Winter has arrived early....our yard is covered with snow, they are already predicting more, and I plan on enjoying it. I hope you're well. I've been busy this fall, and am looking forward to spending winter around home, writing and doing some recording.

Performances this fall included trips to the National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee, Kentucky, Portland Oregon, and Arizona. In between, I've had a great time working with the Rhode Island Philharmonic on their family programs.

One of the highlights for me was performing "Stickeen", a story by naturalist John Muir, at the National Storytelling Festival. The audience was amazing, and there, for a little while, we were all on the glacier in Alaska in a terrible blizzard with a feisty little dog. Now that I know it works as a story, I look forward to performing again. Especially since I've now learned it!

New Song

I've got a new song, “You've Got to Ask” I've been singing a lot at shows. It's on an mp3 file at my website, so you can hear it there. Both kids and adults seem to like it. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the MP3 or cut and paste the following URL into your browser: http://www.billharley.com/

Recordings

I have two new recordings. One, Mistakes Were Made, was recorded this summer at Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in front of a live audience. It includes many often-requested songs and stories for adults, and I'm very happy with it. We put as much on one cd as it would hold (79 minutes, 59 seconds!), and we're getting great feedback on it. To order a copy of the recording, click here or cut and past the following URL into your browser: http://www.billharley.com/ProductList.asp?CategoryID=3

The second, Sandburg Out Loud, is a collaborative effort with storytellers Angela Lloyd, Carol Birch and David Holt. It includes stories and songs by the great American poet and writer Carl Sandburg, and has gotten great reviews from several publications. We are very proud of our efforts to resurrect the work of a great American original. I tell two stories on it - "How the Potato Faced Blind Man Enjoyed Himself on a Fine Spring Morning", and "How Henry Hagglyhoagly Played Guitar With His Mittens On". Music by David Holt, and some by me, compliments Sandburg's wonderful and loopy language. We recorded it for August House Publishers, but you can order it from us by clicking here and scroll down to the bottom of the page or cut and past the following URL into your browser: http://www.billharley.com/ProductList.asp?CategoryID=4.

I plan on doing some recording this winter - I have all the material for a bedtime recording for all of you knee-biters, so I just have to get into the studio. And I also have plans for a recording for teachers (not educational, just fun!), called "The Teacher's Lounge". We'll see how productive I am!

Theater Stuff

This spring, I will be doing three performances of a new piece called The WDUM Family Radio Hour at Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence. The show is fashioned after an old-time comedy radio show, and will also include my friends Kenny Raskin, Keith Munslow, and Valerie Remillard. Some of you know Valerie as our office manager (everybody has to do more than one thing around here - it's a rule). Those of you in the Providence area can check the schedule for dates. Hopefully, it will have a life beyond that.

Also, I am finishing a rewrite (again) of the play about Sarajevo I have been working on for five years, "My Sarajevo". A reading is planned for January, and hopefully, I'll see a production of it in the next year or so. More on that when it happens.

Books

I just finished reading Richard Russo's Mohawk; he has become one of my favorite writers. Recently, I've also enjoyed Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel, War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam, and The Great Pursuit by Tom Sharpe, a very funny British writer. Also, William Langewiesche series in the Atlantic Monthly, American Ground, about the dismantling of the World Trade Center after 9/11, is now a book and a very wonderful one at that. Debbie has been reading, but not as much, since she has recently developed an addiction to quilting. Those of you who are quilters, or affiliated with them, know what that means. Nevertheless, she has enjoyed John Irving's newest book The Fourth Hand and One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. Dylan, now fifteen, recommends Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. Noah, still in school in Wales, recommends The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco, Canasta de Quentos Mexicanos by B. Traven (it's in Spanish), and Playwrights at Work interviews in the Paris Review.

Recordings around the house

Two recordings have been getting a lot of play around here. Tom Paxton's new kid's recording Your Shoes, My Shoes is a real work of art - highly recommended. And Billy Jonas's recording My Life So Far, while not a kid recording, is as playful as they come, and a real work of brilliance. Find them and listen to them!

Calendar

For upcoming performances, visit the calendar section of my website by clicking on the following link: http://www.billharley.com/calendar.asp

Please come if I'm close by - we'll keep you on this list and send you an email notice if I'm coming to your area.