Suprise Me

“Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there's no more music in them”                                                                                                  Louis  Armstrong Read More

Migraine I must have been 11 or 12 the first time it hit me. I was sitting in the back seat with my friend Paula as her father drove us to a friend’s birthday party when I suddenly had a horrible nauseous headache.  I don’t remember what happened after that but I assume Paula’s dad… Read More

How I progressed from zero cooking to pretty good. Read More

Honest Work            Working as a carpenter was the most honest work I have ever done. In the beginning, I saved for the family that hadn’t yet materialized. Later, I left the house treading softly with babies snuffling familiar scents. My wife always got up with me, made me breakfast, handed me a lunch. Those… Read More

Random thoughts on why I’m a procrastinator. Read More

(Excerpted from my book, The Long Pivot Home: Based on a true story of love and loss in Oklahoma.) For five years, from 1995-2000, I had been trying to complete a giant pivot in my life, charting a new course away from the loss of my beloved wife Selena, then away from my experience in… Read More

I made mental notes and subtle comparisons and contrasts between the Beatles, the Dave Clark 5, the Kinks, the Moody Blues, the Searchers, the Zombies. I Read More

Then: Kneeling down in front of the ironing board to iron my hair, so that it will be pin straight, as the fashion dictates. Sometimes burning my left hand (which is holding the hairbrush) with the tip of the iron in my right hand, because I can’t see what I’m doing. Now: What’s an ironing board? Electric… Read More

Then, in the fall of 1963, an amazing thing happened.  The State Department, through the United States Information Service (USIS), sponsored a goodwill tour of American jazz musicians.  None other than the Duke Ellington Band—yes, that one!--made an astoundingly extensive tour that, according to google, went from New York to Damascus, Amman, Jerusalem, Beirut, Kabul, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Colombo, Kandy, Dacca, Lahore, Karachi, Teheran, Isfahan, Abadan, Baghdad, Beirut and Ankara.  You may have noticed Dacca in that list. Read More

On my 70th birthday my brother welcomed me to my eighth decade! While he was accurate, that declaration gave me pause. The summer after my senior year in high school I was in a local show, written, directed and produced by friends (including two who went on to conceive MyRetrospect decades later). There was some… Read More