From the The Things You've Made

It’s the end of the year, so I wanted to put some kind of a gift or offering out there to show my gratitude for all the wonderful people in my life and my many blessings.  Unfortunately, I’m the kind of guy who prefers cash.  But my wife and kids keep telling me that homemade gifts mean more.  I’m coming to learn that, much of the time, they're right.  So I’m taking a risk and putting something out there that I made.

This year I was commissioned to write a new musical.  This is the first song I wrote for the show.  It’s appropriately called “From the Things You've Made”.  I recorded the demo in our living room.  I had fun strumming my cheap guitar, playing the fiddle, and I even did the vocals.  (The story is set in pre-Civil War America, but I channeled a bit of a British Isle’s accent since the story is laced with immigrant characters.)  So download it, put it on your “Favorites” playlist and enjoy.  But above all, I hope you find comfort from the things you’ve made, whether in the year past or the year to come.

Happy New Year!

DOWNLOAD: From the Things You've Made 

I Want to Surf Like Abraham Lincoln

“Lincoln is truly the most progressive man of the age, because he always moves in conjunction with propitious circumstances, not waiting to be dragged by the force of events or wasting strength in premature struggles with them.”


I’m reading Team of Rivals, a biography by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Lincoln and the political rivals he brought into his presidential cabinet. It’s a light, 754 page (not counting the appendix) beach-type book that I thought would be fun. And I have not been disappointed. But for some reason this quote really captivated me. To compare Lincoln to a surfer, I would say, ‘Lincoln knew how to catch a wave’, and I admire that about him.