Hi and Welcome

The new storytelling CD,Bootsie in Season arrived yesterday. I had to turnaround and send 700 CDs to Jonesborough, TN for the National Festival. Right now everything feels a bit like a new school year… New stuff, so here’s a new blog.

I knew when people started to bug me about writing a blog that I would call it, Neurotically Sentimental. I am, you know. Lucky for me that somehow I created a character with whom I could be in that neurotically sentimental and yet maintain a state of relative coolness. Marguerite (or Uncle Charles) can gripe about anything they want and if I’m doing my job, it turns out to be cute and all, but few, save those who know me well, realize it’s really just me doing all the griping.

I think I coined the phrase in my head years ago while standing in a late-night grocery store line with my old show-biz buddy, part-time Shakespearian actor and professional puppeteer-for-a-dead guy, Clark Orwick. This was back in my Renaissance festival days. We were standing in line there and I noticed all the balloons fenced-in on the ceiling. A lady in front of us was buying one – all big and shiny and mylar-y. The jerkiest, sourest part of me said, “man, balloons are something you purchase at fun places where you have fun times, like the circus or the fair or the zoo. It’s so weird to buy a balloon at midnight at the Kroger.”

Clark looked at me for a long time with that perfectly squashed squint he has – the kind of look that gets better with age. He said, “you know, you’re a real old fashioned stick in the mud, you know that?”

Yes I do.

But, like Marguerite I’m actually pretty happy. I just like to gripe. It’s an old family trait.

I’m glad you’re here.