12/16/09 The Holiday Season

It’s hard to believe that the Holiday season is upon yet again {yes that is a jpg of our Christmas tree this year!}. Thinking back on issues from last year at this time I find myself extremely thankful for this upcoming holiday. Peggy and I have done some wonderful seasonal concerts to date. Last Friday night we had a thank you concert at the Presbyterian church in Red Creek, where in April there was a spaghetti dinner fund raiser for us. It was a wonderful night and we were both thrilled to be able to give back just a little bit to so many who have been so generous to us. This weekend we do our annual pilgrimage to Lake Placid for our Adirondack Christmas concert at the Center for the Arts with good friends Roy Hurd and Frank Orsini. Peggy and I will also be doing the music for the Christmas eve service at the First UU church in Syracuse. Lake effect snow is in the air, it must be Christmas time !!

On Monday I had my last visit with the chemotherapy oncologist at Clifton Springs. It was a great visit to the cancer center and I was surrounded with a flood of emotions returning to where I had been a daily visitor for nearly two months this spring. I spent an hour playing music on Hammered Dulcimer for both the chemotherapy lab and the radiation lab. It was wonderful to visit with the nurses and the doctors and have a chance to see them feeling a little more like my usual self. I received a clean bill of health from the Chemo oncologist and hopeful thoughts that some of the neurological issues that I have been dealing with will slowly begin to subside with time. With the passing of time, I have been able to fully realize what a special facility the cancer center at Clifton Springs really is. The staff there has always treated us like family and the positive, helpful environment was a big part of my successful treatment recovery. I can’t thank everyone there enough. I also have been seeing a wonderful acupuncturist, Caroline Robinson in Oswego NY. and she has been really helpful with the neurological issues that have been a problem, especially with my right hand and legs. I continue to slowly put on a few pounds and eating what I can, Thanksgiving dinner was a soft food bonanza to say the least!


As we close this year and look forward to a new year I wish for all of you good health, happiness and a wealth of positive energy to come your way. I hope to be able to see many of you this winter and spring at concerts and workshops. Peggy and I will be traveling to Florida this January and to North Carolina in March for concerts and workshops. Closer to home, the Susquehanna String Band will be performing Jan 8th at the town hall opera house in Bainbridge NY, and Jamcrackers { Dan Berggren , Peggy and myself}, will be performing at the Music hall in Oswego NY on Jan.9th. We are so blessed to have an abundance of good friends and increasingly good health as the year comes to a close. To all of you who have been so thoughtful over the last several months, thank you again from the bottom of my heart, I really could not have done this journey without you!! Have a wonderful Holiday season and I will continue to update the blog as my recovery continues and we enter 2010. Peggy put it best in her song “Giving Thanks”

“In this season of joy and thanksgiving
As I look at the live I am living
I count up the blessing of old friends and new
And I am thankful for you, I give thanks for you”

May we all count our blessings this Holiday season.