Our friends Scott Yoder and Beth Schneck are in a tight spot and need a hand. A series of serious health problems have wiped out their savings, leaving them in substantial debt and in danger of losing their home.

Beth has long struggled with endometriosis, a painful and complex disease with no cure. It has debilitating effects that required her to move upstate in 2008; since then she’s had three surgeries to remove endometriosis in attempts to reduce pain. For the last 16 years she’s been unable to work fulltime as a photographer, and instead has taken freelance gigs when physically able. That’s left Scott’s contracting business as their sole reliable source of income -- which worked until he ran into considerable health problems of his own. In 2020 he learned he had severe heart disease; that led to open-heart quadruple bypass surgery in 2021. After recovering Scott returned to work, taking on bigger jobs in an effort to climb back toward financial security. But in 2023 he suffered a heart attack, then became badly ill with Covid.

At that point a bad situation got a lot worse. Scott had several jobs in various stages of completion, and when he was left unable to work his business collapsed, leaving him in debt. To stay afloat he took an office job with a millwork company, but was laid off last April. Since then he’s applied for dozens of jobs, while helping Beth through a grueling series of diagnostic tests and a major surgery in November. But he has yet to land one; meanwhile, Beth is facing yet another surgery for a pinched spinal nerve. That’s left them where they are now: with no current income, in heavy debt, behind on a mountain of bills, and dealing with a foreclosure on their house.

A lot of you came to know Scott the way I did – through music. As a bassist in NYC for decades he played with and for scores of musicians who all know very well what I know: he’s a mensch supreme who has a long record of putting good vibes out into the universe and would be quick to help out anyone who needed it. And all that goes for Beth as well. Please give if you can, and know that any contribution at all will be hugely appreciated and long remembered.

(Photo by Beth Schneck)