Musical Wanderer

I never cried reading a newspaper.  Until today. Last night we screamed when Howie Kendrik's home run clanged off the foul pole (I wonder how many people in DC will use that sound as their phone's ring tone.).  Robin and I kissed and hugged the cats and each other at the last out.  We fell asleep in bed saying "The Nats won the World Series." to each other in the dark as the cats made themselves comfortable on the bed. This morning I put on a Nationals cap and went out to buy a Washington Post and have a cup of coffee at Hype Cafe, the home of the best cup of coffee on Capitol Hill, perhaps in all of Washington, DC.  The woman serving the coffee and I smiled and laughed about the headline on the newspaper.  Then I sat down and started to read Thomas Boswell's column and other articles about the game. And I started to cry. I had watched all the games, so it wasn't as if anything in any of the articles was news to me.  Sure it's fun to relive the ...

This weekend we went to the 2019 US Gaelic Athletic Association Finals out in Leesburg, Virginia.  After traveling in Ireland last summer, Robin and our friends Kay and Florence were curious about the Gaelic sports after meeting someone in Belfast who actually came to Maryland to play Gaelic sports.  We found info for the championships held here last weekend and we drove out on Sunday, inviting a friend of mine from college who lived in Leesburg to join us.  We had no idea what to expect, though we were heartened to see Guinness would be served. WOW.  Hurling is my new favorite sport.  Gaelic football was fun too, but the hurling was really exciting and compelling, especially as we learned more about it. Starting the ball (called a sliotar) is a bit of a scramble as in hockey.  In hurling there are sticks (called a hurl or hurley) but no protection other than helmets unlike hockey (helmets have only been required in hurling since 2010).   Fol...

You see them everyday.  Waiting for an Uber, at the center of a crowd in bars and restaurants, at the market.  They are different. They are DC's perfect people.  Well pedigreed, charming, successful, they are a breed apart.  They are truly America's aristocracy, the people who the MAGA folks resent, the folks who can't help but win. But who are they really?  A little bit of research found the following data on the folks who are now everywhere in town, even your favorite breakfast place, hardware store, or Mexican restaurant. 1. When they were conceived, their dad used only one sperm, he was that confident. 2.  They were born preloaded with 1000 friends on facebook, perfect SAT scores, and genes for phenomenal future tits and penises. 3.  As infants and toddlers, they never cried, never puked, always slept soundly.  Managed their portfolios well too. 4.  Steve Jobs sent them their first Mac laptops. 5.  Entry into preschool...

Handel's Messiah .  Both disdained for its popularity and loved for its beauty by musicians, it is a rite of passage for singers.  I've had a fun and lucky history with it, going back nearly 40 years.  My first meeting with it was singing "And the Glory of the Lord" at Christmas Vespers at Lafayette College in Colton Chapel in 1980.  Another bass, Juan Jarrett, and I danced away in the back row as we sang, drawing joking ridicule from friends in the audience.  My next meeting with Messiah was on a larger scale, four years later at Washington National Cathedral, with 300 singers (the Maryland Chorus and the Cathedral Choral Society), 100 baroque instrumentalists (the Smithsonian Concerto Grosso), soloists from Germany, England, Norway, and Finland, all under the direction of the former conductor of the National Symphony, Antal Dorati.  The performances were a bicentennial recreation of a 1785 performance at Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 100th annive...

Vatican City - February 13, 2018 In an effort to combine the penance of the first day of Lent with the sentiment of love associated with Valentine's Day, Pope Francis has asked the College of Cardinals to encourage clergy around the world to change the design of the imposition of ashes tomorrow from a cross to a heart.  "I hope this will remind people both of the brevity of live and the love of God," said the pontiff. Pope Francis's new ash imposition design People were receptive to the change.  Some were reported to be canceling dinner plans to get the new design of ashes.  "I'm glad the church is getting with the times.  Several hundred years of the same thing was getting old," said Maria Torres of Sacramento, CA.  The change was reported to be well received by Unitarians, who found the traditional iconography of the cross to be not inclusive of non-Christian faith traditions. Response of clergy was mixed.  "It will be like I'm givin...

The Republicans have had seven years to figure out an alternative to the ACA. They've had time to run the numbers on different systems to support premiums, based on location, age, health care options available. They've had time to explore other ways of providing healthcare to as many people as possible with insurance companies, health care providers, and medical professionals. They've had time to research methods  that fund the medicaid system that kept costs down but still provided access to healthcare. They've had time to work with Democrats on ideas that could have worked better than the current system, even single payer worked out with a consortium of insurance companies. So what did they do? They whined for seven years. They had show votes to repeal the ACA dozens of times. They promised they had something better. The legislation they came up with bore all the careful...

When my mom and dad were born, a woman couldn't vote in the US.  A black man theoretically could vote, but his right to do so was usually denied, usually, alas, by Democrats in the south.  A woman and man of different races could not marry in most of the US.  Folks from poor backgrounds like my folks didn't really have much chance of going to college to change their lot in life.  If someone without money got seriously ill, they usually died, like my grand-uncle's young wife and their two-year old child in the flu epidemic of 1918. A little over 40 years later when I was born, a woman could vote in the US.  Barriers to black folk voting would be torn down a few years later with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, laws pushed through by more visionary Democrats.  A few years later Medicare and Medicaid programs were enacted by Democrats so people without means had access to health care.    My father, who grew up on...