Advent, my favorite season of the year, started today. Fittingly enough, I had a technician come and adjust the action of the harpsichord...it still needs tuning but once I get some batteries for the tuner that should be relatively easy. After having this little 1729 Goujon bentside copy for 4 years, I am finally making time to start practicing ( Read more... )

It's snowing. It gets dark at 4:30. I still have to take the bird feeders in at dusk because the local black bear still hasn't gone into hibernation and I am not prepared to lose yet another expensive set of feeders. The birds are so used to me now that they hover around me as I put in another load of sunflower seeds or a fresh cake of suet. We ( Read more... )

No, this is not the novel by Antonia White (which I highly recommmend). Just an unexpected blast of cold air in Western MA this weekend, including snow flurries this morning and last night with a little touch of freezing rain ( Read more... )

Where to begin? It's been something like 12 years since I wrote anything but now, amid the Covid-19 epidemic, with work cut to a couple of days a week and spending most of my time out in the country, why not resurface ( Read more... )

It's been ages. After a busy summer, hot and wet but not in a good way, civilized weather has returned, apples are ripe, the zucchini vines are dying (I hope), the dahlias are still producing, there is almost frost at night, and the hills of western MA are putting on a show as they usually do ( Read more... )

I had an interesting experience the other night, listening to the Harvard Radio station's program of historical recordings. The program included pioneering 20th century recorded performances of Monteverdi's madrigals, made at a time when Monteverdi was very far from being the household word that he now is, at least in Baroque music circles. The ( Read more... )

Well actually, spring hasn't exactly arrived in Western Franklin County yet. But the 2 plus feet of snow out in Shelburne have really started to recede and portions of the garden beds have become visible. And as usual, that means that ( Read more... )

Last weekend, driving over the mountain from Readsboro to Searsburg on the way to visit my mother in the hospital in Bennington, VT, I suddenly found myself surrounded on both sides of VT route 8 by trees encased in ice. The sun shone brilliantly on this forest of glass, and I was so struck by its beauty that I had to wake Bill up, even though he ( Read more... )

More than eight weeks away from LJ! I hadn't realized just how long until I got a nudge from Franco (London67) who actually missed my contributions ( Read more... )

Every now and then I realize that a particular poem means more to me than I first thought. I am revisiting Heinrich Heine's poems as so unforgettably set by Schumann in his "Dichterliebe". This "poet's love" song cycle charts an unhappy love affair and all of the poems are memorable. Schumann's sensitivity to words and moods is unrivalled, and his ( Read more... )