Sometimes instead of whining about the state of the world, you just have to roll up your sleeves and make it better one person at a time.  We participate in the SOLVE Oregon Beach Cleanup and have helped with some of their neighborhood cleanups in Portland, and have just adopted a block to pick up trash while on a walk.

The Sun Will Return

With apologies to Fiddler on the Roof's "Tradition"

SEDITION!

Based on the book, "House of Goats" by Tammy Owen.

Five Acres of Heaven

Based on the frantic message coming from the Public Address System at the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar being fired upon by the Russian tanks, which could have caused a disaster 10 times larger than Chernobyl.

Does anyone want to send out a Tiktok video?  Feel free to dance your contempt for the Russian tank(s) who fired on the nuclear power plant!

Stop Firing at the Nuclear Power Plant!

Winter is hard for those with Seasonal Affective Disorder or clinically depressed.

Surviving Winter

Based on a random image generator challenge

Open Highway

Five Elementals

I saw this picture and "Spaceship for sale or rent" TTTO "King of the Road" by Roger Miller immediately popped into my brain and wouldn't go away. Definitely a fun rewrite!

Contraband Load

How much will it cost to "rewild" the dodos back into their native environment?  Just wondering.

Why a Dodo?

I had been collecting words and rhymes based on this image and found a Dragon skirmish on the FAWM (February Album Writing Month) which meant I had to finish it quickly, even though technically it was after the deadline.  In China it is common to see fish, dragons, and other water elementals guarding palaces and smaller buildings from the threat of fire. And, yes, dragons tend to be water elementals, living at the bottom of lakes and rivers or sending rain from the clouds above.

Rooftop Dragon

I'd reached a pause during February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) when I was between songs and nothing was sparking new ideas, so I started with "WORD" which rhymed with "BIRD" and it took off from there!  It didn't start out a love song, but by the time they got some alone time in the storm, well...

The Vagabond Bard

This is the story of Portland Oregon's Belmont Goats and the hen they adopted.
https://thebelmontgoats.org/goats
They are in need of help with vet bills for one of the youngest goats, Athos, and have a GoatFundMe at:  https://gofund.me/de6e8dfb
Juniper never let anyone else tell her that hens don't crow or that she was not a goat.  She did her thing and found friends who accepted her for what she was!

The Belmont Goats

Coastlines are washing away around the globe.

Dark Sea Rising

Jacob Everett Wallace  posted the lyrics on the FAWM.org during February Album Writing Month, and I dove on them and put the music together.

i’m the cat curiosity killed

Casey threatened to lock Heather and I in a closet until we wrote a song together (Heather is in Florida and I'm in Oregon, so...) so Heather and I decided that one of our February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) projects would be to separately write Phoenix songs which could be sung as a duet.  She has the Spring Phoenix and sent me a rough demo as a framework.  Can't wait to put them together somehow.

Phoenix in Autumn

Cecilia Eng's Album

Let’s Fly High

February Album Writing Month 2024 Challenge:  Write a song with a verse or chorus that uses a list structure.

Chair of WHAT??

Chicken Dinner Road got its name in the 1930s but in 2019 PETA asked the mayor of Caldwell to change the name to one that celebrates chickens as individuals, not as beings to kill, chop up and label as 'dinner'.  The mayor pointed out that the road was outside his jurisdiction, and the farmers living along the road were...NOT impressed.

Chicken Dinner Road

February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) 2024 Challenge: Get Modal!  The Peter Iredale has been a tourist attraction on the northwest Oregon coast in Clatsop County where she slowly decays on the sands near the Columbia River Bar.

Peter Iredale

You can google news reports from March 29, 2021 about Sisu and his determined raids on the Dollar General in Kenansville, NC and Samantha Lane, the Duplin County Animal Control officer who paid $10 for the purple unicorn who shared Sisu's bed at the shelter as well as his forever home after his adoption through Lab Rescue.

Sisu’s Best Friend

The CCBA is the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association which kept records of the Chinese men and collected payments over the course of their lives so their bones could be returned to their home villages to be buried with their ancestors.  In 2009 a documentary by Ivy C. Lin, “Come Together Home:  Death, Disinterment, Reburial” was shown by the Friends of Lone Fir Cemetery.  Ivy Lin found and interviewed one of the men who helped ship the remains disinterred in 1948 to Hong Kong only to find over a decade later when visiting Hong Kong that the shipment with his handwriting was still on shelves at the funeral home there.  The trailer for the film can still be seen on Vimeo:  https://vimeo.com/6226018

Block 14

February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) 2024 Challenge:  Rip Off Pachelbel

Chanterelle

This feminist retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses from the Brothers Grimm was a Challenge from the February Album Writing Month (FAWM.org) to write a song with a mixed time signature.  I also not only changed from minor to major, but actually changed the key going from Am to G.

Marching to the Dance

Beta Station

By Candlelight

Lyrics © 2/5/2019   Based on the shapechanger, Jane Yellowrock, from the novels by Faith Hunter.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Beast is Best

© 2/17/2020   Based on a FAWM weekly challenge to write a song from the point of view of an inanimate object.  As inanimate objects, Mountain and Sea qualify, although the Salmon folk took over the negotiations... This is (as far as I know) NOT a native American folk tale, but I wanted to give this love song the FEEL of a native American folk tale, as an explanation of WHY the salmon go down to the sea and return from the sea to spawn.  It is also a cautionary tale as to what might follow if we destroy the Pacific NW salmon runs.

Go Betweens

© 2/20 /2020    This song is thinking back to the days before OPEC when we could walk on the moon!  A friend of ours swears he knew a Ford Galaxie owner whose ride sported .38 caliber dents in the door.

Ford Galaxie

Singer/Songwriter since 1984.  Inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2013.
February Album Writing Month (FAWM) member since 2019.  These are scratch tracks recorded for the 2020 FAWM or for myself since 2019.  Featured performer at the 2021 Tumbleweed Music Festival Saturday Night Concert:  https://vimeo.com/593977025

Cecilia Eng

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