Author Archives: singinggrandma

Digital recorders are a marvel. So are video cameras. If you ever want to know how you really sound and look when you make music, go ahead a record yourself. Ditto if you are preparing a speech for an audience. You will need a strong stomach. If you retain a sense of humor and hope,Continue reading “Just Keep On Going”

A couple of years ago, my husband Stan and I bought a 1995 Ford pickup truck from Craig’s list. I will never drive it, but I admire it either from the passenger’s seat or as an appreciative observer of him carting around something useful, like furniture, mulch, or stuff to be moved to the dump.Continue reading “Let’s Hit the Road”

This year I decided to pay more attention to both my anniversary with my beloved husband Stan, and also to Valentine’s Day. In the past, it has been easy for me to be either dismissive or cynical about national holidays that can be characterized as Hallmark events; in other words, commercialized markers in the year,Continue reading “Valentine’s Day, 2021”

Actually, my goal is to be grateful more often. So far I haven’t found pep talks about gratitude or suggestions about gratitude practices to be helpful. It all depends upon how willing I am to receive comfort or direction. Having been pushed around too much as a kid, often I  have resistance to suggestions, andContinue reading “About Being Grateful”

It’s remarkable that a song like Amazing Grace, with such a simple, repetitive melody never gets boring. It’s a chant, really, with a hypnotic magnetism that can be personalized by anyone who sings it. “Amazing Grace and the News”  is my variation of this classic prayer. You could probably figure this out yourself, but myContinue reading “Amazing Grace Despite Everything”

In the song “So Little Time”, on my album “Truckload of Songs”, one verse says “Try to say thanks when you go. You got to live: to take and to give. Try to say thanks when you go.” This is a great idea that I would like to live up to, or die up to,Continue reading “A Positive Spin on Death”

  The coronavirus pandemic has shoved us all into relying on the computer or the phone being the primary way to see and talk with each other. But my favorite modality is REAL HUMANS MEETING WITH REAL HUMANS! I’m an extrovert, so this era is a challenge for me. That’s a polite way of sayingContinue reading “Pandemic: All the People Hide”

People mostly don’t want to talk about incest. It’s hard enough to consider the extent of sexual abuse in general in our country (just read the news lately!), but incest is the largest betrayal of all and the least discussed. Family members are supposed to care for and protect the smaller, younger ones in theContinue reading “A Depressing, But Important Topic: Incest”

My beloved daughter lives on a remote ranch in South Dakota. When Stan and I go there to visit, we stay in a comfortable trailer a short walk from the main house. Truly it’s like being transported to another universe: the nearest house on the ranch is almost two miles away and the driveway intoContinue reading “Pretty Mary Brown”

I’m just wondering if having a blog attack is a little like having malaria. The impulse to write posts can be dormant for a long time, and then there is an attack of blog fever. I just wrote something yesterday, and here I am again, briefly consumed. Maybe it’s because I got a decent homeContinue reading “A Little Like Malaria?”