This CD is a demonstration of community in action.

I am forever grateful to Leonard Goldhammer and Barbara Marvin, my personal coaches from Landmark Education's Self Expression and Leadership course in 1999, for telling me every week for three months, "Let other people contribute to you! Stop trying to do it all by yourself!" In this course I learned deep lessons about what magic is available to each and all of us when we look beyond what we normally think is possible and create with community.

This is the story of the community that made this CD become a reality.

Choices originated as a gift for my mom and my boyfriend for Christmas 2001. It was recorded in the living room of Richard Latimer and LauraLee Williard. Richard and Laura's generosity and talents made it possible for me to give the most meaningful Christmas gift ever to my mom. Richard did the recording and Laura loaned me her guitar and made a pretty label and case insert for my mom and Victor. I thought about perhaps going back at some point and adding harmonies and other instruments, but I realized that would be a very large task.

When I listened to it again the following summer I decided the CD was pretty darned good just the way it was, and that I rather liked the roughness of it. It has a raw, vulnerable, in-the-moment feeling that is missing in highly produced recordings. I always like the less polished aspects of life. So I decided to go ahead and get some copies made to give and sell. I mentioned it to a few people, and it was my friend Barry Sevett who jumped in to make it happen. He spent an entire Saturday with me, copying CD's and pouring over the label and insert design, and later that evening, after finishing the end of the project by himself, he hand delivered the finished product to me at a benefit concert where I was performing. Barry also copied the first three batches of CD's and label/inserts, and set up portable artwork for me to take to get more printed whenever I wanted. I released this early version to close friends and fellow jammers. My boyfriend Victor Kilonzo advised me to get the CD mastered to enhance the balance of the sound, to put out a product that I would be proud of for years to come. My environmental and musical pal Evan Smalley did the job in his 32-track studio near the Blue River.

In stepped Mary Ellen Vincent and David and Laura Shaughnessy to try to help with reprinting on MacIntosh. Finally, David Hakan took over from there, printing my most recent batches and reviewing the CD in the Songwriters' Circle February 2003 newsletter.

Choices is named after the title track, written by a woman who I dearly admire, Martha Haehl.