Four years ago, I wrote a Signpost, and then stepped away from my public journaling for a moment. My website is being re-born, so it seems seemly to send you a signpost while standing on a bridge between that time and this.

The idea of a good bridge is to take us from one familiar place to another, crossing a place of difference – a chasm, a piece of chaos that changed us, birth, death, loss, some piece of beauty that awakened us in some way – arriving finally on the other side, changed, yet still within the continuum of the familiar.

Outside the window, the sun still shines. The leaves on the red maples are beginning to turn, and some to fall. The joggers are wearing more layers, and oatmeal feels just about right for breakfast. It's Autumn. In a day or two, I head to Provincetown, MA for my annual 10-day run at the Post Office Cabaret. It's Women's Week in Provincetown...always busy, the never-ending tribe of comediennes roaming the town, a few musicians here and there, some drama of some sort (of course), either on stage or in the theater of relationships. With the economy in choke-hold mode, it's hard to say if women will choose to come at all. Here's hoping! It so will help the local women survive through the winter-to-come, and I venture to say that the various performances around town will help all of us survive yet another season. We need to support our artists, our culture, our sisters.

Sitting in my friend's backyard in Oakland, just having seen a gorgeous filly run a mile and 1/2 to win the Belmont Stakes...remembering sitting in a car with my friend Susan, up in the Big Horn Mountains over 30 years ago, listening to a horse race over the radio, the day a filly ran and fell...a filly named Ruffian. We just burst into tears on that long-ago day, and my girlfriend and I just burst into tears on this day, too. Today... she won; Rags To Riches in the winner's circle, and it set us thinking about the power of the Woman in this lonely race we human beings run.

Greetings everyone! I want to apologize for being absent from the online journaling for so long. I've missed all of you, and hopefully, you've felt the same. Summer is on the wane, the mornings already darker at six am. It's funny how all of a sudden, Fall is almost upon us. I'm always surprised somehow. But with the Fall, I am returning to performing after taking a long time off. I've been doing other things which have taken up a great deal of my time. I've been writing a book, for which some of you have begged for so long. It's going to be a collection of memories, stories of things which changed me and made me a changer of things. More about that later.

I haven't written since February. In that Road Sign, I meant to say we'd gone to Jazz Alley here in Seattle, so I wanted to correct that, and let you know about that great jazz venue which, by the way, features a lot of great women players and singers among the jazz greats appearing there. If you have a jazz venue in your town, check it out. Jazz is for everyone, as is Opera, grand and Country! Music is either good, bad, or something in between. It all deserves a listen.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you! May the Spirit of Love prevail in these days and all the days and nights to come. Love is the one thing all human beings desire, long for, and write about. All you need is love... love makes the world go round... put a little love in your heart... love is a many-splendored thing... love is just a four letter word... God is Love. So many musings on the subject, and yet, so little we know of love. But we do know that without love, human beings seem to fade away for lack of soul. Making love makes soul. Making music makes soul. Loving something, someone, some place makes us better human beings. Love makes more of itself once it gets going. Sometimes, it seems as if it is frozen in place. But, when the heart is broken open, the ice breaks, a flood pours out and love grows green again. So here's to Love, the thing we are supposed to do. It's hard to get it right, but so worth the effort! It's our life's work.

It's been a couple of scary months for me - in animal crisis mode. My beautiful cat, Asia (aka Kiki), suddenly lost tons of weight, and I, being on the Road, had my good friend/housesitter take her in to the vets to get her teeth cleaned as she seemed to be having trouble eating. They did a regulation blood test before the other procedure, and that test showed that she had a hyperthyroid condition, as well as a piece of grass stuck in her throat. They got the grass out, and then she was put on Methemezol, one of the choices for that condition, but did not alert me or my friend that nearly 20 % of all cats do not tolerate this medicine.

"Greetings from Seattle on a sunny, bright day. As most of you know, we did two successful shows in San Francisco and I have to say, the whole thing was amazing! It was everything I hoped it would be and more. The musicians, my friends, Barbara Higbie, Julie Wolf, Jami Sieber, and Woody Simmons, and Vicki Randle, are so good!, Some of these players will be the core band for the upcoming shows, and some, like Teresa Trull, will join along the way as they are able, along with as many special guests as I can herd into this traveling feast. One of the best things about these players is that they are soloists in their own right and can take the lead at any time. I aim to feature their music in the first set and beckon the audience to know them better.