December 2012 “Now that is what I call settling in and hitting the ground running,” wrote my friend Eric Vazquez on Jan. 13 when I announced on Facebook that I had been accepted as a member of the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus after having been placed on the reserve list for a week. […]

March 12, 2012 At 7 this morning, along a six-mile round-trip loop from Asbury Park to Belmar, I ran between the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean and the almost-full moon faintly silvery and on its descent in the brightening western sky. It was a beautiful and inspiring sight, and an apt metaphor for our […]

December 2011 In 1979 I read a novel, the title long gone from my memory, in which the protagonist, a young man living at home with his parents, drank a lot of milkshakes, fretted about his life in general and his lack of a romantic relationship in particular and, at the end of the novel, […]

Easton Mountain, Aug. 13, 2011 He saw Jesus in my eyes As we gazed and touched         that chilly afternoon We paired in workshop exploration         in a field of men My blue orbs locked on his brown As his thirtysomething fingers Assuaged my fiftysomething skin I palmed his […]

December 2010 … I started quiet and slow with no surprise. Then one morning I woke to realize I had a good thing going. That observation, paraphrasing a lyric by Stephen Sondheim, encapsulates my life in 2010 in several areas. It refers, for instance, to an early-January four-mile run in 10-degree frigidity that made me […]

December 2009 What started in 2008 as my timid re-emergence in the realm of public singing grew full force in 2009 into a series of unexpected musical highlights and one unexpected personal revelation. Certainly I had no idea that an offhanded remark I made at the end of a church choir rehearsal early in the […]

May 2009 Sometimes a singer, like an actor with a particular role, has to study and practice and mature before his abilities match the technical and emotional demands of a song. And sometimes synchronicity presents a gift of a performing opportunity when the singer is finally, if unknowingly, ready. And so it came to be […]

A look back at 2008 Hibernation to expansiveness, letting go to reclamation, wariness to open-heartedness — 2008 was a study in contrasts. My year started out with a January highlight of an almost five-hour hike with Bob Nelson in Stokes State Forest, a hike that began on icy roads and snowy paths in 30-degree weather […]

In the morning, after we’ve cleaned her cage, after she’s had her out-of-cage time and her bath, after she’s gorged herself on cheese and seeds and veggies and has settled back in her sunny room for the day, our Congo African Grey parrot Zephyr begins her morning serenade. Sometimes it’s the staccato rings of the […]