Beth Jochum

For our next President, a song celebrating woman strength and beauty. Try it sometime.

Welcome  to my pages.
I'm glad you stopped by.

It is late January, 2025.
Things don't always turn out the way we think they will, do they?
I mean, I look at the optimism of the last entry I made, and the roller coaster ride that preceded it.
Just imagine if we could all get the concept of kindness, and compassion, for each other, and most especially, for that which is more awe inspiring and lasting than the self centeredness, the weirdness of the moment we are in.
Doing my best to not be a jerk.
In the words of the late great Janis Lyn Joplin (who would've been 82 or so on January 19), I'm doin my part, daddy.
Let's hope this mess will transform into beauty sooner than later.
Love is more brilliant and beautiful than the alternatives.
You know that if you've felt it.
Let's give them something to talk about...in the words of Shirley Eikhard, the Canadian writer and inspiration for the inimitable Bonnie Raitt's cover version.

8.22.24
What a difference less than two months can make!
Looking around, it seems the Light has pierced the Darkness, and there is no denying the collective energy of change, of.....JOY.
You can't help but feel it - that laugh!! That smile!! That STRENGTH.
That resolute, determined focus on doing good acts vs. bad acts.
DO SOMETHING! She says...she who was maligned, savagely scarred and abused by hatred and vitriol, on account of her heavenly grace and beautiful strength... she who moved higher in the face of dirty lowdown sick, pathetic lies and fear...
We've got him on the run! She says...she who was stalked and ripped to shreds by ugly words and accusations, assaulted on account of her fierce strength...
It's inescapable now, the determination and shift in the wind's patterns.
Let Love and Freedom and Joy announce themselves with boldness and confidence, Let us not be divided again.
And so, let us make herstory tonight!
Let us greet the energy of Lotus transformation!
Strong and Beautiful. I vote for that.

6.29.24
The Rain. It always seems to open up the senses. May not seem so if we are prone to hibernating, diving into a good read. For me, as cliched as it sounds, it refreshes me more often than not...unearths my quiet inner voice, yearning to share.
But then again, where I make my earth home, there are few substantial rains...and I have personally never experienced a devastating, mind crumbling kind of torrent of rain - the kind that shakes one's life to its very basics, where one's possessions and shelter overhead disappear or are so saturated with too much of the good nourishing stuff that it is destructive and breeds mold and illness.
No, I am fortunate and blessed in ways I am quite sure I don't fathom, even if I try to.

The last few days have been a shake up of a different order. A debate between political candidates, and the shaky feeling a good many, too many, of us are feeling in the afermath of it all; after tuning in, or tuning out - out of fear...or horror - as we felt the crushing blow of supposed defeat.
Yeah, No.
Because you see, the way I am seeing this aftermath, this match that seemed to be from a science fiction fantasy match of Good vs. evil, is actually, just that. Too simple? Well, yes. I believe it might be.
Because maybe just maybe this is the point of all of this: where do you stand? What are your beliefs, your values, your hopes? Are they for Good, or for evil?
Can we tell a decent thing from one that is rife with selfish ends and hungry ghosts whose souls are parched for power?
It really boils down to that. This freak show is repulsively offensive on so many levels.
But I, for one, will always choose Love, always see clearly this very simple thing:
that evil is loud, aggressive, and hell bent on destruction of the most precious things.
Perhaps our humanity, whatever that might mean, rests on this.
An imperfectly good human being with a heart of Love versus a pathetically ill-intentioned being whose little mastermind game of destructive chess reveals his inferiorities, but more, his hatred and aversion to good. His obsession with self.
If it were just about groceries being expensive, we could still, with the eyes we were given and the hearts available to us within, we could still KNOW that ain't the whole picture show.
It is a time of reflection, contemplation, of digging into the good. We are being called to do this...we spiritual beings having this excruciating human experience.
Bless.
May Love Always Prevail.

4.2024
It is a raw, rainy early April morning. This morning I want to share some more Good Stuff...Inspiration for Difficult Times.
Karine Polwart is a Scottish singer/songwriter/conceiver and doer of many things. My good fortune to come across her music, website, and musings arrived a number of years ago while traveling the Internet Highway "Library" - following Crumbs of Information and Inspiration, when I might perhaps read a story about a fascinating being, for example, that points to another story about another and yet another. It's much like traveling the Back Roads rather than the Interstate Highways...there is a chance to see abandoned old houses, old churches, miles of undisturbed farmland, a soaring Red Tailed hawk or Bald Eagle, a singing brook by the side of the road, a roadside vegetable stand, or second hand goods shop selling trinkets of time-weathered paraphernalia, to discover something off the usual path.....To take these things in, to breathe in the breadth of life around us rather than hustle to the next destination via mile markers and the occasional rest area, amid speeding vehicles barely contained within yellow lines.
These side trips via the back roads, or Roads Less Traveled, are how I have found folks like Karine Polwart, and I enthusiastically share her with you now.
On occasion, she corresponds with her community via email (she is also on Facebook and Instagram, which I am not, so these communications are welcome like refreshing breezes).
Today's email communication hit a deep core place in me.
She wrote of her unusual inability of late to muster words - her deep ally and method of sharing her insights, ideas and music - because of the state of things these days.
Her sharing this resonated with me to the core because it is exactly what I feel; while my desire is to write, I cannot find the words - or motivation - of late. We are a nation, a world, of uncertainty of the unknown. There is a constant bombardment of bad news and an unimaginable and unthinkable future. We who experienced the music and the magick and the struggles for civil and environmental rights in the '60's feel it keenly, for we knew the feeling of optimism and hope, and for whatever criticism we faced for it, our innocent desires for love and peace. And I still believe in Hope, yet there is truth to speak of this difficult place one finds oneself in to find the will to write, the difficult place that Karine describes.
She writes of this heaviness she feels of late, and quotes the words of Paul Simon's "American Tune". It of course still gives me chills when I hear it, and I inevitably shed tears for its poignant portrait of the state of collective being he so eloquently describes. I urge you, dear reader, to listen to this song, and to also listen to a more current version of it as he performed it with Rhiannon Giddens (originally aired December 21, 2022), which nails the overlooked experience of Black and African Americans with one simple yet powerful change of lyric: "We didn't come on the ship the Mayflower, we came on the ship in a blood red moon".
They did not arrive on the Mayflower in search of a new life with promise and hope in their hearts.
Karine writes then of MUSIC providing the Heavy Lifting one might be needing these days.
The Heavy Lifting becomes necessary on those days when we feel the crush of the bad news. We reach for inspiration through music, that universal language that can console, comfort, inspire, transform and lift us by identifying with a loneliness inside us, a need to connect, a need to express.
I can only hope that the music I share gives someone a lift, a connection, an identification of similar feelings, to sort things out, to move to the next breath and move forward.
The world has taken on an urgency, a twist so surreal and yet so predictable in many ways that it calls on us all to show our True Selves - of Love, and Good, of any offering of Kindness we can muster, and to have the courage to speak Truth.
Encouragement to find the Beauty, to get assistance with the Heavy Lifting on those difficult days, is not a denial or bypass of the inherent struggles you, or I, face in day to day living. Far from it. Rather, to shine a light on the Beauty that exists - and I hope you find that in these pages, or elsewhere.
On this website, you will find music tracks from various phases of my songwriting, as well as my own photographs, writings, drawings and sketches.
Also on this website, you will find links to Betsy Soares' gorgeous, colorful art (rubysartstudio.com); Mia McPherson's thousands of photographs of the Natural World (a good part of which are of Birds); and words of wisdom from many seekers.

And, again, I offer up this song, "Into Spring", to greet the season of Spring..in Nature, and also in your Heart. It was written in 2001 when I consciously observed awakening of the Natural world, applying it to the question of whether I was living my own life consciously.

Slanted Sky (photo: Beth Jochum)

the leaf, Beth Jochum 2016

Lisa Nelson, Betsy Soares, Beth - YogaBliss Studio, Schenectady NY October 2015 (photo: Kristen Case)

Higher Ground

"1311" altar, CNWSMT Albany NY 2007 (photo: Gail Blacklock)