Minstrel Girl: Mid-Life Musings and Mischief

I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams)

2020-12-10T14:36:00.001-08:00


Lindsay Holland giving me a guitar lesson

I learned this Hank Williams classic when I was a teenager, from a summer camp counselor who came from Ft Worth Texas. He taught me how to finger-pick, for which I am eternally grateful. This is a shot of me looking at the camera at age 14 with my guitar, learning an arrangement from my handsome camp counselor. Wherever you are today, thanks for teaching me Doc Watson, Hank Williams and Libba Cotton. I worked out my arrangement for "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" at that time, and I haven't change it much in the past 40 years...

Between him and one of my best friends in High School who was into Country music, I expanded my musical repertoire from Folk Songs (of the Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell variety) and show tunes (because Julie Andrews was one of my musical heroes), to Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and the Carter Family.

And the rest is not just history, but my musical life so far...

An Ancient Ancestor

2016-01-01T06:23:00.002-08:00

Melrose Abbey

(shot taken by Beth Kotkin 8/2004)

My most ancient Scottish ancestor, William de Somerville, descended from a Norman family that traveled to England from Normandy with William the Conquerer in 1066. William de Somerville came north from England in 1107 with King David I of Scotland to conquer and settle the Borders area of Scotland. He was buried somewhere here in this cemetery at Melrose while the church was first being built in 1142.

So many of the graves are so old that their markings have worn off, so I do not know which one was his. I walked the length of the graveyard to look at as many headstones as I could. I know he was there somewhere.

Musical Musings

2011-10-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

I just put up a new music-only webpage.I will continue to post my other writings here, but I will be updating the music-only blog with my videos, MP3's and upcoming concert dates as they come up in the calendar. Right now, I am re-posting the videos of me singing and playing the guitar that I have on You Tube at my new music blog.

Feel free to stop by and have a listen!

Click here for the link!

Traveling Dog...

2010-09-03T06:51:00.001-07:00

luci in the Rockies Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

My dog Luci is a great traveling companion. She truly loves long car rides to new places. This shot was from our trip last summer across country to move from California to NYC. We were going up into the Rockies after staying overnight in Albuquerque New Mexico. It was a magnificent day, the weather was perfect, the road was empty and the air was clear. Luci spent the day enjoying the view, dazzling passersby with her pink doggles and sniffing the high mountain air. I wish we could have spent more time here, and I am definitely planning to go back to Taos NM, which looks like an amazing place. We did stop high up in the Eastern side of the Rockies. Luci loved getting out and leaving her mark in yet another place as we crossed the continent. :) I just got back from a long weekend in Vermont, and again Luci proved to be game for anything. She spent most of the trip just like this, looking out the window in her goggles and smelling the sweet smells of the Vermont evergreens. Sweet!

Storm in the Desert

2010-04-10T13:31:00.001-07:00

storm in the desert My shot

The weather suddenly turned ugly after our trip from the Grand Canyon across route 40 and New Mexico towards Albuquerque. The red dust was blowing hard everywhere, making visibility difficult at best. We started down the long and lonely path to the Petrified Forest in the face of fierce red dust storms and howling winds. I took it as an omen, telling us to turn around and head back to the main road.

The car was weighted down with all the things we were driving back to NYC with us from California, and to top it off, the "check engine" light came on as we headed further from the main road and into the national forest area. After my terrifying experience of almost loosing my brakes as we made our way down from 8,000 feet in Yosemite in the pitch black, I decided better safe than stranded in the deserts of New Mexico. I decided not to push our luck. By the time we got back to the highway, visibility was limited and the rain was pouring down in sheets.

We managed to stop at the visitor's center off the main road, so we could see what we were missing, but the weather was getting even worse, so we headed into Albuquerque for the night. As we drove into town, the sky opened up and cleared. The bright New Mexico sun greeted us for the early evening, leaving the terror of the open road behind us. When we settled in for the evening, the storm we had left behind us became even more surreal and dreamlike in my memory. But the sounds of the howling winds and the raw power of the red dust lingered and haunted our dreams.