Blog

  • when you’re feeling blue

    February 19, 2012

    41 years ago this month, I had my first opportunity to create music with a full blown orchestra. My sister Mary and I were recording an album project for Chicago-based record label Sunlight Records. It was 1971 – a time when musical experimentation was in full fashion – and producer Peter Wright envisioned dressing our… [ read more ]

  • the words are alive

    February 8, 2012

    I was a fourteen year old ninth grader at Holy Cross Seminary on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. My English teacher, Fr. Corcoran, gave us an assignment to write a paper explicating a poem written by 19th century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called “The Windhover.” Even though I had a passing… [ read more ]

  • winter days always kill me

    January 20, 2012

    It’s been cold lately, bone chilling cold. Winter days feel so constricting to me, do they to you? They seem to slow things down, make you turn inward, think a lot, take stock. The other night when the moon was fat and full, I couldn’t sleep, so I lie awake wrestling with thoughts and questions:… [ read more ]