When the roses fade, And I'm in the shade, I'll remember you.

Greetings from a long hiatus and self imposed exile. I have been on an unintended break from posting for too long. I have been busy with ordinary home life as the end of the official show season approaches. May saw me doing crazy 3 show a day schedules and now I can chill a little. I just finished planting my garden which saw me expand the size to a respectable italian family size of 40 feet by 12. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, broccoli, carrots, peas, rosemary and hopefully cucumbers. I have been enjoying just hanging around the yard, eating a little too much, and watching the NBA playoffs. Manu Ginobli is the greatest player I've seen in a while. The spurs remind me of the Celtics I grew up watching as a kid. Duncan, Ginobli, Parker, Horry, Bowen WOW! Now there gonna face one of my favorite teams. Always been a pistons fan. Hamilton, Wallace, Wallace, Billups. Hell yeah what a series its gonna be. Been trying to avoid watchin Cspan and Meet The Press because its bad for my blood pressure. It gets worse and worse every day. I have never seen such blatant lying and cover ups of obviously immoral and certainly impeachable offenses. The demo-rats are just as bad. They get a chairman who finally has some stones and speaks his mind and then they all demand he apologize. Bunch of whiners. Meanwhile the young people die and the dollar drops and the standard of living drops, and the US creates more enemies, and the Empire of Amerika spreads itself too thin. Did I mention I havent been watching the news? Sorry I digress. Dylan's coming around the northeast in a couple weeks. Hope to catch a few shows. OH I almost forgot. I just finished a writing contest with the young people of Ottawa Illinois. We gave away some ipods for the best poems and essays. To all who entered thank you and strong work! I was really moved by many of the entries. I will be posting some of the winners here so check back soon. This fall I hope to give away an ipod a month for the best poetry and prose I receive. I will be conducting an online contest and announce it at every school I go to. At the end of the month I will read em all and give away some prizes and post the winners on a special page. Which leads me to some upcoming changes. I hope to be changing and updating the web site soon. I need to add a new video 'cause that clip is like 3 years old and does not convey what I would like it to. Some stuff I plan to add:

• New online polling
• Monthly Podcasts that you can download. It will be a 45 minute radio program recorded in my "home studio" with music, commentary, poetry etc.
• Message boards

Next topic- Music New CD's I'm into: Loretta Lynn: Van Neer Rose Coldplay: X&Y NIN: With Teeth Elvis Costello-King of America (remastered and rereleased) Bob Dylan: Bootlegs from 1998 with Bucky Baxter on guitar and David Kemper on drums. New CD's I'm looking forward to: Billy Corgan White Stripes And in closing I unfortunately have been thinking about age and mortality. Not so much mine but my familiy. I am the youngest son of my dad and mom who are the youngest in their families of 8. All my life my uncles and aunts have been elderly and my cousins have been like most kid's uncles and aunts. And now everyone is getting up there. My mom is 72 and my dad is going to be 8o in july. It was sad this week to see my Aunt Lena pass away because she was the last of my dads siblings. At the funeral my cousin Paul made a statement that really stuck with me. "My mom lived in a time when your friends were your family and your family were your friends." I miss those times. For whatever reason those days are gone for most of us and when I said goodbye to my Aunt Lena this week I felt a much bigger loss. As I watched my Dad say goodbye to his sister I kind of felt like we were all not only losing an incredible woman but a big part of ourselves and our history. I mean this was a woman who lived her entire life within one mile of where she was born...How often does that happen now? At the funeral there were probably more neighbors than "family." All kinds of people from a tight knit italian immigrant neighborhood where everyone looked out for eachother and formed bonds that have lasted 80 years. I was talking to people that I never met that "knew me." I was listening to stories about grandchildren and cousins from this one 85 year old lady for about ten minutes and it was AMAZING and BEAUTIFUL and all too rare. I was reflecting on going over to my Aunt's house when I was a kid sitting in the kitchen drinking "Orange-Aid" from the floral printed glasses while looking out over this frickin HUGE garden. Man those were good days. Gotta go.