I’ve always loved a good story and as a child, was especially fascinated with the lives of the Saints. Admittedly, while most of these stories are about being a martyr and dying a most unpleasant and usually untimely death, the stories about St. Francis and St....

 It's been many years since I've written this song, but for some reason I felt compelled to return to it and bring it into a visual medium. I remember so clearly writing this song. We were flying home from a funeral service in Cleveland for a step-nephew. Tucked in my...

 My sister Maureen was an avid bicyclist and had the fearless spirit of adventurous explorers. She was in the Peace Corps in Africa during the 1970's and traveled alone throughout India, Pakistan and Europe. Her last journey was the hardest, succumbing to cancer at...

  Some songs take 20 minutes to write – others take 20 years. California Sun is one of those twenty year songs. It was originally written as a slow tempo acoustic song intended to be recorded as such. At some point in time, it took on a life of its own outside of my...

  My father lived to be 94 years old. He was a man far ahead of his time with a vision for what could be rather than what was. The first thing you noticed when you drove up to Joe’s home was that it was not shaped like any other on the block. In fact, it wasn’t shaped...

  It’s always a gift when the feeling instilled by another songwriter's composition inspires me to write a song based solely on my emotional response to that song. It's hard to explain, but that was the case with Galileo. While on a writer's retreat in northern...

My music has been streaming on several sites for quite some time now, and I’m always fascinated by which songs generate the greatest response from listeners. One of the most consistently popular songs is “Could’ve Had Me”. This was written when I was fairly immersed...

Timothy McConnachie: oil on canvas I had the pleasure of being introduced to the work of Australian artist Timothy McConnachie through a talented local artist and friend, Trish Toro, some years ago. Trish and her husband Bill, along with myself and my husband Richard,...

I'm sure other songwriters have experienced writing a song that starts out having one intention and, as if having a will of its own, it takes a turn in a completely different direction. That was the case with Gentle Heart. I originally wrote the chorus of this song...

Photo by Rebecca Pavlenko Relationships with parents can sometimes be complicated, and that is probably the best descriptor that I have for my relationship with my mother. While most folks identify Paris as a song about the missed opportunity to be with a lover, this...