In my last blog post I was a week away from the Just Off Broadview Music Festival and more or less losing my mind with trying to control its outcome.  If you recall, my friend Mary-Ellis had counseled me to do something else, to think about something else.  I did.  I started reading the psychoanalyst  Read the Rest…

“A sad tale’s best for winter.” With King Lear still in my system, it was hard to find a nook in which to lodge The Winter’s Tale. Then I didn’t think I had anything much to say about it, but something came to me during a church service.  First, here’s the sad tale for winter:  Read the Rest…

One thing I have to say about King Lear is that if you watch the play on DVD, it doesn’t enhance the experience to be eating grapes during the eye gouging scene. It’s a difficult play beyond some of the barbarous and frankly crazy scenes.  I read it twice and watched two different versions of  Read the Rest…

“I am sorry– the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours.” A quote from my friend Jim. Conversation with friends is near the top of my list of life’s pleasures.  Even when topics get heated, there’s humor and a reasonable confidence that I am still loved. And since I live in the Scandinavia  Read the Rest…

Here in Seattle we have had a week of lovely early summer weather.   It was warm enough to sit under my magnificent 40 year old lilac trees at six in the morning, drink tea and read.  I was so engrossed in the book by Stephen Greenblatt called The Swerve that I read it straight through,  Read the Rest…

It’s the Christian holy week and I’ve been musing over my changing beliefs about Jesus, the point man for Christianity, the one whose mind so many people profess to know.  Actually we don’t understand what’s in our own minds, let alone anyone else’s.   But since I am one of two people who know the  Read the Rest…

The subject is women’s bodies.  I had a moment the other day that would have been welcome 45 years ago, and I have been thinking about it ever since.  The prep work for the moment began as I was reading Tina Fey’s book Bossypants which was as funny and lively as I expected it to  Read the Rest…

My blog topics are a result of little frissons I get in my solar plexus.  Something funny happens and it laughs down there.  Or something thrills when I feel passionate about an idea.  Or I get triggered by something that upsets me so much I want to pretend it doesn’t. I got one of those  Read the Rest…

This week I finished a painting inspired by a photograph of a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins, and Eugene, my first little soul-mate cat.  He’s the cat who liked raisins, broccoli and ear wax –I don’t need to get into how that came about—and who played my answering machine when he was bored. I wanted riots  Read the Rest…

I grew up with a religious education that pretty much killed religion for me so of course, I ended up being a church musician.  I fought against it and actually got fired from a church job once because I didn’t have the outward behavior they expected of staff.  One of the many complaints against me  Read the Rest…