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Fox Hollow Critters

A fox family lived on the edge of our property for our first few years in this house a mile inland from the town of Mendocino, so we decided to call our place Fox Hollow. The labels for jars of jam and pesto we made boasted Fox Hollow.

Then the foxes went elsewhere and we didn’t see a fox for a couple years. The name Fox Hollow began to feel erroneous. So we decided to call our place Skunk Hollow because we had lots of skunks and thought their babies especially cute.

We briefly considered calling our place Deer Hollow because deer abound here, but Deer Hollow doesn’t pack much poetic punch, so we stuck with skunk.

Several ravens nest hereabouts, but we were not inclined to call the place Ravenswood or Ravens’ Hollow. Too dark and foreboding. We prefer a more upbeat moniker.

We do have a beautiful feral cat who includes our acres in her hunting grounds, but she’s only rarely here so Cat Hollow would be misleading.

Recently a second feral cat started hunting here. How do we know these cats are feral? Because various neighbors have tried unsuccessfully to trap them, and no one in the neighborhood will admit to feeding them.

Now that we no longer have a domestic cat living with us, the lizard and snake and little bird populations have rebounded, so I suppose we could call our place Lizard Hollow or Snake Hollow or Little Bird Hollow, but those names don’t sing to us.

Then there are the chipmunks. Until recently, we enjoyed the occasional chipmunk scurrying around the place. We were glad not to have a cat or cats slaughtering the little cuties. But now, for the first time in our twelve years here, a new chipmunk has started coming into the house whenever we leave a door ajar. She boldly helps herself to whatever she can find to carry away from the kitchen, and she seems barely phased by our fits of rage when we catch her with a cookie.

Gone are the delicious summer days of leaving the doors open. This little demon is lurking in the ferns and waiting for her chance to get inside and steal our food. How about Chipmunk Hollow? Not a chance.

The foxes have returned, so we are Fox Hollow again and will remain so.

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Ruby & Spear from Todd and Marcia’s new album Ahora Entras Tu.

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Ahora Entras Tu

Our new album Ahora Entras Tu is here! We’re so glad to be able to share this suite of new piano songs and piano/cello songs with you.

The album contains nine songs and four short poems and is downloadable and streamable from Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, and other music web sites! We will soon be getting our shipment of the actual CDs to send to community radio stations in hope of getting some airplay, and to dispense to friends who still have CD players.

We began the recording process last year when Peter Temple came to the house and recorded me playing the piano tracks on my Yamaha U7, an excellent upright piano I bought new in 1980 and have babied for forty-five years. I then went into the studio and added vocals to three of the eight tunes and gave those eight tunes to Marcia. She listened to them for some weeks and decided on four of the tunes she wanted to compose cello parts for.

When she was happy with what she’d created, we went into the studio and she recorded her parts. Then we lived with those renditions for a time, she made changes and additions in subsequent studio visits, and… voila!

As I prepare to send copies of the album to radio DJs, I’m calling the music Jazz with a Latin feel, though the music isn’t traditional Jazz. These tunes are melodic inventions, several of them Latinesque, as their names imply. And one groovacious blues.

We hope you’ll take a listen.

Blessings and Thanks!

Todd & Marcia