music – Life In A Word

Peachy Keen

We’re getting a new dessert destination in town called “The Peach Cobbler Factory”. It’s a franchise I’ve never heard of despite locations in twenty-six states. As you’d expect, The Peach Cobbler Factory offers fruit pie in a cup (à la mode or sans ice cream) but also lots of other desserts. Choose from cheesecakes, cookies, or brownies, and all sorts of spins on peaches. Now if only I actually liked peaches.

Without “cobbler” in the name this business would never have caught my eye. The truth is, I love peach cobbler. It’s one of those foods I find inexplicably tasty even when its main ingredient doesn’t appeal to me. The same can be said for Fig Newtons. I’ve never been a fig fan yet I’ve eaten scores of the cookies. Not that they taste like fresh figs. But cobbler tastes like fresh fruit.

A peach cobbler cinnamon roll? Maybe, maybe not.

I grew up in a household that was all pie and no cake (read my take on pies in Any Way You Slice It). My mother used to make delicious hot fruit pies from scratch. Cherry, lemon meringue, apple, and peach, and there might’ve been a blueberry in there somewhere as well. The cherry was always my favorite but the peach was a close second. My mother knew how to make a homemade crust, with the wonderful latticework on top to finish off the look. She also knew what ingredients went into the pie to give it just the right consistency.

So go figure; I love hot peach pie even if I don’t love peaches. Maybe I had too many as a kid (not by choice), sliced into a bowl and served with cream. Maybe the sugar and crust of the pie somehow makes the peaches more palatable. Whatever the reason, I know I’ll be visiting the The Peach Cobbler Factory and giving their products a try.

Peaches are a big deal around here, evidenced by the groves (no, not “orchards”) of trees just about everywhere you look. South Carolina harvests over 90,000 tons of the fuzz balls every year, over twice as many as our neighbor to the west. That’s right; Georgia may consider itself “The Peach State” (as their signs boast when we cross the Savannah River) and their pretty girls might be “Georgia Peaches”, but South Carolinians know which state really delivers the fruit. On that note, here’s more peach trivia:

The peaches you buy at the market are likely a local product, but no country produces them in numbers like China does. If you added up the peach production from every country in the world you wouldn’t be close to half the number coming out of China.
A nectarine is technically a peach. So is an apricot. The fruits are only separated by one recessive gene (causing the “shaved” look of a nectarine). You can even find peaches and nectarines growing on the same tree.
Peaches come in 300 varieties. The “yellow” is the one you’re familiar with but the white is more common. Peaches can also look like donuts (flatter, with a hole in the middle). They’re categorized as “freestone” or “clingstone” according to how the pit separates (or doesn’t) from the fruit itself.
Peach fuzz is a form of defense. It protects the fruit from the rot brought on by surface water. It also discourages bugs from taking a bite. Maybe I should skip my morning shave whenever I work in the backyard?

I’ll be sure to report back after I give The Peach Cobbler Factory a try. I’m hoping their signature dessert is as peachy keen as Mom used to make. Of course, it’ll be cobbler – not pie – which adds to today’s trivia. With a cobbler I don’t get a crust under the fruit… only on top. That’s okay. As long as it’s hot and a la mode I’ll be transported back to the pie days of my youth. With desserts like those, who needs cake?

Some content sourced from the Lane Southern Orchards website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle – Update #5 (read about the start of this project in Fit for a (Fairy Tale) King

As predicted, we’ll continue to build this castle in modules. Bag 9 came together in a cool eighteen minutes, but Bag 10 was another test of patience with more of those tiny, tiny pieces. The end result of both bags is the structure and tower you see above, carefully snapped into the surrounding model after I completed it. It’s known as a “bower”, a private apartment for the ladies of the house. Fancy digs, no?

I would’ve loved to see the bower in all its glory. The fact is, with only 14 of Neuschwanstein’s 200 rooms completed the bower is likely just the elegant exterior walls you see here and nothing else. And those walls are full of windows, aren’t they? I’ve added dozens of windows to the castle (with several dozen more to go). And – painful lesson – those windows need to be oriented correctly. I got one wrong on the lowest level of the bower, which meant several steps of deconstruction/reconstruction. Not so fun.

Here’s a close-up of Neuschwanstein’s “lower courtyard”. It’s where King Ludwig would’ve welcomed his guests when they arrived. It’s also where you – should you choose to visit – will begin your tour of this magnificent structure. When all’s said and done, the castle itself will utterly tower over this courtyard, a statement about not only the castle but also Ludwig himself.

Running build time: 5:07.

Total leftover pieces: 37.

Accompanying movie soundtrack: Rudy (1993). I can’t believe this movie came out over thirty years ago. Then again, I can’t believe I graduated from Notre Dame over forty years ago. Extreme bias aside, Rudy is a story of perseverance unlike any other. Just when you think Rudy Ruettiger can’t 1) Get accepted into Notre Dame, 2) Make the football team, 3) Actually play in a football game… Rudy delivers the goods time and again. You need hear only a few seconds of the flute-soloed theme to know most of the soundtrack. I can tie every bit of the music back to specific scenes in the move but that’s just me, a Notre Dame fanatic. I’ll be watching my Fighting Irish – in person – this weekend as they take on Wisconsin at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. Meanwhile, you’ll be listening to the Rudy soundtrack. Here.

A Tale of Two Women

There’s a well-known saying in the South: The intolerable heat of July and August is God’s reminder you don’t want to go to the bad place some day. The coping strategies include lots of time indoors or traveling to more temperate places. Thus did my wife & I find ourselves on the California coast for a couple of weeks. Giving up the sweat and bugs for the sun, surf, and sand was an easy trade. But true to form Cali delivered an experience worth sharing (or at least blogging about).

We all have choices when it comes to shipping our stuff. Maybe it’s the post office in a small town but for the rest of us it’s a franchise like The UPS Store or PostNet. My option during this trip was PostalAnnex, conveniently adjacent to a market where my wife could disappear. So I entered the shipping store alone, phone in hand, fully prepared to get lost in my newsfeed while waiting in a long line. Only there wasn’t any line – just one woman being helped by another behind the counter. My lucky day! I’d be back to the sun and surf in no time.

I’d hardly glanced at PostalAnnex’s impulse buys when I began to pick up on the conversation at the counter. The woman was sending a vase. It was fragile. She wasn’t convinced it would get to its destination intact. But credit the clerk for her calm, soothing voice, assuring the woman she’d packed countless fragile objects before, and this one would be no exception. To which the woman literally shouted, “Well, I hope so! Otherwise my vase will be as broken as my marriage!”

As broken as my marriage? Okay, that got my attention.

Look, I’m not one to eavesdrop but I was kind of a captive audience here, okay? And I had no idea this woman was just getting started with her personal soap opera. “Last name?”, the clerk asked, intending to search the PostalAnnex database. “Jones… Lisa Jones”, declared the woman, who promptly corrected herself by saying, “No… WAIT!!! Not Jones!!! That’s who I used to be!!! Clark!!! It’s Clark now! And you gotta update my first name too because I changed that as well! Ari Clark! Yes I’m… I’m Ari Clark now, thank you very much. New first name and new last name!!! This is me severing every last connection with that no-good loser ex-husband of mine!!!”

Oh my. And here I thought she was just mailing a vase.

Since I was the only male in the store you can understand why I considered bolting for the door at that very moment. But since the woman didn’t turn around and say something to the effect of “ALL of you men are scum of the earth“, I maintained my quiet presence. Quiet, that is, until the clerk looked over at me somewhat helplessly and said, “Sir, are you just dropping off or do you need to set up a shipment?” Which prompted the woman to look back at me and – thankfully – give nothing more threatening than a what are you looking at? glance.

“I look good, don’t I?”, she continued, clearly posing for the clerk. “I mean, I’ve made the changes, if you know what I mean. I’m ready to get out there and start living again. My ex – man – he totally blew it with that affair of his. 35 years of marriage and he goes and cheats on me? Over and done with, baby – your loss.”

“Um, your address please?”, the PostalAnnex clerk pleaded.

“58 Charles St., Apartment B. That’s right, a new address to put into your system because I’m done with that old address. Like I said, I’m done with everything about the last thirty-five years.”

The clerk then assured this woman she looked great and was doing the right thing by moving on, and in fact, should move on right now so the next customer (me) could be helped. And bless her heart, that’s exactly what the woman did… that is, after paying with a credit card she assured us had her new first and last name.

When it was my turn at the counter (twenty minutes after walking through the door) the clerk joked with me. “Well, I guess I offer free marital advice along with shipping services. So let’s chat first; how long have you been married?”

“Thirty-nine years”, I said, a little too proudly.

“Thirty-nine years?“, she exclaimed. “Goodness – no one in California lasts that long! Tell you what, just for you: the thirty-nine-years-of-marriage shipping discount!”

Did I really get a discount? Who knows. I’m just glad I didn’t run into the other woman in the parking lot. I’d put up with enough blistering heat already this summer.

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LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle – Update #3 (read about the start of this project in Fit for a (Fairy Tale) King)

No surprise, we continued to move mountains (er, Bavarian Alps) this week instead of anything brick or stone. The colors and shapes of the LEGO pieces in Bags 5 and 6 (of 23 bags of pieces) were decidedly “earthy”. What we have in the photo above looks like some sort of ocean trawler instead of a castle foundation. But the good news is, we’ve just about reached the far end of the model (on the right), so a little more earth-moving will shift gears into castle construction.

In my haste to move mountains I knocked that single white turret off its footing, which forced me to leaf back several pages in the instruction manual to remember where it was based. Strange how LEGO chose to tease me with a lone turret (and castle wall) this early in the build. That little assembly will be utterly dwarfed by the castle once it rises above it.

A footpath outside of the castle walls, perhaps?

Speaking of the LEGO instruction manual (better known as the “Tome of Construction”) this is a good time to dismiss LEGO “Builder”. For those of you in the know, Builder is a smartphone app that replaces the instruction manual, so you just tap your phone every time you move to a new step. Nope, not gonna do it. The Tome of Construction is much bigger than a phone screen, with easy-to-turn, easy-to-read pages. There’s really no good reason to go electronic with the steps. After all, Neuschwanstein didn’t have electricity when it was built so why should its construction?

Running build time: 2:37.

Total leftover pieces: 21.

Accompanying movie soundtrack: The Natural (1984). Here’s an appropriate choice from my favorite soundtracks list, since we’re in the middle of the major league baseball season. The Natural is a mystical, beautifully filmed story of an aging baseball player. Robert Redford plays the lead role (with Glenn Close supporting, and looking a lot lovelier than she did in Fatal Attraction). The movie score is both haunting and majestic. It taps generously from Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”. It also echoes Rudy, a soundtrack I’ll spend a little time with a couple of weeks from now. Have a listen to The Natural here.

Mighty Fine Print

Whenever a season of sports comes down to the last couple of teams, I pay extra attention whether it’s the Super Bowl, the World Series, or college basketball’s March Madness. A championship is the culmination of an entire season, so the final game puts the stakes at their highest. Just last week I made it to the finals of a competition myself. The thing is, I didn’t even know I was playing.

We’ve all received one of these flyers at one time or another, haven’t we? A bold, colorful announcement suggesting we’ve won something big. In this case, a Viking River Cruise (red capital letters, top left) suggests a tapped mailing list because I’ve cruised with Viking twice. Regardless, this flyer almost went into the trash before I read ~~some~~ all of the fine print. And I must say, whoever came up with the nuts/bolts of this particular contest deserves the Academy Award for Best Producer.

To begin with, notice the element labeled “Combination Box”. This little device is ingenious for two reasons. First, it stretches the envelope the flyer came in beyond a flat piece of paper, tempting the recipient to wonder what’s in there? And second, the device is “activated” by pulling a tab to reveal the “5-digit VIN number” you see here. Then you scratch off the gold circle further down the page to reveal another 5-digit number and – “how about that?” – they’re the same number, which makes me a “Grand Prize Winner”.

The flyer also contains utterly random stuff that has no bearing whatsoever on the contest. I am “cordially invited to ‘The Great America Cruising Expo'” (a fictitious event). Just below the black box is a “VIP Winning Number 5508738” (also useless). Finally, when I call the toll-free number at the bottom (which, to be clear, I will never call), I’m supposed to mention “Code AKSC”. Pretty sure anyone could call the toll-free number, mention the code, and discover they’re also a “Grand Prize Winner”.

Now for the good stuff. Here’s the lower right corner of the flyer. Call Within 48 Hours…? Within 48 hours of what, exactly? How do they know I’m calling within 48 hours of anything? More importantly, look at the four “gifts” below; one of which is apparently mine. Take a guess – which trip do you think I won?

Credit to the contest producers; I guessed wrong. I would’ve thought the 7-Night Resort Stay at Worldwide Destinations was my prize. After all, how much vaguer can a trip description be? If I called the toll-free number they’d probably go, “Yes you won but you can only take the trip on these 7 nights”. And “worldwide destination” technically means anywhere in the world so maybe I’ve won seven nights in the middle of Iowa.

In fact, the prize I “won” is the Caribbean Cruise for Two for Up to 7 Nights. The more I think about it, that one makes more sense. Any ship in Caribbean waters could be considered a “cruise” (even a foreign freighter with an empty cargo hold). “Up to 7 nights” could mean just two nights or even an overnight. And however I actually get to this cruise ship is on my own dime.

The pièce de résistance is on the back of the flyer: the fine print. The five hundred words you see above include the odds of winning (which is how I know I won the Caribbean cruise). Out of every 2,000,000 mailed flyers, 1,999,997 will win the Caribbean cruise, while just three people will win the three trips of any real value. In other words, one person wins a free Viking River Cruise. Okay, enough already; now this flyer goes into the trash, where it should’ve gone in the first place.

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LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle – Update #2 (read about the start of this project in Fit for a (Fairy Tale) King)

We continued to move mountains this week (as expected) but I was delighted to see bits of the castle starting to rise up already. Apparently I need to bring in cranes in addition to my earth-moving equipment. Bags 3 and 4 (of 23 bags of pieces) contained a lot of tiny, interesting, colorful bits. I had to be careful those little guys didn’t run down the mountains and try to escape.

For the first time in a half-dozen models I’m here to tell you… LEGO left out a piece. They really did. If you look at this step in the process (and yes, I’m already through 50+ steps), that little two-dot middle-row-right was AWOL. I checked the bags a dozen times thinking he was still in there. I scanned the piles of parts another dozen times. No two-dot. Maybe he’ll show up in another bag further into the build but by then it’ll be too late. The good news is, his location is buried inside the mountains and is not structural. You will never see the small cavity created by his absence.

What you see in the first photo is only about half the size of the completed model. It will be a full rectangle of Bavarian Alps when it’s done. Of course, by then you won’t even notice all the earthmoving I’ve accomplished, because Neuschwanstein Castle will utterly lord over the (LEGO) land.

Running build time: 1:52.

Total leftover pieces: 17.

Accompanying movie soundtrack: Leap Year (2010). I could use the excuse of the lovely Amy Adams to justify this favorite, but this so-so rom-com came out when she was hardly a name. However, Randy Edelman’s score is wonderful. It’s so much larger than the movie itself. “Anna’s Theme” – which the score returns to again and again – is a calming tune using a lot of piano and guitar. Elsewhere traditional Irish instruments make their inevitable appearance. Maybe the movie is forgettable but the music most definitely is not. Have a listen here.

Note: Life In A Word will be taking a vacation break for the next few weeks. Join me for the next chapter of the castle construction on August 20th!

What’s the Score?

Among the televised game shows I remember watching as a kid was one called Name That Tune. The version I watched wasn’t the original but it was the most successful, running from 1974-1981. Contestants competed for cash prizes by guessing the name of a song from a sound bite performed by the live band. The appeal of Name That Tune was the ability to play the game yourself while you watched (like you can with Jeopardy). But there was one genre of music Name That Tune didn’t tap into very often: film scores.

Here’s my question of the day. Name the last movie you saw where you also remember the music that accompanied the film. Titanic? Okay, but I’m not talking about soundtracks made up of popular songs you’d hear on Spotify (sorry, Celine) but rather instrumental scores where the music is tied to particular scenes of the story. Here, listen to the following sound bite and see if you can name the movie. Bonus points if you can picture the scene where the music was played. (scroll to the bottom for the answer)

Maybe your brain doesn’t associate movies with music the way mine does, but to demonstrate this acuity it took me no time at all to come up with a dozen of my favorite film scores; instrumentals so memorable I instantly recall the movie. Some, like the one I teased above, won Academy Awards (for “Best Original Score”). Others on my list weren’t even nominated… but maybe should have been.

Speaking of Academy Award winners, perhaps examples will help you “hear that tune”. The Best Original Score in 1965 was for The Sound of Music, primarily original songs with lyrics but several instrumental turns as well. The winner in 1973 was for The Sting, in which Scott Joplin’s ragtime piano tunes played the major role. The winner in 1975 was for Jaws, and I wonder who can’t hear that threatening theme whenever they picture a man-eating shark. The 1977 winner? Star Wars, scored by John Williams, who created the music for dozens of blockbuster films. 1990? Dances With Wolves by John Barry, another giant of the world of film scores. The list goes on and on.

As for my own list of favorites you’ll have to be a little more patient. I’ll include them – one at a time – as I give updates on the construction of my LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle over the next several months. If you’re wondering what movie soundtracks and a German castle have in common, I refer back to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang of course, with scenes filmed at Neuschwanstein. The story is a vivid childhood memory start to finish but so is the music. Trust me, for the number of times I’ve seen the film I can “name that scene” for just about every piece of the score.

LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle – Update #1 (read about the start of this project in Fit for a (Fairy Tale) King)

You’d think the construction of a castle would begin with the cornerstone. With the LEGO model you’d be wrong. We’re moving mountains instead. King Ludwig already had the Bavarian Alps at his disposal but we have build them from scratch before they’re crowned with his creation. Good thing this structure isn’t full-size or I’d be renting some serious earthmoving equipment!

With Bags 1 and 2 (of 23 bags of pieces) we got our hands dirty piling up dirt, rock, and other rather undefined landscape to create a mountaintop. Well, one-third of a mountaintop or so. If the next few bags represent the other two-thirds I’m not gonna an exciting update for you next week. At least the pieces snapped together smoothly. As with all LEGO models I’ve built, there were moments where I thought LEGO left out a piece, and other moments where I backed up a step or two to correct the construction. One change I’ve noticed from previous models: LEGO puts the tiniest pieces into paper “baglets”, which I’m not a fan of. Those little bags aren’t transparent, so you don’t always know when a piece gets stuck way down in the corner.

The model’s instruction manual – which henceforth shall be called the “tome of construction” – includes a few teasers about the real castle. Neuschwanstein has secret passageways! It also has “ingenious” inventions of its time, like modern toilets, central heating, and an electric call system for all of the servants who never spent a moment inside the walls. If any of these details are worth seeing before I “close in” the castle, you can bet I’ll be snapping a few photos for your viewing pleasure. Until next week!

Accompanying soundtrack: Mary Poppins . Did the magical nanny really make my list of favorite film scores? No she didn’t (not even for a spoonful of sugar), but I couldn’t find Chitty Chitty Bang Bang isn’t on Spotify and had Dick Van Dyke songs on the brain so… I went with Bert the chimney sweep instead.

Running build time: 44 minutes. Leftover pieces: 4.

“Name the movie” audio answer: Chariots of Fire (during the scene where several runners clad in white jog barefoot on the beach).

Some content sourced from, IMDb.com, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

A Builder’s Half-Dozen

Considering the decimal system we Americans use for counting, it’s a little curious how many of our purchases come in sets of six. Soda cans and soda bottles comes in sixes. So do paper towels and toilet paper. Cube-like things have six sides. So do hexagons. Strum a guitar and six strings sing. Finally, let’s acknowledge sets of twelve where you only need half of them. A half-dozen eggs. A half-dozen doughnuts. Or for purposes of this post, a half-dozen LEGO models.

Before I lay the cornerstone of the LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle I thought I should revisit the five LEGO models that preceded it; the ones that perch quietly in various places in my home office. Like Neuschwanstein, these models have sentimental value, which speaks to the primary reason I chose them out of all of the other LEGO possibilities. I mean, I could’ve built the 10,000-piece Eiffel Tower (for example) but would I have been inspired to do so? Hardly, since I’ve only seen it from a distance. Here then, my builder’s half-dozen:

U.S. Capitol Building – I can’t remember what year I purchased this one, my first LEGO build, but it was sometime before this blog even existed. At over 1,000 pieces, it was one of the more sophisticated models of the budding LEGO Architecture Series back then. The LEGO U.S. Capitol does have sentimental value. As a California kid my parents recognized the need to get my brothers and me to the East Coast for a dose of “real” U.S. history. That month-long driving trip through Colonial America is one of my fondest childhood memories.

Grand Piano – You can read about this build starting with Let’s Make Music. It’s my one LEGO model outside of the Architecture Series but also my very favorite. Snapping together 3,662 LEGO pieces over several months allowed me to blog about my favorite pieces of classical music. The piano also brought back countless childhood memories of practice, lessons, and recitals at the keyboard. I may not play as much as I used to, but the LEGO Grand Piano reminds me that classical music will always be a part of my DNA.

Fallingwater – Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature design is undoubtedly my favorite residential structure, especially the way the house blends seamlessly with the natural surrounds of Western Pennsylvania. Fallingwater speaks to my college degree in architecture as well. I built the spartan LEGO Fallingwater model in early 2023 (read about its construction – and my favorite works of architecture – in Perfect Harmony) and then made the long-overdue pilgrimage to Fallingwater itself in the summer of 2024. The experience was every bit as serene and dramatic as I had hoped. If you find yourself anywhere near Pittsburgh, take a little time to visit Fallingwater.

Notre Dame de Paris – The cathedral on the banks of the Seine River in Paris is the first of two LEGO models that harken back to my junior college year in Italy. During spring break I met my parents in Paris and took a whirlwind tour of the city. I didn’t climb the Eiffel Tower and I didn’t even visit the Louvre, but at least I spent a few moments inside the glorious sanctuary of Notre Dame. Forty years later I completed the LEGO version; my biggest build at 4,383 pieces (read about this adventure in Highest Chair). I still need to add the sophisticated lighting kit, which will give the church the dramatic illumination it deserves.

Trevi Fountain – LEGO offers several options to build a structure located in Rome, but the Trevi Fountain spoke loudest to me. I walked through its piazza many times during that college year, throwing coins over my shoulder with hopes of returning to the Eternal City one day (which still hasn’t happened). The Trevi is one of the smaller models of my LEGO half-dozen – less than 2,000 pieces – but it’s high on sentimental value. Read about the build in Brick Wall Waterfall.

Neuschwanstein Castle – I shared a few details about King Ludwig II’s creation in last week’s Fit For a (Fairy Tale) King. The castle’s LEGO model is 3,455 pieces of stone, brick, turrets, towers, and trees, perched above LEGO’s version of the Bavarian Alps. I’ve often thought I should be building this one on top of a ladder to simulate the dramatic location. But the twenty-three bags of pieces and the hefty instruction manual will be challenge enough. I’ll be sharing the ups (and no doubt the downs) of its construction over the next few months.

If you liken a builder’s half-dozen to that of a baker, we’re actually talking seven LEGO models instead of six. And that, my friends, is the convenient caveat for claiming Neuschwanstein Castle will be my final construct (convenient, caveat, claiming, Castle, construct… NICE Dave!). After all, LEGO will keep adding new models to its Architecture Series. I only have room to display six of them but I’m sure that won’t deter me when the seventh comes a-calling.

Key(board) to My Heart

Steinway & Sons produces some of the world’s finest pianos, the same way they’ve built them for the past 150 years. They make each instrument by hand, using career-long craftspeople who pass their skills on to succeeding generations. The company has never moved its headquarters from New York City’s Astoria neighborhood because, well, piano makers are hard to find these days. Kind of like pianos themselves.

Think about it. When was the last time you actually saw a piano? The classic musical instrument used to find a spot in the living rooms of a lot of homes. Nicer homes even had “music rooms”, with a baby grand proudly on display in the middle. The assumption was, these pianos were actually played instead of simply for looks. Playing the piano used to suggest a more refined upbringing. Today they’re a little harder to find.

The piano is considered a “foundational” instrument; that is, a good place to learn to read and play music. Eventually most move on to another musical instrument, be that woodwind, brass, string, or percussion. Not me. I started (and ended) with the piano. A good eight years – second to tenth grade or so – included weekly lessons and monthly recitals, with hours upon hours of practice on our living room grand piano. Even though high school ultimately pulled me into other interests, the piano entered my DNA (as did classical music). It’s part of who I am.

Over the decades since those long-ago lessons, the piano keeps showing up in my life as a reminder of its significance. The year I started college, a movie called The Competition was released, an entire film about piano starring a young Richard Dreyfuss and younger Amy Irving. I still have a copy of the film on DVD. Also in college, I one day wandered into the halls of our school of music to discover a dozen small practice rooms, each with an upright piano. As it turned out, these rooms were open to any student, and so the piano became my escape as I worked through the stresses of an architecture degree.

When I got married, my wife – who couldn’t afford a Steinway back then (and still can’t) – presented me with a Korg digital keyboard. A poor man’s piano if you will, but with the touch and sound of the real thing. Almost forty years later that keyboard still works, sitting quietly upstairs in one of our bedrooms.

Four years ago, as many of you read back then, my wife gave another nod to the keyboard when she gave me the LEGO Grand Piano for Christmas. Building and blogging about that beautiful model one chapter at a time over several months was a captivating adventure, including all of the classical music I re-listened to along the way. The LEGO models I build now will never surpass the Grand Piano, which sits proudly on its own shelf in my home office.

Four years ago also brought me, unexpectedly, my first real piano. My daughter and her family bought a nearby house, where the previous owners left an old, upright Baldwin behind. I found it very sad: a lonely, neglected piano, probably not played for years, inevitably out of tune and in need of repair. So I came to its rescue, hiring a piano mover to get it to our house, and a tuner to restore it to fighting shape. Today that piano sits in our living room. It doesn’t match any of our furniture. It doesn’t get played as often as it should. But it warms my heart just to see it there, and that’s all that really matters.

Recently, the grand piano of my youth resurfaced. It had been sitting in storage for several years, lost among my parents’ many belongings, waiting patiently for another owner. It seemed it would never find another home until – go figure – the Methodist church I grew up in had a need for one. So the piano was wrapped up, trucked up, and placed in the church’s social hall, where it will be restored and played as it was meant to be. To me that feels like the completion one of life’s many circles. The very piano that brought me so much music ends up in the church that brought me so much of a faith life.

Just like my wife, I will never be able to afford a Steinway & Sons masterpiece piano. Neither my budget nor my modest keyboard talent are deserving of such a beautiful instrument. But not to worry. I have my modest Baldwin upright to keep me company. It brings back a lot of keyboard memories. And there are sure to be more.

Some content sourced from the CNN Business article, “How a company from the Gilded Age…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Goddess of Green

Green Goddess is a salad dressing with long-ago origins in France, created by a chef who wanted to top his dish of green eel with an equally green topping (still with me?). The Green Goddess, Danú, is a figure of long-ago Irish mythology, associated with fertility, wisdom, and the land. Danú is also the name of the Irish troupe who put on a lively concert in our small town on Tuesday night.

It was fitting to go to a performance of Irish music on St. Patrick’s Day. I grabbed a couple of seats the moment the offering was advertised. As it turned out, Danú’s was the brand of lively Irish jigging you’d otherwise find in the streets and bars of Dublin. More of the instrumental and less of the singing. More of the fast and less of the slow. And when there was singing it was mostly Gaelic, with a few words of translation about the story of the song beforehand. We had a “grand” time.

Danú’s musical instruments (and the remarkable talent behind them) were as alluring as the music they produced. I mean, who wouldn’t be drawn to a concert of tin whistle, fiddle, button accordion, bouzouki, and Irish pipes? The pipes, also called the uillleann, is a device played sitting down, where the bellows is compressed between the arm and the body to generate the air, producing a wail that sounds decidedly Irish (because were I to claim “decidedly Scottish” the Irish wouldn’t be at all happy about it).

My wife is one-quarter Irish, which may explain why we’re drawn to the music of “her country”. Danú is just the latest in a series of performances we’ve enjoyed over the years. Our initial foray into the genre was years ago in Colorado, when we first saw the group Celtic Thunder.

If you’ve seen their show, you know Celtic Thunder is as much about the theatrics as they are about the music. Like Danú their lyrics are nods to Irish mythology, but the sounds are decidedly more modern. Celtic Thunder came together just twenty years ago and in that time they’ve recorded a dozen albums, toured the world, and spun off several solo acts. If Celtic Thunder comes to your town, drop everything you’re doing and go see them.

One of the Thunder’s spin-off soloists is a favorite of ours to this day. Emmet Cahill is an Irish tenor whose success includes a #1 album on the Billboard charts, and performances in venues like Carnegie Hall and with the Tabernacle Choir. Cahill has the voice (and the accent) where it doesn’t really matter what he sings; his music is always captivating. Even better, Cahill performs most of his concerts in church sanctuaries where the acoustics allow for a cappella singing, not even needing the microphone. We’ve seen Cahill perform several times. You should too.

Finally (as if to top each performer with the next) we found yet another taste of Ireland’s music on her western shores – atop the breathtaking Cliffs of Moher. We took a bus tour from Dublin years ago, which cut all the way across the country and then headed south to the Cliffs. According to the locals we were lucky to visit the Cliffs on a sunny day, but I’d say we were really lucky to find Tina Mulrooney performing right there in the out-of-doors. Tina’s an accomplished harpist, with a soft soprano voice deserving of her instrument. She was parked alone on the cliffs, just sitting, singing, and playing her harp. Mulrooney is siren-seductive with her singing, akin to the music of Celtic Woman.

If Danú ever returns to our fair city we’ll probably leave the seats to others. Not that we didn’t enjoy ourselves on Tuesday night, but one night of “dancing in our chairs” was probably enough for a while. Now then, should Emmet Cahill or Tina Mulrooney choose to pass through? Then, then you’ll find us sitting front and center, hoping for just one more rendition of Danny Boy.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

When I’m Sixty-Four

We’ve reached the time of year when we abide by an unwritten rule: It’s no longer appropriate to say Happy New Year! We’re well past the first week of 2026 so quit thinking the year is still “new” already. On the other hand, it’s entirely appropriate to say Happy Birthday! Today happens to be the birthday of yours truly, as it has been for the past sixty-four years. I now find myself squarely between “Early Sixties” and “Medicare Eligible”, which sparks a wide variety of thoughts. Including a song by The Beatles.

Here’s a contradiction I wrestle with every birthday. I am celebrating 64 years but it’s actually my 65th birthday. If you don’t count the very first one (when you turn “0”) you’re effectively removing the first year of your life from the equation. 64 equals sixty-four years of my existence. But 64 also means my sixty-fifth birthday. Get it? I didn’t think so.

Birthday are traditionally celebrated with presents and cake, and both made their appearance yet again this year. I keep telling my wife and kids no presents, because in our sixties we finally learn we have almost everything we need (and need almost nothing we have). On the other hand, I will never turn down birthday cake, especially when the choice of flavor is mine to make. German chocolate – heavy on the coconut if you please.

My birthday is also the perfect reason to recall my late father. He was born the very next day (well, the very next day thirty-three years before). If my mother could’ve held on for another couple of hours Dad and I would’ve shared the same birthday. Not that I ever blamed her for choosing January 22nd. I’m sure the last thing she cared about back then was the clock. But at least she got a kind of two-fer in that Dad and I celebrated our birthdays together every year.

Our financial advisor makes a nice birthday gesture every year with the colorful assortment you see here. These beautiful chocolates – handcrafted by Florida-based Norman Love Confections – are too pretty to eat. Having said that I can assure you the entire box will be empty by early February. Yes I realize this “gift” is really just me buying myself a birthday present, since it comes out of the profits of my own investments. But at least there are profits…

My birthday is also a reminder I fall under the sign of Aquarius (barely). An Aquarius is described as intellectual, independent, and humanitarian. I happily embrace all three even if I regularly fall short in all three as well. On the other hand, Aquarius is the water-bearer. In the thirty-odd years my wife and I have been homeowners we’ve been plagued with every form of water disaster imaginable. Drips, leaks, mold, flooded basements, overflowing retention ponds – you name it. Would it surprise you to know an ice storm is headed our way in the next few days?

Finally we have The Beatles; or at least, Paul McCartney. McCartney, who turned 83 last June, wrote the merry tune When I’m Sixty Four when he was only fourteen. The lyrics include musings about his life fifty years on, but really the song’s just a silly rant about a time he couldn’t possibly foretell. (At least he thought to include “Dave” in the lyrics.) If I could meet McCartney in person I’d love to ask him, Hey, was it really like the song suggested nineteen years ago? Even if it wasn’t I’ll bet he’d take age sixty-four back in a heartbeat.

We make wishes when we blow out birthday candles (even at my post-middle-pre-senior age). Such was the case again this year on top of my German chocolate cake. What did I wish for? I’ll never tell, at least not unless the wish comes true. But I will admit to one distraction while I was huffing and snuffing those candles. There were only sixty-four on my cake. I’m thinking there should’ve been sixty-five.

A Triumph in Travertine

LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #8

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

A little over two months ago we set out to do the impossible: construct one of the world’s great fountains in time for Christmas. Today, a day before our self-imposed deadline we put the very last piece of travertine in place. Okay, so this Trevi Fountain is made of LEGO and we’re nowhere near Rome but still, we’ve had a nice little adventure from start to finish.

As is the case with many of LEGO’s models, the final pieces are meant for flourishes and ornamentation. Bag 14 – of 15 bags of pieces – focused entirely on the top center structure you see here. Everything was completed in a cool 23 minutes, finished off by the careful placement of those four tiny statues.

Today’s musical accompaniment was fitting. I chose Gabriel’s Oboe, a short but beautiful instrumental some of you may recognize from Amy Grant’s “A Christmas to Remember” album. It was actually written by Ennio Morricone for the movie The Mission. I listened to it twice. Then I went with Luigi Boccherini’s Minuet from his String Quintet in E Major, which some of you may also recognize from movie scores. I listened to it thrice. Finally, I concluded with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (though of course, only with the “Winter” movement).

Bag 15 – the final bag of Trevi LEGO pieces – was an adventure from the get-go. Thirty seconds after spilling the pieces onto the counter I heard a tiny “tap tap tap” on the kitchen floor, the exact sound of a LEGO piece skittering away. Sure enough, way over by the frig, the little guy was standing there looking up at me with a devilish grin. He’d rolled way, way across my kitchen counter and dropped to the floor before attempting his escape. Again with the runaway pieces, sigh…

The statuary of the Trevi is impressive and the LEGO equivalent is kind of fun. If you look carefully in the piles of pieces above you can see hairpieces, torsos, and horse heads. Fully assembled and installed, it’s quite the collection of humans and animals in and among the rushing waters.

Finally, here’s an interesting coincidence of timing. In just over a month – for the first time in its history – you’ll have to pay $2 to see the Trevi up close. The fee is designed to reduce the overwhelming flow of tourists in front of the fountain. A fee just to see a fountain may sound nit-picky but a trial run showed it works well to reduce the chaos. Trust me: pay the $2, spend as much time front and center as they’ll allow you, and gaze upon one of the sculptured marvels of Ancient Rome. I think you’ll agree; the Trevi Fountain is a triumph in travertine.

Running build time: 7 hr. 48 min.

Total leftover pieces: 44

Priceless Hatches

I’m enjoying a couple of soft-boiled eggs right now, my every-other-day breakfast entrée. The timer I use to prepare them sits right in the pot of water, indicating when the eggs are cooked to perfection. I pay a little more than average for my eggs, to producer Vital who advertises “pasture-raised – tended by hand by farmers who care”. On the other hand, if I wanted to pay a lot more than average I’d simply go to a rare goods auction and buy one from Fabergé.

You wouldn’t have a Fabergé egg for breakfast, of course. No one would ever sink their teeth into a priceless work of art (well, maybe a banana), let alone one of only fifty that were ever created. One of the Fabergés – the “Winter Egg” – went under the auction block last week, with the winning bid confirmed in a mere three minutes. The buyer’s purchase of a single Fabergé for $30.2 million dollars is a new record; noteworthy considering how many times the eggs have changed hands in the last 140 years.

I can’t say why we Westerners even know about Fabergé eggs. Most hide in private collections or in museums you’ve never been to. The eggs were created in St. Petersburg, Russia in the late 1800s by jeweler House of Fabergé for the reigning tsars of the time. One or two eggs were produced every year as exquisite Easter gifts, from 1885 through 1917. Most are jeweled with diamonds and other precious gems, and hinge open to reveal delicate animals or scenes within.

The Winter Egg (1913) is described as “the most spectacular, artistically inventive and unusual” of all fifty Fabergés, which is quite a statement when any one of the eggs deserves the same praise. The Winter Egg took almost a year to design and create, and the value is evident in the details. 4,500 tiny rose-cut diamonds are married to a platinum snowflake motif to create the impression of a block of ice dusted with frost.

The Winter Egg hinges opens to reveal a hanging basket of wood anemones, made from white quartz and rare green “Tsavorite” garnets. I can’t imagine working with these expensive materials on such a small scale but maybe that’s because I don’t have the delicate fingers of a woman. The Winter Egg was designed and created by Alma Pihl, the only female jeweler in the House of Fabergé.

On a cruise around the Baltic Sea several years ago, my wife and I were fortunate to spend a couple of days in St. Petersburg, touring Catherine Palace and Peterhof among the city’s other sights. When we returned to the ship we were greeted by a local jeweler, who offered replicas of the Fabergés (for less than $32M, thank goodness). We chose the Imperial Coronation Egg (1897), inspired by the color of Tsar Alexander III’s robe. The Coronation Egg houses a replica of the imperial carriage, made with gold and platinum and detailed with rubies and diamonds (the original egg that is, not ours).

After learning a single egg can set you back $32M, I now look at my breakfast eggs a little differently. $10.99 a dozen? That used to be top of the heap. Now it’s just pocket change.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #6

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

There’s a moment in every LEGO build where you look at what you’ve constructed and think, Hey, I’m almost done! That moment was today. Bags 10 and 11 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought the structure of the Trevi Fountain to new, practically finished heights. The tiny, tiny pieces I worked through (so many of them I was afraid to count) resulted in the uppermost level of the backdrop you see in the final photo.

From my magic hat of Italian composers I somehow chose Claudio Monteverdi for my musical accompaniment today. You don’t know Monteverdi and apparently I don’t either. Had I realized his contribution to classical music was mostly opera (hard pass) I would’ve reached into the hat again. Alas, I was subjected to Monteverdi’s L’Arianna “lament” – equal parts sorrow, anger, fear, and so on. Those singers sure didn’t sound happy as I snapped together LEGO pieces, but honestly who knows? I don’t speak “sung” Italian.

Here’s an expectation with a symmetrical LEGO build. If you construct an element that goes on one side of the model you’ll be mirroring it on the other side before you know it. A hundred or more pieces went into the windowed wall you see here, and a hundred more went into its twin soon after. It’s repetitive yes, but at least you go faster the second time around since you just had practice.

A word about the little devils in this photo. Because they’re cylindrical they can roll. Because they roll they can hide under something. Something like a LEGO instruction manual. Once again I was fooled into thinking I was missing pieces… until I thought to look under the manual. Sure enough, there they sat just smirking at me. So I promptly arrested and cuffed them, hauled them away, and now they’re jailed in the backdrop you see here, without possibility of parole.

We’re just four bags of LEGO pieces from “turning on the water” of the magnificent Trevi. I’ll admit to peeking into the box at those upcoming bags. They are small, all four of them. Perhaps I’ll wrap the fountain construction in a single go next week. Even if not, conveniently, the final block of travertine would be laid the following week, just in time for Christmas. Now that’s what I call a gift!

Running build time: 5 hrs. 42 min.

Total leftover pieces: 32 (tiny, tiny pieces)

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “Faberge egg fetches record $30.2 million at rare auction”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.