I'd give it 4 1/2 stars. Critics say "don't miss it if you can." And so on. It's been a good year. Yes, some imperfections. But I am a very lucky person. Let us count the ways. No, let's not. Let's just appreciate them. Splendid to more or less end the year at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. "The Pianist of Willesden Lane" hit so many notes...forget the pun...that I'm still pleasantly confused. But is it art? Something like this question occurs to me. Which is quickly superseded by another. Read more [...]

It's beginning to look a lot like...California should about this time of year. The crew installing new shrubs and lawns and decorative walls at the apartments up the street have stripped down to their undershirts. Yes, it's vest time. Although for Jane it's vestment time, with the services this Christmas eve, and again tomorrow morning, Christmas Day. Hard, intense work, and she is utterly into it. Meanwhile, my work here is completed. With two retail forays under my belt by 11 AM, really there was Read more [...]

Something good will come of this, I keep telling myself. But as in much of life, that 'something good' is often obscure...elusive...or, let us be frank, dubious. Technology made me employable. It's that simple. Yes, I am not remuneratively employed these days. Doesn't matter. Technology is more important than ever. Fortunately, in a general way, it gets better, technology does. Each version of my voice recognition system truly improves upon its predecessor. Which, like heroin, breeds users. Addicted Read more [...]

Well, I am looking for something to do, aren't I? So what else but to journey into San Francisco, turn up at a Union Square restaurant and have a chat with a local NGO. They are not shooting victims, the two women I met with. But they are progressives, and at home in the not-for-profit organizational world. It's good that we weren't all victims, those of us enjoying our Italian lunch and talking gun policy. We can't all get teary over this stuff. Well, we can, but it's probably ineffective. One Read more [...]

I know that life is working for me...when things aren't. That's the test, how I absorb and recover from setbacks. Especially the ones that might be deemed self-created. Take the Menlo Park chorus. I never practice enough, do I? Each concert arrives like a surprise. The rehearsal period stretches over three months, but I procrastinate, have a little go at this song, dabble at that song...all of this accomplished by computer, where the chorus website presents a sort of follow-the-bouncing-ball version Read more [...]

Homeward. And on this freezing Phoenix morning...a cold front, not exactly the PR image of the Lower Sonoran Desert...has weather in the bottom 50s. And due to my own standoffishness, I haven't quite lined up help. Either my sister or brother in law would have been perfectly happy to stop by my hotel and assist with shoes and socks. But I couldn't quite ask. And so, after struggling with my trousers...some neuromuscular complication making it hard to support one leg with the other, probably because Read more [...]