When I tried to picture the logistics of the recent Summer Musicale featuring both The OK Chorale and All Present my mind tended to shut down. Working with either group can feel like trying to juggle Jell-O cubes. For this event we sang at the Community Hall at the Phinney Neighborhood Center.  It has great  Read the Rest…

For my annual pilgrimage to Walla Walla, I decided to fly instead of drive. I hadn’t flown since 2009 so I was rusty on the procedure. I scored an expedited pass so I didn’t have to take off my shoes, but the water bottle I meant to leave in the car was still in my  Read the Rest…

I almost wet myself the first time I read the denouement of Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities and I still love the pacing and tension between the comic and the terrifying in that scene. This book is an old favorite, and one nurtured by a beloved high school English teacher. I can  Read the Rest…

All Present, a song circle for people living with ESML (Early Stage Memory Loss) is in its second quarter. Almost everyone from the spring returned. It’s a peculiar feature of this group that if I hadn’t been told every one of these singers had some form of dementia, I wouldn’t have known. Some of them  Read the Rest…

My Little Dorrit story begins months before I ever launched myself on my current Summer of Dickens project. I was browsing in the library to see if there was a book on tape not by an author whose paperbacks could insulate a McMansion. I saw Little Dorrit. “Oh. Little Dorrit. I’ll try that.” There were  Read the Rest…