Singing Along the Journey

I will confess -- I have been on vacation.  Those of you following my writings might say, hey, weren't you just in Spain?  That, my friends, was not vacation.  That was work. But the last couple of weeks have been what I call "real vacation"...no true responsibility, no deadlines, no demands greater than walking the dog and doing basic life-maintenance activities such as cooking and laundry.  And in the middle of it all, a week of real vacation enjoying my favorite beach location. But one of the great things about Washington DC and its weather extremes is this -- you certainly know when the seasons change.  And change is definitely…

The "dog-days" of summer are taking a toll on my productivity right now;  starting up any projects in these two weeks between Spain and my next travels has proved, well, impossible.  But I have started working my way through a new book:  Resounding Truth:  Christian Wisdom in the World of Music, by Jeremy S. Begbie (Duke Divinity). My earlier favorite, Music and Theology, had a lot of references to Dr. Begbie's work, so I thought I would read some of his writing myself.  The two books couldn't be more different -- Dr. Begbie's writing is, so far, speaking mostly to my more left brain, academic side, but is fascinating nonetheless. …

Someone pointed out to me today that, I have been home for several days and had not blogged once since my feet landed on this side of the Atlantic.  That was, however, the problem.  My feet and body were here; the rest of me had not yet arrived. [caption id="attachment_406" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Home..."][/caption] I have spent a lot of time travelling back and forth between the U.S. and various European locations in the past 10 years, and it is always the same -- the trip from east to west (in other words, the trip HOME) is always substantially more difficult than the trip from west to east.  But there are…

My darling beagle, Gracie, has a number of tricks she performs on command, but to me, one of the most interesting is her ability to balance a ball on her nose.  I really don't know how she learned this trick.  In the beginning, she could only balance the ball for 10 seconds without moving her head or licking her lips; now, on command, she can easily hold the ball in place for 60 seconds, or longer, until she is told to release it. The command for this trick is:  Focus, Focus, Focus. It just happened...I'm not really sure that she has any idea what "focus" really is, but she does…

When I was waiting in line to make my train reservation the other day, I couldn't help but stair at the markings on the floor of the ticket lounge -- on the floor, between each line and the counter, was a big white line with these words printed in red:  "LINEA DE ESPERA".  With four years of Latin in college and recently 3 years devoted to the study of Italian, well, I couldn't help but see the amusement in the fact that the Spanish verb for "waiting" had the same root as the noun for hope, "esperanza".  And I couldn't help but think about the amount of time we all…