So, for real, from Judy Collins to Courtney Love? But I beg of you, stay with me.

It took me a really long time to choose an image to start off the blog. SO many images of Courtney show her as the train wreck that she oftentimes is. And I LOVE those images, not for a voyeristic reason, but more so for a "yeah, I've been there a few times in my life too..." reason. But, in the end, she is a musician. I went with a combo "trainwreck playing her guitar" kind of shot.

This past weekend I had another one of "my moments," and God knows that Tim gets sick of hearing about it, so, lucky all of you, I now have another audience! I got up on Sunday to read my Syracuse Post Standard. Coffee in hand, I discarded the front pages and went straight for the STARS magazine, happily finding Courtney Love playing her heart out on the cover. What struck me was that, just last week, my downloading desires tapped back into my somewhat fleeting love of 90's grunge. I "$1.29ed" to my heart's content downloading the likes of Pearl Jam, Garbage, and, yes, Hole. I have loved them for a long time...I mean, ya GOTTA love a band just for that name alone don't you? Not so much a Nirvana fan, barring "Smells Like Teen Spirit" of course, I mean, a song named after a deoderant? Again, you have to show some love for that kind of genius! (or maybe I am just a sucker for advertisement, but I think that is another, or several other, blogs) Still, I have always loved Hole, and not only did I download some of their old stuff last week, but got sucked into Courtney's worthy new offering, "Nobody's Daughter." In viewing that front page STARS magazine article, my 40 year old self felt so young, so current, so ahead of the curve! If I could just get people to give her a listen, though, I think they'd be pleasantly surprised.

Courtney takes you to so many places. I mean, right now, hearing "Violet" scream "GO ON take EVERYTHING, take EVERYTHING I want you to," is helping me over come my rage at the never ending state testing we have been subjected to this past month, and my contintued irritataion that now, teacher evaluation is going to be based on these damn tests. Go on, take everything, take all of my creativity Albany, I still have Hole.

"Someday, you will ache like I ache..."