Christmas Celebration

Christmas Celebration

Christmas Eve This special ‘eve’ning is filled with expectation – and stereotypically, frantic, last-minute preparations. The longstanding joke is that parents would be up all night, assembling gifts. Or the chef in the house would be checking and double checking that...
A Piano Man Speaks

A Piano Man Speaks

Mrs. Mullin’s assignment for my practicing piano progressed from 20 minutes a day to 30, then 45, then 60 over the 5 years I went to her for lessons.  After several years away from lessons, and now a piano major in college, Dr. Mead’s practice assignment was 3 hours a...
Better than an e-reader

Better than an e-reader

Over 134,000,000 books (according to a brief online search) have been published since the invention of the Gutenberg press in 1450, and, on average, 2,200,000 more books are published annually. I think I’ve read hundreds of books in my lifetime – many novels, some...
The Birth of Wonder

The Birth of Wonder

I invite you to invest a few minutes of your day, basking in the following songs on this Christmas, Day 6:  Gather Round, Ye Children Come Away in a Manger Mary giving birth to Jesus was a wholly natural event – painful, long, complicated, messy, exhausting – and yet...
The Present as Present

The Present as Present

It’s what’s after the big move, with the boxing and planning and repairing and cleaning and shuffling and decluttering and staging and coping with an ever-emptying house and ever-disappearing essentials (but once that box is taped shut, ain’t nobody opening it). It’s...