I have been working on a production of a play called “Heritage” which opens this Friday, July 17th at the Theater in the Park at New Salem. I will be portraying Abraham Lincoln’s father, Thomas. The play is primarily about the women in Lincoln’s life.

Because of this I have been bad about web updates. Let’s see if I can summarize what’s going on since my last post.

In addition to working on the play I have been continuing learning songs on my ukuleles, I have three ukes now, my main one is a tenor I just purchased. It is an archtop design with f-holes and is another electric-acoustic model like the soprano I bought that looks like a Les Paul. That soprano is made by Mahalo and the tenor is made by Kala.

The trio is coming along, with a bass and percussion to add to my uke and singing and I have played my first paying gig out at New Salem as the opening act for the last play that ran, “Forever This Land.” I had to play alone because the trio is not ready yet, but hopefully they will be ready in time to do one of my upcoming shows at New Salem, one Friday, July 24th and another August 22nd.

I am getting ready for the Decatur Celebration where I will be part of the Lincoln Writers and Artists section in the “Lincoln Heritage” area. I will be there as an artist selling my Lincoln prints.

Prints have been selling well at Tinsley Dry Goods in downtown Springfield and I have them available at Prairie Archives bookstore as well now. We started new editions of 5″ X 7″ on paper which are priced at $30 retail.

We have been getting some more work done on the house. We had all the windows fixed so they don’t need to be propped open (that has probably never been done in the 110 years the hosue has been standing!) plus we had some tuckpointing done in the basement. During this we found out we needed to have the coil replaced on our central air unit, something that really affects the value of the house) and it ended up costing a little over $900!

I decided a while back to cancel my political talk show on Restore the Republic / Revolution Broadcasting. It came down to where I had to cancel something and that show just required too much advanced preparation to fit into my already overburdened schedule.  Also, I really felt that I was spinning my wheels with it and that I get more accomplished just by posting news articles on Facebook. I wish them all well at the station though as they fight the good fight.

I am still in a quandary about the Basement Radio Network. We still simulcast all our remaining shows that we do from the home studio on BRN, but I have been concerned about how the station is affecting my reputation with potential art customers and those in the political activist community. Most of the time, if someone were to tune in at random to the station they would most likley hear something that was not only offensive, but entirely ignorant, hateful, and dishonorable in nature. Because of this, I have been relunctant to promote our involvement with the station in anything other than a minor way.