How like a winter has this quarter been, like a winter.* It’s been unseasonably cold and has gone on for too long. Taxes loomed over everything, as always until one gets them done, making January even more dreary than it already is. God bless the Capricorns, they can’t help it. I wasn’t especially excited about  Read the Rest…

The framework to this post is that here in the Pacific Northwest there is unrelenting heat. We’ve had no rain. Temperatures are in the high 80s and low 90s, which for some of us is unbearable. We are not an air-conditioner culture. The most we have is an AC sticking out of a bedroom window.  Read the Rest…

On this last day of a moody year, I think it would be a good exercise for me to review all the good things about the spin cycle of the last month, otherwise known as the holiday season. The holidays begin in October when I start the fall quarter of the OK Chorale and All  Read the Rest…

I’m up on Whidbey Island writing a novel.  I have no idea how to write a novel.  This novel actually began in 1997 with a very long short story that I thought would develop itself.  I thought a novel would spool from my imagination without my having to think about anything like structure or an  Read the Rest…

“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world, which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.” Rebecca Solnit (Thank you, Jenni, for this quotation) I am no stranger to panic.  I suffered for nearly 20 years with panic disorder.  A counter-intuitive  Read the Rest…

Last May when I was two weeks away from my trip to England, I started a folder called “Stuff to Do When I Get Back” and began tossing notes quite liberally into it.  After spending an idyllic June in England, I came home to my life, which includes wonderful friends and neighbors, my two cats  Read the Rest…

Memorial Day Weekend: a signpost to vacation like pausing my library holds, arranging on-line bill pay, another storm of cottonwood pollen and another Northwest Folk Life Festival for the annals of The OK Chorale.  Our first official appearance at Folk Life, fifteen years ago, was on the Intiman Stage under dramatic lighting and it gave  Read the Rest…

I yelled at the Chorale. In 23 years of directing the Chorale I never remember yelling at them. I am often irritated by them but I don’t let that show. I’m a singer and I know how to take a deep breath. I often raise my voice over them to get their attention, but that’s  Read the Rest…

The OK Chorale lost one of our long time singers three days ago. Quite unexpectedly, Hal, our resident funnyman, died in his sleep. He was cheeky, irreverent, and a reliable bass with a lovely voice. When I got the news, I went trawling through my blog posts to find the ones he had starred in.  Read the Rest…

My two choirs began last week. I’m not sure what prescience caused me to be more than usually prepared with the music, the schedule and the quarter routine but I shudder to think what the first rehearsals would have been like if I hadn’t been. The OK Chorale has been singing for 23 years. It’s  Read the Rest…