Welcome to the website.

Welcome to all of you New Yorkers, and to everyone reading this in different parts of the country and different parts of the world.

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Two day's ago, there was a really wonderful article in The New York Times about a little tradition I've had for myself around this time of year for about the past 10 or 12 years, I guess. Click on that link to check it out if you're new around here.

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In fact if you're new around here, I hope to see you one day out in Central Park with me and "The People on the Hill".

Come back tomorrow for an update about the next concert we're gonna have here in town on Saturday night, January 24th.

But, for today... I'm just gonna re-post the update from Tuesday.

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Grab a cup of coffee and sit back and relax. This is a fun update.

There's a reason I'm posting it today. Did you pick up a copy of The New York Times on Tuesday? If you don't live in place where you can grab a copy go check it out online, I guess.

I'm tellin' you.... my Life is sooooo strange! Kinda cool, though.

First... I wanna welcome everybody once again to this site. I think it's such a cool thing that New Yorkers show up here. After all, Central Park is our backyard. But, man! I get email from people all across the country and in different parts of the world. It's really so very cool. If you're new around here, I guess all you hafta know is that I am the luckiest man in the world.

I have a couple of FREE downloads for you today.

First up - - just to prove to you what a miserable, godless heathen I am... (Well, ask the Bill O'Reilly's among you. They'll be able to tell because I read the New York Times!) ...I'd like to make this song a FREE download for you. It's from my latest CD.

The Religion Song

But, to show you just how much I love this time of year and the ideas of Christmas and Santa Claus, I'm gonna give you all a special treat today. (I think it's kinda special anyway.)

Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus

Y'see? That article in The Times today by Clyde Haberman happened because over the past 10 years or so I have been secretly slipping a little Christmas card under the door at 115 West 95th Street, just to say Merry Christmas and more importantly "Thank You" to a little girl... a little girl named Virginia.

No, I've never met this little girl.

About 10 years ago I was home alone one night with the television on, watching a Christmas special about Christmas specials! It was hosted by Marie Osmond and it was going through all these little comedy sketches and musical performances and stuff from over the years. But, then she got to an old clip of a Perry Como Special from 1960 in which he was talking about one of my favorite Christmas things.... the letter this little girl wrote right about 63 years before that - - 111 years ago now.

Well, out comes this lovely old woman to read the letter and it turns out it was the REAL Virginia. On the letter was scribbled her return address. Now gotta tell you, for me this was like a bad, corny movie. I'm sittin' there alone. It was snowing that night. I was living alone in an apartment near West 93rd Street, and I see this address on the screen that reads 115 West 95th Street.

(By the way, we live in such a cool technological age now in 2009. Down at the bottom of this page is a clip of the show I was watching. Virginia comes on late in the clip. But, you'll see what I'm talking about!)

That night I was drawn to get up, put my boots on, grab my coat and head over there in the snow to see if this little girl's house was still there.

It was.

So that same week, just before Christmas that year I wrote her a little "thank you note" and late one night I slipped it under her door... just for... just for me. (Thinking whoever lived in that house now quite possibly didn't even know what the hell this card was about or who it could possibly be for!)

I've done it nearly every year since then, the first night it snows or just before Christmas. I walk over to Virginia's house and slip a Christmas card under her door. I'm sure over the years various tenants or building supers have found them, checked them out and then tossed them because I never put my full name on it I'm sure most don't know a Virginia who currently lives there. I just did it as a little "thing I like to do. It keeps me in touch with gratitude and Spirit.

I did it again just a few days ago. Just my little "thing". I probably oughta find out where Frank Church used to live and slip a "thank you" note under his door, too. (He's the wonderful newspaper man of the New York Sun who wrote the Truth to little Virginia.)

Here's something I did in concert back just before 2000. I wanted to share this beautiful little thought with the audience at that year's "Year-End Concert"... so I wrote a special song for the occasion and asked my own little "Virginia", a young lady named Julie, to help me out by reading the letter.

Click for larger image

Here you go...

Early Christmas present.

DO YOU REMEMBER CHRISTMAS?

I'll be back tomorrow with some more about the first concert of 2009.

In the meantime...

Here's that clip. Virginia comes on around the 6:00 minute mark.

Um.... if you're new around here, take a few minutes to it the ARCHIVE and browse through the site. There are lots of really fun Photoshop images, FREE songs to download, all kindsa stuff.

Stuff like this!

When George Bush drove by "The Hill"

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Hey... Merry Christmas everybody. Happy Channikah. Happy Kwanza. Happy Festivus for the rest-uv us!

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See you tomorrow.

Thanks for everything.