Long time

 It's been ten years. That is all ...

New Guitar - Finally

Soon I will have the custom guitar for which I have waited more than a year. I decided to build this guitar now because even though I have never done anything this extravagant before, and felt guilty to be indulging myself this way - it is a tribute. My folks, Bernice (uka Becky) and Charlie (hka Charles) have died in the last ten years and after the sale of the homestead in Darien, CT - all the brothers got a little cash. I wanted to build the guitar to honor my parents. It was my mother who asked me not to play too loud, so I learned to fingerpick. It was my father who rewrote the words to every hymn he ever sang in church and encouraged me by his example to write my own songs. Both of them loved music - in the end - even mine.

I miss my parents, even though I take them with me every day. Sorry folks - the humor comes from Mom who never missed an opportunity for a quick pun or quip and who taught me early to pounce on any poorly written headline for an easy and cheap laugh. Ah, the speed at which that woman could rip poor grammar to shreds - I miss that. My father was the most Godly man I ever knew. Now to those of you who don't believe in God - I'm sorry - my father did and lived every day to please God and to pattern his life after Jesus. And - not in the way those on the religious right do today. I could tell you story after story, example after example of how this simple man who finished high school well into his forties, and who worked in a factory by day, and as a handyman by night had a profound influence on those around him. At his memorial service in 2001, people spoke, one after another for more than two hours about how Charlie had made an impact on their lives. My brothers and I were very lucky to have Charlie and Becky as our parents. And so - the instrument that brings me great joy is a tribute to them, to their hard work and encouragement of all their sons.

I will speak more later about the process of building the guitar, the difficulty and falling out with the guy who gave me the wood, the great work that Chuck Sanzone, the luthier has done - later in another post.

For now - a tribute to the folks:
Charles Knudsen - 1916-2001
Bernice Knudsen - 1916-2008

No one reads these but it's fun anyway

I realize that after several years - no one is reading this blog. It's probably because no one can find it. Maybe I'll get back to it, maybe not. But for now - I'm still alive.

It's late February - It's New England

So, here I am at my desk listening on a conference call.

It's winter and I'm thinking about this picture. I took it last weekend on a long walk in the woods.

I'm thinking about how a simple act of looking into a stream can allow you to focus your thinking and transport you out of your current circumstance. Oh, believe me, that's what I'm doing right now.

I'm really intrigued by the shapes in this photograph. I must have seen them when I clicked the shutter, but now I've done a little cropping, a little photomagic and I have the current result. The question is: why am I sitting in my office when I should be at home printing, or mounting photos? Or writing songs, or performing somewhere. Oh yeah, I have a daughter in college, a mortgage, expenses. It was a nice short vacation while it lasted.

December 2006

I am now convinced no one has seen any of these posts. I don't care. Okay that's all for now. It's very cold today. I wrote a new song this month. It'll be on the site at some point in the near future.
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DEC 12th - update
So I've heard that at least one person is reading.

September 2006

Today is the last day of the month and my last day to haved this posted this month. I got a little bored with the website so I added some features: This blog (takes the place of comments on the "Stuff" page which will remain in place, a "guestbook" that I added from a free site. I'm hoping it's not doing anything untoward, like putting cookies on everybody's computer. Those of you who are worried about that are probably tech savvy enough to clean them out. I may be changing the guestbook to a new format which will be totally contained in my server. We'll see.

So, last weekend we went to Brooks, ME and spent a couple of days at the Common Ground Fair. All organic food, everything at the fair is organic and grown in Maine. Or so I thought. There is no coffee for sale at the fair because, I was told, they don't grow coffee in Maine. There was lemonade at the fair, you can't have a fair without lemonade, so I'm still trying to figure out where they grow lemons in Maine. I guess you have to have lemons for lobster and scallops, so they must grow them somewhere. And, what's iced tea without lemon - you get the idea.

August 2006

Tough month. Who cares? Oh, I do.

Anyway - we said goodbye to our little girl who is off to college and my son and I drove to San Diego where he is beginning graduate school. On the way to San Diego we had a lot of fun passing important landmarks:
Pigeon Forge, TN (Dollywood)
Nashville, TN (you know - Nashville)
Memphis, TN (Graceland)
Okema, OK (Woody Guthrie's home town)
We did stop at a big ditch in AZ. (yup - that one. Now, that's an impressive hole in the ground.)

My son insisted that we stop in Los Alamos, NM. (Richard Feynman is one of his heroes. Look him up.) As we drove in from Santa Fe, Los Alamos was covered with clouds and a large ominous thunderhead. Dan commented on how much it resembled a mushroom cloud. Hmmm. In case you're planning a trip - Los Alamos is one restricted/no-tresspassing sign after another. There is a Starbucks and a museum - so it wasn't a total loss.

We finally got to San Diego and the transmission on the van died. Really.

Introduction and first post

I'm going to replace my random posts that appear on my "Stuff"page. This way you can comment if you want to . I'm looking for some interaction on this website. This could be a place to leave your thoughts and ideas, or just a place to chat.