This has turned out to be a big weekend for substituting around here, and it reminds me of how fun it can be to be the one who sort of rides in to the rescue. Friday night, it wasn’t me who was the sub but rather James Setapan, who came to town to conduct the
It’s interesting how life delivers smiles to us where and when we might not even see them coming. I’ve been rather haunted by the story of the mass shooting at a shopping mall in Omaha, which claimed the lives of nine people - I think because we used to live about 45 minutes outside of
Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons at 2:30, as I’m heading down the hall towards JAC 253 and my Popular Music in America class, I almost always hear the sound of someone playing the piano . . . and almost always it will be one of the football players in my class. Often it’s Scott or
The absurdity didn’t occur to me until two different students of mine, Nick Sluss-Rodionov and Trevor Parker, both said something about it - and now I can’t stop thinking about the crazy array of interviews I will be doing tomorrow at WGTD. First of all, on a program which has in recent weeks tackled such
You can probably guess what my favorite radio station is- and I trust that it’s your favorite, too. My second favorite station is WGN in Chicago; it’s the station I listen to every morning as I travel from WGTD to Carthage- and whenever I’m out and about during the day. (In the evening, I opt
The Carthage Choir got one day off after the big weekend but was back at it today, learning two new pieces for their spring tour. My favorite moment in the rehearsal was while we were going through the second piece, a lovely twentieth century setting of the latin text Ubi Caritas- “where there is charity,
It’s been an amazingly musical week, with Carthage’s Christmas Festival, the Tremper High School concert, and a big morning at church including the first rehearsal for the upcoming Christmas program, a rehearsal with the youth choir and some dads in a rockin’ arrangement of Little Drummer Boy, a fine performance by my senior choir of
It’s a blurry photo, but it captures one of the more dramatic and interesting moments from this weekend’s Christmas Festival performances. The Carthage Choir, as always, met before today’s concert down in the choir room - and Mr. Noble talk with them went maybe 4 or 5 minutes longer than usual. (He really got them
Yesterday, November 30th, is the birthday of two important people in my life. One of them is my youngest brother, Nathan, who turned 38 - and the other is Weston Noble, who turned 85. I told a couple of choir members a little story about Mr. Noble and the birth of my brother back in
