Monthly Archives: January 2016

Life sometimes serves up the most inexplicable sorts of sorrows - and there are a lot of us in Racine right now who are reeling from just such a loss.   Today was the funeral of a 17-year-old names Tyler McCray ...  an exceptionally talented young man from Horlick High School who had lit up

If one would peruse the Berg's recently pared down cookbook cabinet,  you would find some big names there like Betty Crocker,  Better Homes & Gardens,  Cooking Light - two cookbooks by my favorite TV chef, Caprial Pence (who has this gift for making it all seem completely doable) - and lovely cookbooks from Holy Communion,

This past weekend,  Kathy and I engaged in some major projects around the house,  including the dismantling and storage of our 9-foot Christmas tree and the "un-decking" of the halls.  Interestingly enough, what was more important than all of that for Kathy was the time we took to tidy up our laundry room .... which

It was a finish line that I wasn't sure librettist Matt Boresi and I would ever reach .... but on Friday, January 22nd,  we did!  We finished our opera Black September .....  at least for now. That is to say, we finished writing it.   The small matter of mounting it and performing it still

I've been writing a lot about "Black September,"  the new one-act opera crafted by myself and librettist Matt Boresi for Carthage's J-Term Opera .... but I certainly hope that any excitement about that doesn't come at the expense of the other opera which we are doing.  In fact,  this new opera would never have come

I am currently engaged in perhaps the most exciting creative ventures of my entire life-  the writing of my first opera.  It's a strange and unexpected fulfillment of something I said almost in jest at the banquet which opened Carthage's current school year.   This year is my 20th anniversary as a full time faculty

I'm writing this on the eve of a Power Ball drawing that could conceivably give a prize of 700 million dollars to a ridiculously lucky winner .... which would be (I believe) the single largest lottery payment in history.  (And if there is no winner,  the next potential prize climbs even higher.)   It's one