As Fall 2025 semester approaches its end, I'm curious as to how much time I've spent teaching and writing over these past many years. So I ran some numbers, all rough estimates, but enlightening nonetheless. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music I estimate that over 97 semesters I have spent about 19,000 hours teaching in classrooms. Between the Fromm Institute at USF and the University of California, Berkeley I have spent about 2950 hours teaching in classrooms. So m

Deep down inside I'm convinced that I'm an utter fool about money. I'm also convinced that I'm actually quite a lot better about it than a lot of folks. Certainly better than most musicians. We're a bunch of nincompoops about money on the whole. That's partly because we don't make very much of it, but it's also for the wonderful and compelling reason that we have other fish to fry. We aren't in it for the money, after all. If we were, we wouldn't be in it. My suspicions as to

Today I remembered a cute cartoon from some years ago, of a stick-figure young woman going about a happy day on her own. She played with her dog, had her lunch, read books, went for walks and bicycle rides, and tended her garden. It made for a fine counter to those folks who just can't seem to understand how people can be happy living on their own, without a lot of social contact. Introverts, in other words. People who like to be on their own, people who actually become stres

Retirement is in the air, at least from my main teaching job. It’s not coming really soon, but it is definitely coming. I’ve been...

Summer of 2015, shortly before me Summer of 2025, after 10 years of me I have been wondering why I let such a momentous 10th anniversary...

It is said that for every person there exists something that is the primary joy of life. Those somethings are highly varied, but each is...

After I had my home's windows replaced with fine new vinyl jobbers, the family-owned window company sent over their dad (the company...