Lubec, Maine and Kane Welch Kaplin: Living in the Present

I can rationalize many things in the spirit of focusing on living in the present.  Of course I've always EXCELLED at rationalizing things.  We all have our strengths (well....I suppose technically it's a weakness...) and that's one of mine.  Last year when we found out Ernie's cancer was back was when we decided to have Kane Welch Kaplin help us celebrate our 20th anniversary.  Kind men that they are they made the trek to our little house and made us inordinately happy.  It was a wonderful night for us.  My friend Richard Hill just gave me some clips he had taken of them playing in our house.  I have been so happy playing these over and over.  I had managed to get a couple of my favorite Kevin Welch songs  that night but then my memory card was full (in so many ways) and I was too busy having fun.  Luckily Richard somehow managed to get two songs of Kieran's that I adore---Four Questions and Shadows on the Ground.  THANK YOU RICHARD!!! Good memories.....

With our latest round of troubles we again have vowed to live in the present.  Now is this just a way to convince myself to spend money we don't have? HA! Possibly....but it works for me....  So at the same time we relived our party with these songs, we also decided to go to Maine again this summer.  We had kind of written off plans for the summer, partially because yet again I've had to take so much time off work for family reasons.  However the other day I updated all my vacation and sick leave and realized that I still have plenty of vacation time to take a bit of time off.  So with my sister Debbie's generosity and encouragement....I have booked a week for all of us in a house in Lubec, Maine.  Somehow I wanted to go someplace new this year and the thought of being at the easternmost edge of the country just sounded so cleansing.  Just like those incredible winds we had yesterday----there was something that felt so cleansing about them----blowing the old leaves out of our yard and making papers flap throughout our house.  It felt so good.