When I was 52, I checked myself into the Emergency Room thinking I was having a heart attack. I didn’t have chest pains, per se, but I definitely felt “off” with that dreaded “sense of impending doom.” This was exactly the age my grandfather was when he dropped dead from an unknown heart condition. I
One of my great fears in life is an absence of stimulation. And so I subconsciously fill every day with a multitude of plans and goals as a way to hold at bay any existential realities of life’s brevity and of my small place in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think I have
When I set up my itinerary for this 8-day trip, it was immediately clear that the city of Moissac should be a destination, that there was too much to see here in the few waking hours one has while walking every day, and that this should be the place to take my day of rest
There is an inevitability that evolves after a few days on the Chemin.
Terroir, a word which Californians love to toss around to refer to the specific effects of a region’s soil on its production of wine, is of course a French word referring to the land (“terre”). But as we use it today, it refers to the characteristics unique to something, uniquely influenced by multiple aspects of
History is full of heart-ache. I walked to Lauzerte, famous as being one of the “plus belles villes de France,” where people have been living at least since 1000 BCE. This afternoon I walked around this exceptionally lovely city, high on a hill, with sweeping views down verdant valleys all around, stately medieval houses everywhere
In the music world, organists are low-on-the-totem-pole. I first discovered this in Conservatory and found it an interesting reversal of organists’ roles in the period between roughly 1600 – 1900. During that time, virtually all composers were organists (completely the reverse of today), organists had the most sure employment possibility of all musicians (the Church),
I didn’t hear the quote directly, it was related to me later by my mother, but the comment made in passing from my very first mentor would mark my career trajectory. If I recall, my mother had asked him about playing the organ in Duke Chapel, and he responded “Every organist wants to play all
Evolving isn’t talked about much in our world. Pity, that – because I consider it the most important thing about life on this earth. We are born with the seeds required for living a meaningful life: compassion, wisdom, a thirst for knowledge, a desire to live (physical health), a desire for happiness (psychological health), a
In 1884, the Tennessee Supreme Court articulated an employment at will doctrine that would eventually be adapted throughout the entire United States (with the sole exception of Montana). With this doctrine, which soon was written into each states’ laws, an employer could dismiss an employee at any time, for any reason, or for no reason.
One of my favorite opening lines of literature is from Dante’s Divine Comedy – “Midway along the journey of our life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood for I had wandered off from the straight path. … But if I would show the good that came of it, I must talk about
Picture New York in January. Even for New Yorkers, like me, it’s the time of year when everyone is anxious to get away and distance themselves from the bitter cold, wind, messy snow, grey, and general dreariness of the heart of winter. In January 1987, I escaped to San Francisco for a holiday with two
Cathedrals & a Royal Peculiar I’ve always thrived on pressure. Perhaps it’s the residual effects of having worked as a triage secretary in a hospital Emergency Room while in college, or perhaps it’s just my particular constitution. But in the music world, one’s ability, or inability, to remain calm and flexible under extremely stressful situations
A few hours after posting my last blog, I was fired. It wasn’t the first time I’d been fired from a church job; it was actually the fifth! So the psychological pattern that would follow was well-known: shock from being broadsided, anger and desire for vengeance, long aftermath of depression and self-doubt. But this one
Although I don’t recall the actual circumstance, part of our family lore is that when I was three years old, sitting next to my mother at church (Presbyterian Church on the Green in Morristown, NJ), when the organ started to play, I leaned over to her and told her: “When I grow up, I’m going
“Ce n’est pas moi qui fait le chemin, c’est le chemin qui me fait.” (“It’s not me that makes the Way, it’s the Way that makes me.”) Every place we stopped for the night, from gîtes to chambres d’hôte to AirBnBs, all have little sayings scattered around the walls. They’re there to make you
