12-16-07 | The first rule of writing is to use fewer words than you think you need to. I violate this rule every time I put my fingers on the keyboard.

12-13-07 | Last month, the day before Thanksgiving, I was pumping gas into my car, or trying to, anyway. After a few tries, the gizmo still wasn’t working. I was annoyed. I turned to step over the hose and head into the station to get an attendant. Suddenly I heard an eerie sound: it sounded just like the thwack! of a baseball and bat making contact.

12-4-07 | I’ve just spent a week, more or less, doing what is for me the hardest part of writing: starting.

11-30-07 | One summer, when I was a kid (maybe seven, or eight) I read Fred Gipson’s 1956 classic Old Yeller. When I got to the end, when Travis Coates has to shoot his beloved dog, I cried and cried.

11-20-07 | “Musician, mentor, friend.” That was the headline of a story in the Nov. 14 edition of the Rochester, NY Democrat & Chronicle. The story continued: “Noted as a scholar and a gentleman . . . the late Alfred Mann is credited with bringing attention to early music. As brilliant as he was in his field, Mann also was gifted in the art of kindness.”

11-12-07 | I remember 19 very well: it is a potent threshold, a time shimmering with the halo of possibility. If you can keep that halo alive, then in a very real way, you’re always nineteen.

11-9-07 | When I was nineteen, I was offered a position as composition instructor at a university. To my dad, a musicologist and college professor, this must have seemed a dream come true.

10-31-07 | For years I have believed that the most empowering thing one can do is to freely declare, “I was wrong.” I believe this is one of those acts that can elevate one’s character and ennoble one’s life as almost nothing else can. ¶ Why is it we cling so ardently to being right?

10-6-07 | I’ve had more response from my last post, “Lessons from My Mom on Staying Young Forever,” than just about any other post I’ve written.

9-30-07 | A little while back, I posted an article inspired by my dad on the Zen of MLM site. In honor of my mom’s birthday this coming Thursday (she would have been 78), here is a piece inspired by her.