“Ce n’est pas moi qui fait le chemin, c’est le chemin qui me fait.” (“It’s not me that makes the Way, it’s the Way that makes me.”) Every place we stopped for the night, from gîtes to chambres d’hôte to AirBnBs, all have little sayings scattered around the walls. They’re there to make you … Read more
Rocamadour is a place of legend. It emerges, high upon a cliff, from fog and clouds, and seems to brood over the surrounding valley like a mother hen over her chicks. Historically one of the main four pilgrimage spots in Christendom (alongside Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela), this UNESCO site continues to draw spiritual … Read more
On the surface of it, the phrase “never again” doesn’t make sense. How can something that doesn’t exist (“never”) happen again? But in the context of the appropriate predicate (such as a killing) the logic of the statement becomes clear, taking on an urgency of exasperation, a demand for an entire society to examine its … Read more
There is a law of diminishing returns that states that a benefit will require an ever increasing input of energy to maintain a fixed result. In the United States, in early 2017, we witnessed a casual amount of bullshitting by our nominally-elected president. The outrage and shock by the citizenry was high. But today, after … Read more
Seven and a half weeks may not seem like a long time, but when the entire time is spent packing and unpacking a suitcase, it is a weighty time, full of expectation and observation, elation and frustration. I write this on the day my seven and a half week trip comes to a close, the … Read more
I can’t recall how many times it happened, but it seems to me that most of my grade school years, through high school, had an English class which started with the assignment to write a short essay on “What I did last summer.” Long before we could even envision a life in which Facebook could … Read more
I am part-way through my summer tour of ten concerts in Europe, having already played in the cathedral in Mainz and the Abbey Church in Steinfeld and am now aboard the train to Braunschweig where I’ll play a concert tomorrow in the late afternoon (le quatorze juillet). George and I spent five days of honest-to-goodness … Read more
Virgin Gorda is one of those places that most people have never heard of – which is precisely the reason that I love going there. Nestled into the British Virgin Islands, and forming a border between the Atlantic and the Caribbean, this corner of the West Indies has been a favorite place for me for … Read more