Andrew's Essays

The winter holidays arrive again with the ever-present temptations to spend and save, while a music man searches the heavens for meaning.

Another year is winding down in the usual frenzy of big box retail sales and glamorous holiday specials all over the TV. Weren't we just doing this? I mean, I guess there was that long hot wet summer and all, but the flashback effect is pretty vivid.

Another of my irregular musings on the infamous Circle remaining unbroken.

The summer of 78'. I was a teenager aspiring to be a guitar player and part of the jaw-dropped world that heard Eddie Van Halen for the first time. And everything that I had thought about playing guitar got pretty radically altered. Like Jimi Hendrix did over a decade earlier, EVH changed the conversation about electric guitar. Many innovators and fabulous players have come along since, but in my life hearing "Eruption" for the first time was a watershed event.

The energy of a restless planet commands our attention this spring.

"April showers bring May flowers", so the old adage goes. No additional parameters regarding the volume or intensity of those showers on the quantity of said flowers exists, to the best of my knowledge.

Musings on the memories that accompany the first blossoms emerging from the warming spring soil.

Northern Virginia is a peculiar place. Part southern, part northern in personality and weather, but truly of neither. We get winter, and then I get surprised by flowers blooming in the snow in late February, of all things. Sometimes I fail notice the changing angle of the sun and slowly lengthening daylight until some tiny audacious blossom at my feet reminds me that indeed winter is already lining up in the rearview mirror.

Confessions and resolutions on 1-1-11

Tis' the time and season for resolutions. No doubt most wind up in some karmic scrap heap someplace. The laws of physics dictate that energy must be conserved - where it is spent, someplace it must be created - and for every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. I am somewhat amused at the possible existence in the universe of a giant heap of anti-resolutions left behind over the millennia by well-intentioned people, but somewhat fearful of the crisis its discovery might provoke.

One full year into the service of home ownership, and my masters and overseers, "Old House" and "Mortgage"

Here we are again, November - you and I. The election and World Series and the season's first frost all lie in our shared past. Where were we last year when you came to visit? Ah yes, of course - that mad six week dash from closing on the house to actually getting it ready enough to get all our stuff into it on the day of the first snowfall. I remember now. A lot of work you were.

End of summer musings on hundred-year weather events, the history of political histrionics, and other oddities.

By most any living memory, these past few months have brought bizarre and unusual circumstances to these Virginia hills. Three epic blizzards in a winter, summer with nearly 60 days of above 90 degree temperatures, and of course there was that little earthquake on July 16th to ice the cake of strangeness. While I ruminate, a hurricane named Earl is churning up the Atlantic currents, bound at least for a brush with the beaches and who knows what else.

A strange and wondrous experience on the busiest road in the Union.

Southern summer is here again. Days too hot even for a dog. Weeks without rain. Grass gasping for any shred of green to cover its parched brown wispiness. The epic winter of 2010 has given way to the daily drenchings of the dreaded 3 H’s – hazy, hot and humid.

Thoughts on perspective through the eyes of 3-year old and in light of the recent tragedies in West Virginia and the Gulf of Mexico.

Madeleine and I planted a red spruce sapling a few weeks ago. It was a good chance to play in the dirt, and talk about trees, and talk about growing. The perspectives of someone not quite three years old on such matters is both entertaining and enlightening.

The supermarkets have been stocked for weeks with red hearts, sugar-laden chocolate-coated chocolate sweets, cards, balloons, florals and other Valentine-themed merchandise. I have found myself reassessing my own personal definition of the word and the emotion, as no doubt humans have done for a very long time.

I am becoming part of an old house story, or an old house's story, or more accurately, a new old house's story. I have lived for nearly 17 years in an old simple farmhouse in the country, enjoying the open starry vistas and mountain sunsets and the many pleasures of rural living while occasionally chafing at maintenance left neglected by the landlords. As with all things in life, pages turn, chapters end, and new ones begin.

Woodstock. The term conjures many things from the imagination - an iconic moment in time, a musical revolution, a cultural touchstone. Call it what you will, but one thing is certain - the music world of today is nearly unrecognizable through the gauzy lens of yesteryear. While radio and records delivered the "soundtracks to our lives" for that generation, today those terms mean drastically different things.

Those who have kept up with my meanderings and musings over the years likely know that I am an enthusiastic gardener. The mild weather here, with good stretches of warm sun and gentle soaking rains, have created an unusual overlap of spring crops and summer veggies. Peas and peppers, spinach and squash, all somehow contributing simultaneously to the table, even if only for a short spell. The bounty, and the good work to collect it, have begun in earnest.

April showers bring May flowers – the nursery rhyme always seems to echo in my head at this time of year, especially if the clouds settles in and shroud the landscape closely for several day stretches. April’s spectacular white and purple tree blossoms and wildflower carpets on forest floor and floodplain alike, slowly give way to the denseleaf greenery of May, signifying the onset of post-final frost date gardening and subsequent summer heat. It is a time of renewal and reflection, as well as a lovely time to travel the region with camera and paper.

While I don't spend lots of hours on Facebook, the seemingly ubiquitious social networking website, I must confess its primary joy generator for me is reconnecting with friends and acquaintances from every phase of my life. Had we the sophisticated social networking tools (or even email), we might have stayed better connected after graduation, or wherever else our paths parted.

I remember at a young age thinking about how far off the year 2000 was and how old I would be when I got there. I realized the other day as I wrote "2009" on a check for the first time that we are nearly a decade past that milestone.

The first hard frost has put a bitter end to a long gardening season. The cornucopia of peppers and tomatoes is snugly preserved in the freezer, and the shortening days seem to instill in me a heightened passion for cooking, with olive oil instead of shortening of course. Beef stew on a chilly Sunday afternoon, homemade pizza for Monday Night football with the girls, or messing with a new idea from an online recipe or one of the many cookbooks we've acquired over the years - they all do lead to eating, which is a delight unto itself.

A leap year August means that two years of campaigning for the highest office in America is still two months away from the finish line. We are guaranteed another nine weeks of increasingly vitriolic ads, commentary and news headlines all aimed at making our blood boil and convincing us that one pair of candidates or the other are either the spawn of Satan or the most reckless spenders in the history of the planet. Pardon my personal lack of enthusiasm for that.

I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to make a life in music. It is full of surprises - between the concerts, and the teaching and the recording, and the endless business work come many unique and surprising moments, great and small. They are all worth remembering, but the big moments especially do linger fondly in the heart and memory hopefully for the rest of my sentient days.

Earth Day and Arbor Day fall on the calendar here when the dogwood and redbud blossoms are in fullest glory, and with a wet spell like we've had here at the foot of the Blue Ridge recently, the place resembles Ireland. The planet seems to keep demonstrating both its resiliency and its creativity as spring comes to this verdant place each year. It is a wealth of attention at a time when our corner of the planet is looking its best. It is easy to think that all is well and all will heal itself.

It's been quite a month. I left home for the South Florida Folk Festival a day late thanks to a icy snowstorm, which meant I got an extra day with baby Madeleine. And while the 12-hour drive the next day to Jacksonville was grueling, it was quite worth it. I was excited about my first ever South Florida tour, and especially for spending my day off fulfilling a childhood dream of seeing the Everglades, before heading off to Texas.

The shortness of time, the shortening days, the changing angle of the light. Gradual shifts from the summer into autumn. Too bad the thermometer has forgotten this - a week of 90 degrees and humid days greeted my return from the High Plains, and overnight into below-normal 60 degree days and near freezing nights. That and the worst ragweed season in a long time seem to be making their presence felt in many households nearby.

Nothing like a deadline to either crush the creative spirit or light it ablaze like a tinder dry forest. I've always been one who writes in fits and starts - lots of writing, but focused on bursts of different kinds of writing at different times. This spring has definitely been fits of crushed soda cans and blazing forests both. A bit disconcerting, yes, but I guess I've been at this long enough to learn how to channel the process.