked out without a gall bladder and with medication for pneumonia and other ailments.  Wheww.... what an ordeal (which caused me to miss the Las Vegas gig where Terry and Jerry did a great job picking up my slack). I'm on the mend now and will be up and about a little later this month.  See some of you at FAR-West in early November!

September 26, 2007 - Packing and working like a crazy man as I try and get ready to head out to San Francisco later this morning for the mini-tour of California and Nevada.  In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, a gift from Russ Paris from the House Concert at his and Julie's place down by LA earlier this year: Tom on YouTube .

September 18, 2007 - Man has it been a long time since I have had a chance to update this website! One of the great difficulties of being an independent musician is maintaining the website, the MySpace, the Sonic Bids, the schedule, oh and life itself (almost like a Monty Python sketch, that last).  I usually take the summer off to enjoy Alaska at its best, but this one was full of turmoil and change - -house reconstruction, best friends moving out of state, way too much travel and some great music gigs throughout! Since the last entry been to LA, New York, Pennsylvania, DC, Puerto Rico, Oregon, Northern California, Washington state, and Montana (as well as here).  Continuing to do work with youth and helping communities develop strategies to prevent crime when I'm not playing music (a strange but oddly satisfying life). Also continuing to write sonnets for the February book... edits are being done by one of the finest poets I know (and, yes, I know a few) Keith Liles (he has a book ready for publication, so go to his MySpace and check him out and either publish him or pass it on!).  Really, not quite the relaxing summer I'd hoped for (ergo the lack of entries).  Musically, it was cool having som eof the folks from FAR-West up here for music at OutNorth -- a great venue here in Anchorage.  Still hoping to continue to develop that venue.  More importantly I and my friends the Holders are heading to Northern California and a series of gigs next week and the following week.  Terry and Jerry Holder moved to Olympia last month and she has moved forward tremendously on her new CD (untitled as yet) with the guiding hands of Freebo, Joel Tepp and Kurt Rieman of Surreal Studios.  Our tour next week begins with Terry at the Rose Street House of Music on September 27th. I join up with them on the 28th and we head to Placerville to a perform at the Cozmic Cafe that night.  On the 29th we are at a House concert back in San Francisco (e mail for more information and to reserve a seat: ninajo@redwoodrivermusic.com) and then we close out Northern California in Cotati at Ordinary Miracles on Sunday (for more information e mial: matt@atmattsplace.com).  The following week (after a long-delayed visit to my Mom in Carson City) we end our tour in Las Vegas at Garage Mahall.  I'll get a little respite after that -- some time to work on my own CD -- before heading for a couple of gigs and some other work in Denver and then FAR -West at the begining of the month.  More on that later!  Now I'm off for a break and a glass of wine. : - )

April 26, 2007 - Returned from another great "Grind" in Sitka on April 21 (my Mom's Birthday!  Happy Birthday Mom!)  Got to love those events -- was able to stay at the "Clarke B & B" (not really a B & B, just the home of my good friends Tom and Gretchen Clarke), meet up with many old freinds like Jeff Budd, and even get Gary to come up on stage with me (thanks man -- great harmonica work!).  I just LOVE that town.  If you haven't been to Sitka, you need to go, but respect the folks there : - ) .  Tom and Gretchen got me out for a walk at  Mosquito Cove (luckily too early for those critters) and I was able to just relax and enjoy the beauty of Southeast Alaska.  Following a couple of days in Juneau (visiting old friends) I was back at home and preparing for this Saturday's 7:00 pm House Concert at the home of Jose Salas and Claudia Rivera (see gigs) and a sneak preview of the event at my Side Street Espresso haunt tomorrow! (11:30 am for those who read this). California coming in early May and Pennsylvania and other haunts later that month!

April 6, 2007 - Today my Father would have been 75 had he lived.  But instead I am older than he ever was now by 6  -- nearly 7 -- years.  I find that odd, in a way.  Its a day of reflection... Usually the Fund would announce winners of the scholarships named in his honor, but those have been delayed for a month or so.

I have finally slowed down a bit, trying to catch up on the world of recreation, though building a great number of sonnets in anticipation of my book of sonnets (to be released in Feb. '08) !  Though normally reflective of love or adventure, some have slipped political lately.  Following is Ozymandias (2007)- a remake of a great sonnet with W as the protagonist ...

Ozymandias 2007

Armed with the ammunition of story

I blaze forth, retell my past, and create

              the heroic pattern of history

Where myth becomes truth, reality debate

I stand as democracy’s lone sentry

I dictate and decide who is with us

               and who lies against freedom’s destiny

Or denies to history my purpose

I treat the future with abandon, for

My name is Ozymandias, arisen!

              I determine all and then command when war

Is to be forgotten and rewritten.

Legacy? It is left to my judgment

I am but God’s vessel, his instrument

By the way, "Eddie's Song" continues to hover around 100 out of 1200 plus for the "Living With War" site.  If you want a chance to help move that song along, just click on the site and when you get there, do a "find" on "Begich".  That will take you to the song (then just click to listen!)

March 7, 2007 - Waited TOO long to make this update but much has - and continues to - happen! I spent the second week on February heading down to Juneau, Alaska then over to Minnesota where Bill Isles invited me to join him and his wife Kate for two gigs - one in Superior Wisconsin, the other down in White Bear Lake near Minneapolis.  While the crowd was small in Superior, it was an amazing evening.  Bill's audience knows him well and I was warmly welcomed.  I was also pleased to see my cousin Jeff's daughter Bri show up - popping over from Duluth and making me feel pretty good about music that transcends age : - )    The big suprise came in White Bear Lake where 16 members of my extended family and a number of their friends showed up making for a verrry friendly crowd. These were folks from both sides of my family, some who had never met and some I hadn't seen for over 25 years!  Very cool and a great evening too.  With a fond farewell to Bill and Kate, I stayed with my cousin Anna and her husband Gary and just caught up for a missed quarter century.  Though much of the following weeks were also quite full, one highlight was in Hawaii where my friend Laura Nissan asked me to play after a conference for Reclaiming Futures (another of my many lives - you might have heard the tag on NPR "...and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation which is sponsoring Reclaiming Futures...").  Laura and a small group of friends from New Hampshire to Oregon and beyond gathered around an umbrella and I was able to play a number of the new songs for them for about an hour and a half.  Magical - and for all of us a good evening.  Enough for now except one last thing - just found out that I'll be at Out North Theatre next Saturday (17th) opening for Samarabalouf - amazing French jazz trio!  I saw them first on Paris TV when I was overseas this last year - mesmerizing. Life really is too cool sometimes!

February 13, 2007 - Back in Alaska for a moment -- The Burren gig went well -- folks from Providence, RI and up in Maine showed up, as well as folks from Boston.  Just a great time had by all.  Loved Host Danielle Miraglia's music and the music of the Drew Hickman Band, and the crowd, though loud, seemed to like the sounds.  Drove my friend Riley back to Providence that night before returning to Boston in time to catch my early morning plane!  Very tired now....

February 9, 2007 - Played at Club Passim on Wednesday opened for the Santa Cruz River Band, and had a great time!  Really loved listening to the Band, and just felt lucky being surrounded by all the music -- very, very cool.  Also got to see lots of friend: Liz Spinney brought a friend of hers, Jen, Lael and her husband Charlie stopped by.  College friend Victoria and her Husband Wayne made it.  Valerie (friend who also worked for me in Alaska) left hubby at home and brought her friend Eve and Leo Carroll came in from Concord. Leo loved the SCR Band and, when I left, he was offering to help carry their gear!  What a great group and engaged crowd it was.  Tonight Leo and I poppoed over to the Colonial Inn in Concord to catch John Fitzsimmons.  It ended up another cool night of music as John asked me (thanks to a discreet request from songwriter Jim Shaw) to play a few songs and the folks there seemed to appreciate the music.  Its the kind of thing you just love (I was the last customer out of the bar as Jim Shaw slipped out right in front of me.  Getting ready to play the Burren on Sunday (8) then home Monday for a day or two! "Eddie's Song" was at #53 this week.

January 31, 2007 - "Eddie's Song", one of the pieces I am most proud of, has made it to number 70 on Neil Young's "Living With War" site.  I was stunned to see it move at all and then those of you on the list have helped it move into the top 100.  So many thanks for that -- I played it for the Anchorage Folk Festival crowd this past Sunday and was struck by a Viet Nam Vet, (14 months in) Mike, who came up to me and thanked me for writing it.  That, and the overwhelming emotion of the e mails I have received, are truly humbling.  Thanks gang....

January 25, 2007 - The California trip is complete! Music at the Porch in Santa Margarita (sans sound system) was cool -- great photos from Dusty Davis -- followed by a little after party at Anne's house. The next day was the 10th Anniversary show at Russ and Julie's House concert.  The room was packed (at least 100), the company good, the music fabulous.  Had a great time and felt honored to be in the company of folks like James Lee Stanley, Severin Browne and James Coberly Smith, Freebo and Jim Photoglo, Laurence Juber, Lowen and Navarro, Berkley/Hart, Wendy Waldman and Penny Nichols as well as many of the friends I've made in the LA area. A great week, though I'm glad to be home again!

January 17, 2007 - It snowed in LA today.....

January 17, 2007 - Played at Garret Swayne's Mainstreet Songwriter's Showcase last night and had a great time -- been a great week actually.  Finally finished traveling with my old friend Martin Gibbs -- left him in San Francisco as he headed North to Seattle, and I back to LA to play (see below).  Capped off the Bay area trip with a visit with Tim Mason's wonderful wife Shannon and her Touchable Stories project in Richmond.  She is doing remarkable things there -- worth getting involved with!  If you don't know Shannon Flattery or Touchable Stories, go to their web site and learn more -- get involved and contribute! : - )

Before getting up there got to spend a great couple of days with another great friend Anne Bussone in San Luis Obispo (after a quick KCSN radio gig) and no few days on the road in a very, very cold California (they swear I brought it!).  Last night's show ended with a great gathering of folks, and promise of more to come. Can't beat good company and great music!   The door is open to Alaska, will any walk through it?

January 7, 2007 - A new year dawns and it is already full of activity -- though the cold up here has got me barely moving -- some kind of prehistoric instinct for survival I am sure....  Just returned from a mad cap trip to DC (and a little beyond) where I spent New Year's Eve with good friends Martin Gibbs and Sarah Morgan. Martin popped over from London with his Dad, David and picked up his friend Jamie McLeod in Boston.  Together they met another British friend, Simon Skinner -- (I knew them all in England when I lived there).  Martin is heading off on a great trip across America that we cooked up after I did the same last year (he joined me for some of that one last year).  I went as far as Chapel Hill, NC with them then had to turn back for dinner with friends in DC (Rob and Karla and Kim) and home... I'll hook up with the journey later this week in Phoenix and together we'll head to San Diego, LA, San Luis Obispo and San Francisco before I take leave and head back down to LA to begin a short week of music!

The show on the 28th on KCSN's "Tied to the Tracks" with Larry Wines went very, very well, should have it up soon.   I was even invited to a party in LA (had to e mail that it was pre recorded and I was in a coffee house in Alaska... alas). Larry will have me on for two quick songs this coming Saturday (January 13th) at around 8:00 am Pacific Time -- which will help me promote the Main Street Songwriter's Showcase gig (thanks again Garret!) and mention the Porch in San Luis Obispo and Russ and Julie's 10th Anniversary House Concert on the 20th.  A busy week for me ending with a visit to San Diego and then home.

Check out the gigs list -- new updates all the time.  There are upcoming January dates in Alaska, February dates in Alaska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Massachusetts, and more after that!  If you know of a good venue drop me a line and let me know who to contact.  Love to play!

December 15, 2006 - Too long between entries, but I suffered from the inevitable hard drive melt down.  Left me unable to add to this for three weeks, but all is well now.  Big next five weeks coming up.  Just finished confirming a great week in mid January in Southern California (check out the gigs link) starting with 1 hour pre-recorded radio show on Woodland Hills/Northridge's own KCSN (88.5 FM) broadcasting as www.kcsn.org.  The show airs at 8:45 am Pacific Coast Time as part of Larry Wines' "Tied to the Tracks" show, and should be good.  After a few weeks here at home (Mom visiting now!) I head down to Phoenix to meet up with my old British friend Martin Gibbs -- he's on a cross country drive (Boston to Seattle) and I'll join him from Phoenix to San Fran.  Then its back south for Cafe Bellissimo on the 16th of January (Main Street Songwriter's Showcase with Garret Swayne), The Porch in Santa Margarita on the 19th and Russ and Julie's House Concerts tenth anniversary concert on the 20th.  Just a great week! Don't forget to pop over to the music link and buy a cd or two for a stocking stuffer -- they go out immediately and shipping and handling is my treat for Christmas (okay, its always my treat).  See you all down the road!

November 18, 2006 - What a week so far!  Played at Folsom Prison on Thursday the 16th with good friend Jerry Holder and Buddy Tabor.  With help from Buddy, Cheri Snook and especially Jim Carlson (runs the arts program there) we stepped into a bit of history.  Folsom's changed -- the old prison where Cash rocked the house is a relic.  The new blocks are brighter, less stone more concrete.  But the gate checks, the guards and the guys in the yard haven't changed.  Each step taking you deeper into a life you can't really know.  An odd feeling that.  We played in the Chapel -- four concrete block walls -- on a stage where the only adornment were two roughly painted hands reaching up to the sky.  Freedom was a theme, and loss, and life.  We took turns playing and listened to the poetry of Spoon, the music of Marty and another inmate (who sang "A Cowboy's Confession" -- a song that came to him in a dream) as they and we belted out original creation.  Thanks owed to all and those fifty who came to listen.  As Buddy Tabor observed, whether your inside or outside those walls, its a limited gig for all of us.  Following that we joined Terry Holder and drove up to Grass Vlley for a lightly attended fundraiser and some of the worst jokes I've laughed at in a long time...thanks Buddy!

Last night was our first here at FAR-West in Sacramento (that's the Western end of the Folk Alliance and a conference of music, venues, singers, tips, and talents held annually) -- Susan Mumma and I (she of the Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival) co-hosted an Alaska room featuring artists from Alaska (or born there) and those who have played in her summer festival.  What a night, after successful showcases from Buddy, Lauren Sheehan, Dan Lowe, James Lee Stanley, Tim Mason, Terry and Jerry Holder and myself, Terry and Jerry, Tim, Susan and I traded songs (and liquid joy) until the wee hours of the morning finally stopping as the conversation drifted into world saving, life and the hard reality of loss -- bookends for another day of music. 

Tired but awake, we begin another day.

November 5, 2006 - Well, not so successful at doing the blog thing, but here is another attempt....  Just returned from the Sitka Grind -- a monthly event with a number of artists from the community and beyond held in that marvelous City by the Sea (Paris of the Pacific!). This time it was the "Maritime" Grind -- sea shanties and Ocean themes, though one act put down "Motorcycle Mama" and "The Thrill is Gone").  I played my new song "The Wave" (on the next EP CD "Five Songs, Five Stories" this Summer) and an old one: "The Calling of the Sea" (likely to be on the Winter 2007 "Forgotten Streets and Lost Broadway"), then took my ten words from the audience.  In the end, we had the audience singing the new construction of "A Whale of a Tale" to close the show.  Ted Howard, local Sitka History teacher and fab guitarist joined me on stage for that last song and a playing of "Fat Moon". He was just great! Sitka was completely clear, the moon full and the air was magic -- like it always seems to be to me when I am there.  Friends like Jeff Budd (who hosted the Grind), Tom Clarke and Sheldon Schmitt just add to my always great experiences there. I always seem to leave to soon, but I've been on the road traveling for a while and needed to get home.  Can't wait for the next time...  Great people, great town, great time.

Also new -- I should be posting a new first cut studio version of "Eddie's Song", which addresses war, on the home page (if I can figure it out).  Pass it on if you like, and get it on the air if you think it should be.  

July 24, 2006 - This is my experiment: first blog entry. Just finished a whirlwind week down in Los Angeles, The San Fernando Valley and Las Vegas. Many thanks to Garret Swayne (http://www.garretswayne.com) for hosting a great venue at the Main Street Songwriters Showcase. The crowd was excellent, including a number of old friends. I hadn't seen Bruce Grossman (also a singer/songwriter) since college days (great to connect up again!) and got to see old friends Bob Meadow, Ron Young and Linda Dewar, Gordon DeBoer and many others. After a quick trip to Vegas to meet up with one of my musical compatriots, Terry Holder, and her daughter Erin and granddaughter Jade, and friends Anne Bussone and, Andrea Stats, Mary and others, I headed back to a night of a casual meeting of the music scene with Russ Paris.  You should all check out Kulak's Woodshed which is operated on the generosity of both its physical and cyber patrons (www.kulakswoodshed.com/) and the current happenings at Russ and Julie’s House Concerts which can be found on at (http://jrp-graphics.com/houseconcerts.html) to really get into the San Fernando Valley. Finally ended the trip with a stop at KCSN, 88.5 on the dial there (and webcasting at www.kcsn.org) for a live show with Larry Wines host of "Tied to the Tracks" - a great show from 6 am to 10 am every Saturday featuring live interviews and great independent music. Chicago Red and the incredible Wiyos (www.wiyos.com/) were on after me - loved watching that live music in that small studio! Check it out on the web. I recorded a copy of one of my new numbers, "Eddie's Song", which should get some airplay over the next few months there - that's its first recording (though it is copywrited!) That's it for now, gotta catch a flick.