My Family
I suppose we should start with Hazel. She is after all the one who puts up with me. Bless her heart. She's a professor of French and Spanish at Middlesex Community College. I am in awe of people like her who are dedicated to teaching. I have no idea why our society no longer values education. I blame it on Richard Nixon.
Jessica is an amazing sound artist. She builds electronic synthesizers and uses them in recordings and performances. She's been all over the U.S. and toured Europe last fall. She also does installations in art galleries. You can read all about her work on her web site.
My older son, Justin, is the most amazing guitarist I've ever known. He can play all styles. He has a master's in jazz guitar performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. He plays around Boston in his own trio and several funk bands and has recently signed on as guitarist for the up-and-coming band Angry Hill. Remember that name. Angry Hill is one kick-ass rock band. One day you'll see them opening for Aerosmith, or perhaps it will be the other way around. You can read all about Justin and download some .mp3 from his web site. I have a number of "boot leg" .mp3s of his music on my Music pages.
Kim is Justin's partner. She teaches music in Melrose and founded and runs the Allegro School of Music in Stoneham, MA. If you want to learn piano or guitar, that's the place to go. I was blessed this past summer (2005) when Kim did music with me in church several times. We did flute and piano duets, some spirituals with guitar and sang a capella things with Hazel. Once we even got Justin to join us. Kim in a treasure. My sons have good taste in women.
My younger son, Zach, currently teaches English as a second language. He lived in Japan for a number of years and had some amazing adventures, many of which he has chronicled on his Xanga blog. He is an amazing karoke performer and can speak fluent "hick" Japanese. That is the Japanese equivalent of the speech one might hear from hog farmers in Georgia. In Japan, he lived with folks who worked in the timber industry. Zach has also taken some amazing photographs. He features them in his blog, and one of these days, some of them will also be featured on the Allegro School of Music's Gallery Pages.
Zach met Katy in Japan. Katy comes from the eponymous town of Redding, CA. Essentially the same name (albeit misspelled ), just the other side of the country. So they meet in an out-of-the-way place in Japan. Go figure. Anyway, Katy wants to be a lawyer. We'd like her to become a rich one so we could all sponge off her. I'm thinking she might be too nice to be a lawyer. I think her friend, Jasmine, might think so too. For those who care, Jasmine is Scooter's (see below) mother. Oh, did I mention that my sons have good taste in women?
Brewster is a rather sociable dog. He loves people almost as much as he loves to eat. Probably the two loves are intertwined. He has a knack for getting people to leave food unattended so that he can snarf it up. Believe it or not, he has his own web site, although sadly, he hasn't managed to get his webmaster to update it recently.
Then there's Scooter. Not much one can say about a rat, really. Technically, she's Jessica's rat, but I seem to be her primary source of food and fun. Figure that. [Scooter passed on to rat heaven on June 20, 2006. We miss her.]
Page of Dogs and first travelogue, Hokkaido 2000. Other travelogues available from there. I'll fix the navigation, I promise.