My sweet Arthur came home today, and has been laid to rest in a special urn next to his beloved Grandma Kittling and his brother Snickers. I will be custom building a base for the urn, which will be wrapped in the bright green fabric of his cherished cat bed where he spent so much of his time.

This first week without Arthur has been expectedly difficult. Every time I walk past a room, I instinctively peer in to see where Arthur is. Every time I walk into a dark room, I instinctively slow down so that I don't bump into him. But a fraction of a second later, I remember that he's gone.

It seems like just yesterday, I was cherishing my time with Snickers and Arthur knowing there would be a future day when both their remains would be in urns next to Kittling. It's hard to believe how quickly that time has come. In the years ahead, Viola will join them in heaven, and someday it will be my turn. I look forward to that joyful reunion.

It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of my best friend and loyal companion, Arthur. He has gone home to reunite with his beloved brother, Snickers, and his cherished grandma and guardian angel, Kittling.

I took Arthur to the ER yesterday since none of the fluid treatments or medications he received eased his symptoms. They took an x-ray and found a very large mass in his abdomen. Apparently this mass was pushing on his organs and causing his problems. Surgery was not an option due to the complexity of the mass and Arthur's medical condition. He passed away very peacefully in my arms.

Arthur was a diabetic cat who required insulin every 12 hours. He and I were a diabetes management team. He would eat on cue, and then I would follow up by freezing a spot on his skin to numb it and delivering an injection, which he always took like a trouper. We stayed this course for almost four years. I had to turn down a lot of band jobs in order to maintain his insulin schedule. Some people thought I was nuts for doing that for a cat, but I had absolutely no reservations. He was family.

When we think about people loving their pets, we usually conjure images of playtime, toys, and treats, but there's another side to that love we don't always see. When I was saying goodbye to Snickers in 2021, I promised him that I would take good care of his brother. That promise helped me stick to that commitment. The result is the pile of insulin containers you see below. My commitment to Arthur as his caregiver was topped only by his commitment to me as a loyal companion. Managing his health wasn't an easy task, but it's a task I wouldn't have traded for the world.

Arthur came into my life on December 20, 2012. He and Snickers quickly became lifelong best friends. Snickers passed away in December 2021, but Arthur continued to fill my home with warmth and love for another 3½ years. Arthur had an attention-getting meow, and he used it to let me know he was ready for some TLC. I'd often be sitting in my computer chair when he'd meow, and would reach down to scoop him up. Then I would flip him on his back, practically holding him upside down, and rub his tummy. He'd purr like a motor boat while flicking his tail and kneading imaginary dough in the air.

With Arthur now gone, my home feels cold and empty. That will take getting used to. When Snickers died, I still had Arthur, so my home didn't change much. But now I am dismantling the 6-foot cat tree, removing the food and water dispensers, and boxing up 32 years' worth of accumulated cat toys.

I'm not going to throw these items away, however, I have no plans on getting a future cat. Snickers, Arthur, and Viola were stray kittens divinely gifted to me by Kittling. I didn't go looking for them. Kittling brought them into my life by guiding them to the right place at the right time. If any of my cats in heaven divinely gift me a kitten, of course I will take it into my home without hesitation. But I'm not going to go out and look for a cat because their healthcare can cost thousands of dollars a year. (I will never again own a cat without getting pet health insurance.)

I'm having Arthur cremated so that his ashes can reside in the same place of honor in my home shared by the ashes of Kittling and Snickers. I've ordered a special urn and will be building a wooden base for it that I will cover in the fabric of the plush cat bed that he cherished.

Of all the adjectives to describe Arthur, the most fitting is sweet. He was as gentle and friendly as any cat could be, even under stressful conditions. Everyone who gave him medical treatment loved him for that. He never did anything naughty so he never got yelled at. He was the epitome of a good boy. He was my "Pumpkin Pie."

Arthur's very first photo: Dec. 20, 2012. Approximately 9 months old.


December 29, 2012.

Celebrating his first birthday in 2013.

2014, being a pillow for Snickers. They were the best of friends.

Arthur's final photo, 8:10pm, June 8, 2025. 

I woke up this morning to hearing Arthur crying underneath the couch. He's never been underneath the couch before, so I immediately knew something was very wrong. I pulled him out and noticed that he couldn't walk. I rushed him to the ER where they determined that he was hypoglycemic. Instead of his blood sugar being too high which requires insulin injections to regulate, it was too low.

He is currently on an IV to stabilize his glucose levels, and they are also warming up his body temperature.

I take Arthur to the vet several times a year where he gets fructosamine tests to determine what his insulin needs are. They've gone up over the past three years, but earlier this year they've started coming down. Apparently since his last fructosamine test less than two months ago, and more specifically within the last day, his insulin needs have drastically dropped, which has never happened before.

What we do not yet know is whether that means his diabetes is heading toward remission, or some yet-undiagnosed condition is abnormally diminishing his appetite and reducing his glucose levels. Since I've been doing a good job with his insulin regimen and diet since he was diagnosed in 2021, and since a comprehensive blood, urine, and stool test a couple months ago didn't reveal anything concerning, I'd like to think his diabetes is heading toward remission, but it's too soon to tell.

I don't know what kind of shape Arthur is in right now, but he's receiving prompt urgent care at the hospital. They'll call me in the next hour or so to let me know how he's doing.

UPDATE: JUNE 4

The staff at the ER saved Arthur's life by restoring his blood sugar level to a healthy range, but since being back from the ER, Arthur never regained his appetite, and has remained lethargic and despondent. Earlier today, I took Arthur to see his regular doctor. He ran another battery of tests and found issues with Arthur's pancreas as well as a urinary tract infection. Arthur is going to be in the hospital overnight with an IV for treatment of pancreatitis and a UTI.

Receiving fluids was enough to spark Arthur to start eating, so even though we don't yet know what is causing the issues with his pancreas, at least he's on the path to feeling better.

The possibility that he is going into diabetic remission is still on the table, although it's too soon to tell. His future is uncertain. He could bounce out of this relatively healthy, or maybe he is stricken by cancer. Only time will tell, and right now we're taking things one day at a time.

UPDATE: JUNE 8

I thought Arthur was on the path to feeling better, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Within a day of coming out of hospitilization, he became as despondent and uninterested in eating as when I took him in. Tomorrow I'm going to decide whether or not to take him back to the ER.

Petanaldi Accordion Manufacturing Company, based in Silicon Valley, in partnership with Google, has integrated artificial intelligence into their digital accordions. The AI integration is designed to assist accordion players in assessing their audience and choosing appropriate music to play. Each accordion is fitted with advanced optics and sensors to continually monitor audience response and offer music suggestions to the accordionist.

It's no secret that volume is an issue for polka bands playing at assisted living facilities, senior living communities, rehabilitation centers, veterans administration homes, and memory care facilities. JBL has chosen to address this problem by designing a new series of loudspeakers which are designed to sit backward on speaker stands.

 "What makes the Polka Power series so revolutionary is that it effortlessly solves two problems at the same time — it reduces volume out front, and it provides sound monitoring for the band," explained Wayne Oerth, JBL Director of Technology.

Polka Power active speakers start at $799/pair MSRP. For polka bands still lugging around their heavy, bulky Crown amplifiers from the 1980s, Polka Power speakers are also available in a passive design featuring 1/4" speaker inputs and pre-dented grilles.

The United States Department of the Treasury announced on Tuesday that the Mint is terminating its Yankovic Quarter Program after the first batch of coins went missing.

"We had just finishing minting 1.4 million quarters, which were bagged and readied for distribution the next day," said Treasury Assistant Secretary Nick Sollover Planchett, "We didn't have room to store them at the Treasury, so some friends of ours, who are polka music fans, graciously offered to have the bags stay overnight at their house. The following morning, all of the coins were gone."

According to the police report, also missing from the house were a set of bath towels and the homeowners' entire collection of Johnny Pecon records.

I thought for sure I'd be putting the psychology-related blog entries to rest for a while, but a serious situation recently transpired that commanded my attention and intervention.

You may remember that several years ago, an album that I was working on took a sudden change of course when the friend I had originally hired to partner with me had flipped out and bailed halfway through production. As she bailed, she ended our friendship in a sudden, scathing rage that came clear out of left field. I knew she was having issues with low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety, so, knowing her as well as I did, I armchair-diagnosed her outburst of volatile behavior as being linked to a mix of personality disorders and just let it go.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago. On a whim, I thought I'd check up on her to see how she was getting along, and I found all of her social media pages deleted. Since I remembered her as such an avid user of social media, my heart sank as I thought she might be dead. Thankfully, I didn't find an obituary.

Instead, a little sleuthing turned up a misspelled version of her name which directed me to a YouTube channel where two people were complaining about her bizarre behavior — a young singer and a music producer. Both of them were sharing stories very similar to mine where they were once her friends, but then she flipped 180 degrees and raged against them, just like she did with me. What alarmed me most, however, is that the young singer was trauma-bonded.

(Although my friend exhibited symptoms spanning the entire Cluster B family of personality disorders which includes narcissism, I'll simply refer to her as the "narcissist" going forward as my article centers on the narcissistic subset of behaviors.)

A trauma bond is kind of a co-dependent relationship where the emotionally vulnerable victim needs the attention of the narcissist, and the narcissist exploits that vulnerability to feed their own ego with power and control.

The music producer was doing a great job of protecting the young singer, but I felt I could help just by stepping in to say, "Hey guys, you don't know me, but I'm another music producer who got bamboozled by the same narcissist just like you did. You're not alone." So that's what I did, and in the process, I made a couple of wonderful, new friends.

Together, the three of us worked to un-bond the victim from the narcissist. What makes trauma bonds so hard to break is that narcissists are so desperate to keep their claws dug into their victims, they become experts at manipulating their victim's emotions. The narcissist will say sweet things to win the victim back and turn them against their friends. Sometimes the narcissist will outright threaten their victim to make them too scared to leave.

Hardly a day later, the narcissist said all the right things, played on the victim's emotions, and won her over, which is a standard narcissistic behavior associated with "hoovering." Sadly, it wasn't unexpected due to how strong some trauma bonds can be and how manipulative narcissists can be. The only thing the producer and I could have done is what we already did, which was plant the seeds of knowledge. All we can do now is step back and hope they take root.

With 100% certainty, at some point down the road the narcissist will continue the cycle of turning on her victim and inflicting mental abuse just like she's done before, except this time, the victim will at least have a better understanding of why she abuses her.

A Quick Rundown on the Disorder and the Trauma Bond

Think of a healthy person's identity (sense of self) like a house. If the person is brought up in a nurturing environment, their house will be built strong to withstand the elements. Think of rain, hail, and snow like adversity such as criticism. It all just bounces off. With this protection automatically set in place during childhood, they don't grow up having to focus on protecting themselves. This allows them to live normally and go out into the world to meet new people, make lifelong friends, fall in love, get married, and do all the things healthy people do.

A narcissist's house, however, never gets built. Due to being raised in a dysfunctional household or to physiological abnormalities, their sense of self gets stunted very early in development, sending them into the world exposed, vulnerable, and insecure. A person cannot function in the world without an identity, so the narcissist does something fascinating during early childhood: they create a false identity, and learn to engage with the world through that identity. They crudely hack together their own version of a house, and that becomes their security blanket in the face of adversity.

Since the narcissist has no foundation or framework to build on, they can't build an actual house, but they can hack together a facade that looks like a house, and that's all they need. Then they stand outside their fake house putting up decorations, watering the flowers, and doing whatever they can to make people think their house is better than everyone else's. Essentially, they play make-believe. "Look at me! I'm secure, awesome, and full of love. I'm the best and most loyal friend anyone could ever ask for!"

But, unbeknownst to both the narcissist and the victims they attract, it's all a trap.

The narcissist needs people to think they are happy and secure because it generates external validation, and external validation is what strengthens their fake house. But there's a problem. The fake house is so shoddily constructed that a single rain drop or snowflake (eg. a criticism or perception of being judged) can send it tumbling to the ground, leaving the narcissist exposed without any protection.

As a person gets closer to a narissist, the narcissist becomes increasingly unsettled because the person can discover how fake, flawed, and weak their house is. Suddenly the person's validation of the narcissist loses its potency, and the narcissist responds by holding the person in increasing contempt, labeling them an enemy, and devaluing their worth. In addition, the person may say something that inadvertently knocks the narcissist's facade down. Either way, the person is either devalued and instantly discarded, or devalued and made a victim of the narcissist's cycles of abusive behavior.

In the situation I described earlier, the narcissist's happy facade lured a victim who was a young, impressionable, vulnerable girl who apparently didn't have a lot of friends. The girl looked up to the narcissist and made her a necessary part of her life. That is exactly the kind of validation a narcissist craves — feeling needed, exalted, and important. This dynamic created the perfect storm for a trauma bond.

In the idealization phase of their online friendship, they validated each other immensely. They became BFFs. They depended on each other to lift each other up. But as is standard for relationships with narcissists, as the victim got closer and the relationship matured, the narcissist felt less validated and started to devalue the victim. The devaluation escalated to where the narcissist started becoming unnecessarily hostile (mentally abusive) toward the victim.

When a narcissist does this, the victim may realize the narcissist is toxic and step out of their life. This is one reason why narcissists have very few friends. But this young victim was already too emotionally attached to the narcissist. She was strong enough to give the narcissist a piece of her mind, but not strong enough to leave the narcissist behind and escape the abuse. She didn't have many friends to turn to, so her emotional dependence on the narcissist won out.

Narcissists' egos do not benefit from love, but from external validation and whatever gives them a sense of power and control. Having a victim who sees them as a mentor, emotionally depends on them, and isn't strong enough to leave them is like striking gold. A narcissist will not easily let go of supply this valuable, because without supply, a narcissist has nothing to hold up their facade. No identity. No security.

The narcissist keeps their claws in their victims by a process called hoovering. This is a cycle of devaluation and love bombing which allows the narcissist to repeatedly mentally abuse their victim. After they abuse their victim, they prey on their victim's emotions in order to suck them back into their life (like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, which is how the term originated) and continue the cycle.

Narcissists are programmed to do this to their victims. It is a cycle that will infinitely repeat until the victim, once and for all, says enough is enough and leaves for good. Every victim is different. The strongest, most independent victims will leave right away. The more dependent victims may leave after several years. But highly-dependent victims may not be strong enough to leave at all, and will live out their lives as victims of the narcissist's abuse.

What makes this particular case so frightening and dangerous is how young and vulnerable this narcissist's victim is, and that she admittedly suffers from mental disabilities. She is so enamored by the narcissist that she has no clue that she's a pawn in the narcissist's hoovering behavior. All she knows is that she loves the narcissist so much that nothing — not even the narcissist's mental abuse — will keep her away. Most narcissists would be intelligent enough to know they should back off, but this narcissist is so flawed and debilitated by her disorder that she is willing to keep allowing a young, vulnerable, impressionable girl with mental disabilities back into her cycle of abuse. So who will be her next victim? A teenager with Down syndrome? A baby holding candy?

For this reason, the producer and I stepped in to help this victim when it seemed like she was on the cusp of breaking the trauma bond and finally freeing herself from the narcissist's grip. Unfortunately, the trauma bond was just too strong. The victim is patently obsessed with the narcissist. In the months ahead, if the narcissist and victim maintain their relationship, the victim will endure more love-bombing and re-devaluation by the narcissist. It is an inevitable cycle in which the trauma bond has trapped her.

There is nothing more the other music producer and I can do to help her because she is an adult and free to make her own decisions. Our hope is that the next time the narcissist says anything abusive, the victim will take a closer look at our words and how diligently and kindly we tried to help her. Hopefully she'll connect the dots, find the strength to leave the narcissist in her dust, and go on to establish and experience normal connections with normal friends.

No-Contact

When it seemed the victim was on the cusp of leaving the narcissist, my advice to her was to go "no-contact". What that means is simply what it says — summarily and permanently ending all communication with the narcissist. Once a narcissist rages and reveals their colors, there is no hope of reasoning with them because narcissists are incapable of owning the shame of their behavior. Narcissists are not emotionally developed enough to accept any perspective other than their own because only their own perspective shields their ego from harm.

This fundamental aspect of the disorder makes it pointless to debate anything a narcissist says. The narrative they write in their head will always make them right regardless of the truth. Their need to defend their narrative will lead them to rely on made-up facts and absurd excuses. When you argue with a narcissist, the argument will go around in circles ad infinitum because the narcissist is not mentally equipped to handle the shame of being wrong. Most of you, at one point or another, have argued with a narcissist and have experienced this.

People who are experienced at identifying the symptoms of personality disorders know that when a narcissist rages at you or when a borderline splits on you, the healthiest and most effective strategy is not to argue, but to step away and establish appropriate boundaries. The ultimate boundary is summarily removing yourself from their life and going no-contact. Going no-contact means ignoring and deleting all forms of communication. It means deleting their written messages without reading them, deleting their audio messages without hearing them, and never, ever reaching out to them for any reason.

But what if the narcissist may be reaching out to apologize? Nope, it's a sham. A narcissist does not possess the empathy required to offer a sincere, authentic apology for having hurt another person because they're not emotionally equipped to withstand the shame of being 100% responsible for it. Quite often, they'll instead deflect the blame by placing it on circumstances beyond their control, such as another person or on another mental illness diagnosis. When narcissists don't deflect blame and seem to be offering a sincere apology, it's a strategic move designed to keep their victim on a string. After some time has passed, the narcissist will repeat the same hurtful behavior for which they apologized.

This is the cycle called hoovering. Hoovering a victim generally involves mentally abusing them and making them feel subordinate, then playing on their emotions to win them back by apologizing or love bombing. Days or weeks later the narcissist will start mentally abusing the victim again, and the cycle keeps repeating.

It's very difficult for a trauma-bonded victim of a narcissist to go no-contact because they want so badly to believe the narcissist is actually a good, loving person whose apologies are sincere. Trauma-bonded victims commonly talk themselves into believing they deserved the abuse, and may even apologize to the narcissist for making them so angry. What they don't know, and refuse to accept, is that the narcissist is an abusive person who's trapped them in a hoovering cycle.

A narcissist is a wolf in sheep's clothing, but trauma-bonded victims hold onto the belief that it's the other way around — that the sheep who once idealized them exists somewhere underneath the wolf, and if they can just love the wolf enough, they'll get their sheep back. But a narcissist's true self is not defined by how they behave when they're high on validation and in full sheep costume, but how they behave when the sheep costume is off. That's when the abusive, spiteful, self-centered, apathetic, intolerant, and judgmental narcissist reveals their true colors, and no amount of love on the face of the earth can heal that. The sheep costume will slip on and off, but the wolf will never, ever go away.

What trauma-bonded victims need more than anything is support. They need it in the form of information about personality disorders and friends to lean on. The problem is that the information and the friends both say, "Leave the narcissist. We've got your back." and the narcissist says, "They're wrong. I'm the only one that has your back." and then the trauma-bonded victim gets stuck in a emotional tug-of-war. Which way the victim goes depends entirely on how strong the trauma bond is, and how willing, ready, and equipped they are to break free from it and go no-contact.

For a spouse or significant other, leaving a narcissist is very difficult. It takes a lot of strength because it essentially means leaving an old life behind and starting a new one. It's a frightful prospect, so it can take years or even decades for someone to summon the strength to break free from the abuse of a narcissistic spouse. And after they break free, they should seek therapy or counseling to help them make sense of how and why they got trapped.

I believe there are literally more survivors of narcissistic abuse in therapy than actual narcissists because only the victim can feel the pain of lost love. The narcissist can only feel the pain of lost supply. If you or someone you love has been victimized by a narcissist, here is a link to help you find out where support is available: VeryWellMind.com

Why Narcissists Refuse the Help They Need

A few comments I've received have prompted me to add a final section on why it is difficult for narcissists to seek the help they need.

Our brain is like a camera lens. Through that lens is how we perceive ourselves and the world around us. All during our childhood, if we are programmed with the tools we need (self-love/esteem) to develop a normal lens, we'll grow up to see ourselves and the world around us in a healthy way. This normal lens is what allows us to get along with others, make lifelong friendships, develop loving bonds with people, get married and have kids, and handle adversity. It's a security that we take for granted because it's always been there.

But some people raised in broken homes or with genetic defects grow up plagued by low self-esteem and insecurity, so their camera lens is distorted. A person with a distorted lens does not know their lens is distorted because it's been that way their whole life. They've never seen the world through any other kind of lens. It's the only lens they've ever known.

Narcissists know they're insecure, and they know how problematic their relationships with people are, but since their lens is distorted by the disorder, they can't understand and own the root of those problems. Their low self-esteem and insecurity makes them self-centered, judgmental, and abusive, but their disorder distorts their lens in order to shield them from the shame of that reality. Through their distorted lens, the narcissist sees things completely reversed. They see themselves as the innocent victim of other people's hostility. They insist they are authentic, tolerant, loving, caring, and empathetic, and it's everybody else who's hostile, judgmental, and self-centered.

Narcissists may seek help for their depression, but the help they need and the help they want are two different things. What a narcissist wants is to feel vindicated and validated, but what they need is to understand that the root of their problems lies in the distortion of their lens. Narcissists can't do that because their distorted lens is what's been protecting them their whole life.

This causes narcissists to skip out of therapy and try to self-heal their way through their problems, but self-healing can't work because everything they do is done through their distorted lens. No matter how many self-improvement strategies they practice, their life never changes because their lens never un-distorts.

The difference between a narcissist and a reformed narcissist is that a narcissist thinks their lens is fine, whereas a reformed narcissist knows it wasn't. A narcissist insists they are an innocent victim of other people's hostile behavior, and that they are, and will always be, justified in how they choose to behave toward those people. But a reformed narcissist knows that the pain of their insecurity caused them to overreact and victimize innocent people.

Narcissists are not stupid; they're just emotionally disabled. Narcissists are mentally capable of self-reflection, but their disorder prohibits it to a large extent due to the emotional pain it causes. If a narcissist can look back on their life and say, "I do see a pattern that never changes. Maybe I really am seeing things in a wrong way. Maybe I am the problem," then there's hope for them. Only a narcissist that can self-reflect has a chance of reforming, but most narcissists won't ever get that far. They will forever cling to their security blanket — the protective, false reality of their distorted lens — and remain narcissists for life.

I have to be completely honest. When I first conceptualized this album, I knew it would do well, but I didn't think it had much of a chance of becoming my all-time best seller. Compact disc sales peaked in 2000. That was a long time ago! With Mollie B driving sales, however, I predicted that it would become my 2nd best-selling album of all time.

I had to look back at a document I shared with a colleague in 2021 to find how I projected this album's sales to go. I originally estimated selling up to 400 CDs in the first year, and up to 300 additional CDs over the next few years, totaling around 700 units sold.

Apparently I underestimated Mollie's marketing power.

In the first year alone, approximately 800 CD copies had sold. The album became my 2nd best selller within seven weeks of its release. As expected, sales then slowed way down, but Mollie's touring schedule continued to take the album all over the country. A little more than a year and a half later, CD sales finally topped 1,000 units sold — a milestone I had very little expectation of reaching.

Although Mollie and her dedicated fans are the primary force that propelled the album's success, there are many people to thank:

All the musicians and vocalists who contributed their exceptional talents to the album... the retailers (Polka Connection, Jimmy K Polkas, Cy's Music, the Nat'l Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame)... Don Hunjadi and Polka Parade... all the radio DJs who promoted and played the album over the air and on the internet... and Steve Meisner, whose contribution to the album's success vastly exceeded the only payment he ever took for his vocal work, which was a roll of bubble wrap to give to one of his grandkids.

And of course, thank YOU, the listeners of my music, for your patronage and continued support. There are a lot of music awards out there, but no award on earth could ever compare to the compliments you offer, or the smiles you share, which express how much you enjoy the music I create. That is the intangible reward of this craft, and its highest honor. Making music is about making people happy, and if there's one niche of the music business in which this has proven to be true more than any other, it's polka music.

There's a brand new forum on the internet called "Songwriter and Producer".

Although the internet is full of music-related forums, this new forum is poised to stand out from them all. Why? Because it's built on the same framework, and operates under the same administration, as VI-Control.

VI-Control was founded in 2004 as a forum for people to discuss using virtual instruments to create music for film and television. In 2017, the forum was purchased by L.A.-based music producer and virtual instrument developer Mike Greene. Under his administration, the forum has swelled to over 40,000 members, and it boasts some of the movie and television industry's most prominent composers as members.

What makes VI-Control so unique is the integrity of the membership. There aren't many places where hobbyist composers and Academy award-winning composers can comfortably and freely exchange information and opinions, but Mike and his team work to keep the riffraff associated with other internet forums at bay, resulting in a professional yet casual environment.

Although VI-Control is welcoming to all types of musicians, it was designed specifically for composers in the movie, TV, and video game business, so it skews heavily toward orchestral music. The discussion of a virtual accordion library, for example, can get instantly buried under a multi-page discussion of John William's brass sound from Jurassic Park.

For several years, Greene, along with other forum members including yours truly, entertained the idea and hashed out the concept of another forum like VI-Control — one of comparable integrity, but for everyone else outside the orchestral virtual instrument and film composing realm. It would be designed as a home for producers, songwriters, recording engineers, and musicians of all levels and all genres. Last year, Greene and his team went to work, and early in 2025, Songwriterandproducer.net (also shortened to songprod.net) was launched.

It's brand new, so the membership is just starting to grow. Over time as pop, rock, country, R&B, jazz, EDM, and polka artists, producers, and songwriters set up camp, they'll influence its growth as the forum will undoubtedly adapt to encompass the topics that are most important to them.

I encourage all of my musician friends and colleagues to join this forum! Whether you're a Grammy-nominated producer with industry wisdom to dispense, or a hobbyist accordion player needing help with programming your MIDI foot controller, your membership on the new forum will be welcome, appreciated, and rewarding.

This is also a rare opportunity to become a pioneer member of a new internet forum. That doesn't happen every day. Sign up, maybe post a message introducing yourself, and then sit back and enjoy watching the forum grow. And look for "Polkasound." That's me!

If you lost a black, metal DVD organizer that fell off your car while traveling north on Highway A toward Fox Lake, uh... I found it.

Fortunately I didn't see any fluid leaks after slamming into it and dragging it along, and the car made it back home, but something triggered the engine light to come on after a while, and my bumper will need to be repaired and repainted. I had planned to attend the Illinois Polkafest today, but I'll need to get my car inspected for mechanical damage before I drive it too far.