I remember the first time, as a child, I sat in the pew and heard the choir carry a hymn into the rafters. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t just music—but it felt bigger than anything I’d ever heard before. Years later, I realized what I had experienced was a room full of voicesContinueContinue reading “Think You Can’t Sing in Choir? You Absolutely Can!”
Category Archives: Stories & Sound
Bad Moon Rising and the 8-Track Sounds of Childhood
I can still conjure it—the family’s tobacco-brown Pontiac Bonneville, the smell of leather warm from the mid-day sun, dashboard gleaming with chrome, at that age when I was still small enough to straddle the transmission hump. I felt part of the whole ride—the road ahead, the hum of the engine mingling with the faint whisperContinueContinue reading “Bad Moon Rising and the 8-Track Sounds of Childhood”
J. R. R. Tolkien Remembered: When the Last Ship Departed the Grey Havens
On September 2, 1973, J. R. R. Tolkien died in Bournemouth (a seaside town on the southern coast of England) at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times remembered him the next day as a “linguist, scholar and author of The Lord of the Rings,” a man who cast “a spell over tens of thousands of AmericansContinueContinue reading “J. R. R. Tolkien Remembered: When the Last Ship Departed the Grey Havens”
Dinner, Mystery, and Memories: Our Night with the Impromptu Players
Our little corner of Louisiana doesn’t always get much theater, so when a community troupe puts on a show, it feels like an event. The Impromptu Players in DeRidder, now in their 43rd season, staged the interactive mystery Sherlock Holmes and the Bully of Baker Street. Last night, it was a full evening — dinner, fellowship,ContinueContinue reading “Dinner, Mystery, and Memories: Our Night with the Impromptu Players”
An Ordinary Love, Lifted into Song
Back in the 1980s, chasing U2’s spark led me to Clannad, whose music wove Ireland’s ancient roots into something fresh. Their duet with Bono, “In a Lifetime,” caught me in a spell, Moya Brennan’s voice like a breeze carrying secrets from another world. Without knowing a word of Irish Gaelic, I was enchanted, drawn intoContinueContinue reading “An Ordinary Love, Lifted into Song”
Veni. Vidi. Scripsi. 