These are dark and death filled days we are inhabiting. As optimistic as I feel about the new year ahead—and I do, for reasons I can’t exactly account for,...
Read MoreMose Allison, Harry Belafonte, and a poem from France It would seem that, even here in Southern California, autumn is upon us. It may reach 74 degrees today, but...
Read MoreDear friends, Greetings from Bay City, Michigan: The Land That Time Forgot. I spent yesterday, the release day of “Blood From Stars,” in the company of my wife’s 98-year-old...
Read MoreThe Martin Luther King Parade, Los Angeles, 2005 My family and I spent several hours yesterday at the corner of St. Andrews Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. We...
Read MoreIn 1967 I was six years old and my family moved from Charlotte to Atlanta, leaving behind all kinfolk and everything I knew to be familiar. In our new...
Read MoreThe music of Thelonious Monk is, for me, purely devotional and endlessly life-affirming. And I am devoted to it, as Monk was my doorway into jazz. In fact, I...
Read MoreI had a dream. A “vision,” I’m tempted to say. But that would sound too mystical, and make me sound like…I don’t know, like…Sting. Not something I can afford...
Read MoreIn 1966, as a 5-year-old living in Atlanta, I loved songs without thinking about them as a matter of any choice. I listened to them the way I ate...
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