This time between Christmas and Twelfth Night, when the three kings arrived at the stable, is a good time to think about my love of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. In the story, the three kings stop for the night at the house of a poor single […]
The very first blog post I wrote as an LWON regular, in August, 2013, was about singing in a group–how singers’ hearts speed up and slow down in unison, as we breathe in and slowly, tunefully, exhale. At the time I’d just sung on a recording that included the 16th-century motet “Haec Dies,” by William […]
In a fenced-off corner of Washington, D.C, down at the very tip, where the city’s diamond shape meets the Potomac river, is a giant feeding station for gulls. Ok, that’s not its main function. If you have ever pooped in DC, or in parts of four surrounding counties, including Dulles International Airport, you have helped […]
I love walking. This seems like such a silly thing to say, like “I love breathing.” We’re humans, you and me. Walking is our thing. Being bipedal makes us us. But walking is also an activity that I love. It takes me places, it shows me things, it gives me ideas, it calms my nerves. […]
The other day I made a plant friend. My plant friend is some kind of squash. Pumpkin, maybe. It grows along the edge of a community garden that I walk by on my way to work. Like many of those squash-like plants, it uses tendrils to anchor itself, clinging in tight spirals to the fence […]
The equinox is past. At last, fall has come to the northern hemisphere. Some of the ways the new season shows up are obvious. The sunset creeps earlier and earlier as we race toward the winter solstice. The air cools. Pumpkin spice is in every product imaginable. Others are subtler. There’s the spooky Halloween decoration […]
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about eating meat–as in, whether it’s a thing I still want to do–and thought now was a good time to revisit this post from two years ago about whale. Whales are impressive, enormous, beloved animals. Whaling has been banned since the 1980s, but it still goes on in a […]
Two weeks ago, my living room was home to a miraculous transformation. In truth, this transformation was utterly mundane: An insect entered the last stage of its development. It just happened to do it on my dining room table. And it was beautiful.