Podcast

My wife and I moved out to the Olympic Peninsula in 2002. Not long after we arrived we met Flora May and Bob Bradley. That next summer Bob introduced me to the Olympic Mountains.

By the end of the Summer of 1968 my dreams of becoming a doctor had been replaced by thoughts of pursuing a music career or continuing to do social work in New York City.

The Summer of 1968 opened up new worlds to me and for me. My three college friends and I represented the University of Washington in a national talent show.

My two monumental experiences of the Summer of 1968 were connected by a flight from Hamilton, Bermuda where I had just spent a week singing for a group of kids from Manhattan's Lower East Side to L

In the Summer of 1968 I went back to New York City to do social work. On some level at 21 years old I wanted to do what I could to change the world.

Albert Einstein famously said that "Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.

For me there is something special about putting new memories on top of precious old ones. Something about music that can transport and transform us.

It was something special to go back with three guys who became lifetime friends to where we met and sing again the songs we sang when we were just getting to know each other.

A lot of times it's hard for me to know how to tell someone how much I care for them. It's easier sometimes to sit down with a pen and paper and put those thoughts into a letter.

As I get closer to the end of my career, I appreciate even more where and how it all began.

It is special to go back to places that hold precious memories. To return with the people who were there when those memories were made and make some more.

So much of life appears to come down to choice and chance and circumstance.

For our last stop we returned to the river. To a place our family visited regularly when we first moved to Spokane. There is a suspension bridge there that crosses the river.

Pat and I left the river and went to the cemetery. It was beginning to rain.

My dad died on May 28, 1997. My mother turned 75 the next day. For more than twenty years on the 28th we celebrated my dad's whole life and his dying day.

There was a natural progression of places Pat and I visited as we honored my parents' lives. We started with places that represented the lives they had lived.

There is a saying out there that "we are as sick as our secrets." As someone who grew up in a family with a secret - in this case that my dad had been in a mental institution when I was born - I ac

It was challenging yet important to visit places my folks lived and worked and worshipped and raised their family. &nb

On May 28, 2022 it was 25 years since my dad died. The next day would have been my mother's 100th birthday.

It was something special to return to my high school.

After singing songs for my classmates I began to talk about my experiences in high school. I laughed as I told them that my high school experience might be summed up in four words.

This Episode contains more songs for classmates.

This Episode contains more songs written for individual classmates.

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs

In MORE SONGS AND STORIES FROM HOME Mark Pearson shares a belief that we are all in this together, more alike than different, capable of finding common ground in the stories we share and the songs