Every December I take some time to go through my reading list for the year and reflect on it a bit. While I read primarily for pleasure and at whim, it is also one of the primary ways I learn and continue in personal formation. I find it an invaluable exercise to take stock of the year and also clarify some things as I think about my reading for the coming year.

Two years ago I started writing a short annotation for each book when compiling my list, which is even better for thinking about a book you may have finished several months ago. I also do a little data crunching (at the bottom), which is just for my own enjoyment. Reading is not a competitive sport, though these numbers do help me understand how much fun I’m having.

Here are the books I finished in 2025 listed in chronological order by date of completion, with annotations:

Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, Various

• Edited by the good folks at Plough, this was a nice compilation of readings from a variety of sources.

Motherhood: A Confession, Natalie Carnes

• In a moment of serendipity, I picked this up right after finishing a slow read of St. Augustine’s Confessions not knowing that she was glossing his work through her perspective as a scholar and mother. Insightful and deeply personal.

Handel: His Life and Works, Jonathan Keates

• This was a “disambiguation” read, by which I mean, I was frustrated with the common stories and myths that circulate about Handel and the composition of Messiah seemingly every Christmas season so I finally went to a good source to sort out truth from fiction. Turns out, Handel regularly composed large-scale works in a matter of a few weeks (just like he did with Messiah), and other than obligatory participation in English civic religion he doesn’t seem to have been particularly devout. In fact, he seems to have been quite a man of the world.
• Great read though, and introduced me to much of Handel’s music that is just wonderful but not well-known.

Practicing Music by Design, Christopher Berg

• This is the best book of its kind that I know of (and there is a lot of tripe out there in the music practicing world). Combining insights from brain scientists with tested advice from great performers of the past, Mr. Berg (who, in full disclosure, was my guitar teacher for my undergrad years) gives a set of practicing tools that increase the learning value of practice immensely. I give a lecture in my freshman musicianship class summarizing the ideas of this book and it makes a huge impact on my students. If you have anything you practice regularly (an instrument, chess, a sport, anything) and would like to improve there are insights in this book that will help you.

Ambition Monster, Jennifer Romolini

• From one of my favorite sub-genres of “trying to make it in publishing in the big city in the early aughts,” this is quite a tale. It’s one of those memoirs that one suspects has been somewhat burnished (let’s avoid accusations of fabulism) into the punchy narrative it is, but it’s terrifically fun nonetheless.

Zero at the Bone, Christian Wiman

• One of the things I get from Wiman’s prose is exposure to poems (his and others). This work got me on to Wallace Stevens which filled a lot of the poetry reading I did this year. I appreciate his voice, but I am often frustrated by his ability to doubt everything except his own modern sensibility. Despite that, some incredible writing throughout this volume.

The Marriage You Want, Sheila Wray Gregoire, Keith Gregoire

• I read this along with a young couple my wife and I have been meeting with pre-engagement. I have what I consider a very good marriage, which I account largely to our ability to ignore most of the marriage advice found in christian literature on the topic. This book is not one to ignore, but includes a lot of helpful framing and information, and is one of the few that doesn’t fall into the unhelpful gender stereotypes that make up most books of this kind.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

• One of the great upgrades to my reading life this year is that my oldest (he turned 5 in June) is up for reading “chapter books” at bedtime instead of just children’s books. I’ve taken this opportunity to revisit some of my childhood favorites and it’s been a gas. We started with the master of the form: Roald Dahl. I absolutely loved his books as a child, and I enjoy them even more as an adult (as does E). Dahl said that writing children’s books was much harder than writing regular literature, because adults read a book once and are done with it. Children, however, will read a book again and again and it has to be able to hold up to their imagination over and over. It was both stranger and more fun than I remembered.

In the Name of Jesus: Thoughts on Christian Leadership, Henri Nouwen

• I read with a small group of men from church. Nouwen describes his decision to leave a successful career in academia to serve in a group home for adults. By “Christian leadership” he of course means Christ-like service, one of the few books (and lives) I’ve ever read that actually follows that thought to its logical conclusions. Challenging and convicting, we had wonderful discussions about work, faith, parenting, and more in our group.

Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Richard and Florence Atwater

• Another bedtime read with my son. He absolutely loved this one, and it was much different than I remembered it from reading it 25 years ago or so.

Hallowed Be This House, Thomas Howard

• This was recommended to me by someone after a discussion of viewing the world sacramentally. I thought I would enjoy it more than I did, but it was fine.

My Name is Red, Orhan Pomuk

• After a non-fiction heavy start to the year, I got in the mood for some novels. This was a re-read, though it has been 8 or 10 years since the first time I read it. It is an astounding work with depth and detail that is hard to believe. Told exclusively in first person narrative by every character (and some animals, paintings, and others objects), on its face it is a murder-mystery about 16th century ottoman manuscript illuminators and miniaturists. But like all great murder-mysteries, it is probing many deep questions. East and West, Islam and Christianity, iconoclasm and iconography, writing and painting, love and lust, looking and seeing.
• I was introduced to this book by a piece of guitar music written by my friend Ron Pearl. I’m pretty sure this is the only time that has happened.

The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes

• A historical novel about one of my favorite composers, Dmitri Shostakovich. I’ve read a number of biographies about Shostakovich and listened to hours of his music. In this attempt at interiority by Barnes I didn’t meet the person I imagine Shostakovich to have been, though there were some effective ideas. I also found his writing a bit…twee? The kind of thing that passes for good writing but is actually not that great.

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngochi Adiche

• Another great novel. This was much of what you hope a modern novel to be: deep characterization, overlapping timelines and settings, cultural clashes. Very enjoyable, if a bit on the long side.

Harmonium, Wallace Stevens

• I have read a Stevens poem here or there for years, but Christian Wiman’s treatment of several of his poems in Zero to the Bone encouraged me to finally pick up this collection. I learned a lot about modern poetry reading this. His poems have the rare quality of being enjoyable even when inscrutable. Stevens is to poetry what Charles Ives is to music. And both happened to work in insurance, which is just the kind of trivia I love.

All the Beauty in the World, Christopher Brinkley

• This was gifted to me by a friend when I mentioned I would be visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art this summer. It is the memoir of a man who, wracked with grief after the death of his brother, quit an enviable corporate publishing job to work as a guard in the Met for ten years. Brinkley concluded that standing quietly among the world’s greatest art would be what he needed to heal, and he was right. Enjoyable on so many levels, absolutely recommend. Especially good for museum and art lovers.

Between Two Sounds: Arvo Pärt’s Journey To His Musical Language, Joonas Sildre

• This was the first graphic novel I ever read cover-to-cover. Likely the last. My attention is just not calibrated to enjoy this, though I understand why others would.

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

• When it comes to children’s literature I am a firm believer that you stick to the classics. Surprisingly, a lot of classic children’s books are mostly about death. Charlotte’s Web really takes an unflinching view of the facts of life, but through the appropriate vehicle of farm life. This theme returned later in the year.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll

• Another read with E. Even weirder than you remember it being! Some truly hysterical dialogue (I was cackling while reading the tea party scene out loud).

How to Know a Person, David Brooks

• Maybe not a book I would have picked up on my own, but it was given to me (perhaps a subtle hint?) and I enjoyed reading it. My main criticism is that I think it’s very unlikely that a book about conversation skills can effectively teach conversation skills in any practical way.

The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Charles Rosen

• A magisterial work of criticism and analysis. Rosen’s depth of knowledge of this repertoire is truly astounding. To become capable of writing a book like this requires daily in-depth study for decades. I’ve already been surprised how much I’ve used his ideas in my own teaching.

Stuart Little, E.B. White

• Such a strange and effective little book. White’s ability to turn a sentence is wonderful for the reader, and the audacity of the book’s premise was not lost on E. Stuart (who is a mouse) is also a fully accepted member of the family and they make various accommodations for him. But not so much that he doesn’t occasionally get stuck in the blinds and nearly die.

Fig Pudding, Ralph Fletcher

• I didn’t read this as a child, but my wife remembered it and picked it up at a thrift store. It’s about a family of 6 kids, five brothers and a sister (exactly like my family growing up, so that got my attention). I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say some very heavy things happened for a children’s book. Death is a major part of this book, but unlike Charlotte’s Web it doesn’t remain with the animals. When E’s betta fish, Mikey, his first pet, died in November I was reminded of how important it is to encounter difficult things in art before you encounter them in real life.

Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred, ed. Peter Bouteneff

• This is a collection of analytical and critical essays from the perspective of sound studies, which has been making its way to more concert music from its origins in jazz and pop music. I think it’s generally the wrong tool for the job, and most of the essays were not particularly insightful. Most of the authors have some other interest that they were attempting to cudgel Pärt’s music with but it didn’t result in good analysis. Pärt is one of my favorite composers, so it was a bit disappointing.
• One interesting tidbit was that Pärt worked for quite a while as a sound engineer and radio operator. When he started working with Manfred Eicher at ECM records to record the standard versions of his works, his understanding of recording and making a particular sound was clearly a factor in achieving such a consistent “Pärt sound.” His monk-like persona hides some signifiant technical prowess.

Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell

• My wife is a prolific reader of novels, most of which are not exactly my taste, but when she recommends a book to me I almost always read it (she does tend to know what I like). This was an excellent recommendation (and before I knew there was a Chloe Zhao film version in the works). It was a bit of a slow start, but the second half was riveting. O’Farrel’s realism and unflinching depiction are wrenching. Great, great ending as well.
• We went to see the film in the theater in December. Beautifully made, and just as wrenching as the book. There was loud and open weeping throughout the theater (which, on the rare occasions I darken a movie theater, is exactly what I want). Book and film both highly recommended.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

• I didn’t read a ton of novels this year, but man, I chose some good ones. I also read quite a few first-for-me authors, including Hurston. Her novels were an extension of her anthropological work with American Blacks while slavery was a living memory and Jim Crow daily life. Her ability to create vivid and realistic characters through dialogue is really amazing. This book is like sitting on the stoop while friends and neighbors pass through telling tales.

King Lear, William Shakespeare

• I read this before seeing it on stage, and was reminded yet again of the incredible work actors and directors do. Much better on stage than page, but his sheer imagination is always startling.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit

• This is one of those wonderful, broody collections of essays that are so beautifully wrought you just float through enjoying the sentences and images. Would be a perfect companion to a long road trip through the American west.

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

• Another great novel, but absolutely harrowing. Themes of trauma (committed, experienced, inherited, cultural) self-image/hatred, and the colonization of the mind. Morrison does not flinch in her portrayal, with almost journalistic precision, of the facts this story builds over the course of the book. Morrison’s first published work, it took some time to gain attention and won the Nobel prize in 1993, 23 years after publication.

The Big Relief, David Zahl

• Another read with a small group of men from church. Led to a lot of good discussions, Zahl is a great collector of good illustrations.

Sharpen This, Christopher Schwarz

• An essential guidebook for anyone who works with sharp tools and needs to know how to make them sharp again. “Making tools dull is more fun than making them sharp.” “The solution to nearly every woodworking problem is sharp.” Schwarz is a delightful writer, and the instructions in this book are a model of clear instructional writing with comic relief.

Ralph S. Mouse, Beverly Clearly

• Another read with E. He got very invested in the mouse show the class put on.

The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers

• Yet another first, my first Dorothy Sayers book. This one was chosen somewhat at random (I found a nice hardbound copy at a book sale) but it was very enjoyable. It is a bit of a slow opening with a lot of campanology (bells and bell ringing), but they were sufficiently integrated into the plot it made sense structurally by the end.

The Liberated Imagination, Leland Ryken

• Ryken outlines a very coherent set of principles around engaging in the arts. A lot here I had worked out in my own thinking and teaching, but some nice new additions as well. Its real weakness is his one-dimensional portrayal of modern art and its various movements. He just doesn’t have a broad enough experience with it to comment helpfully on it as a whole, which is what he purports to do.

The Sonnets of William Shakespeare, William Shakespeare

• Something of a bucket list check-off, but thoroughly enjoyable as well. Such a wild imagination. Take a few months and read one a day, you’ll be better for it. If nothing else, you can be one of those smug folks who casually mentions you’ve read all of Shakespeare’s sonnets (caveat lector).

Entries, Wendell Berry

• This collection from 1994 was a real treat. Berry is somewhat uneven as a poet. I found this out reading sections of the New Collected Poems. It’s a bit of a scavenge. I’ve also learned that I much prefer smaller, curated collections of poems anyway. Nice small books you can put in your jacket pocket on a walk, just in case.
• The collection is divided into four sections. Section 1 is Berry at his ruminative and grateful primarily, seeking a peaceful alternative life. Section 2 wanders toward his angsty register frequently. Section 3 ranges into issues of love and loss, male and femaleness, and the various connections we make throughout our lives and how they change.
• The final section, In extremis: poems for my father is the highlight of the book. Written (autobiographically, I assume) from the perspective of a middle-aged man caring for his aging father, they are elegiac, tender, frustrated, and bracingly honest about the challenges of aging and caring for an aging parent. The lessons learned from a father, the memories of ancestors slipping away from his slowing mind, the depredations of a mind and body once strong and capable (”His mind was then an act / Accomplished soon as thought, / Though now his body serves / Unwillingly at best / His mind’s unresting will.”), the frustrations of disagreements, and the memories of past hurts all swirl together, connected by the clear love for the father that doesn’t hide away his faults and challenging personality. Some of the most moving of Berry’s poetry I have read, I’m sure I will return to this in the future.

Small Teaching, James L. Lang

• I started reading this on a Sunday and used an exercise in class Tuesday. Immensely useful and practicable. Much like musical performance, a lot happens in the moments and this book is about teaching the moments. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to teach things to other people and have them learn.
• Lots of overlap with the reading I’ve done on practicing instruments. What do you know, learning is roughly the same whatever your discipline. A project I would love to tackle is writing/adapting a set of small teaching strategies for one-on-one music lessons. There is much opportunity to apply these there, but a little adaptation might be needed. Plus, there is a general dearth of good literature about teaching applied lessons rather than in a classroom setting.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

• Needed something quick to tide me over while I waited for a book in the mail. Found this on the shelf and it was great fun. Hadn’t read it since I was probably 13 or 14. RLS likes his long sentences, but it’s a very short book. Perhaps literature’s most influential novella? I can’t think of another with cultural recognition like this one.

A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

• I have seen this on stage and listened to various audio versions nearly every year of my life, but to the best of my recollection I have never actually read this book myself. An error corrected! I started it with E and he was a real trooper, but he was afraid of the ghosts (he’s a sensitive soul) so I finished it on my own. I’ve never gotten into any of the long Dickens novels (though I love the good miniseries versions of them), I just may have to in the coming year.

Waiting on the Word, Malcolm Guite

• Guite is one of my guiding lights and I returned to this wonderfully curated collection of poems for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany (I read ahead a bit…). Reading analysis of poems can be like reading a dishwasher manual, but Guite’s is vivid and full of insight. Particularly where broader prior reading than my own is useful he always sheds light without getting in the way.

And now, the numbers. A single book can be counted for more than one genre, so those numbers do not add up to the total at the top. I find those categories helpful to see what kinds of things I’m reading in broad strokes. I also have data from the last two years. Turns out I had quite a good reading year (2023 numbers are artificially boosted by the birth of my twins, I spent most nights that year feeding a baby and reading).

We had a good Christmas. We aren’t traveling for any of the holidays this year, and while we do love visiting family it is a relief to not have a trip looming or be on the road.

I thought the anticipation would kill E (our 5-year-old), but he handled himself very well today. We had my brother’s family over last night so he went to sleep late and by 7:00 this morning he was jumping in his bed singing “Jingle BELLS! Jingle BELLS!” I expect we’ll have a big crash tomorrow, but today was wonderful.

If there’s anything that can make you as happy as getting legos as a kid on Christmas, it’s giving legos to your own kids.

E bashed out two 300-piece+ lego builds in a few hours almost completely on his own. Last Christmas he got his first set and could’t build it at all. Even six months ago he couldn’t have handled sets this complex.

Except the Christmas I spent in Naples, FL, this was the warmest Christmas I can ever remember. Sunny with a high of 75º . Couldn’t even wear the cozy socks I got, shed my flannel by 11.

Christmas didn’t really register for the twins last year, but they were into it this time around.

We decided to potty train them this week. Might have been a tactical error, but E (little E, I have two children with E names…) finally made her first big “peep” (rhymes with poop, they came up with this) on the potty. Our Christmas miracle.

It was a year of buying two of each present for them. Hopefully we can get away from that, but they did parallel play with their matching toys most of the afternoon. The doll strollers were a huge hit, they “took them to the park” on walks many times.

Books and tools for me. It’s good to be known well. I even spent an hour in my shop this afternoon while everyone was resting and before dinner prep really got going. I don’t think I’ve had any downtime on Christmas since we had kids.

Dinner was magnificent. Mince-meat pie has a branding problem. All the more for me.

The Incarnation astounds me more each year. Of all the ideas in the world, it is the most outrageous. Immanuel, God with us.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

That’s right, it’s Christmas break and we’re reviewing sixty year old recordings.

When it comes to baroque music, I’ve usually been a fan of small ball. Bach cantatas with a chorus of 16 is usually right, and a nimble chamber orchestra is all they need. The music is acrobatic and large ensembles often can’t maneuver at the pace needed.

The same goes for Handel’s Messiah. The recording I have listened to the most is the Academy of Ancient Music directed by Christopher Hogwood. Another particular favorite is Stephen Cleobury’s, which takes all of part I like it’s single breath. Really thrilling pacing.

This year though, I decided to listen through the 1966 London Symphony recording directed by Colin Davis. I’ve had it on vinyl for years (before I had a record player I think, a thrift store find) but realized I’d never actually listened to it. I expected not to like it very much, since it is firmly from the “Big Bach” era of baroque recordings with romantic sized orchestras.

I was wrong, it is wonderful. Though skeptical, I was won over by the end of the Sinfonia. The opening section seemed lethargic to my tastes (24 violins can’t be quite as overdotted as 3), but the heft it gives to the fugatta section was striking. This was the impression throughout, bigger bigs but still small smalls. This group can get to real size without straining.

The tempos are not ponderous, even though the forces are large. The chorus is also quite nimble. It’s hard to imagine the Berlin Philharmonic chorus of the same era handling the choral fugues with the clarity achieved here, but the English choral tradition of a straighter tone and precise tuning really helps.

John Shirley-Quirk is another highlight. His musicianship is unmatched, and his sense of sung English (highlighted in his work with Britten’s operas) is magnificent. The rest of the soloists I could take or leave, Wakefield particularly is the wrong fach.

You may have attended a performance of Messiah that ended with the Hallelujah Chorus. I have. And I would like to apologize for the artistic crime committed against you. The Hallelujah Chorus is a little mid-concert diversion compared to the real ending (and highlight) of Messiah: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.”

This is not just the highlight of the work, in context it is the greatest thirty seconds of music in the Western canon. The most perfect unity of form and content ever achieved (despite what Kierkegaard might say about Don Giovanni, music is primarily transcendent, not erotic). When I have sung in the chorus I usually haven’t gotten a single note past the lump in my throat from this point on. Sorry, fellow tenor 2s.

Davis delivers this through the Amens perfectly. Just the right pacing and weight, and truly shimmering violins on the instrument fugue that interrupts the amens before the final chorus.

Davis has another recording of this work with LSO from 2006. Perhaps that will be next.

A photo and some memories from each month of 2025.

January

January brought the first snow we’ve seen since we moved to South Carolina. The twins first ever and the first E remembers. The snow was a highlight. I don’t remember much of January other than feeling very dark of soul. The holidays do a number on the kids and there isn’t enough sunshine. It was the first time I considered I might get seasonal affective disorder. The rigors of raising two 1-year-olds and a 4-year-old was a lot, especially without much outdoors time.

February

The caprices of February weather allowed the occasional outing and even some bike rides—the greatest mood enhancer of all. By February the Spring semester is well in hand and things start to feel normal in a good way. The girls are not yet two and can still be challenging. Even the best days leave us utterly exhausted, collapsing onto the couch right after bedtime.

A round of deep faculty cuts is announced at the end of the month. They are delivered in a way that seems, from the outside, cruelly calculated to be hurtful and encourage gossip. My position remains for now but faculty morale is at its lowest point in the three years since this turmoil began.

March

Winter is short in our southern state. Spring approaches and as we return to daylight savings time we are greatly restored by daily time outside. Usually a bike ride before or after dinner to one of the nearby parks.

The girls turn two at the end of the month. The blurring speed of the past two years is overwhelming. Slowing that time and attending to the unrelenting passage of moments that is their lives becomes a focus. I turn off my iphone and switch to a tiny little phone that barely works for anything. David Whyte said in an interview that “the only way to change the past is the quality of attention we give to the present.” I’ve spent the last two years depressed and frustrated. This is the biggest change I’ve made so far.

I attend our Ash Wednesday service alone. My dear friend George (who we call St. George behind his back, he is that kind of person) is there and we sit together, then kneel side-by-side on the hardwood floor while the Litany of Penitence is read over us. George is beginning the final stage of his life and I’m finishing my beginning, somewhere between youth and middle age. Together we confess and two years of struggling starts to come undone.

April

April is brightness and light. The last cool days are behind us but the heat of summer is far off. Evenings stretch long and we ride far almost every day. On Good Friday I see the first hummingbird of the season.

On Easter the girls wear their dresses and get mosquito bites hunting eggs. Everything is new for them and it will be again next year. We pick the first weedy flowers from the yard to add to the cross on the church steps. Family dinner in my brother’s back yard for good eating.

May

May begins at the end of the school year and ends at the beginning of summer. On its first day I perform a concerto I’ve been preparing a full year. It goes well and I’m ready for new projects. The school year ends in yet more uncertainty. The brand new president has resigned before his first year is up and for the third year in a row we do not know who the president will be when we return in August.

We end the month with a road trip to my hometown to visit my parents. The kids go to Knoebel’s for the first time. (If you aren’t from central Pennsylvania I can’t adequately explain to you the hold this place has on my heart). Watching my kids ride the rides I grew up on is the happiest I’ve ever been as a father.

June

Our roadtrip pushes into June with a stop in Virginia to visit my sister. We spend a day in Washington D.C. seeing the Natural History Museum (which blows my oldest’s mind). The kids tolerate a walk through the national gallery while we catch up with an old friend and we all eat lunch together at Carmine’s. Slowly, a new phase of parenting is starting to unfurl.

July

I help lead a study abroad trip to Latvia and Estonia. As a lifelong Arvo Pärt devotee this is something of a personal pilgrimage. We spend five days each in Riga and Tallinn, feeling like the only American tourists there with perfect weather, endless sunlight, and a comfortable food budget. S and I walk along the shore of the Baltic sea until it feels like we’re the only people in the city and the cold north wind will blow forever.

Our last day in Estonia we sat on the ground in the rain with 100,000 people while a choir of 35,000 sang folk songs and other music important to the Estonian national identity. It defied my wildest ideas of what is possible in a culture.

August

The summer ended with our first real family beach trip with two of my brothers. This involved nine children eight and under, including two sets of toddler twins. Once they all get comfortable with the idea of sand it is raucus digging, splashing, and shell collecting the rest of the day. Between the other adults and cousins there is always someone around to help.

Faculty in-service arrives and the long summer is over. My fourth year (and fourth university president) of full-time teaching begins. I have a confidence in my returning courses I never have before, plus the excitement of launching a brand new course that I believe in.

September

September is a month of habits. The school year is settled but not worn out. The kids are used to new routines but still freshly amazed by every new day of day care or co-op. The weather is still a little too hot, but compared to the scorch of July and August we spend the still-long evenings outside riding bikes to the park after dinner and staying until bedtime. The energy stored up during summer break is fueling us with just enough structure to funnel it into an energetic and beautiful life. It is one of the best months of the year, except that a nagging infection takes several weeks for E to get over.

It’s the month I get back to woodworking regularly for the first time since hurricane Helene took my previous shop. Life feels balanced for the first time in a very long time.

October

We enjoy the mildness of October, spending time outside and everyone learning to ride some form of bike. Despite our large grassy backyard, the kids greatly prefer to be in the front. They enjoy watching the traffic and the bugs are’t as bad here.

I play a few concerts that I’ve been looking forward to and submit an enormous portfolio as an application to advance in faculty rank. This project has taken all my spare time for months and it is such a relief to be done with it.

Somewhat on a whim, I reboot my blog after several years and migrate to micro.blog. I’m having fun on the internet for the first time in years.

November

The end of daylights savings hits us hard, but the weather is still mild and we make the most of it. The girls are starting to feel “almost three” and E is on his way to five-and-a-half. There’s a lot of development in those six months.

Ever Since Halloween the kids are obsessed with holidays and count down the days to Thanksgiving. I’m off the whole week and we have a perfect family time together. All my performances for the semester are over along with the bulk of the school work.

December

Cold weather hits us early this year and comes with rain. We set up our tree and decorate the house. Every day begins with the countdown to Christmas, the opening of the Advent calendar, and E crashing out with anticipation by mid-morning. We light our advent candles each Sunday and the darkness isn’t so dark.

We stagger onward rejoicing.

In The Gift of Good Land, Wendell Berry writes of the value of small solutions. An example he gives is riding a bike to lower your personal carbon footprint. There are massive global technology companies spending billions of dollars (and expending who knows how much carbon fuel) to work toward making vehicles more efficient and emit fewer pollutants. One of the towering figures of our age is Elon Musk, who (even with his re-sized public image after his brief yet intense involvement with the current administration) has been heralded as one of the great generals in the army against emissions with his luxury electric cars. (Be reminded that his other pet project does consume a little rocket fuel, about 700,000 gallons a second, and his newest pet project [Grok] is wreaking havoc on the power grid of Memphis).

And yet, as mentioned in an article from the NYT, e-bikes are now reducing the daily need for gasoline by a million barrels a day - more than all the electric vehicles in the world. Getting out of your car and riding a bike has more potency than marginal gains of vehicle efficiency ever can.

My other favorite example of this is Stoop Coffee. A couple living in San Fransisco wanted to get to know some neighbors and grow a sense of community where they live (don’t we all). The obvious course of action here might be to put invitations to a party under all the neighbors doors or form a community organization and try to get people to join. Maybe gossip on Nextdoor a bit more.

But their brilliant solution was small. They decided that every Saturday morning, they would take lawn chairs outside and sit on the sidewalk while they drank their morning coffee. That’s it. For a month nothing happened other than doing what they would have anyway, just outside. Then one neighbor joined them. After that, it was a cascade of connections and community formation unlike anything most young Americans have ever experienced. They now have a neighborhood WhatsApp group, shared spreadsheets with resources and needs, and throw larger events regularly. A small act that took a little bit of courage transformed a collection of urban housing units into a neighborhood.

My small solution this past year was leaving books where I tend to sit. At any one time I now have a couch book, a chair book, and a bedtime book. I read eleven more books this year than last year without changing any else.

What else is in need of a small solution?

Many years ago a friend referred to me as someone who “likes maintaining things.” I think the immediate context was knife sharpening, but it’s true, I do like maintaining all kinds of things. I especially like things that can be maintained.

I’m thinking about this because I recently came across (via @bradleyandroos) this quote from Pete Seeger: “You should consider that the essential art of civilization is maintenance.”

When I read this I had just picked my car up from its (quite expensive) high-mileage maintenance. A pair of fifteen year old dress shoes were at the cobbler’s getting new soles. During Thanksgiving week I spent several hours re-weaving the seat of an antique stool that belongs to a friend. Maintenance was on the mind.

Before, during, and after of a stool I restored for my dear friend George. George is in his 80s and the stool was his mother’s, I think it’s over 100 years old.

As I worked with the stool I was reminded that though it is a simple construction it is of a higher quality than the vast majority of furniture in most homes. This style of post and rung stool is four large sticks and eight smaller sticks. The large sticks have holes drilled partway through and the smaller sticks are stuck into them. The only difficult thing about making this is aligning the holes in each leg so it ends up a rectangle. Not long ago this would have been a basic project in shop class (when we had a real country). Years after the glue failed the stool was held firmly together by the seat weaving, which is itself made of recycled paper. The materials to fix the stool cost maybe five dollars and it will last for decades, by which time it will be serving its third generation (at least, I don’t actually know how old it is).

In fact, every part of the stool is reparable. As long as there is someone with the desire and skill, any post or rung of this stool could be replaced and put back together as the same useful and beautiful object. (I will leave to the philosophers whether it is the same stool after every part of it has been replaced).

This ability to be fixed is a practical and economic value that is hard to find in most modern furniture or consumer goods of any kind. They are designed to be consumed, not maintained. Although that is not exactly correct. They are designed to be used until a mission critical part (usually made of plastic) fails, rendering the entirety of its other materials useless, destined to be gathered to the halls of its PFAS fathers. They are trash with a temporary use to tempt you to buy it.

This noble stool I have now written too many words about will never be trash. When in the course of time it is broken beyond reasonable repair or its usefulness is finally at an end it can be burned, buried, or left in the woods. Even with the slowest method there will be no trace of this stool in a few years. Throw it in the fire pit and it will be gone in an hour. Even our disposable goods are not designed to be disposed of.

I’m thinking primarily here in terms of the world of things, but the application to institutions, relationships, our bodies, and many other things, should be obvious.

To maintain is cheaper than to repair or replace.

I’ve been listening to podcasts for about 20 years now, about as long as I’ve been doing anything regularly and roughly the full lifespan of the podcast. Long enough at least that I have noticed the major shift they have undergone in the last few years. When I first started listening they were primarily actual radio programs distributed via RSS. This meant they could expand listenership to those who didn’t happen to be around their radios during broadcast time (perfect, since radio listening was beginning to decline, though it is still much stronger than I would have guessed). I remember describing it to my mother: “It’s a radio show you can download and listen to anytime.” The accessibility of RSS syndication meant everyone could broadcast, and that’s what they did! This continued a long time. Podcasting was a free-form audio genre that became it’s own pillar of the media institutions (RIP Gimlet Media) but was accessible to anyone because of the openness of distribution (of which I learned all kinds of things from Manton Reese’s write-up about syndication). There were the pros, radio people who found creative freedom away from the clock and radio format needs, but using largely the same set of professional tools. The archetypal This American Life, an actual radio show rebroadcast as a podcast, and its many imitators are the coin of this realm. Then there were the indie folks. People with a passion project that found an audience through the delivery of the podcast feed. Two great examples of this are the History of Rome podcast and the History of English podcast. Both wildly nerdy, encyclopedic passion projects run by amateur enthusiasts. All of these are in the lineage of radio. Scripted or structured interviews, they are information, entertainment, edutainment, criticism, and commentary. They could be many things, but they had the soul of radio without the limits. The technological constraint of radio is the limitations of the AM and FM radio bands. You can only cram so many channels into the Very High Frequency band, and you are limited to a certain power transmission. These are regulatory controls more than technological, but they had major cultural impacts. Radio is regional. You can reliably find a public radio station in the 80s or low 90s, and they will syndicate a lot of the same shows, but the announcers and local commentary will indeed be local to you. This limitation means a finite variety of channels in any vicinity, and thus at least some amount of cultural cohesion in a location. Nearly everyone I knew growing up listening to our local public radio and thus exposure to a similar band of information. We were on the same wavelength (sorry, that’s all my radio puns). RSS (magical as it is!) means everyone is chasing personal interests, which are likely not provided for locally and take the place of local news. (Radio also had a profound influence on music genres and commercialism. Interesting interview here.) About 2023 there seems to have been a seismic shift in the nature of podcasting. I first started to notice that younger people (late teens and 20s, my students) started talking about podcasts again. There was a while there where the fact that I listened to podcasts was a generational marker, but all of sudden we were all listening to podcasts again! Then I realized my students meant something wildly different by “podcast” than I did. All at once I started seeing people posting YouTube videos with a host and guests sitting on couches talking into microphones about whatever banality of the day was getting clicks, and this was a “podcast.” I noticed that all the podcasts I listen to (almost exclusively in the car) started referring to those “watching” since they had started recording in video. About the same time various smutty “podcasts” became wildly popular and a “podcast” hosted by someone with a tangential relationship to the world biggest pop star became a major culture force. (I don’t intend to burden my mind with understanding how all of that worked, but I understand they are getting married). Dear reader, what I just described is daytime television. The podcast I grew up with is something you download and listen to on your iPod while you mow the lawn or ride the train or exercise. They are primarily monologues. Maybe you learn something you discuss over dinner (the famous words, “There’s that episode of This American Life…”). The new podcast you watch on YouTube while attractive people with full makeup interact in charming ways. They are almost exclusively unscripted and conversational and draw on celebrity power to attract viewership. This shift from exclusively audio to primarily video is a major portion of why Derek Thompson’s argument that everything is television is so convincing. Privately watching distant people, the state of Television, is the default state of being alone. And the podcast has become exactly this: being alone while observing other people together. I also wonder if it has become the dominant form of conversation. Listening to this podcast (which I downloaded and listened to in the car like a proper millennial) this week I was somewhat amused by the way the host and guest sound almost exactly alike. They are both intensely “conversational” in their manner. They talk about interesting things as well, but I suspect the main benefit we get from these is that we feel like we are participating in an engaging conversation, a privilege it seems harder to find IRL.

Two recent concert experiences left me feeling particularly full. Though utterly different music from one another, they had a quality that made me (as someone who gives concerts occasionally) think a little more about what a concert is for. The value of live music has always been self-evident to me, but I think I have placed my finger more precisely on why.

Both recent concerts were joyful affairs with energetic music, but generally speaking my own tastes are more austere. I enjoy music like a winter landscape; beautiful, but also harsh and perhaps even threatening. Not necessarily comfortable, though I make room for that as well.

This is all to say, I have felt the same value at lots of different kinds of concerts and the diversity of the recent two reminded me of the many diverse and profound concert experiences I have been able to have. What is it that they all have in common? Why should we insist that attending live music is such a significant part of the humanities education we offer?

My new thesis is that a concert is an affirmation of the goodness of being alive.

But not just the nice parts of being alive. Music affirms the entire range of the givenness of human experience. A problem the philosophers of music have puzzled over for some time is why people enjoy music expressive of negative emotions. We generally avoid sadness and disappointment if we can, it goes, so why should a concert hall fill to see Dido and Aeneas cruelly separated from one another in the underworld? Why listen to Shostakovich’s tenth symphony roil with anger and bitterness?

Though we instinctively avoid the circumstances that lead to those affects, they are an unavoidable part of life. They are (please forgive me) the being of being a being. Life comes with joys and sorrows. These are given as well, some of the gifts of living.

For some of us it is hard to dwell in our emotions. Weddings and funerals (to span the range of social expression) both have a certain number of ceremonial aspects to slow down and facilitate the feelings we should have at such significant moments. Reflecting on our grandfather’s funeral my brother said, “That was one of the best days of my life.” I completely agreed, but it wasn’t until later I figured out why. In facing up to death and remembering a good life we felt so alive.

This is the role of the concert. It is a place to confront your most uncomfortable feelings, experience them in your body and remember, “This is part of being alive. This is good.”

The performer takes the responsibility of choosing some of the various shades of experience and inviting the audience into them. Our greatest performers are like priests of our emotion, ushering us to a space of deep presence with our inner selves.

When you play the searing D minor partita Sarabande (BWV 1004) you say that living people experience embodied sorrow. (JSB certainly did.)

When the subjects unite in the Jupiter symphony finale you say it is good to live together in diverse unity.

When “Freude” erupts from the chorus of Beethoven’s 9th symphony we say living humans experience unspeakable joy.

The concert is a sacred space to claim some small fragment of the human experience and invite your audience to feel it with you and to remember the gift it is. To live as embodied creatures in a state of reflection so that when we step back out to our living we don’t forget to be alive.

One of the secret pleasures of reading used books is when you find an artifact from the previous owner. This Hoover Dam tour ticket from 2009 made the perfect bookmark.

One of my favorite things to do is plan concert programs. As much fun as actually playing concerts is, I am almost constantly thinking up new combinations of pieces that have connections or fit a theme. (If any classical guitarists out there just can’t decide what to play hit me up, I have enough programs for years of my own playing). In an average classical guitar concert, most people will be hearing most of the works for the first time. Presenting them in a context that helps them connect to the music on first hearing and connect them to something they already know is what I’m always trying to do.

Usually I’m working on these programs for a long time, noticing a connection here or there and finding pieces that fit. Once I had the idea to play the Bach D Minor Partita (BWV 1004) but pair each movement with a modern piece that has some resonance with it. It took over a year to choose all the pieces. This past spring, though, I had a program fall from the sky; a bit of curatorial spontaneous generation.

I was driving to work listening to a great album by Alvaro Pierri (https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/brouwer-el-decameron-negro-other-guitar-works) which introduced me to Tres Danzas Concertantes. It’s a work of juvenilia, but packs a serious punch. I knew right away I wanted to play it at some point, and by the time I had gotten to work a full program of guitar and keyboard works had come together.

I wrote it up, emailed it to a colleague and asked if he would be interested in presenting it. He finally agreed and here we are presenting this program.

Manuel Ponce, Sonata for Guitar and Harpsichord

This is a somewhat neglected gem from one of Mexico’s finest composers. Classical in form, baroque in texture and melodic sensibility, and modern in its jarring, nearly constant key changes.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Fantasia, Op. 145

This is like the perfect blend of Debussy and da Falla. Lush harmony contrasted with driving rhythm and a remarkable pianism (Tedesco’s own instrument). One of my favorite pieces in all the guitar chamber repertoire. Tedesco lived quite an interesting life and ended up in Las Angeles (like Arnold Schoenberg) teaching composition to aspiring film composers in Hollywood. A wildly prolific composer he wrote over three hundred concert works and about a hundred film scores.

Bryan Kelly, Basque Suite for Guitar and Harpsichord

Kelly is rarely played outside of England. I can find no information about this work other than that it was published in 1978. I only know of it because a copy of the guitar part was included in a box of music given to me by a retiring guitar teacher. A work for guitar and harpsichord seemed unusual (the Ponce being the only I knew of) so I filed it away until the right time, which came with this program.

Leo Brouwer, Tres Danzas Concertantes

The piece that brought all the following three together into one program. I didn’t know until recently that he wrote it when he was only 19. He ability with form is already on display, and it’s really terrific fun.