Playing the Covid Odds

Playing the Covid Odds

We’re all shooting craps against Covid these days–playing the odds as we feel our way to deciding what to do (and not to do), and struggle to get back to some semblance of life as we knew it without taking dumb risks. Which of the many longed-for activities...
Music II—Inching Up The Foothills Of Jazz

Music II—Inching Up The Foothills Of Jazz

This is an account of how, at the age of 61, I found myself whining with frustration, afraid of humiliating myself, and then fired by my piano teacher—all part of a journey that’s nevertheless been a highlight of these twilight years. After traipsing around the...
Mask Up and Vote in Person

Mask Up and Vote in Person

Call me stupid, as some of you undoubtedly will, given that I have the trifecta: “advanced” age, a compromised immune system, and a chronic lung condition. But I’m planning to vote in person, and hope that others who can possibly do so will too, especially in...
My Life in Music – Part l

My Life in Music – Part l

It began on Christmas in Dobbs Ferry, New York when I was about six, which would have been 1958.  I woke my sister Debbie before dawn to get a jump on opening presents. Ripping away the wrapping paper, I discovered a book around the size of a comic book:  the Trapp...
Loon Shots

Loon Shots

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a loon. She made a fool of me. It was August of 1978, on the first day of  a 100 mile canoe trip with my college roommate on the iconic Allagash River in northern Maine–the same trip Thoreau memorialized in his Maine Woods...