Orel Family

This past Friday evening at a recording studio in Birmingham, about 50 people gathered to witness Stewart Francke and his band record a DVD. The invitees included those who had contributed to a kickstarter campaign for Stewart's excellent new CD, Love Implied . The session, however, wasn't simply a rehash of the album tracks, but a bit of a career retrospective. Spanning two full sets at 23 songs, it included several that I had never seen him play before; songs that hopefully will have some listeners checking out some of his earlier work. While the main focus of the set was on tracks from Stewart's last 3 albums ( What We Talk Of...When We Talk , Heartless World , and Love Implied ), a key highlight was a rare performance of a composition that predated those albums: Letter From 10 Green , written as a letter to his children when Stewart was a patient at Karmanos Cancer Center, at a time when he didn't know if he would live to return home. It is difficult and person...

15.5 seconds remained in the second period. At center ice, Yale's Clinton Bourbonais banged his stick against the ice several times as he waited for the face-off. Just a few minutes earlier, Bourbonais had taken a bad penalty, giving opposing Quinnipiac an extended two-man advantage. But Yale had survived it unscathed, and looking toward center ice, I smiled. Bourbonais looked ready. Despite an almost frenetic pace, including extended two-man advantages for each team, and nearly 50 total shots on goal, the National Championship game between Yale and Quinnipiac had yet to produce a goal. Bourbonais won the face-off. Yale's defense played the puck in to the Quinnipiac end. I allowed myself a brief sigh of relief. Yale appeared to be feeling the effects of the game's pace, and the puck being down in the other end meant there wouldn't be any late bad surprises; it'd be no worse than tied going in to the third period. The puck came to Quinnipiac's All-Amer...

March 23, 2012: Extreme heat caused cherry trees to bloom a full month early, dooming the crop. In March 26, 2012, I wrote a blog piece titled, Cooked and frozen - the looming disaster for our tree fruit.   Due to a ridiculously warm March and the near inevitability that temperatures would return to normal, I could foresee the impact: "Tomorrow evening, the low temperature here is predicted to be 28 degrees. Assuming that prediction -- or another one for later in the week -- is accurate, our cherry crop will be wiped out. We have no rational or affordable defenses against it." Sure enough, a frost on March 27th -- it got down to 27 degrees here -- wiped out the cherry crop. What a difference this year! Oh, we've had freezes. 10 of the last 11 nights, including three that were colder than that coldest evening last year. But we haven't been outside to run water to the trees. Haven't even looked. Because this year, the trees haven't bloomed. The hollyhocks ...

I went to Yale . In 165 prior blog posts I've never mentioned that, but it is true. Boola Boola. I played in the band at Yale. In the winter, we had the Yale Winter Wonder Band (an offshoot of the more celebrated Yale Precision Marching Band ); we'd follow the hockey team around. At home games, we'd take the ice between the 2nd and 3rd periods, and play a mini-show before the Zamboni came out. I got a car before junior year, and drove band members and instruments to Dartmouth and Harvard and Brown and Providence, and, most memorably, to Cornell. I'd drive, and the backseat passengers would make signs to put in the windows for people in other cars to see. The signs weren't always G-rated, but only one or two people actually tried to run us off the road. During my time in the YPMB. The hat is long gone, along with the hair. Our hockey team was always good, but, it seemed every year we'd come in 9th place in the 17-team ECAC, and only the top 8 made the ...