About

I am married to a wonderful woman, who has become a professional genealogist.  We have two sons, both grown. I also share my home with two cats.  The header picture is a view of the sunset from of our balcony in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.

I started my career in music, studying composition with Bülent Arel, Charles Dodge, Jack Beeson, and others.  I taught at Antioch College, where, shortly after my first son was born, I had the privilege of teaching full time and conducting the Three Penny Opera while collecting unemployment.  This inspired me to find a more reliable way to feed my family, and I discovered that writing software was way easier than writing esoteric music.  I did this with some success for decades, and then retired.

I don’t listen to recorded music very much.  I play the piano, participate in an amateur chorus (Musica Sacra), and I go to concerts. Before this blog, I would occasionally write mementos of memorable concerts.  Some of these essays I polished well enough to put on my wife’s website (no longer working).  Once I started blogging, I had my own space to publish them. However, I review concerts less often now.  I began to find I was paying more attention to what I might say than to the music, and consequently, what I had to say was less interesting.

Sometimes, I write mementos that help me digest my own experience.  The most significant of these are about the the wedding of Santeri and Tsholofelo, which occurred in Itsoseng South Africa, following Tswana customs as practiced today.  I wrote as series about this, and it is still the most popular part of my blog.

Since I sometimes write about religious topics, I need to tell you that I am a member of Eastern Hills Friends Meeting.  We are sometimes called liberal Quakers. At some point, I will probably try to explain what this means.

I was inspired to actually start blogging by the debate between the Young Earth Creationist and the Science Guy.  I became convinced that I had something useful to say about science and religion.

Inevitably, my blog has gotten ensnared by politics,  a constant source of outrage.  I try to avoid regurgitating the predictable line, to be fair and informative, while making clear my own point of view.

In sum, this is the blog of an amateur.  I write when I have something to say that I hope is worth reading. I don’t try to fill the void on a regular schedule.