Orel Family

A slow ballad plays. A soft soprano sax solo plays over the music. Then Bruce Springsteen sings: "River blood red with the years. You can flood this valley with a thousand tears. Wash away all that's been found. But you'll never wash away the sound of the stray bullet that shot my baby down." What is it really  about? Hell if I know. Was his baby shot point blank? Is the singer certain what's going on in his life? Or does he just ride by night and travel in fear? On Friday Bruce's latest box set album retrospective, The Ties That Bind: The River Collection will be released officially. The collections have grown ever more expansive: A decade ago, for the 30th anniversary collection for Born To Run: 30th Anniversary Edition it seemed a miracle to include a full video concert from England. But there were no outtakes included. Five years ago, the box set for Darkness On The Edge Of Town included a 2 disc collection of outtakes in addition to various video ge...

A few weeks ago, The Detroit Jewish News published its annual "Cap and Gown" issue. This issue has a section with the names and faces of all area students who sent their information to the newspaper; generally, this consisted of the high school name, some information about their activities in high school, and what they're doing next. Although the list is by no means comprehensive -- many families may not subscribe to the paper or, like us, may simply have forgotten -- it seemed to me to provide an interesting slice of the local community. Between the listings in The Jewish News and a handful whose information I have because we know the families, I found I had records for 283 students. Of these, 20 have not listed a college, either because they listed only a gap year in Israel, or because they listed themselves as "undecided." I decided to take a look at the other 263. Of the 263 students with a listed decision, 99% are headed off to a 4-year (or more) college...

Roger McGuinn at the Michigan Theater, May 16, 2015 How often do we get to see the master and arguably his greatest interpreter back-to-back? Not too often, I don't think. So off we were Friday to see Bob Dylan at the Fox Theater in Detroit , and Roger McGuinn at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor the next evening. Dylan, of course, has been charting his own path as a performer for... well, forever. These days, he's not altering his setlists, so a quick look at his most recent performances on his official website  -- even though it was two weeks out of date -- gave a fairly precise idea of what he was going to play. I was "busted" for taking this snapshot of Bob and the band. As with the last time I saw Dylan at the Fox in 2012 , the stage was dark, dark, dark. "Photography is Strictly Prohibited" signs were posted approximately every 3 feet, and the staff were instructed to enforce just as strictly (I was "busted" after taking a pictu...

Getting high with a little help from a friend. Last things first: Paul McCartney played with Ringo Starr last night, and there was an echo of magic in the air. Just before that, Stevie Wonder and John Legend combined to create unforgettable performances of Bill Withers's most famous songs. The induction ceremony lasted 5 hours, this was the first I've attended. These high points in the wee hours will stay with me for a long time. Beck arrives and greets fans.  Beck performed "Satellite of Love" in tribute to Lou Reed. Cleveland Public Hall hosted the ceremony; as several speakers noted, the venerable hall hosted The Beatles in 1964. From the windows of the narrow hallway outside our seating area, we could watch the stars coming in. Steve Van Zandt. .. Green Day ... Ringo Starr... Beck ... Stevie Wonder. Several fans unfurled a huge "Ringo We Love You!" banner (which he acknowledged later from the stage), and produced some vintage screams w...

Live Long and Prosper. What does that even mean? Living long is not living forever, and prosperity -- however it is defined -- is reserved for the living. As a benediction, it seems entirely illogical. Yet there it is, the single most recognizable line from the most iconic character in television history. I have considered that line a bit since Leonard Nimoy passed away before the weekend. I also considered, as I often do, my own attachment to that show and that character. As a child, I was small, shy, emotional, and a math nerd. Sometimes I was on the wrong end of a playground bully, and sometimes I watched my tears fall. I felt myself to be an "other." At age 9, I made a vow to myself to show no emotion -- at least not in school -- no matter what. I would contemplate everything, and stay calm no matter what. For two years, maybe more, my school life included not so much as a single smile. During this period, I discovered Star Trek .  It was in syndication by ...

Graph 1: Ascending: The global temperatures of my life. (data source: GISS) Last Friday, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) released the final piece of data for 2014 global temperatures. The numbers are published in several places, and the newspapers pick them up almost instantly, but the page I've always used is  http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt . It's a simple text page, and NASA's been using the same address for it since at least the 1990s. Sometime around the middle of each month, they just add another number, showing the final data for the prior month. And then I can look for myself, as is my preference. I follow the data pretty closely, so I already knew that May had been the warmest May since the beginning of record keeping in 1880. I also knew that 2014 set new records in August and September, too. I knew that, when looking at records, even monthly records, it's pointless to look further back than 1998. And...