Vance’sMondayNightAcousticPajamaParty#49 - Storms and Weather. Because look out your window or at the news.

Where: https://youtu.be/DZA8hh-aESM

When: Monday Nite, February 22nd 7:30PM EDT (“doors” open at 7 for community hang) -

Who gets 10%: Coats For Kids via Anton’s Cleaners. https://antons.com/cfk/ The mission for Coats for Kids is simple; “Anyone in need of a coat will have one.” Each fall, Anton’s Cleaners collects, cleans and distributes approximately 50,000 coats for children and adults free of charge. Since the program’s inception in 1995, Anton’s have collected and distributed over one million coats.

$$$: http://paypal.me/vancevancevance or
https://venmo.com/vancevancevance or
a check to VanceFunder P.O. Box 17, Arlington, MA 02476 for this web-groovery.
Pay or not. Up to you. Let’s stay connected.

This week’s pajamas: The purple hoodie is in rotation. Maybe fuzzy airplane bottoms

I coach voice, songwriting, performance.

Good Good Man - the CD - streaming all platforms, even get an actual CD from me…

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WHATEVER LOUISE WANTS

There’s nothing like making one's exercise an exercise in holistic exercise. Today I ran from my house to the https://themusicemporium.com via The Bikepath. Intent on picking up my tools of the trade and getting my workout in at the same time. That’s pretty virtuous, right? 2 miles there and 2 miles back. I'm pretty proud of that. It is also one of maybe two places other than my house that has four walls that I stand in for more than 3 to 5 minutes at a time. All the guys near the cash registers, me at the door, masked, safe, discussing who sang the high harmonies for The Band on their second album and why. My listening to The Band is new for me, and I was getting opinion, guidance, musical friendship, and strings all at once. I love that place.

Trotting back home, I was reminded how familiar this whole route was as I came to a very familiar quarter-mile stretch of high fence that marked the mile-away mark from home.

I used to run this route with Louise, our first Standard Poodle. We had her for 3-1/2 very short years but those years change my life when it came to truly loving another sentient being. Still I sneer in my heart at neighbors that say “Well since you don’t have any, they’re like your children, aren’t they?” Now I reply, “Not really. Dogs die before you put them through college, often with help, on your carpet, but please, do go on…“ That said, Standard Poodles are indeed teenagers that just happen to poop in the yard.

It got to the point with late-life-rescue Louise that I could occasionally run for miles on the bike path with her inches from my hip without a leash. At least two or three times someone would go by on their bicycle and caterwaul “Lease your dog!!!” And I did have the temerity to holler back, “My dog is under better control than your kids were on this path this weekend…“ Sure I was scofflaw wrong. But it was true.

One day on an empty bike path I was heading home and I came to the fence stretch with clearly something else on my mind. Louise trotted it in front of me, looked back, and took off down our path looking back occasionally to see if I was out of my distraction, sprinting and whether her challenge had been met.

Can dogs wink? Don’t ask me if you don’t want some anthropomorphic answer. Just don’t.

As I reached that fence today during my run back home I felt myself physically sag with some strange triumvirate of joy, sadness and longing that not even The Band’s mournful Unfaithful Servant in my earbuds could touch.