My Blog

Those of us who live in sunny, drought-stricken California were supposed to get slammed with rain. LAST YEAR. But it didn’t happen. Little did we know Mama Nature was saving up. For the big wet party in 2017 that, unfortunately, drooled all over us—The CC Strummers and me—as we performed at Culver City’s Screenland 5K Race of The Century. My adopted hometown is celebrating 100 years of “being here” on this small parcel of land. Five square miles squeezed into the map … Read More

I was a sick kid–-as familiar with my hospital room in the pediatrics wing at U.C.L.A. as I was with my own little room at home. Being a teaching hospital, I was frequently Exhibit A as interns and residents and their stern physician instructors made their daily rounds. They’d refer to me by my gender and age and disease. I didn’t appear to have a name. They didn’t know I love to play the piano or sit under big shady trees or … Read More

I’ve been swooping under the radar since my mother passed away July 4th but I wanted to check in with you. First of all, thank you for sharing your kind words and stories about my last blog — Going Out With A Bang. I try to respond to every one of your emails but suddenly the tasks before me are looming large and I can feel the giant vacuum cleaner of time doing what it does best. Suck. Please know that I … Read More

I call it “shopping therapy.” I jump on the “consumer bandwagon” and follow the sales to my local brick and mortar store. It’s like a mini-vacation that I book on my way to a gig. I don’t have to buy anything and usually don’t. But there is something about shopping that gets me out of my head and into a kind of hypnotic trance. Well that’s the way it’s supposed to work…   So here I am pushing open the … Read More

My friend Wendy leads The Palm Desert Strummers who make beautiful ukulele music near the mid-century modern capital of the world: Palm Springs. Folks drive north, south, east, west from their desert abodes to play with this group. Snowbirds fly in for the winter, escaping the ice and cold of their homelands. Last week they did one of the coolest gigs ever. And it has everything to do with Elvis. Yes, THAT Elvis. The guy who would have turned eighty-one years old … Read More

I can’t see the big “E” on the eye chart that hangs in the eye doctor’s office. With my left eye, that is. Actually I can’t even see the chart. I was a little girl when they first discovered my goofy left eye. Was it because I walked into walls now and then? Like most folks who have only one workable eye, I have adapted. I drive my car with ALL mirrors on high alert. I wear a headset microphone … Read More

When I saw Frank Sinatra perform at The Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, the whole aroma of the evening burrowed into my memory. The theater is gone now and so is Frank. But after all these years I can still smell the evening. I was one of thousands ensconsed in the darkness of this gigantic space, my eyes focused on the lone spotlight that Sinatra inhabited like he owned the sun, and when he turned his head in my direction and sang … Read More

I wish you all lived in Southern California. At least for one weekend. Next weekend. Because that’s when Torrance, a neat little town in the South Bay part of Los Angeles, becomes “ukulele central.” I like Torrance because I like to shop. Well I call it “shopping therapy” and Torrance is bubbling over with glorious opportunities for that kind of feel-good escape. Don’t even have to buy anything. I just run my hand over the hangers and neat stacks at … Read More

I saw an article about a guy who entertains at retirement homes. Of course it catches my eye because I too rove from senior community to senior clubs shaking things up with familiar songs and sing-a-longs. So this guy tells his airport story. The one where he sees Sir Paul McCartney in the crowd of travelers. THE Paul McCartney. This is a moment, the close-encounter-kind of moment you throw yourself at…or else you regret that you didn’t. For the rest your life. … Read More

Are you wondering “how’d the big Ukulele Holiday Show go and ho ho ho…yo?”           The audience plants their bottoms in chairs before The CC Strummers have a chance to find a landing strip of their own to set up ukulele and stand. It’s an average day of controlled chaos at your average senior center during the holiday season when folks are a little testy and oh-so-eager to find an oasis of feel good. Maybe at the same … Read More

‘Tis the season’ for fruit cake, warm hugs, hurry-up-and-get-it-over-with hugs, gifting and re-gifting, making resolutions that won’t last ten minutes past New Years Day, cursing traffic crazies and hanging out with people we don’t usually hang out with. So let’s get real. These holidays can be really stressful. For a lot of people. For a lot of reasons. Can we admit that? Please… Well The CC Strummers and I are going to make it all better. Next week at our … Read More

It’s a funny thing about birthdays… Maybe we toot our horn and tear into a gift or two, as if it’s all about us. But I think it’s my mother who should be celebrating my birthday. After all she’s the one who went into labor and was summarily drugged out of her mind. She’s the one who slept through the whole “birth thing” but did wake up in time to find a newborn lying on her belly looking for food. … Read More

Let me tell you about my singing teacher–Laura–my mentor and substitute mama-figure. She was a mélange of contradictions, this fierce Grand Dame. She was brutally honest and honestly kind. Occasionally at the same time. I both adored and feared her, but above all, I listened and watched. Laura is gone now, but all these years later I still hear her voice and sense her presence no matter what I am doing. The seeds she sowed in the precarious ground of … Read More

It’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, but these days it feels like every week is a sort of “shark week” somewhere, somehow. Usually this stuff goes through one ear and out the other in our house. Usually.  But last month my husband Craig and I actually did “swim with sharks” and not exactly on purpose. Here we are in beautiful Hanalei on the north shore of Kaua’i enjoying a real tropical vacation. I don’t realize how exhausted I am until … Read More

The idea to do a CC Strummers “Flash Mob” has been percolating for a long time here in the neighborhood. One of our ukulele scouts talks with folks at the local mall and reports back with their curt reply. “If we let you play, we’ll have to let anyone play.” Undeterred and fortified with ukulele gusto, we locate a parcel of public land in the heart of downtown Culver City. It is a triangular shape of concrete with potted plants … Read More

I have added another song to the pantheon of birthday ditties. As if there aren’t enough, huh. But my song has a couple twists.  Astronomy and fire. Astronomy: The lyric of my song includes this line: “So your birthday has come. Another spin around the sun.” When my November birthday rolls by I remind myself that the Earth was at this same location on her 365 day orbit around the Sun as last year and the year before that. Give … Read More

Crazy weather we are having these days? Have you noticed? Are you digging out of snow and ice? Are the temperatures hovering south of zero? Here in California it’s been warm and dry. Scary scary dry. Listening to the news this morning on my clock radio, the in-depth NPR report compared the drought in California’s central valley, the fruit basket for all of us who like to eat, to the Dust Bowl. All of a sudden the politicians are talking about it. … Read More

The full-page obituary in the Los Angeles Times reminded readers that up to ten days ago Pete Seeger was chopping wood outside his farmhouse in upstate New York. And then he died. At age 94. We should all be so lucky. There is a marvelous Zen saying: “Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.” I have no idea what “enlightenment” is or “who” it may happen too, but I am suspicious of Mr. Seeger—that maybe … Read More

We get into our routines, don’t we? Hubby likes to wake up super early, check his Facebook page and head to the local hole watering here in Culver City for coffee. Sometimes even before the sun comes up. The Roll ‘n Rye is his home away from home and the waitresses take good care of him. Sometimes he’ll report back later with a sterling tidbit about the morning. Like this… The deli is post-holiday crowded as a little girl emerges from … Read More

A few lines from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye. Actually it was an obituary, a beautifully written one, for the great actor Peter O’Toole. A man, whom by all appearances, lived very wide. As well as long. “Once a thing is solidified it stops being a living thing. That’s why I love the theater. It’s the Art of the Moment. I’m in love with ephemera and I hate permanence,” he said. While most of us check our … Read More

The Butterballs are on sale along with spiral cut hams, golden yams, Brussels sprouts and pumpkin pies. Harbingers of the “thank you” holiday ahead. But I know it’s Thanksgiving, for sure, for sure, when I see the commercials for The Twilight Zone Marathon on KTLA. Ah, turkey and terror. A long time ago, when my parents and I landed in another galaxy far far away—also known as Los Angeles—my father snagged a downstairs “two bedrooms and a den” in an … Read More

Do you hear this sometimes? Or even say it yourself? “There aren’t enough hours in the day, by golly.” Or “So much to do and so little time.” Well today is your lucky day! That is if you live in one of the states that slides the clock back one hour to standard time. Around here, in our cozy condo treehouse, I’m using that extra sixty minutes to clear my desk. I mean REALY clear my desk. And then hubby, Craig Brandau, and … Read More

I want to share a great big THANK YOU to my ukulele group, The CC Strummers, with them and with all of you on my elist. Considering the vagaries of life, everyday is a birthday as far as I’m concerned. For me and for you. But isn’t it extra wonderful to share your “birthday” with the people who mean so much to you? So Thursday is Halloween and I’m all decked out in my hippy threads because I have to … Read More

During one of our many ”let’s-explore-LA” driving trips, my parents and I inched past the backlot of MGM Studios. From the street it looked like a western scene with California chaparral hugging the ground and groves of eucalyptus and oak trees set against the mid-size urban mountains. In the midst of all this “nature” and mélange of desert colors I saw a tall, long painted backdrop of a bright blue sky. “Maybe they are filming a western today,” my father opined. It … Read More

When you love to do something, keep on doing it. If you can. No matter what they say. Or don’t say. I can’t tell you how many body blows I’ve taken over the years just doing what I do. Making music. Or how many times I’ve heard my mother’s I-told-you-so-voice in my head scolding me “you should have stayed in nursing school” when I got fired from a gig or didn’t get the audition, or whatever. Somehow I kept going anyway and in the … Read More

Don’t we love our “projects”? I have dozens of “dem things to do” in every corner of our condo tree house. My desk looks like an organized zone of chaos. On the piano, there are piles of songs to learn or write or arrange. The ukuleles sit sentry in every room beckoning me to forget all that other stuff and “play me, play me now”! There are hundreds of emails to return, calls to make, social media to “get social … Read More

Welcome to the land of bacon lemonade, spam musubi and rows of Porta Potties sponsored by Sees Candy. It’s Fiesta La Ballona time in Culver City, California and Sunday morning, forty-five of The CC Strummers arrive early for our “really big show.” We bring our music stands and ukuleles, husbands, wives, friends and neighbors. We wear aloha shirts, leis and flowers tucked behind either the “I’m-Taken or I’m-Not” ear. The CC Strummers have been practicing our thirty-minute set every Monday and Thursday … Read More

So here is my challenge… How do I describe a “local” ukulele show so it feels like it’s happening in your neighborhood too? Well, this is how I see it. We all need a little bolus of joy now and then. Maybe everyday. A second-wind that lifts us over the sticky spots. Making music is a great balm for what ails us. And when we have a musical family to make music with, that’s a gift that just keeps giving. … Read More

Look at dem feets! You just have to SMILE. Huh… Well that is what my new ukulele CD is all about. A breath of fresh air in our busy, cuckoo lives. Jim Beloff calls it “a perfect summer disk.” And I vote for year-around-summer! Another happy customer writes: “Here is a Monday morning story. I have my copy of Smile, Smile, Smile and put it in my C.D. player as I pull out of the driveway. Wow, such a good time is going … Read More

I run into my good buddy and monumentally talented musician, Craig Fundyga, in the parking lot at Ralphs Grocery Store. Craig handled the percussion duties on my new ukulele CD with stunning panache. In other words, he’s totally awesome. The man plays drums, vibes, steel drums, piano and God knows what else. Is it any wonder Craig is always working and he invites hubby and me to his free concert tonight. With his Latin band, Lucky 7 Mambo. Outside. Under the dimming late … Read More

I am putting on my “you-gotta-toot-your-own-horn-because-no-one-will-do-it-for-you” hat and sharing some traveling news with you. Hubby and I are leaving earthquake country for the land of lightning bugs, killer humidity and summer thunderstorms. The little slice of earth where I grew up. Washington D.C. We will be exercising our rent-a-car on what the locals call “The Beltway.” I am hoping it is called this because it’s a cinch to drive. But I don’t think so. This is a working vacation. Let me start … Read More

Not a particularly pretty sight, huh… Unless you happen to be one of the Chem-Free guys who are busily primping and preparing our plain ol’ beige building of sixty units for the big execution, as millions of termites are sent packing into their next lives. Or else the circus is in town… We’ve known this thing is coming for a while, so I tear through the drawers and shelves, pitching bottles of medicine with expiration dates that go back to … Read More

It’s been quiet here, on the western front, with regards to my soon-to-be-born ukulele CD, “Smile, Smile, Smile,” probably because this thing has seemed, at times, like the “never-ending” story. Two years in the making. Well that’s what happens when life happens. Like…I have to work, you know. That means doing gigs and teaching. And there’s writing, cooking, cleaning, hovering around those damned social networks and never, ever catching up on my email. I don’t have to tell you how it is… We’re … Read More

“Don’t get old.” I hear that. A lot. I sing at an assortment of retirement homes, assisted living dormitories, skilled nursing-almost-hospitals. A few of the residents tug at my sleeves and repeat these very words. More than you would think. My own mother says it too. When she remembers. For the last few years she has been “87 years old.” Well that’s her story and she sticking to it. Here is a woman whose gray hair leaks around the sides … Read More

Last week I shared the story of my long-time friend, Cinda, who passed away on Easter morning and I received a bounty of heartfelt responses. Thank you! The people we love and who love us, the critters, the flowers on the window sill, the fresh strawberries in a bowl, the long-lived relationships, the bucks in the bank, the insights we file away on mental post-its—they come and they go. It seems like there is a little goodbye in every hello. … Read More

We were friends for a long time. Thirty years, give or take. We saw each other through her divorce and my marriage. And the whole galaxy of “life events” that happen–the surprises that come out of nowhere, the “situations” that drag on. Cinda had that “joy” thing happening and she delivered it into every corner of her life. By the time we met, she was teaching and working with children. But Cinda loved to sing too and she was a … Read More

Hubby and I, partners in love and ukulele, are heading east to the land where there is a three hour time difference. We’re meeting with the riotous Indy Ukers of Indianapolis, Indiana, on Wednesday evening, July 18 from 6:00 to 7:30 P.M. to play, sing, teach a little and have one glorious Kanikapila of a time. Joy central is The Sam Ash Music Store (located at 8284 Center Run Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46250). And everyone is welcome. Even if you … Read More

As if my wild ride through the car wash last weekend wasn’t enough… (see previous post) A family of crows, who I suspect helped themselves to the all-you-can-eat salad bar at The Sizzler, took a royal dump on my front windshield. This morning. My husband insists I go straightaway to our own car wash here in the neighborhood. Compared to the crazy sci-fi one in the valley, “The Bubble Machine” is normal. And soon I am on my way to … Read More

I arrive at my house party gig way too early. The trip from my part of Los Angeles to their part of the San Fernando Valley is not so far as the seagull flies, but seagulls don’t have to drive on the 405 Freeway which has turned into a 24/7 construction zone. One little bumper-thumper can jam up the road as if there’s molasses on the asphalt. That is why I leave extra early for my gigs these days. So … Read More

Hubby and I don’t get out much. We’re too busy woodshedding on our ukuleles and doing “music stuff.” So it’s a real treat to go to the movies and we have a hot date this morning at the mall cinema up the road. The one that shows foreign flicks. We’re here to see a French movie, “The Intouchables.” The word on the street is “see it or else.” We find our assigned seats. They are cushy comfy and actually rock. … Read More

My husband and I attended the big boisterous party, known as The Hollywood Bowl, to watch Glen Campbell do his farewell performance in Los Angeles. He is saying goodbye. This mega-talented musician, singer, entertainer is slowly taking leave of “this” world, of “his” world and all he holds dear. Alzheimer’s disease.