I watched the Aggies of Utah State beat the Cougars of BYU tonight.  The announcers repeated, often, that the last time the Aggies bested the Cougars in football was in 1993.   Tonight they were triumphant and I loved watching the fans who’d gone down to defeat  for years and years finally have their moment in the victory circle.

My nephew, the greatest of all BYU fans, and a student there would text me throughout the game.  He was in agony. What had happened to his beloved and cherished team?  I was grateful he sent the texts to me who, of course, had the answer:  God must love Logan, too.

Tonight I relived a very precious part of my life.  My friend Daniel Rona asked me to talk about my connection to Israel and the writing of the oratorio THE GARDEN to the group B’nai Shalom.  The Thursday before General Conference every years  this group gets together and listens to various speakers with different connections to Israel.  Tonight was my turn and I was amazed how vividly my memories flooded back and bathed me a special kind of joy that I believe can only come from sacred memories of sacred places.

It was interesting discovering how I felt about the allegorical oratorio I wrote with Bryce Neubert and Merrill Jenson over a decade ago.   I remember when I first played the completed recording of The Garden to my wife she said, “Well, you can die now. ”  It wasn’t a wish, she said, but a feeling that I probably wouldn’t ever create anything more meaningful that a work that explored the idea: What if the Garden of Gethsemane could sing?  What would we learn about what happened there two thousand years ago.

After my presentation I took a trip to Primary Children’s Hospital to visit a little four year old boy in the ICU fighting cancer.  Skylar’s only a couple of months older than my grandson Bucky.  Although his mother said her son had had a good day, I was shaken by the image of his bloated and  jaundiced little boy connected to tubes and wires and under heavy sedation.

I was inspired by his young mother who less than two years ago buried her husband who had a tumor in his heart. She was telling me every single positive and good thing that had happened that day.  She pointed to the meters that registered improvement.  She told me how he was looking better.  Then she escorted me through the pictures of her healthy son pasted to the walls of the ICU and smiled at the remarkable little man she was proud to call her son.

Of course the scene was heart wrenching, but I also found joy there.  Joy in the service of the doctors and nurses of Primary Children’s.  Joy in the profound and ferocious love of a mother fighting for the life of her child.  Joy that somehow my songs bought me a ticket to be where all this love and service was most vibrant and alive.

Where’s Bucky and Sadie?  I need to kiss them goodnight and whisper the jewish hello and goodbye: Shalom

I was invited to speak/sing tonight at the  Wednesday Night Forum at the Salt Lake Institute in Sandy Utah.  The program took some twists and turns that I hadn’t anticipated and the result was a connection with the congregation that was very meaningful to me.  I think I spent more time talking to people AFTER the program than I did sharing the program, and here’s what I learned:   There’s a deep hunger to feel connected to heaven, reassured that someone up there knows us and cares about us, completely.

I also learned that even though I’m an old guy, comparatively speaking, I didn’t feel “old” singing my songs and sharing my heart.  Didn’t feel wise or brilliant or ancient, but more like a fellow seeker taking his turn to reveal what my journey is teaching me.

It was wonderful to have a chance to make so many new young friends.  I will keep the feelings they shared with me after I’d finished my part of the program very near to my heart.

The miracle of the day that midst all my feng shui-ing I found some stuff that I’ve missed, and now I know where it’s been…and where it’s gone: to the trash!  I’m so proud of myself for being able to just “let it go”.

Is it possible that all this stuff is mine?  I’m looking at a garage full of boxes filled with “stuff” that was recently transfered from an office I used back in the day before we moved to Malibu.  Boxes on boxes.  To toss or not to toss, that is the question. As I go through them all I’m taking a M2B:) approach.  I’m looking forward to discovering some “stuff” that I can’t live without  (though I’ve apparently managed to live without it for the last 7 or 8 years)  AND revisiting some memories stirred by the “stuff” I’ll be going through.

The return from Vermont to Utah had some perks the drive out didn’t have.  First of all, I wasn’t alone.  Lynne made the journey with me.  And secondly we were able to take time for some side trips.

First stop was at my son-in-laws private boarding school in Massachusetts.  It’s a gorgeous place called Northfield  Mount Hermon and visiting there I wished I’d been able to be educated there.  Of course  to afford to send me there my parents would have needed to win the lottery…twice!  But it was very, very cool.   I loved seeing Bucky and his dad in matching Northfield jerseys.  It will be interesting to see if Bucky follows in his dad’s educational footsteps.

After visiting the private prep school we took a side trip to the Peabody Museum at the campus of Yale.  Alex loved going there as a youth and hoped his son would get into it as well.  Bucky thought it was VERY cool, particularly all the dinosaur bones.   He treated us to the sounds he believed the dinosaurs made back in the day.   Quite convincing and very scary.

The rest of the journey was “catch up” time for Lynne and me.  Having an entire country to cross in a motorhome, together is the greatest communications retreat a couple could ever have.  It’s also an argument for the diet soda IV attachment I’m thinking of patenting.   Surely somebody besides me has thought of this!   Probably, but my idea is we could get all the different flavors to compete:  Diet Coke vs Diet Pepsi vs Diet Whatever offering amazing deals in order to get their logo on the IV device.   Hey, don’t laugh.  There’s a global economic crisis and I’m a SONGWRITER for crying out loud.  No potential income stream is rejected as “tacky”.

We’re back in Utah, carrying on with nursing home and day care responsibilities.  Grateful for each other, and for every second we’re alive.  Happy to have a chance every day to love a little more, learn a little more, give a little more.

Some days are utterly and completely unique unto themselves.  There’s nothing like them.  We can do our best to try and describe them but the words fail us.  We say things like, “You had to have been there” because no matter how hard we try we can’t capture it all. Not even close.  It’s like taking a picture of the Grand Canyon with your cell phone.  Today was one of those days. It was my first gay wedding.  My son’s.

What I felt today is not what I anticipated.  In one sense it was unlike any experience I’ll probably ever know, and in another it was strangely familiar.  Before I get alzheimer’s I’ll try to chronicle all that happened today in my journal.  Not just what happened that defined the day, but what happened to me.   As for now, I’ll leave it at this: today was a gift. If pressed for details all I can really say is, you had to have been there.

I drove from Butte Montana to Thetford Vermont this week.   Alone with boxes of M2B:) books, cds, guitars, microphones, boom stands, a sound system AND SATELLITE RADIO.  I think satellite radio was invented for people driving across the country.  So much music, commercial free, to accompany the trek across the fruited plains.  Montana sort of cried out for contemporary country.  South Dakota screamed for classic rock.  Minnesota, for some reason, was devoted to the comedy channel.  Illinois: soul music from the sixties and seventies.  Chicago:  the blues…duh!!!   Indiana:  ESPN (to find out what’s wrong with Notre Dame football).  Ohio:  Singer/songwriters  (Batdorf grew up in Ohio)  Pennsylvania:  Big bands  (hoping to hear Glenn Miller’s Pennsylvania 6-5000)  New York…the Sinatra Station…another duh.  Connecticut cried out for sixties greatest hits, Massacusettes-NPR.  New Hampshire…political talk and Vermont: silence.

I slept well in rest areas nestled between big semi-trucks and occassionally creepy looking folks in really old SAABs.  I marvelled at the landscape and got emotionally patriotic crossing my country.  I love this place I live.  Really, really love it.  Love the manicured corn and soy fields, love the silos, love the villages, love cattle ranges, love the helpfulness in the midwest, the directness of the east coast, the sounds of the dialects, the quality of the roads.  I found M2B:) moments every hour of every day of the drive.

I got some great counsel from a trucker I met on my journey.  He told me to make sure I went the speed limit so I’d be able to look out the window and soak in the greatness of America.

I did.

Got a chance to fall in love with Montana this week.   And I didn’t even do any fly fishing!!!  Says a lot for the great folks of the Big Sky State.   The M2B:) concerts were divided between Great Falls, Billings and Butte.  My friend John Batdorf joined me and the most repeated phrased between us this week was “why aren’t we fishing?”   Lots of pretty water and offers from fishing guides that KNOW the rivers and streams.   Hopefully, we made enough friends that on our next trip we’ll get a chance to meet and greet some trout up close and personal.

Making new friends in areas I’m not that familiar with is always a M2B:) time for me, but one of the highlights of this week was the folks who fed us.   Before each performance John and I got to share a meal with Montana’s finest.  I know the southern states are known for hospitality, but Montana did the northern states proud.  We were treated like superstars and it was wonderful.  I’m so grateful for those who opened their homes and their hearts to a couple of musical geezers that love sharing their songs.

It was in Montana that I took my second round of anti-biotics for the pneumonia and sinusitis I’ve been battling for about a month.   Recovery’s been slow, but this week I really felt hope that I might actually live to write another song.  I credit the power of Montana love.  Perhaps the state should use that as a marketing tool.  ”Come To Big Sky Montana and FEEL THE LOVE!!!  Anti-Biotics Optional.”

I’m insane, but hopeful.  Or, should I say, hopefully it’s just BEING insane that has me sitting here at the back of a plane headed for California to perform tomorrow at a Singles Conference that was booked months ago.  Don’t feel spectacular, but I’m not coughing, dripping, wheezing or spitting up that delightful avocado green gunk that accompanies congestive ickinesses.  These pills I’ve been taking are scary.  How do they know how to make me this much better than I’ve been for the last two weeks?  Another vote for better living through chemistry…and for the prayers of those who must REALLY want to hear my songs on Saturday in San Diego.

I must not be THAT much better, however.  The security guy at the airport looked twice at my ID picture and asked if I was normally so white!

I said, “I didn’t know you knew my music!”