Judentanz

My college piano teacher was a loud, brusque, 7 foot-tall wild-man whose grandfather had been the last democratically-elected president of Lithuania until the coup d’état of 1926.

The Mind of God

"Could God ever change his mind?"

“Tell Him I Saw His Head in a Box”

At the Art Institute of Chicago, we saw a silver, cathedral-shaped box called the “Reliquary of St. Sixtus.” It took me a moment to realize that the box held his entire head, wrapped in a golden net …

My Nun and Me

If you ever take a class in music history and wonder if Gregorian Chant will ever be of use to you …

Animal Intelligence

Recently someone on TV said that the only human behavior he had never seen in another species is that we cook our food.

Reminiscences

I'm thinking about the time I called my mom's longtime companion Charles when we lived in Las Vegas, because I couldn't remember the formula for the area of a circle. It was the first time I had ever needed it in real life, and it slipped my mind. He said "Radius Squared Times Pi," and …