It was a rough October with the passing of two terrific guys and influences in my life: Tom Petty and Tom Weigel. I met Tom Petty down here in Gainesville Florida, where he was born, back in 1989. I was looking for a good recording studio that had DAT recording facilities so I sent them the project. Anyways they liked my song "The Ballad of Jessie James" and decided to help out. Tom brought in his friend Norm Schaffer to sing the lead. I had no idea at the time who Tom Petty was! But he brought the song to life with his amazing guitar licks and he also played the drums. I sent the demo off to some Song Publishers and got a reply from one. She really liked the vocal and said to me she couldn't use it! "What else have you got?" she said. I replied "You don't understand, this is it". But she wouldn't budge. Maybe the lyrics were too controversial. Tom just said "I thought you had a hit!" The second passing was Tom Weigel, a great poet who was published in the Paris Review and read with Allen Ginsberg in NYC. He came to New London CT. where I'm from later in life and was very instrumental in the poetry scene there. He published a number of my poems in his journals "Back Room Poets" and more recently "BURP". We had a number of excellent poets contributing like Jake St. John, Jean-Yves Solinga, Dave Kennedy etc. We also had some fantastic poetry readings with guests like Michael Brown (the originator of slam poetry) and Bob Clawson from Nantucket. This was for a period of about eight years, and Tom was always at the forefront of the scene. There was a wonderful write up in The Day Newspaper about him and we will all miss Tom's charm and wit very much. One of his sayings was "Find inspiration in the Universe". He certainly inspired us all.