Happy New Year!

Hello, everyone. Thanks for checking back in with me--I know it's been a while.

(Help! England Dan & John Ford Coley's "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" just clicked on in my brain: "Hello. Yeah, it's been a while. / Not much. How 'bout you? / I'm not sure why I called, / I guess I really just wanted / to talk to you," etc. Ah, my misspent youth. )

As I was saying, it's been a while. The wrists have been bugging me, although my new office setup has reduced the carpal tunnel aches & pains. And I've been up to my peyes in unrelated projects: my Romance Novel class, my new and improved--well, my new--Intro to Poetry Class, my graduate Teaching Poetry gig, and the great joy of my life right now, my new oud: a "quality learner oud" made by Haluk Eraydin of Turkey. (Although I'm seriously contemplating stringing it for Arabic tuning. But maybe that's wrong of me. And will it hurt the oud? Many an hour recently over at Mike's Oud Forum sniffing out the answers to such questions.)

Still, with the Hi-Hos upon us--as in, "Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to shul we go"--this blog has been, like the proverbial Mama, on my mind. And although there's no tradition of "new year's resolutions" at Rosh Hashanah time, other than the usual u'tshuvah, u'tefilla, u'tzedakah trio, I'm going to try to get back to regular blogging here, at least some squib every couple of days, whether a poem or a thought or a link. Hmmm... Maybe I'll toss the reflections on oudism here as well, since it was things Jewish that brought me to the instrument. Make a few converts, maybe.

OK: off to get washed clean in the... Oops! Wrong metaphor. Off to engage in a little off-shore sin disposal. It's been quite a year, folks, so if you see a forty-something bearded man in glasses slinging a large pepperoni, thin-crust, frisbee-style out into Lake Michigan, that would be me.

And, since no religion truly satisfies the soul, year in and year out, like the Church of Baseball, let me simply add: Go Sox! (You pick the color.)