Currently I reside near Delaware, Ohio, with my Bengal cat Callie. We encourage each other to live as creatively as possible.  Corporate jobs in the accounting and payroll fields were abandoned to spend more time on harp gigs and ART projects -- Callie didn't abandon anything and continues to do what she wants, when she wants, and because of this her daily existence is quite rich.

I am certain that one's success ~ the fulfillment of goals and dreams ~ is guaranteed by having the desire to succeed and a strong support system.   Surround yourself with those who encourage you no matter how little sense (cents) you may make at times.  To all those who have offered their support over the years -- a heartfelt thanks.

What drives you, what fuels your passion?

How do you best express yourself?

What do you want to say?

Drop me a line -- tell me what sings to you.

"...all that we say moves outward in gradually diminishing but neverending sound waves.  One of the more delightful mysteries of sound came when the astronauts on one of our early space ships heard a program of nostalgic music over their sound system, and radioed NASA to thank whoever it was who had sent them the program.  From NASA came the rather baffled reply that they had sent the astronauts no such program and knew nothing about it.

"This phenomenon triggered a good deal of interest and research:  who had beamed the music to the astronauts? What was its source? All the radio and TV programs all over the country at that day and hour were checked out, and none of them was responsible for the music the astronauts had so enjoyed.  Further research.  Could they all have imagined hearing a non-existent program of old popular songs? Was it a kind of mass hallucination? It seemed highly unlikely.  Research finally revealed that that particular program had been broadcast in the nineteen-thirties." (p. 94).

"The mind is a magnet and we attract that with which we identify the self. In order to get the most out of life we must learn consciously to change many of our habitual thought patterns. If you are filled 
with fear, refill yourself with faith, for faith always overcomes fear."

Ernest Holmes 

"You have powers you never dreamed of.  You can do things you never thought you could do. There are no
limitations in what you can do except the limitations of your own mind." 

Darwin P. Kingsley

"Like the elephant, we are unconscious of our own strength. When it comes to understanding the power we have to make a difference in our own lives, we might as well be asleep. If you want to make your 
dreams come true, wake up. Wake up to your own strength. Wake up to the role you play in your own destiny. Wake up to the power you have to choose what you think, do, and say." 
--Keith Ellis, Bootstraps 

WHAT IS LEFT UNSAID 

One doctor's work was with a so called "primitive" tribe. The people were asked who was their doctor or medicine person,
they said no one. All were responsible for this. When asked then how the village dealt with sickness, this is what they said (this is from everything from AIDS to cancer to gastric upset and the common cold): the patient sits in the middle of a circle and the rest of the village, everyone, forms the circle. The patient is asked "what has been left unsaid?" They wait. Everyone waits until the patient finds the words and says what has been unsaid. Sometimes they wait for days. And the remarkable thing is that their cure rate is 98%. This may 
be a good practice, even to write in your journal or to speak in your prayers, what has been left unsaid in your life. 
Say it, share this technique with others. 

To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, 
and refinement rather than fashion, to be worth, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, 
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart, 
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never- 
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. 
This is to be my symphony. 

William Ellery Channing 

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and scared.
Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel 
and kiss the ground.

Rumi, Sufi mystic

"In an age of nothing, at a time when we stand at the brink of our own destruction - strengthen your belief, in yourself, in the future of humanity, in the things of this world which cannot easily be perceived...When it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants of the fabric of your life - Believe."

"We must widen the circle of our love until it embraces
the whole village; the village in turn must take into its
fold the district; the district the province, and so on
till the scope of our love encompasses the world."

- Gandhi

"Why? Why Not? Why Not You? Why Not Now?" -- Aslan

Byron Katie says, 
“ The worst that can happen to us (now) is a thought”.

Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough
to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.
Vaclav Havel

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable 

but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

George Bernard Shaw

"It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes
and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first
job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in
listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view,
letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.
And so on, all day. Standing back from your natural fussings and
frettings; coming in out of the wind."

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

         "I don't believe people are looking for the
          meaning of life as much as they are looking
          for the experience of being alive."

Joseph Campbell

To attain knowledge, add things every day.
To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

Tao Te Ching

Let no one be discouraged by the belief there is nothing one man or one
woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills.  It is from
numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or strikes out against injustice, or
acts to improve the lot of others, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and
crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring,
those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of
oppression and resistance.

Robert F. Kennedy

Music gives access to regions in the subconscious that can be reached in no other way.

Sophie Drinker

You must work diligently for your own salvation.

Buddha

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Anais Nin

Turning points announce themselves through a variety of vague symptoms:

deep restlessness, a yearning with no name, inexplicable boredom, the feeling of being stuck.

Gloria Karpinski

Your sense of boredom, contraction, or resentment is your soul's way
of letting you know that you are settling for less.

Alan Cohen

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson

Take care to get what you
like or you will be forced to like what you get.

George Bernard Shaw

We can't become what we need to be by remaining what we are.
Oprah Winfrey

....another thing that has to be considered is the way we incorporate music into our lives.....going to a symphony hall and sitting to hear any kind of music just seems to sterile to me...there's no interaction and it is completely separate from our 'real lives'....we have lost our rituals (to celebrate, mourn, come of age, etc.) and the meaningful music that went with that.

Allyson Patterson Zadnik

A goal is a dream with a deadline.
Napoleon Hill

Focus on where you want to go, not what you fear.
Anthony Robbins

Instead of talking in the hope that people will listen,
try listening in the hope that people will talk.

Dr. Mardy Grothe

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.
Leonardo da Vinci

Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Have faith in its course.
It will go its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices.

Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will carry you.

Sheng Jen

I could be whatever I wanted to be if I trusted that music, that
song, that vibration of God that was inside of me.

Shirley Maclaine

He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool - shun him.
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child - teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep - wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise - follow him.

Dreaming is easy. Acting on those dreams - saying to yourself, 'Hey,
wait a minute, I want this' - is another kettle of fish. It takes
conviction and faith, even audacity. But consider a life without art, books, movies, design, or fashion.
Every one of these things grew out of a dream pushing the boundaries of the possible.
Martha Beck

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten
that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

We would have greater success in achieving our goals

if we tried not so much to control time

-- an impossibility, as it is outside us --

and instead tried to control energy --

eminently possible, as it is within us.

Eugene O’Kelly

How different our lives are when we really

know what is deeply important to us,

and keeping that picture in mind,

we manage ourselves each day to be

and to do what really matters most.
Stephen Covey

Imagination is the beginning of creation; you imagine what you
desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.
George Bernard Shaw

Don't worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that.
Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to
have more things, or more money in order to do more of what they want
so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse.
You must first be who you really are, then, do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Margaret Young

I wanted a perfect ending... Now, I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme,
and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing,
having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner

If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent
twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the
cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a
better grasp of one's subject matter.
Margaret Mead