Hello, friends…I hope that you had a restful Memorial Day and found some fun ways to continue to be safe and healthy without missing out on the social interaction that typically comes with the unofficial start of summer. I’m happy to report that I scored a pound of ground beef on my last Wal-Mart pick-up so I was able to enjoy a grilled burger on my back deck:)
All is well here on the Big Front Porch….garden planted, house projects in progress, working through a long overdue list of books to read, and new and creative adventures in the kitchen as a result of a renewed relationship with my oven. Would love to hear how you’ve been spending your ‘quarantine time.’
During these days of pandemic, it’s been inspiring to see how so many are doing what they can in the service of others, no matter how big or small the task…we all have gifts and talents to share…whether in a real ‘physical’ space or through the amazing connectivity of an online environment. Feels like we can all take HOPE in that.
And that being said, I wanted to share a couple of creative projects with you that have been completed over the last few months in the hopes that they will resonate with you as a gift and that you will pass them along to the folks in your ‘orbit.’
One is a project that originated over a year ago with a song called “Joy In A Teardrop,” written by myself and my good friend, Dr. John Mulder, as the outcome of a songwriting workshop for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). John and I ‘gathered’ ideas from conversations with hospice professionals and then crafted the song from their honest and vulnerable thoughts. The work was so well received that we were invited to the fall 2019 national conference to lead another workshop and develop a full-length album of similar songs based on small group input from hospice professionals. The project, The World Around The Bed, was recorded in January in Nashville, and John and I were scheduled to premiere the project at a conference in Washington, D.C. in late March, but the pandemic prevented that from happening. However, the album was released a couple of weeks ago 
and is beginning to receive some very positive reviews. All proceeds from the sale of the project will go to help provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospice workers. If you fall into the ‘I stream all my music’ category, you can stream it from Apple Music, Spotify, and almost any other platform. You can also purchase a download of the album from Apple Music/iTunes, Amazon Music, and many other platforms (more $ from downloading than streaming, by the way). And if you’re in the ‘I still buy CDs’ category (and live in the Cleveland, MS area), you can purchase a copy at Cotton Row Books in downtown Cleveland. It is such an honor to be a part of this project…
The second project is on behalf of the fabulous GRAMMY Museum® Mississippi here in Cleveland. As of today, our museum, as well as all others in the state, remained closed under order of the Governor, so the staff has been working hard to develop some projects and programs to offer virtually until the physical doors open again. To that end, we’ve put together a project called No Place Like Home: Songs From The Heart of Mississippi, which features a group of Mississippi’s wonderful, talented, and generous singer/songwriters. 
They each sent us a ‘home grown’ song performance and the museum has begun airing those each Friday at noon CST on the museum’s YouTube channel.Please subscribe to the channel and click the little ‘bell’ to receive notifications of each video coming up. Then please SHARE the videos with others and encourage them to subscribe to the channel. There will be some wonderful content posted to the YouTube channel as we go forward. THANK YOU for your support in this effort.
And speaking of YouTube, I’d appreciate it very much if you’d take a moment and subscribe to my own YouTube channel HERE. My first goal is to have 100 subscribers. 
I’ve been ‘dabbling’ in some hymns, songs, and home video ideas and will begin to post them to YouTube as they are completed (FYI, Facebook is still wonderful, but posting on that platform does not always reach the intended audience due to algorithms, computations, and tech stuff that’s WAY over my head…just trust me on this). Thank you kindly:)
If you’ve made it this far in the post, I wanted to share a link to an article that really ‘hit home’ with me earlier this week from a site called Becoming Minimalist. It’s about how to stay focused on the good. The title for this post was taken from that blog…I hope you enjoy the article as much as I did.
https://www.becomingminimalist.com/focused/
So stay safe and stay well, y’all…and as the world begins to ‘reopen,’ here’s to using the good sense that God gave us:)
+Peace+
Tricia