Back To The Beginning

September 18, 2022
The annual return to school and work is underway; a transition that lasts several weeks, ramping up to full employment again. It's hard to give up the freedom of Summer for the schedule of Fall but I have been really enjoying my reentry this year; I feel very fortunate to have such a fun job, playing music with enthusiastic kids! I have been teaching for 20 years, but I still strive to do it better every class, learning from my mistakes and always seeking new approaches to stimulating a love of music in my students! After attending a Kodály conference…

Inspiration!

April 25, 2022
I have just enjoyed a phenomenal 10 days of music! First was a trip to Nashville--we left the kids with grandma and spent four days in Nashville, Tennessee with eight of our closest friends. It was a true music safari, and I was blown away by the quantity and quality of musicians we heard. The main strip, Broadway, is known as The Honky Tonk Highway and it lives up to its name and reputation, with live music pouring out from every floor of its multi-storied bars from morning to late-night. Some venues, like Robert's Western World, focus on the country…

Mommom

April 4, 2022
She became a grandmother when I was born and when I first made noises, I dubbed her Mommom (and her husband Daddad, of course). Summers at her house, Asticou, on Cape Cod and holidays at her home in Bethesda, Maryland was ample time spent with the matriarch (and her four sons’ families). When I went to college, the time together dwindled, sometimes to just a day or two in the summer. When Daddad died almost 17 years ago, I lost my connection to her almost completely; I moved to Brooklyn, and started my own life. But when I had my…

Books

March 8, 2022
I have a few pockets in my schedule when I get to sit leisurely with a book and I have gotten through some really good ones over the past few months! Overstory by Richard Powers. An incredible work about intertwining roots and purpose. My appreciation of trees grew infinitely. How It Ends by Chris Impey. Basic comprehension of Time and Space for feeble minds like mine. Sum by David Eagleman. Postulates on the afterlife shifting perspective on the nowlife. Storm by George R. Stewart. Written in 1941, describing a storm forming in the Pacific that barrels through North America. Rudimentary…

On to 2022

December 22, 2021
I skied yesterday! For the first time in 9 months I schussed the alpine slopes, with a wonderful solo day at Hunter Mountain. I had never skied at Hunter before and they are reporting a 1" total snowfall on the season at this point, but there was plenty of terrain open and the conditions were solid; it was a beautiful sunny day with zero crowds on big, fast lifts and I rode from 1st chair to last chair for 40,408 vertical feet and a max speed of 55.3 MPH. I look forward to more of that soon! The Beatles documentary,…

Renewal

June 17, 2021
Last night, we had a movie date: dinner and "In The Heights" at the local Nitehawk Cinema. We have watched countless movies at home during the pandemic, but returning to a theater was monumental! Sharing the experience with strangers, laughing and cheering while being served delicious food and beverages, felt like a real return to the community that I love and missed over the past 15 months; I look forward to more concerts and theatre in the near future! I have shifted into summer mode, with reduced work schedule and expanded travel plans. Vaccination rates are high and COVID levels…

Vaccination Nation

March 15, 2021
On Sunday we celebrated Alaina's 40th birthday, marking not only the day of her birth, but also the one year anniversary of our lockdown quarantine when we moved to the Land with no idea about the future. We lived there for about four months then returned to our beloved Brooklyn home and have remained in partial lockdown with limited school and work. It has been a difficult situation but we have been lucky in many ways. From the beginning of this pandemic, we held great hope in the development of a vaccine that would end it; in January, we upgraded…

Biden/Harris 2020

November 7, 2020
What a glorious day! It was an absolutely gorgeous morning, 70 and sunny, so we made a family excursion to Prospect Park. We have been making almost daily journeys there for the past several months; Ivy and Miles love riding their bikes and we have a well-established route around the lake, which I have been really enjoying on my new longboard! Today was truly special and I will never forget exactly where on our loop we were the moment Alaina said to me: "They're about to call it..." and instantly the entire Nethermead erupted in euphoric hoots and joyful hollers.…

I Skied Today!

October 11, 2020
October 10 (Andrew's Birthday!) Earliest start to my season ever! It was at a mall in New Jersey, but it was with my kids and the snow was consistent and the turns felt GREAT! Big Snow American Dream has been a fantasy teased by reality for over a decade; a derelict development dead and dormant after the 2008 financial crisis. A giant metal sloped barn, rising several hundred feet above the parking lot it shares with MetLife Stadium (where the 0-5 Jets were losing to the Cardinals in front of 82,500 empty seats), chilled to 28 degrees and covered in…

Homeward Bound

July 18, 2020
We are headed home to Brooklyn in 24 hours! We packed up hastily and evacuated the city on March 14, as the virus began spinning out of control. There was very little understanding of what was happening at that time and it became clear over the next few weeks that the city was infected much more than anybody realized; peak hospitalizations and deaths would occur about a month later, which we watched in horror from seclusion in Warwick. Fortunately, the numbers have diminished steadily in the city since then, although they have risen almost everywhere else in this country as…