Summertime
Blog, Post
Summertime George and Ira, arias and blues have to admire those New York Jews “I loves you, Porgy. Don’t leave me here.” They would of course be familiar with fear and caustic squalor and bitter fruit Wagner trumps Mahler with sharp-edged boots They sat at the piano on the Upper West Side mapping a plan...
The Great Escape
Post
Fifty years ago these Iowa Amish boys fled to the shelter of cornfields rather than obey the law that compelled them to attend public schools. I was just a little older than these boys but oh how did I look up to them. A few years earlier I had also escaped to these same fields....
The Kingdom of Summer
Post
Our Kingdom Come. Not the one of other worlds. But right here. Now. In the slant of sun off June water. We are princes, princesses, kings and queens. Today we are divine. World without End. Amen. [music_store_product id=”557″] Late afternoon Twenty-first of June Light in the trees, reflected from the water A lake, a breeze,...
Flying Down to Rio
Blog, Post
When Fred Astaire died on June 22, 1987, Ginger Rogers was living alone on her Rogue River ranch in Oregon. Their last movie was almost forty years before (“The Barkleys of Broadway“) and while Fred and Ginger had parted amicably and remained friends, their iconic onscreen romance of the 1930’s was in the distant past....
To Tune a Guitar
Blog, Post
The way to tune a guitar: hold it loose and easily Every flat or sharp tells you where it needs to be Strings should sing like stars, serenade us like the moon and that’s the way a guitar is tuned To listen to a song: come inside, be right here So soon we will...
Arlington
Blog, Post
I was in the high school marching band back in Iowa and every Memorial Day we would march a few miles to a cemetery that lay among cornfields, lonesome willows and elms. The town and the farmers would come out and listen to us play Sousa marches that always seemed too rousing for the occasion....
The Poet and the Pig Farmer
Blog, Post
As a boy, every meal with my family began with Bless us Oh Lord for these thy Gifts We prayed together, heads bowed, and after through Christ Our Lord. Amen we blessed ourselves, opened our eyes and looked to our father who remained in silent darkness for…seconds? minutes? I have no idea I felt nor...