happy birthday.

  The day before Veteran’s day is the Marine Corps’ birthday, and this year I was lucky enough to score an invite to the MCB Quantico ball. As the evening began, we had cocktails and chit-chatted with the people at our table before moving on to more somber and reflective matters. We watched a recorded […]

I have the best students.

As a thank you for helping him choose an instrument, one of my students drew this for me: a Marine playing the cello.   This could not be a more timely reminder of what’s important. I really do need my students as much as they need me.

Quantico

As a kid, people always asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Maybe they could already detect my ill-fated and inconvenient relationship with music and were testing the waters for a more rational direction. It was around the age of 12 that I could say with eye-rolling certainty that I was going […]