Notes from the Wardrobe: Let’s Hear it for the Boys...

I have a pet peeve. Actually two. Okay, if you know me I have a whole farm full of them, but in the case of Love, Loss & What I Wore I have two very specific ones. The first, that I’ve Already covered here is that the play is merely about clothes. The second is that this is a “women’s show”.  

When Spawn was in elementary school I volunteered with the reading program, and kids who would coming in looking for books would often reject them on the basis of whether it was a “boy’s book” or a “girl’s book”. I worked long and hard to convince them (with varying degrees of success) that there was no such thing gendered books. Such is the case with Love, Loss. Yes, these are stories about women’s lives, and yes, we definitely need to see and hear these stories on-stage. Especially now. But as far as the intended audience? There is no such thing as “Men’s Shows” or “Women’s Shows”, only Human shows.

But first, I do want to address the idea that men don’t care about clothes. This is manifestly untrue. They may not care about FASHION but they do care about STYLE. Fashion is what the stores and magazines try to sell you, style is knowing who you are and adorning yourself accordingly. They care about the expressive power of clothing. The guys I work with at Pioneer all have definite takes on clothing, whether they admit it or not. Jon, my assistant director, has an affinity for “old-man sweaters” and very definite ideas about pants. He also has a collection of bow ties for dress up that includes Spider Man and bacon. Dan, our company artistic director has a great collection of silver and beaded bracelets that I have tried to pilfer on more than one occasion. And Doug, one of our board members, and the director of our spring show Tommy, is almost never seen in public without his leather jacket. Each of these guys has a very distinct look that is part of their persona as artists and creators. They have STYLE.

And then there are the stories...One of the interesting things about the rehearsal process has been how often a scene we’ve worked on sparks a cascade of stories from both actors and production team. One monologue about a prom dress had all the women and men in the rehearsal room telling stories not just about what we wore to our proms but who we took, what we did afterwards and what our dates turned out to be in their adult life. Sometimes all it takes to spark a connection or conversation is the shared memory of an object. In our case the object just happened to be clothes. 

Not all stories illustrate the commonalities, but illuminate the differences and that too is a blessing. There are things men never experience that are part of the daily fabric of being a woman. Dealing with the expectations of a society that sends constantly mixed messages. That insists you must be sexy and desirable but if you are sexually assaulted somehow you bear the responsibility. That tells you that men and women are from different planets and it must simply be accepted that there will never be understanding between the two. But the beauty of really listening to someone’s else’s stories is that we begin to understand the world from a perspective outside our own. This is what a show like this offers to men. The chance to see the world in a different way.

So bring your girlfriends and sisters and mothers to see Love, Loss & What I Wore  but bring the men in your life too. You’ll be surprised at what happens. 

Notes from the Wardrobe: What’s Your Number

There is a scene in Love, Loss & What I Wore  where the actors confront that bane of all our existences, the dressing room mirror. A nook designed by a sadist to highlight every insecurity you’ve ever had while providing you with eight or nine new ones. This is where bad lighting, fun house mirrors and inconsistent sizing come together to make you question all your life choices. Suddenly you are reduced to numbers - what size you are, how much you weigh, your age, even your income.  In that moment bathed in ghastly green fluorescent light you break into a sweat as the voices in your head tell you that have failed utterly at all of the above. 

But here’s the cold hard truth. You are not a number. Say it with me now - I. AM. NOT. A. NUMBER. Repeat as needed until you believe it. We humans seem to have a need to quantify things in order understand them. Sometimes this is useful, in baking or medicine or quantum physics. But in determining the worth and value of a human soul? Not so much.

Let’s start with sizing. First of all, there’s no such thing as standard sizing. Your size can vary based on the brand you’re buying and even the season in which you purchase an item. Some designers deliberately cut their clothes larger. This is called vanity sizing and is particularly nice to find when your shopping expedition starts with a large lunch and ends in chocolate cake. Then there is aspirational sizing. Where a brand cuts everything a size or so smaller. This is the one that makes you embark upon the dryer lint and water diet to prove you are worthy of their clothes. The result is that we end up with a range of sizes in our closet and think this means something about our very essence. It doesn’t. If anything, it tells you more about a label’s attitude towards their consumers.

And then there’s weight. Women, food and weight - we are damned if we do,  damned if we don’t. Jean Kilbourne, an expert on advertising, wrote an amazing book called Can’t Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think & Feel (originally published as Deadly Persuasion). In it she devotes a chapter to how food is marketed to women. Almost invariably it is presented as a guilty pleasure, a shameful secret to hide from one’s nearest dearest. We are led to believe that instead of something to be relished and enjoyed, something that we need to live, food is a signifier of our virtue, our willingness to sacrifice to attain a mythical perfection. This mindset leads to shame, which in my view is an absolutely useless emotion. There is nothing shameful about fueling you body, or enjoying wonderfully prepared food with friends and family. Our shame about consuming needed food leads to unhealthy habits and unrealistic expectations about our bodies. I struggle with this everyday. On my good days I know that while it’s important to do things to keep myself healthy so that I can do what I love for a long time, it’s not about a magic number. There is no weight that will magically make me a better person. In fact, constant hunger makes me significantly less amusing to be around. 

Age is right up there with weight on our list of obsessions. This another place where, as women, we get a plethora of mixed messages. We’re supposed to “fight” the signs of aging, and stay eternally young, yet the fashion blogs are filled with “age appropriate attire”. We should be striving for a long and useful life but if we haven’t succeeded by thirty we need to retire gracefully from the field. I say, bullshit! You heard me - bullshit! In the first place “age appropriate dressing” is a sexist trope designed to make women feel they need to live up to some standard set by the invisible fashion gods. If it makes you look great and feel great - wear it! Imagine if Tina turner took up wearing Maxi dresses, or Cher decided to rep for Saint John. There would be nothing wrong with that if that’s truly what they wanted to do, but it wouldn’t feel true to the selves that they’ve fought all their lives to become.

And as for success having a predetermined age. One of my favorite character actresses of all time, Thelma Ritter, made her first movie at forty-five and by the time of her death she had accrued six Oscar Nominations. Another of my faves, Kathryn Joosten took up acting in community theatre at age forty-two and went on to create several iconic television characters, among them President Bartlett’s secretary Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing. 

What I’ve loved most about working on Love, Loss & What I Wore is that it gives women of all ages and types a voice. It illuminates women who strive every day, not for some ideal that they’ll never reach, but to connect, to become the people they most want to be. It forces us to look past the numbers and see their true beauty which is flawed and funny and just perfect all on it’s own. As are we. Numbers be damned!

Carol Hall-An Appreciation

My first conversation with Carol Hall was not about the music. Not about the shows she had written or whether it was easier to write songs for Big Bird or the Floozies from the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It was about our children.

Many years ago I was accepted into a program at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, CT. I was far away from home and knew no one. My first night there I went to the small barn like building that was a classroom during the day and a gathering place in the evenings. My introvert self decided to take a tiny table in the corner so that I could observe without being noticed. Within minutes of sitting down Carol pulled up a chair at my table and was soon joined by Sally Mayes and Julie Wilson. I don’t know why they chose that spot, and I can’t recall who started the conversation, or what sparked it, but soon we were talking about our children and sharing the stories that mothers do when they gather. I didn’t know it then, but these women had just become a permanent part of my life. They became my teachers, my mentors, my friends and my exemplars.

Two of them, Carol and Julie, have left us. Julie a few years ago and Carol only a few months ago. One day I will write about Julie, but today I want to write about Miss Carol.

I will always be just slightly in awe of Miss Carol. She was unfailingly polite, but did not suffer fools, whip smart and funny. She told wonderful stories. I have vivid memories of her recounting the journey of her Dachshund Jake’s trip from the Dachshund rescue society to his new home in New York City. Complete with references to the French Connection and a secret underground Dachshund railroad.

But I think maybe it was her voice that I loved the most. It was like molasses - dark and deep and ever so slow. I’d pick up the phone to hear her say, “It’s Carol” every syllable elongated and deliberate with just a tiny touch of Texas around the edges. When Carol spoke you always had the feeling she weighed her words with great care.

Words were important to her. Which you would know if you ever saw her take a singer to task over changing the tiniest word in a song. She labored to get her lyrics just right, and even the change of a “the” to an “a” or an “and” to a “but” could dramatically alter a song’s intent. She was a fierce warrior on behalf of writers everywhere. 

She was an example to me of so many things- Grace under pressure. She did not love performing, in fact, she was often terrified before going on, but she went on stage and did it every time with her signature wit and charm. It surprised me to learn she’d gone on as Doatsy Mae in the original production of Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. But it shouldn’t have. It takes guts to put your vulnerable self in front of an audience and Miss Carol had guts. She showed me you could speak your mind, hold your ground and still have good manners. Carol had beautiful manners. Most importantly, she understood the power of the words Thank You. On my desk is a red lacquer pen from Tiffany, and in my closet a blue lace jacket from Anthropology. Both were gifts from her that came with lovely notes of gratitude for some small thing I had done. I will keep them forever.

She wrote a song called Tattooed Boy in Memphis which I think is my favorite of all her songs. The chorus says -

The truth is that we never really know the ways we reach each other

                   Though we think we see it there’s a world we never find.

                   The truth is that we never can be sure of how we teach each other

                    Life is full of changes

                    And the touch of passing strangers

                     And it’s all just like a ribbon we unwind .

I doubt that Carol ever knew the ways she influenced me. I was lucky to know her, and learn from her. I will miss that slow syrupy voice telling me a story about taking her son to see  the original production of “Sweeney Todd” or gently yet firmly explaining to a singer why they mustn’t change a word in a composer’s song. But I have her words and her music and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Who Am I, Anyway?

Photo by Denise Medve Penguinmoon Studios  

I had a moment of absolute clarity during a rehearsal for Women’s Work last week. I was singing away and I heard the words in my head as clearly as if someone were standing next to me whispering in my ear, “THIS is who you are”. I am good at many things but nowhere am I as much myself, my absolute truest and best self, as when I’m standing in front of a microphone singing and telling my stories.  

I have neglected that particular self during the past few years. I had to. There were things I needed to learn to become better at doing what I do. I spent three years working on my writing, learning to dance, and returning to stage acting. I use these skills in ways I never imagined when I get up to perform, but still I had to leave this other self aside for a while to concentrate on mastering them. It temporarily disconnected me not only from myself but from those amazing people who are part of my tribe. At the same time it brought new tribe members into my world.

I am reconnecting with that girl in front of the microphone, and those mentors who first put me on this path. I have new things to bring to the table, and old things that have only improved with age. It means change, of course, something I actively fear every waking moment. But it also means returning to the thing that I love more than anything else. 

I am not going to abandon all those wonderful new things I’ve learned. If I don’t continue to work at them those skills will certainly atrophy. I will, however, work harder at putting this wonderful gift that is my very heart at the center of them all. The best compliment I got after the show was from a friend who hugged me tightly and said, “You’re a storyteller!” I am and I intend to use every tool available within me to tell my stories. New possibilities are appearing and I can’t wait to see where they take me!

Back to School

Graphic by Denise Medve Penguinmoon Studio

I am a fall girl. I’m not so much on the whole profusion of pumpkin products, but beyond that there’s something about fall that perks me right up (well, perk is a relative term for one who is so far down on the perkiness scale but...). It could be a throwback to the days of fresh notebooks and new pens and pencils that always came with a new school year. I still have an obsession with notebooks. I have a whole basket full of pretty blank books waiting to be defiled with my illegible scrawl. But I digress (as usual)...

This fall I actually get to participate in the whole back to school hoopla as I’m teaching a brand new workshop for Pioneer’s Stagecraft education program. Solo is a class built especially to inspire, encourage and educate performers about creating their own shows. One of my favorite Lin-Manuel Miranda quotes is, Don’t wait on anyone to make your favorite thing- make your own favorite thing. If there is one thing that can make me wax evangelical it is the art of solo performance. The freedom is immense and the creative rewards are incredible. In mastering the art of solo performance you learn how to bring your own unique strengths as a performer to the stage while discovering all new skills. Every performer should have this tool in their kit!

This class is meant as a one day intensive, “get your feet wet” kind of thing. I’m covering a lot of ground including song performance, choosing material, working with a musical director, arrangements, structuring your show, visual image, and booking and promoting your show. We’ll wind up the day with an informal performance for an invited audience of friends and family (your friends and family that you get to invite, that is).  

I am lucky to have as my willing accomplice for the day Bruce De La Cruz as musical director. Bruce works all over the place as a musical director, accompanist and an arranger. He’s also a Staff musical director at Paper Mill Playhouse. 

If youre a performer I hope you’ll consider joining us. You can sign up HERE . If you sign up by the end of the day on September 16th you can get $25 off the price of the workshop by using the code early. If you are the friend of a performer please feel free to pass this info along to them. We are limiting the class size so that there is lots of personal instruction time and attention. If you’ve got questions feel free to drop me a line.

In Our Own Words...

Michele Brourman & Me Photo by Cindy Banescu

So, you may have heard...I’ve got show coming up (September 16th you can check out the details HERE). Not only does it reunite me with Michele Brourman, but it gives me the chance to celebrate the work of female songwriters. Why female songwriters?  

I’m a storyteller at heart. I was raised in a world of women sitting around a table sharing stories. Family lore, ghost stories, things that happened every day, men who disappointed, children who misbehaved in public and embarrassing ways- each story sparking another one, voices overlapping and rising making it impossible for little kids not to listen. And listen I did. I still remember them. Even the most horrifying anecdotes would be salted with so much laughter and humor that it was years before I realized what some of those tales were really about. 

The more time that passes the more I return to my roots as I’ve realized that as far as we’ve come as women we still are not always the ones in charge of telling our stories. Terms like chick lit and chick flick get thrown around and are used to dismiss stories that are seen as being too small, too domestic to be universal. Stories not told from a male perspective. 

But those stories I heard growing up were not just fluffy, funny anecdotes. They were about survival and problem solving and standing up for yourself in a world that makes it almost impossible. It told me that I could do hard things. That what does not kill me gives me stories (I find myself saying this more and more often these days. As regular readers of this blog will note.)  And most of all that in sharing them we create bonds, and community. They are meant to be shared. In the words of Maya Angelou, There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

This is why I chose female songwriters in this moment. I think they often go places where male writers fear to tread. They fearlessly take on subjects others would see as too small or mundane and use them to illuminate a larger truth. They (to quote my friend, director & performer, Shellen Lubin) created their own sounds and poetically documented their lives and hearts. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about excluding males from my audience. And there are several songs that I’m working on that have male co-writers.  I want men there just as much as I want women there. There has been so much ink spilled over how men and women are incapable of understanding each other. We speak different languages, inhabit different planets..blah, blah, blah. I don’t believe it. Maybe if we could listen to each other’s stories in our words, we’d learn not about being male or female but being human. 

Hitting the High Points...

Photo by Penguinmoon Studios

This summer has been one of constant motion - I joined the board of Pioneer Productions, produced (and had a cameo appearance in) a musical and hit two very big milestones. One was inevitable and the other came through more than two years of blood,sweat and blisters.

The first biggie was my birthday. Whether it was divisible by five, ten or three hundred twelve I will leave you to guess. I’m not ashamed of my age but I also don’t feel the need to advertise it. I have officially entered my IDGAF Years. You have been warned.

The other was that I moved from Bronze level to Silver in my dancing. In my studio you start out at Bronze one and work your way through four levels until you reach the Silver level. Basically the Bronze syllabus is what most colleges use in their ballroom dance majors so finishing it is the equivalent of a Bachelor’s degree. It took two and a half years and a whole lot of toil but I did it and I’m proud of it. 

I had no idea when I started it but studying dance has been the best decision I could have made. It has made an impact on almost every other aspect of my life. In an odd way almost everything that has happened in my career in the last couple of years can be traced back to this decision. 

Dancing did not make me a different performer/person but through it I have become more myself than I have ever been. I am finally at home in my own skin and that has given me confidence both physically and psychically. The skills I already had when I started, the ability to create a character, to perform, to engage an audience, to tell a story have only grown stronger. Added to that are new ways of expressing myself and different ways to explore and understand music. Also, because ballroom is an art that is dependent upon working with another person it has enhanced my ability to communicate with a partner.

I have always been great with words. Words have been my salvation throughout my entire life. Dance has enhanced my nonverbal communication. I can take the stage without saying a word and that is a powerful tool to own.

It took me a while to come around to seeing it this way, but Dance has given me the gift of being a beginner again. You can never fully master an art unless you allow yourself the time and space to be bad at it. It’s not just how you conquer your craft but what teaches you empathy and patience. Knowing this makes me a stronger performer and a better teacher of performers. (This will really come in handy when I teach my Solo performance workshop in October. A plethora of shameless plugs coming soon.)

Finally, there’s the wardrobe. It hasn’t really changed that, it’s just given me even more opportunities to break out the sequins, fringe and corsets. This is the most excellent thing of all! 

Who Knew...

Photo by Denise Medve - Penguinmoon Studio

Once a teacher said to me after a performance, “Well, who you knew you had that in you?”  And then went on to wax rhapsodic about all they had done for me, and how lucky I was that they gave me this wonderful gift. I smiled sweetly, said thank you, and walked away. But it nagged at me for a long time afterward. Because I didn’t answer the question. 

I did. I knew. Let me preface what I’m about to say by saying that I have been extremely fortunate in having teachers and mentors who have nurtured me and believed in me, and to whom I owe more than I can possibly say. Their advice and instruction was invaluable, but it was I who did the work. I who chose them because I knew who and what I wanted to be, and then sought out the people who could help me become the performer (and human being) I knew in my soul I was. 

It was I who took every lesson home with me and thought over it, and cried over it, and then put in the hours of practice it took to master the material. I was the one who sacrificed the time, and money (oh, so much money) to learn as much as I could to be as good as I could. It was I who ignored friends, and family and housework (not the greatest sacrifice) to devote time to my craft. I was the one who tormented myself by constantly wondering if what I was doing, what I was, was enough.

I didn’t do it because I needed a hobby. I didn’t do it because I wanted attention. I did it because I had a vision. I was called to it. And. I. Knew.

So In Love

A little Friday romance for you. This is the video from the choreographer’s showcase I did last weekend. The singer, of course, is me, and the dancers are Janette Dishuk & Chris Zang. The choreography is by Olivia Galgano.

My Life as a Broadway Musical

A few weeks ago on twitter the writer Nicole Cliffe asked her followers to imagine explaining their lives to their therapist in one song from a Broadway musical. I chose  I Put a Little More Mascara On from La Cage Aux Folles. In case you aren’t familiar with this particular tune (and why aren’t you?) it’s about seeing life through the lens of your self created fabulousness. I recognize that to some people this is the ultimate in shallowness. How unfemininist of me to believe that a little lipstick and mascara can change my life. And yet...

I have to start this story with my mother. Mom was born with a very rare disease of the connective tissue called Marfan’s Syndrome (both Jonathan Larson and Abraham Lincoln had the same condition), it caused her a number of issues throughout her life, early onset glaucoma and osteoporosis, malformation of certain bones, and heart problems. She died, as many Marfan’s patients do, of an aneurysm at age fifty-nine. From the moment she was born she was the object of curious doctors who often treated her more as an object that a human being. She loathed, more than anything else being seen by the world as a “sick person.” 

In my entire life with my mother she NEVER left the house without being perfectly made up and immaculately dressed. This was not vanity, this was survival. She could not control what other people thought of her, she couldn’t control what was happening in her own body, but she could control this. She could choose the face she presented to the world. It was her rebellion against a world that could not look past the disease to see a brilliant, witty woman, who had endless compassion and empathy for everyone she met. 

I think maybe this is one of the most important things my mother taught me. I would rather my life be seen as musical comedy than Shakespearean tragedy. In musical comedy you know the plucky heroine may be faced with serious and seemingly insurmountable obstacles but she will triumph in the end and  along the way there will be sequins, great songs and at least one fabulous dance number. Unlike in Shakespeare where the costumes are lovely but by the end of act III not a soul is left standing. 

The actress Ann Miller said “I’ve tried to live my life like an 8 x 10 glossy”. There will be those who read this and think I’m talking about fakery, about not being “authentic”, and I would have to disagree. There is nothing wrong with wanting to chose what you put out into the world. Putting your best face forward is not a denial that life is hard, but a celebration of what makes life wonderful. There is joy in becoming who you are and sharing that with the world. In the words of La Cage’s Zaza 'Cause when I feel glamorous, elegant, beautiful, The world that I'm looking at's beautiful too!

Find Your Miracle

Photo of harpist Maria Banks, Andre DeShields & me by Lia Chang Photography

One of my jobs as an Associate Producer on this year’s Bistro Awards was to go through hours and hours of video footage of our Lifetime Achievement honoree, Andre DeShields. This was no hardship. Mr. DeShields is a remarkable talent with a stunning body of work in theatre, film and television. He is also a man of great style, humor and graciousness. When he complemented my outfit I had to exercise massive self control not to throw myself at his feet and beg him to adopt me. But I digress, as usual, back to the video footage. Among the clips of his performances with Patti LaBelle, Nell Carter and as the Wizard in The Wiz was a wonderful interview he did with Sherry Eaker. 

At the very end of the interview he says, Miracles are commonplace. Blessings are an everyday occurrence. Where we get confused is where we chase after other people’s blessings,or when we covet a miracle that doesn’t have our name on it. That’s when we get into trouble...Pursue those blessings, dreams and miracles that have your name on it, and everything will be fine. How much time I have I taken away from developing my blessings to moan about the things I haven’t been blessed with? Where do I find MY miracles and blessings? I don’t know really, buy I think I have an idea.

The first step is learning to be grateful. To look every day at what I’ve been given, and what it’s brought me, and where it’s taken me in my life, and to be thankful. These are the blessings and experiences that have made me who I am.

I believe that one of my greatest gifts is the ability to work really really hard. Talent is nice, and I do have some of that too, but talent is only the starting point. You have to work every day to develop that talent. The work I put in has certainly given me mastery over my gifts, but it’s also given me ownership of them.  

Culitivating generosity is the final piece. To learn to give a compliment sincerely and without envy. To take as much joy in the success of others as I do in my own. To remember that success is not a finite resource and that just because someone else has it does not mean that there is less for me. In fact, I think there’s more. I’ve always hated the gig scarcity mentality. The idea that if I tell someone how I got a certain gig then there will be fewer gigs for me. I’ve found the opposite to be true. When I pool my resources with other performers I have found not just success but community. 

I don’t know if this is the one and only path to finding my miracles. I’m sure everyone reading this may have a different idea of how to get there. (Which, by the way, is what the comments section is for. Please share how you find yours.) But at the very least I suspect that if I can manage to do all these things there will be no time to covet what is not mine.  

The interview is below, and the section I’m referring to starts about six minutes in. 

Singing for a Cause...

In rehearsal for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with Salvador Navarro & Dan Vissers . Photo by Penguin Moon Studios

The art of making art is a difficult one. It requires talent, vision, willing collaborators and funding. You can have the first three elements but without the last one, the almighty dollar, you won’t get very far. At times like this we all can use a little help from our friends.

Last year Pioneer Productions Company gave me the opportunnity to play Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I had a blast exploring the contours of this iconic character and made some talented new friends in the process. Now it’s time for me to give back a little of what they gave to me. On January 20th I will be reuniting with some of my pals from Cuckoo’s nest along with some other terrific performers for an evening benefiting Pioneer. 

Your ticket will get you an evening of great singing, yummy food, and the knowledge that you’re helping to bring new art to life. Click HERE to get your tix for the event. I’ll see you there!

 (If you’d like a sneak peak of what you’ll see on the 20th check out the promo below...)

On the First Day of Blogging...

Words! Words! Words! My brain is full of them. they spin around my head while I’m trying to sleep and crash into my conscious when I’m trying to grocery shop. The more I put off committing them to print the more they plague me. The time has come to set them free in the hope that I can finally stop frightening people in the checkout line at Wegman’s with my muttering.

Welcome to the Twelve Days of Blogging. Similar to the Twelve Days of Christmas but not- there will be no birds or pear trees, but maybe some leaping and dancing. For the next twelve days (that would be twelve weekdays, folks, even a procrastinator gets the occasional weekend off) I am going publish a post daily. I’ll be talking about music and dance and theatre and books and any other thing that  floats through the transom of my mind.

I also want to hear from you. Chime in with your thoughts and even links to your blog. Let’s get some conversation going. I’ll start it off right now by telling you my next post will be all about Balance. Finding it, losing it, and what it all means.

Sooner Rather Than Later, Please

This week has been a wretched week on both a personal level and the larger global level. Bad news seems  to be coming thick and fast from all corners. There is so much that seems beyond our control right now, with demons prowling everywhere. What can we do? Well, there's kindness and compassion both for others and for ourselves.  You'd be surprised how little of that it takes to lighten a mood. And beyond that there's music. Good music- the kind that makes you laugh and cry and forget just for a minute that the odds are long and so is the day. Yesterday just when I was at the absolute end of my tether I stumbled across Karen Ziemba & Bill Irwin's version of Stephen Sondheim's Sooner or Later. It didn't solve my problems or spout platitudes, it didn't even do my dishes. But it made me smile, and at that moment everything seemed much better. So,I'm sharing it with you, I hope it makes your day just a bit happier.