Merry Christmas From Us' To You's

 (photo John Hancock)
Last night was the big Christmas Party and 10 year anniversary for the San Diego Troubadour Newspaper, and what a celebration and gathering of tribes it was. Everybody got up and played a song or two on stage, while out back around a campfire there was a perpetual trad/music-jam going. Kent and Liz, the owners of the newspaper hopped on stage and sang some Everly Bros.,  Lou Curtis a long time accomplice to, and purveyor of, the San Diego folk scene sang a traditional tune and accompanied himself on auto-harp. There were too many cookies, alot of wine and even a few kids. 

(photo John Hancock)

My son Alexander and I were down in the city all afternoon because we'd gone to see the Old Globe Theater's wonderful production of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. We wandered around Balboa Park and then came over to the Troubadour party at nightfall. Folks were already up on stage playin' music and the party was jumpin'. Alexander was up for playing a song on mandolin and so we played House of the Rising Sun. Sure, not very christmas-y, but the only song he knows all the way through and plays melody on. 

(Last Christmas the Women's Group Widow's fund from Pilgrim Church-UCC  gave us a money gift toward a musical instrument for Alexander. He chose mandolin and has been taking lessons for about 4 months)

(photo Dan Chusid)

It turned into a little media-fest with our friendly neighborhood paprazzi-pals snapping lots of photos of Alexander's first time playing mandolin on stage and solo-ing (his idea). I was just the backup musician here, while he made his fedora-hat-wearing-debut. Fearless, is what I'd call his performance.  

(photo Dennis Andersen)

Other notable news of the night; Alexander learned how to play pool from some kids dad and later got more pool shark pointers from Skid Roper (Mojo Nixon's longtime washboard player).

(photo Dennis Andersen)

(photo Dennis Andersen)

I'd like to express my appreciation to the San Diego Troubadour for supporting acoustic music and artists in our community. You guys have a tough job getting the zine together every month but we musicians thank you for your ardour and commitment, from the bottom of our hearts.  

http://sandiegotroubadour.com/

Steel Drum Concert-Kainga Music

My son Alexander playing with his steel drum ensemble at the State Theater in Carlsbad, CA. His teacher, a gifted pianist and arranger explained that the word Kainga comes from the language of the Tonga, a Pacific island where his family is from, and means 'coming together' or community. And so we did have community tonight around the steel drum which is actually from the Caribbean.

Alexander in the white fedora and his best friend Guthry Hahm without fedora.

They started with Santana's Evil Ways then played Winter Wonderland, the head-banging I Don't Wanna Be (Davin DeGraw) and finally Dog Days Are Over (Florence and the Machine)

The closing act... (the girls brought the fedora's and deemed the group The Fedorables for the night.) There'd been several other groups earlier of equally inspiring yet older kids and even adults, with solos on the drums and some galloping 16th notes, a sublime steel-drum dream version of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and a nod to Dave Brubeck.

Taking their bows....my son in front in blue and his friend, beside him. 

December Moon

Driving home at midnight along Coast Highway 
the moon called 

to me

Christmas Fest at Alexander's School

Alexander and middle school kids dancing to Gangnam Style at the Phoenix Learning Center holiday night (no relation to Phoenix Az btw)

We won the one of the most popular prizes at the raffle (gasp), a popcorn popper...

Here's the funny synchronicity thing Alexander pointed out today: We've had 2 run in's this week with popcorn poppers. The first one on Saturday where we were evacuated from a movie theater very suddenly/screen goes dark/alarm wails/pre-recorded voice "evacuate immediately"/ and with much urgency...and later, calling them, finding it to be the fault of a smoking popcorn popper that set off the theater alarm. And now winning this big popcorn popper at Alexander's school. What's next?

The 6th graders and their teachers did some kinda dance thing together. It was warming and heartning to see the teachers, staff, students and parents all having such a good time at the school last night. Alexander's in 6th grade now but has been at the school since kindergarten

Better 'n a bankers holiday

Playing songs at Culver City's premiere dive bar, The Cinema Bar with Randy Hoffman on glockenspiel and cardboard box and David Schwartz on upright bass. 

My pal Syd Straw jumped up and joined us on a shouting match of Make Way for The Handicapped

I went from walking into this place, when we were unloading our stuff, and thinkin' "oh crap, the band is gonna hate me" to "hot damn, we is havin a helluva good time". I think everyone in the crowd played some kinda of instrument so at some point we had a Ravi Shankar tribute with a bunch on droning notes and the lovely and talented Lucy Schwartz doing some free-jazz spoken-word-verse. 

Buddy Zapada, Phil, Jeff Turmes, Greg Boaz. Thanks to Buddy for setting up the show and overseeing everything. More fun than a payment to the spa, more nourishing than a field trip to Chik-fil-a, and better than a bankers holiday. Plus everybody in the audience got a lollipop.

Randy and I outside of David Schwartz' recording studio. I met David a few months ago and Wednesday was our first time running through these songs with the three of us. Randy kept saying "Man, I've never heard these songs with a bass before". David was a blast to play music with, and true to my long-time mission statement; he was willing to 'play well beneath his innumerable abilities'. 

See you all February 14th for the next round at the Cinema Bar

(photos by David Schwartz and Greg Boaz)

Lenny Kaye Talks Paul Williams

Lenny Kaye's Travel-blogue

A very nice posting about Paul (link above) from rock-onteur and Patti Smith guitarist, Lenny Kaye over at his blog.... You'll see the Paul-visit-writing the 4th photo down. Plus lots of great travelogue-ing about the recent Patti tours..

CLB, Alexander and Lenny after Patti Smith's San Diego show Spreckles Theater 10/12

Why It Happened

My husband Paul Williams, as many of you know, lives in a nursing home with early onset of dementia-due to a brain injury he sustained in a bicycle accident in 1995. Paul had the kind of recovery from that accident that his doctors called 'miraculous' at the time. He went back to writing books, lecturing about things he was an expert in, editing the Complete Collected Works of Theodore Sturgeon, fielding interviews on scifi writer and friend Philip K Dick, and managing the day to day sales and shipments of his books.

Aside from Paul's lousy driving (and it was bad after the brain injury). Most folks wouldn't know he'd had 5 centimeters of his right temporal lobe crushed and then removed in an emergency room brain surgery.  He pretty much seemed like his same old self.

Paul was very fortunate. During the brain surgery one of the surgeons came out to tell me what was happening and what Paul's prognoses might be. They asked what kind of IQ he'd had and I told them what his mother had told me (she'd had him tested as a teen), near 180. "The fact that he had a very high IQ means that he will probably be a little less effected by this injury. But I'm going to be honest, he very well may be like someone with Alzheimer's (the doctor actually said "like Ronald Regan").

So Paul was on the lucky side, he knew everything that he'd known before. His doctors said things could only get better for him now. He couldn't wait to get out of the hospital, rehab, and scheduled and went out on a lecture tour in Europe within six months of the accident.

From April 15th of 1995 (the date of the injury) to somewhere in 2004 Paul was active as a writer, editor and lecturer. He was the "miracle" recovery the brain doctors had deemed him back at rehab.
Then something went very very wrong.

These are images of axon regeneration in mice two weeks after injury to the hind leg’s sciatic nerve. On the left, axons (green) of a normal mouse have regrown to their targets (red) in the muscle. On the right, a mouse lacking DLK shows no axons have regenerated, even after two weeks.

Paul's brain, as smart as it was, could no longer hold back the tide of the inevitable that was now upon it, circa 2004. When he had his initial injury, in 1995, microfibers of his brain, neurotransmitter-super-highways called Axons, were cut and those highways closed down for good. But much like his brain surgeon told me; "Paul can take other side streets, it may take those electrical impulses longer but they can still arrive at their destinations, it's just that 'freeway 5' is now closed for good."

For almost 8 years Paul's brain seemed to do very well, wagering those side streets. For a while that brain kept getting better. Rarely was it at a loss for words, or memories; short or long term. But those Axons (super-highways) that were broken from the accident didn't stay broken in the same way. The road began now to break down further, slowly, mile after mile. The Axons began to regress taking away more ability to handle the movement of electrical impulses.

And how did that look. It looked like Paul was sleeping much of the day, that he became unable to handle simple daily tasks, he forgot where we were reading in the book The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, and he kept reading me the same page over and over. He struggled to do our taxes April of 2004, lost his temper and bit our 2 year old son on the arm when the boy tried to get his dad's attention. It was like his brain was losing control.

That initial break in the neurotransmitter highways is called a traumatic brain injury, but the subsequent retraction of the axons, worsening the ability of the electrical impulses to get around the brain, is what became of Paul, "Early onset of dementia/due to a brain injury".

Sheesh, I got it! Just today at a lecture by Yimin Zou, Ph.D., UCSD, where he talked of new research on regenerating growth of those axons, mostly in spinal injuries (by inserting antibodies into the lesion and blocking the "scabbing" effect of WNT which blocks regrowth of the axons,..../blabla, something like that)...and his precise telling of how it worked made it all click into place. With a little deductive reasoning I began to piece together what happened to Paul.

I raised my hand and asked Mr. Zou; if the retracting of the axons was what caused football players with head injuries, and others, to fall into dementia later, and he said "yes, exactly, that is what happens. And it can happen sooner or later".

Now I know. It was a mystery that no neurologist could figure out at the time. They didn't know this much stuff 8 years ago, apparently. Paul, who'd been having severe anxiety attacks, saying he was "losing his mind" had a psychiatrist through our HMO and the guy insisted, insisted, Paul was falling apart because of his acid and drug use when he was younger. I knew that guy was out of his mind-wrong. And he was. He didn't know about axons and WNT's, and proteins....and the new research that might be able to regenerate growth of those most beloved super-highways.

We went round and round to different specialists to try to help Paul: anxiety and depression? they recommended psychiatry. Clumsiness? Neurology. Neurologist sends us to an expert outside of the HMO, they didn't even figure out Paul had dementia for 2 years, he always answered the questions correctly: "who is the president and what year is it".  It wasn't until Paul showed up, unbeknownest to me, at the expert neurologists office disheveled and confused, did they decide it was some sort of dementia he had, not just a psychiatric disorder...

This was only 6 to 8 years ago. Since then much has been made of post brain injury dementia via the NFL players that have succumbed to it, some donating their brains to research. New research is giving us hope that spinal cord injuries may possibly be repairable in the near future and according to Dr. Zou, brain injury research, very closely related, is not far behind.

And today I found out what happened to Paul. And for some reason I'm excited and relieved to know.

(Photo at top of post: An axonal growth cone of a cultured hippocampal neuron. Rab33a (green) participates in axon outgrowth by mediating anterograde axonal transport of post-Golgi vesicles and their concomitant fusion at the growth cones. Red, actin filaments; blue, microtubules.

-Journal of Neuroscience, September 2012)

Thank you to the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation for hosting Dr. Zou's very informative talk at their November meeting 

A gift

Paul holds and considers the guitar pick Patti Smith handed me, 2 weeks ago, to give to him. She acknowledged him and another influential rock journalist Paul Nelson, quite nicely in her book Just Kids

Paul Williams and the Gospel Songs of Dylan Documentary

Bob Dylan- Gotta Serve Somebody - Gospel Songs of from baddaboom on GodTube.
Paul Williams comments on Bob Dylan's Gospel songs at the beginning (and again at 3:11) of this clip (from the documentary Gotta Serve Somebody Gospel Songs of Bob Dylan). 

I think I remember the film maker coming out to our place and interviewing Paul in the early 2000's. Maybe 2004 or 05. You can see my nifty Wurlitzer sitting behind him. I do remember the film maker trying to get ahold of Paul around 2007 to see if Paul liked the way the documentary turned out. Sad that Paul was never able to get back to him.

Thank you Johannes Wilbrand for emailing this link over to me.

Geez, watching this, I sure do miss him. What a wonderful, 
brilliant wack he was...just my type.

PS: you can also find him on this Philip K Dick documentary at 1:27, 7:42 and 9:14. Paul was a good friend to the science fiction writer and, after Phil's death, became the literary executor of the estate for a while.

Deep Sea Fishing

New song and a little film-short to match. Thanks to the fisherman who was willing to 'co-star', the Oceanside Police Dept. for the $56 parking fine (my front wheel was over the line a few inches)
... and to PS and B for the inspiration

(Oct 30th-updated the editing a bit)

Another Friend Visits Paul

Friday I visited Paul Williams at a nursing home in Encinitas. Formerly an accomplished author and rock critic, Paul is now in the late stages of dementia. I was afraid I'd have to steel myself to see how far gone he was. But once I got over my dismay at seeing him bent over and drooling on a book he seemed to be reading, it was actually a pleasant visit. 

I reminded him who I was and said I was glad to see him. He responded with a flash of his old smile and hugged my arm. When we held hands, I marveled at how strong his grip was. He seemed to relish touching and physical contact.

I mentioned people we'd both known, friends from the '60s, and that elicited a few coherent sentences. "Do you remember Larry Stark?" I asked. "I lived with him," Paul said. At one point he even asked me, "Is there a new book by Phil Dick?"

When I was leaving, I caught a glimpse of the book Paul was reading. The cover illustration was a photo of a glowing nebula and at first I thought the book was a science fiction paperback. But the title was "Does The Creator Have A Plan For You?" and it turned out to be a religious tract from the Watch Tower Society. 

"Do you think the creator has a plan for you?" I asked Paul. "I don't know," he answered. 

-William Sarill (October 2012)

Lenny Kaye Visits Paul And The Pope of Cool Sends Her Blessing

I feel lucky today. Every now and then and for no good reason it happens. I know it'll be gone soon, that feeling, but I'm gonna relish it right now. 

Paul and I have a mutual friend in musician Lenny Kaye. I met him at a benefit for the freelance writers of the Village Voice in 1988. Public Enemy, Mo Tucker from the Velvet Underground, Lenny Kaye and others and myself were on the bill. We met and he produced my second album, Naked Movie Star. A few nights ago Lenny introduced me to an LA friend of his and said "...he and I talked alot during the recording process, a whole lot. And you and I...." I interrupted "we talked about science fiction". And it was true we have science fiction in common. And so does Paul. Actually my husband Paul Williams and Lenny Kaye met as teenage fans of science fiction, before they became well, rock legends. 

Patti Smith was in town last weekend. A wonderful big show at the Wiltern in LA on friday, big because: the Wiltern has that kinda presence and the band met the challenge with ease, not to mention Johnny Depp getting on stage to play some rhythm and Flea (Red Hot Chili's) pouncing out some massive bass riffs on the epilogue of the show. 

After LA the band had two days off in my town of San Diego. So I met Lenny for breakfast on Sunday in my old section of town Ocean Beach (OB) and ran into Patti and Tony on their way back from the cafe. We said our hello's and she shook my hand. I told her I was whisking Lenny off for a bit to visit Paul in the nursing home and she asked me to give her regards to him. As we began to walk apart and she passed me she stepped to the side and looked me up and down in the way sailors do, on leave . It was very cute. Then she said "nice shoes"

Lenny and Paul had a really nice visit. Lenny said to me several times later on, "Paul is really in there. When I talked about the Beach Boys Smile album it was thumbs up and smiles. When I talked about the science fiction scene of our past he was making comments". 

Paul has his good days and his bad. He was less talkative this day then some of the others, not that he converses anymore, because he doesn't, but he does make occasional comments which add up to complete sentences,( and he can be counted on to remember minute details). But not so this day, not too much said. Nonetheless he smiled and nodded with purpose at things he agreed with and remembered with fondness. 

I left Lenny and Paul in the room alone to say their goodbye's and I could tell Lenny was full of feeling when he came out. We didn't talk for the length of the hall. 

Afterwards Lenny came over and we talked and played one another our newest songs, then I drove him back to the band. They had a show that night. 

I can be funny about my city of San Diego, I have a complicated relationship with it. But Sunday nights show (and Patti's spoken word show at the Spreckles Theater Saturday-where I took Alexander) were wonderful reminders of how San Diego can step up to the plate and love and support a powerful and inspired artist like Patti Smith. 

After the show Lenny led me back into the inner sanctum and I was able to give Patti a few little presents: a chapbook by Paul called Common Sense which has a lovely hand binding and pressed pages and is a numbered edition and then I gave her something I wrote this week, an essay about Women. Before I left the room she walked over to me and handed me something small in her hand, at first I couldn't quite make it out. It was her guitar pick. "Give this to Paul" she said.

My Son The Scientist

An essay for science class by Alexander (he's age 10 but turning 11 next week): 

My scientist is a theoretical physicist named Allan Adams. He studies String Theory, the cross between particle physics and gravity. According to String Theory, instead of particles being 0 dimensional, they are 2 dimensional  "strings". These strings can be "open", with the ends sticking out, or "closed" with the ends put together in a loop. Both strings can oscillate, like a guitar string. These oscillations create physical properties such as mass or spin. For example; Einstein said that the energy of a photon, a particle of light, is related to it's color or frequency of oscillation. The more it oscillates, the higher the energy. This is similar to Einstein's theory, E=MC2. Combine the two, and you you get the real world, a place where there is a similarity between frequency of oscillating "strings" and properties of mass, where quantum and relativity theory are all the same thing. And that's just the basic picture!

As a theoretical physicist, your intellectual traits have to be infinite, eternal, forever, but at the same time inflating. You always have to be able to learn from your mistakes, and be prepared to make them. You have to be open to new ideas, old theories crossed out, new entirely different ones created. New questions arise, as old answers are proven incorrect. Long lasting questions still hang in the air, with a million answers waiting to be found. That's what being a theoretical physicist is all about, not finding the one big answer to everything, but the trillions of small ones, that have enough answers to fill the universe.

Something interesting about Allan Adams is his preference for black boards to white boards. His reason? Millions of beings, tiny bacteria called coccolithophores on the surface of the ocean died, and sunk to the bottom. More and more died, and their calcium carbonate-filled skeletons piled up on each other forming a limestone mud. As they got exposed to more heat and pressure, they hardened into what we now know is chalk. then other rock gets metamorphosed and we stick it on the wall. Then we rub the other bit of rock against it, and "we're doing theoretical physics! How cool is that?"-Allan Adams

Paul S Williams

Here's Paul yesterday at lunchtime at the nursing home. Alexander and I rose him out of bed, fed him 1/2 a milkshake which energized him enough to get into the wheel chair and we wheeled him into the mess-hall. These days Paul needs to be fed. He just forgets, I think, that he has food in front of him and his appetite is flagging somewhat. He really enjoyed looking at his 10 year old son, who was sitting nearby reading a book. I couldn't help but think that Paul was thinking "Gee that's what I was like when I was his age"

And what is it with the haircutter person at the nursing home. Months ago I asked for something where he could have a little hair on his head and they went for the late 60s look with his hair hanging in his eyes and then the ponytail because they didn't know what to do with the long hair in his eyes. So a week ago I asked for something short but not a military buzz, something I guy would ask for at a barber shop. So it seems there is only too long or too short. 

Das Energi Handwritten Manuscript

Paul Williams wrote Das Energi in the early 1970s while living with fellow young urban-defectors at a remote location off of Vancouver Island called Apple Bay. He said later in his memoir Apple Bay or Life on the Planet: "...there was no way to get there except by water, short of a ten day hike through fifty miles of uncharted woods, hills and swamp....No ferry. No dock. No exit in stormy weather, which was common in wintertime."

Das Energi, a book of thoughts, was written in between his chores or as he told me a few years ago, "skipping my chores and getting a lot of flack from the others". It was actually the first, (maybe the only) book Jac Holtzman put out on his Elektra Records catalogue (alongside The Doors, Love, The Stooges etc). And it was a hit! In an underground, word of mouth kind of way, with several hundred thousand sold in its first five years.

For many years Paul kept the full hand-written manuscript in a bank security box along with a few other little treasures. I pulled them a couple of years ago to see what was left, things still unsold on Ebay.

At some point I'd like to sell this full manuscript to someone who dearly loves the book. Probably need to get it up on Ebay.....(if you are one of the interested email me at cindyleeberryhill@yahoo.com)

In the meantime, here's one page out of the 161 handwritten pages.

McCabes with Freedy

Goofin' around with my pal Freedy Johnston after his show tonight at McCabes. I helped out on a few harmonies on some of his songs: Evies Tears.. and some covers: Witchita Lineman, Seals and Crofts' Summer Breeze, Neil Young's Comes a Time, and the 

Hollies Bus Stop

The photos are a collaboration of Greg Allen's photographic eye and Susan James iPhone. 

I have Freedy's Fender and he's..., well, I don't know what he's doin with that backwards guitar with the price tag on it....

Lookin' like a coupla yeehaw's in color coordinated plaid

A photo of us found amongst all the debris, the books, the journals, the boxes of stuff, things that were put in to unit 74 haphazardly at the end of 2004 when we moved back to the beach. We'd moved away for 5 months to try living with Paul's mother Janet, she moved here from Boston and after 2 months proclaimed: "You lied to me. Paul is in worse shape than I'd expected and he can't drive me anywhere. Plus all your friends are weak California bourgeoisie!" She moved home after six months and once the landlord allowed her to break the lease.

But that's a whole other story I'm yet to tell...At any rate this is a photo of me and Paul at my parents in May 2001.  I was about 5 months pregnant and living in Venice Beach, still working for Lookout Mgmt in Santa Monica, delivering shoes and stuff to Neil Young and picking up David Crosby at the airport. A few months later I moved back in with Paul at our place in Encinitas.

*     *     *

This past weekend I met one of the directors for the San Diego Brain Injury Foundation, an organization that helps brain injury survivors and their families. They were having their monthly meeting at a hospital near us and when I passed by I saw their sign and stopped in. I had a wonderful conversation with one of their directors which lead to us talking about me doing a lecture on my experience with my husbands traumatic brain injury, his recovery, the subsequent fall into dementia (too young/his 50s), and then the hard work of getting him care when I could no longer do the job.

Sheesh, this is gonna be a whole lot of talk. I'm gonna have to find a way to do the Readers Digest-condensed version of many years of hope then hopelessness, acceptance of his state of decline, care-giving and advocacy. My talk will be some time in early August of 2013.

The San Diego Brain Injury Foundation can be found here:
http://www.sdbif.org/http://www.sdbif.org/

Crazy Good 45's

Several boxes full of this great stuff from early 60s to mid 90s. What a find in his old storage space today. . .Got to get that record player set up in my apartment now. Spent the day cleaning out one of the 5 spaces which means a savings of 50 bucks a month. Thank you to my great pal Paula and her son Ben.

Too good, had to put another coupla looks up here for ya...

The Other Side of Summer

Alexander and I at sundown tonight, on a run between Beacon's and Moonlight Beach. Alexander just started 6th grade last week at our local public charter school here in Encinitas, same school he's been at since Kindergarten. 

But before school started we took a little driving vacation up the coast, visiting family and friends. Here's Alexander and some of the locals, seals, in Marina Del Rey. 

We made it up to our friends house in Scots Valley/Santa Cruz and stayed for a few days, then Alexander stayed a few nights in Silicone Valley with some of Paul's family. We even got to have lunch at Apple headquarters which was the highlight of the trip for Alexander

We stayed with my long time friend and cellist Renata Bratt and her husband Lee Ray. Since I hadn't set up a proper show we did an online performance for something called Stageit, my pal Steve Poltz has done a million of them, and so I tried it. We had a studio audience on hand of about 20 friends and fans at Open Path Music Studios and had a great time. Folks that signed up to watch us checked us out live via my laptop. Kinda cool. We'll def do that again.

On the way back from the Bay Area we drove along one of my favorite stretches of Hwy 1, at Point Mugu. This sand dune was a favorite of Paul's and when we were first seeing each other we climbed to the top and and checked out the view, he telling me what it was like as a kid on the dunes of Cape Cod and me dreaming of new songs soon to be written

Back home. The golden bluffs of Leucadia..we live about 3 blocks from here

Enjoying the last days of high temperatures, 83 today at the beach, the sun going down, it's the other side of summer

Just a part of the whopping bill from 1995

This letter says it all, $87,868.23. A medical bill from some part of the stay at the hospitals ICU, 2 weeks in fact, we were given a whopping bill. This didn't include the brain surgery or the anesthesiologist...or any of the other stuff. Fortunately Paul had been accepted for Kaiser Medical Insurance just 2 weeks (!!) before his bicycle accident.

There were several other bills that came in the mail, like this one and Kaiser said "put them all in a big envelope and send them to us" and like that, the bills were gone. 

Lucky for us we had insurance and Paul was almost turned down, they were nervous about his reasons for getting out of duty for the Vietnam War (he had his mothers friend, a doctor, say he was not fit for duty because he was rather crazy). A pre condition! Getting out of the Vietnam war.  

Live Performance This Thurs: You can watch cuz it's online

Cindy Lee Berryhill's Live Stageit show link 

Join us from your computer this Thursday Aug. 16th 7pm.

Too busy to go out to see live music cuz the kids need to be in bed at some ungodly early hour? Be an armchair audience! No need to go anywhere cuz you can watch us from the comfort of your own love-seat. This is an online only performance.

Cellist Renata Bratt and I will be performing live from Open Path Recording Studio in San Jose and you are invited. It's 5 bucks (or any donation you see fit to send us) and we will be performing in front of a very small studio audience and you out there in computer monitor land (or even the screen of your cell phone!)

This is my first time doing a Stageit show, so lets have some fun with it. You can Twitter me or FB messages while I'm performing and we'll try to have a read and talk back to some of you hecklers. And the cool thing is I can completely ignore the real hecklers cuz it's all virtual and we have hundreds or thousands of miles of airwaves and underground cable between us....

Here's the word on Stageit's self image:

Stageit is an online venue that allows musicians to stream exclusive LIVE concerts to fans. The vibe is incredibly intimate often featuring performers playing from their homes, directly from their laptop.

here's me and renata at Open Path Studios in 2010

Cindy Lee Berryhill's Live Stageit show link 

The Once And Future Room

I've been working the past 2 weekends, with much help from my dear friend Paula, on my husband Paul's 'office', the room in our apartment where he once upon a time did work, file, ship, write, play solitaire, edit, and lay out Crawdaddy Magazine....

Paul hasn't asked about, nor stepped foot in that room for over 4 years, and he's 3 years now in the nursing home. I think it's time to make it my own room. But man, ...how hard it is to process all those piles of things. Process meaning: throw out, box, mail out to others. And then there are the things you don't really want to find, (not to mention the 7 year old bags of weed). 

A random page, torn from a journal, dated Feb. 1, 2006 Paul wrote: " I'm feeling on the edge of some kind of madness-

unable to find J.L. tapes/cd's- again!

playing solitaire compulsively--

unsure what to do each day, each moment."

Very difficult to move through this stuff. So many things. A life that was lived. Who am I to make the decision to keep or to purge?

*   *   *

At any rate, we visited Paul at his nursing home Sunday....here's the flip book version.