Orel Family

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...

My father was a jazz aficionado. Big band jazz. He knew all the songs, all the players. Put on a track, he'd call it out within a bar or two, say who was playing on the track, and give details. While not being a player himself, he had spent hours upon hours upon hours listening to the music, studying it, breathing it, learning every detail. His favorite stories were of his time in the Army: the 19 times he saw Benny Goodman play, and of the one time at Fort Ord when he was the only person in a dining hall where Lester Young was practicing. When dad was 80, an old record would make him 20 again. That was the power of the best music. Today, my 17- year old son is becoming a player. Not yet breathing it, really, not yet really  studying it, but passionate enough. Big band jazz has long faded from being this country's pop music, it's still fairly standard for kids learning to play in high school combos. Aaron plays drums and double bass. His bass teacher recently had a reco...

Playing Sir DukeL Stevie Wonder at The Palace of Auburn Hills, November 20, 2014 Songs in the Key of Life has always been, to me, the  perfect album. An album of astonishing breadth, both topically and musically. An album in which every note, every utterance, seemed perfectly placed. The album that taught me why a great double album might have side one on a different disc than side 2, because of course  I'd want to hear all 4 sides in order without having to get up so often to flip the disc. The album in which the "bonus" EP - though played far less often - was still superb. I've seen Stevie play before, including once in Malmö, Sweden . But never behind this album. This tour, this short tour of just 11 dates, had "don't you dare miss this" all over it. Never mind the ticket price, this was a treat. Thursday's snow storm resulted in a very late arriving crowd, and Stevie didn't take the stage until almost 9:15pm, more than an hour after ...

September 19: Full house for homecoming. Today is recovery day. Yesterday the West Bloomfield High School Marching Band , including both kids, performed at The Michigan Competing Bands Association (MCBA) State Finals at Ford Field in Detroit . The band finished in 9th place in Flight I, with a score of 88.125. Two years ago, that might as well have been written in Greek, but today I can translate every word of it. August 22: At band camp. September 5: For the first half of the first game, the dress stayed casual. Two years ago, I would never have expected to become a band dad. Aaron's school didn't even have a marching band, just a loose-knit ensemble of a few kids in a quasi-rock band that played various school events. They did ok, we had no complaints. Aaron played guitar, but with the encouragement of the group's advisor, he also tried electric bass, and it stuck. He started private lessons. Then he decided to transfer to WBHS. WBHS didn't have an ense...

John Fogerty at the Toledo Zoo Amphitheater (photo: John Fogerty facebook page) Growing up, I had 3 musical heroes. First, there were the Beatles. And eventually there was Bruce. But along the way, there was also Creedence Clearwater Revival. CCR released just 7 studio albums. Six of those albums were crammed in to an amazing 30 month period, as John Fogerty cranked out 3-minute masterpiece after 3-minute masterpiece. Being too young to see CCR play, I waited... a long time. I didn't see John play live until the 1990s, and last night was still just my 4th show -- and two of the other 3 weren't full length performances. In recent years, John has come around as an opening act for performers like John Mellencamp and Jimmy Buffett . No offense to those guys, but... really?  I couldn't bring myself to pay money to see Fogerty in that role, not for artists I didn't especially want to see otherwise, not even this past Saturday when Fogerty opened for Buffett in Detroi...

July 3, 2014 One of the few vacations we take is a trip to Michigania Family camp . This is a one week camp on Lake Walloon in Northern Michigan. For us, this has meant celebrating July 4th at camp. Sometimes the camp celebration is on July 3rd or July 5th due to details of the camp schedule. This post is a retrospective of some pictures from July 4th celebrations at camp. July 4, 1999 1999 Our first year camping as a family, and July 4th was our first full day of camp. It was very hot, and Aaron -- then 2 years old -- was already a ball of sweat when I took this photo of him trying on my sunglasses. In the background is the old dining hall. July 4, 2002 2002 Elianna was 14 months old. The heat broke just in time for the parade. July 4, 2006 2006 Elianna, now age 5, at Ceramics, Arts and Crafts, working on a project. July 4, 2008 2008 July 4th was the last day of camp in 2008. This is Elianna at the closing ceremony, overlooking the lake. July 4, 20...