It’s been an incredibly long day, but I couldn’t let Valentine’s Day slip away without a few words. Beloved or maligned, this holiday stirs up big emotions. Do something this whole week that reminds you how valuable you are, and how much you value the people in your life. Valentine’s Day has become about more … Read more
In case you’re NOT a fan of weird holidays, Bill Murray movies or large rodents… Today is Groundhog Day. I’ll spare you the requisite history lesson — you can Google it as well as I can. What I really love about this quasi-holiday is the focus on PREDICTION. At various points in our lives, we … Read more
Can a challenge for Indigenous Peoples’ Day give you an excuse to learn something new about our world?
I thought hard about doing a fake article or other prank today, but aside from the time that I just haven’t had time this week (see below!), the whole concept has had me thinking even harder. After the year we’ve all been through, levity is good. But is fooling each other equally good? Maybe not. … Read more
Prepping for our upcoming unSUNg concert, a very multicultural affair, Ariel and I have been exploring a number of ways that people celebrate different parts of December. It’s also led to no small bit of nostalgia. When I was growing up, my mother bought two gorgeous cross stitch Advent calendars as kits in Solvang, each … Read more
This holiday is about important things. While its meaning is too often expressed with the same old words, those words themselves mean a lot. So in a year that has been fraught with additional challenges for performers and companies and support organizations and everybody else in the arts, here’s a little happyrant about the things … Read more
Did you know that “Leap Day”, that extra day that comes every four years and creates a 29th day for February, is also Rossini’s birthday? We must celebrate!, even if it’s not all in the same place. Unfortunately, a variety of factors (including flu worries, venue issues and more) have brought us to one conclusion: … Read more
We’re going to explore some unusual holidays this year, and while Old Rock Day isn’t officially about music, we’re hijacking it to share a video of one of the earliest examples of the rise of rock ‘n roll: the 1944 gem from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “Strange Things Happen Every Day“: Of course, there may be … Read more
Sometimes, we post pictures just because they’re pretty. That’s where this one started, but it’s also a reminder of what the Listerhood is all about. We are, after all, at least somewhat like a grove of trees: widely varied, but joined by our sameness. Dependent on one another, and standing together to take on whatever … Read more
