As I write I have my nose in three Sungold tomato plants.  When I finish this post I’ll put them out for a day of hardening off.  They are emblematic of the journey I take every quarter with The OK Chorale.  If you’re new here, the Chorale is a community choir I started in 1992.   Read the Rest…

The Ballard Writer’s Collective took over Egan’s Jam House last Tuesday night to showcase the considerable literary talent that lurks in unassuming little Ballard. (For those of you unfamiliar with the Puget Sound area, Ballard began life as a Norwegian fishing village but was subsequently swallowed by Seattle. It lives on as a distinctive neighborhood  Read the Rest…

Let me begin by saying I am supposed to be thinking of something else besides the subject of this post. It all began when I made an attempt to get out of some work. When The OK Chorale finishes a quarter’s worth of rehearsals, we sing somewhere in the community.  The Christmas season has a  Read the Rest…

Let’s review all the reasons “Good King Wenceslas” is a great carol. From a piano teacher’s point of view, it’s an easy one for beginners, especially small children who have just started learning piano in September.  By December, “Good King Wenceslas” is a good teaching piece.  That’s about it.  Or that’s what I thought two  Read the Rest…

The fussy, self-important and over-committed woman is not one of the more attractive stock characters in our society but she likes to infiltrate her archetype throughout our ranks during the holidays.  This year, she got a toe-hold in me and was meddling with my nervous and digestive systems in no time at all.  It started  Read the Rest…

I love my Yoga for Over 50 class.  It’s slow and easy going and gives me time to think exactly how I am going get up from that forward bend.  Lately I’ve started having an experience with breathing which I never thought could happen outside of ingesting a Xanax.  I feel as though the breath  Read the Rest…

The full moon is waning and I am following it down the backside of my Christmas schedule.  Three performances were crushed into this past weekend and my book launch was scheduled for Monday, or in other words, on the day I would typically expect to crash.  Just as I was about to cry “uncle,” on  Read the Rest…

I went to a meeting the other night:  the parking lot of the church where The OK Chorale rehearses floods and loses a quarter of its parking lot every time it rains.  The church got a grant from the city to correct the drainage problem.  As a community member representing an organization that uses the  Read the Rest…

Being a musician, I am used to stage mothers, spotlight whores, and microphone monsters, all stock characters at lessons, rehearsals, and performances.  Being a teacher who often runs the show, I exercise a certain amount of control over the egos that show up to strut and fret.  But here’s a tale of an ego so  Read the Rest…