Orel Family

"We are going to be the last mass school shooting." So said students in Parkland, Florida, a couple weeks ago. Of course, nobody -- likely not even the students who said that -- believed it to be literal truth. All it would take is for one person, somewhere, to go off. Yesterday morning, we had the 4th shooting on a college campus  since Parkland. The first 3 didn't include any deaths, but 2 people died yesterday. According to news reports, a student killed his own parents, who were on campus to pick him up and take him home for spring break. In the current news cycle, an event like this seems sadly unremarkable. It can be dismissed as a "domestic dispute."   No students were killed in the making of this story. Move along. But this one was at Central Michigan University , where Aaron is studying. Yesterday morning, he was preparing to come home for spring break. He had an 11am class, after which he was going over to the music building to practice. He was ...

Has it really been more than 5 years since Newtown ? Little Noah Pozner, maybe he'd be... still in Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with his classmates. Maybe he'd be starting to dream about his bar mitzvah. A crazy 20-year old former student with 4 semi-automatic weapons came in to the school one December day, and in less than 5 minutes unloaded more than 150 shots to ensure that dreams would not come true. Noah was shot 11 times, the shots literally blowing off his jaw and a hand. The governor cried. The president cried. He begged for congressional action to create laws that might at least reduce the risk. At a vigil shortly after the massacre, he said, "Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?" So here we are. Five years later. I start typing in the s...

Last night we went to see the latest Star Wars saga, "The Last Jedi." It has received wonderful reviews, apparently, and the kids all loved it. But me? Not so much. It was fun, no doubt. Plenty of action, the appropriate amount of impossibly close escapes, and more than enough Force wizardry and mysticism -- some of it in forms we haven't seen before -- to last until the next installment. John Williams scored it, we have Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher and Anthony Daniels back in their original roles, and there are several other unexpected nods to the original trilogy. There's even a super-choreographed light saber fight scene with a whole minyan of sacrificial red-shirts, and Rey and Kylo Ren in the Samurai roles. It was light years better than the fight scenes of "The Phantom Menace," but it was also during that scene that I really noticed how overbearing the score was, and found myself wishing they'd just play something lighter. Like " Bad Rep...

The set for Springsteen on Broadway. One piano, two microphones. Guitars are off-stage. At about 8:05pm on Friday, I stopped thinking about the money. Yes, this is worth it. That was, more or less, the time at which Growin' Up  started to fill the Walter Kerr Theater. Bruce Springsteen had taken the stage, spoken the magic word... "Balls!" He'd announced his intent to perform his magic trick, his proof of life. And here we were, just 5 minutes in. In the moments without music, I could hear the silence in the hall. When Bruce was playing, the hall overflowed with the lush noise of Bruce's voice (sounding great) and his guitar. The Walter Kerr Theater is tiny by Broadway standards, just 960 seats crammed close together. I'd been there once before, and remembered the bar area that was practically on top of the last row of seats. Space in the theater was so limited that a main souvenir stand was located next door at a hotel. The seating was so tight that ...

Yesterday was an awful day. It started with news of a horrific massacre, and continued with the death of Tom Petty . It was difficult to stand at the brand new Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, just to enjoy a music show, without thinking about people doing virtually the same thing across the country just 24 hours previously, or about a rock icon who surely would have visited this stage soon. But we create our own islands, sometimes. Walking across Detroit, stopping off at a taco stand , enjoying the warm October day in the plaza outside the arena, we had our island. Inside the arena, mash-ups of Beatles songs and covers of Beatles songs helped prepare for Paul McCartney's concert. Paul was 21 when he first toured the United States, playing shows that didn't even last 45 minutes. Last night, at age 75, he played the last US show of the latest tour, playing nearly 40 songs,  and after 3 hours he didn't even look tired. Paul's voice isn't what it once was,...

All around Detroit this weekend, there was music. Music everywhere. Swinging and swaying and people playing. As Bono said from the stage at Ford Field last night, "Detroit. City of History. City of the Future." The past few days, the River Walk and Woodward and the eateries have been packed, from mid-afternoon until well after midnight. The mood has been festive. It feels like the City Of Now. Herbie Hancock. September 1, 2017. Aaron with John Patitucci, September 2, 2017. The Detroit Jazz Festival has been running all weekend. Aaron came in from Central Michigan University to see the shows. By Friday evening, we were downtown to catch the headliners : Wayne Shorter , then Miles Mosley , and then Herbie Hancock . The stage setup at Campus Martius made it difficult for me to see anything other than the video monitor until the final few minutes of Hancock's set, but the sound was perfect, the audience was grooving, and the music was, as Hancock said to descr...

1:29pm. Totality!!! Living in a mobile country. Sometimes it means that on Wednesday morning I have no definite plans, and just 5 mornings and 580 miles later, I'm sitting by a pool in a Tennessee state park, waiting for the sun to go out. All it takes is the will, a car that can get there, one old high school friend with an idea and another with an extra hotel room and  the willingness to let it be used. Oh, and a clear day, too! 11:18am. Still time until the start, but the signs are out: Don't look up without those glasses! Less than 3 months ago, I didn't even know it was coming. But I always liked the sensation of being in an eclipse. I'd even used a pinhole projector once or twice. But never a full eclipse. I wanted in. I read about the eclipse on various sites. I studied up on how to take photographs of the eclipse , and quickly decided that enjoying the show  would be the top priority. Nashville is about the closest "totality" city to our ho...