I thought I should say something about the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale before it ends! To my astonishment, I haven’t posted in here all year. What happened? I suppose the review of Kamala Harris’ book exhausted me.

In all seriousness, though, it’s been an odd year. I had a writing residency at Hedgebrook (Washington State) in April; I hadn’t flown since 2014. Alaska Air has certainly gone downhill since then, as has everything else… But I survived and enjoyed the flight back a lot more than the flight there. It was good for me to spend two weeks away, to walk every day, to eat great, healthy food—and yet, perhaps because I’m new to the residency experience, I found the social side of it unexpectedly jarring. One woman said to me, “They just threw us out here and left us.” Her particular fear was walking back alone to her cottage after dark, and we really were deep in the woods, so I understood. Personally, I had insomnia each night. Finally, I turned off the light outside my door and was paradoxically able to sleep better after that. I was able to write a bit once my mind calmed down. But I came away with the sense that any residency I did would contain some of the same dynamics… and therefore I would probably avoid such a thing in future. I can cross it off my bucket list. There’s that.

The Year of the Horse brings a lot of unexpected loss. I have noticed this before. Was quite stunned to go on X one morning this month and see Hunter Biden tweeting about “Senator Graham’s death.” It took a while to sink in. I was not a big fan of Lindsey Graham, but his death was startling and sudden.

Another sudden death took place just recently, of course. Glen Hansard of the Frames (that’s the way I think of him in my mind). Just a few years younger than me, he was someone who I remember as a young Viking with flowing red hair. He was in The Commitments, of course, though I had forgotten that. He was part of everybody’s life in Dublin, which is why the whole country is plunged into mourning.

What I didn’t know about Glen is that he was friends with Jeff Buckley in the early ’90s. Jeff was a great musical love of mine. Glen helped Jeff’s career ignite by introducing him to Sin-é, the tiny Irish-owned musical venue in New York where he sang for about a year before signing to Columbia. Typical of Jeff, he never mentioned having been part of the touring show of the Commitments as a guitar tech! It makes me smile now, to think how big the movie was for our generation, how the singers had their brief flashes of fame. But Glen had this steady thing, and now he’s gone.

There has been a lot written about him, but I particularly liked this piece by Alan Corr, which I found on X. It concludes:

From day one, Hansard was a music lifer, a man who dived into the torrent and went wherever it took him. He has left behind a serious artistic legacy that will remain a monument to self-belief and the healing power of music.

I think that brings me up to date for a bit…