We’ll see how close I can stick to that, but you know me...

When: Monday nite 3/28, 7:30pm EDT.
(“doors” open at 7 for community hang)

Where: https://youtu.be/u0pyVvDw4Ic

Who gets 10%: https://www.projectbread.org/ - Project Bread connects people and communities in Massachusetts to reliable sources of food while advocating for policies that make food more accessible—so that no one goes hungry, envisioning a Massachusetts where hunger is permanently solved.

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 = it’s spring but still, yes, flannel
I teach and coach stuff.

LIVE THINGS OF NOTE (many other things between these dates):

Sun, 3/27, Exeter NH https://www.thewordbarn.com/events/3/27/2022/come-on-up-to-the-house-march w/Mark Erelli & Melissa Ferrick

Thur, 3/31 Cheshire CT - Powerstation Events Studio - Put on by the Black Bear Music Fest folks (uh, ahem - Bear Of Color, thank you)

Sat 4/2 - https://www.tucsonfolkfest.org/

JUNE 12 THRU 18 - https://www.rootsontherails.com/upcoming-trips-2022-monhegan-island-me-with-ellis-paul-vance-gilbert-and-molly-venter

I’M MAKING A NEW ALBUM.
Recording has started. OMG what am I doing? One tune sounds like John Prine. One tune sounds like D’Angelo. Another sounds like Louis Jordan/Count Basie. Another like Nick Drake. Another like Parliament Funkadelic. Squirrel!! Did you expect anything less from me? You’ll love it, I promise.

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PEACE, EVEN BRIEFLY

How are you making peace? Particularly with war in your face, acrimony around you, illness lurking the horizon? Maybe you’ll forgive my plebeian grasp on the concepts that emanate from Buddhism and Christianity and General Peace Thinking, but like I said to a friend the other day, it’s more than loving someone when your opinions differ - it’s loving them when you know that they are dead wrong. Unconditional.

Boy, that’s a strange thing.

Written language, unless you go on and on, seems to have a “this and then or that” club with which the user bludgeons a situation over the head about love. But it's really quite the odd feeling when you learn to walk away from a battle, resolved or battered, and you still know that your core caring for that sentient one hasn’t moved the needle on your love meter a fraction. Unconditional

Someone once said we’d all be better off if we “loved each other a little less and respected each other more”. (Flip, flip, flip...that’s Vance thumbing through a Thich That Hanh reader, then the Bible, dictionary, a Harlan Ellison reader, Flannery O'Connor compilation, The TV Sing-Along Song Book, then clicks Google...click click...) I saw it somewhere.

I’m not well-read enough to even know where to search effectively for a treatise on the love, unconditional or otherwise vs. respect thing. Sorry. Then it dawns on me as I reread this, there’s a place a paragraph or two back where i mention the “when you walk away from a battle” thing, and I realize, that for just that moment of considering doing that, you’re not at war.

Just that moment without war. Look what you did. It’s a start.

xovg