Winston and the late Edwina and were five year old cats when Freud and Artemis joined the household.  Just six weeks old, they were stray pieces of fluff, one orange and white, one jet black; with flat baby noses, pink tongues and soft paws.  They pounced on anything that moved and stalked single grains of  Read the Rest…

A few years ago I spent two inert hours sitting at the duck pond on the Whitman College campus in Walla Walla.  It was 109 degrees which is why I was inert.  The two hours produced a poem. The poem was printed in this quarter’s Whitman College alumni magazine. Lakem Duckem gets its name from  Read the Rest…

It was a six Xanax quarter with the OK Chorale.  They always pull it off in the end but three pieces made me wonder if this was the quarter when we would break our streak: I didn’t know much about Abba.  My popular music education stopped in 1972. (See https://www.elenalouiserichmond.com/2011/03/piano-students-part-2-the-adolescents/ )  Then one of my  Read the Rest…

This is a curmudgeonly blog so if you don’t want to hear me whine, have a look at the new photo on the teaching page of this web site.  Doesn’t that look cozy and delightful?  My nose is not that big. Ok, here it comes:  I hate daylight savings time.  I have always hated it  Read the Rest…

Robert didn’t want to take piano lessons.   His brother had been with me for three years and it took Robert a month to decide the mystique was off.  Two years and eleven months to go.  The boys’ mother had decreed that her sons would each have three years of piano lessons as part of their  Read the Rest…

I taught pre-school for four years when I was in my 20’s and had the energy. I love those ages, but it’s been a while since I worked with a child under the age of five in private lessons. Luciana is 4.  At her first lesson, she exploded into the house at the end of  Read the Rest…

Perry Mason. It was the Law and Order of its day.  It ran from 1957 to 1966 with a dramatic theme song by Fred Steiner. It’s a world of pre-furnished apartments and twin beds.  Everyone has a little drinks cart or bar in their front room.  Everyone drinks martinis or highballs. Men and women meet  Read the Rest…