Blog
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First, They Came for the Truth
When I was a freshly minted Cal grad, 22 years old and knowing basically nothing (academics - sure; life - hell no), I had the very great privilege of beginning what would become one of the most impo…
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Fair Dinkum
Now that Marmalade Mussolini has at least temporarily backed down on a calamity of his own making - i.e. holding Federal employees hostage to get his ridiculous wall (you know, the one that Mexico wa…
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Baked In
When I was a little girl, my Mom – who had been a high school English teacher when we lived in Maryland – decided she wanted to launch a second career as a lawyer. Of course this would necessitate he…
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Bella Donna
"Atropa belladonna is a Eurasian perennial with reddish, bell-shaped flowers that bear glossy-coated, black berries. Other names for the plant include belladonna, deadly nightshade, devil’s berries,…
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My Great America
“Make America great again.” This is the mantra of the anthropomorphized Cheeto currently occupying the White House, and of his followers, who apparently thought it was a good idea to gamble the stabi…
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The Cat in the Hats
Jazz players love their lids. You know what I’m talking about: from Prez’s porkpie to Dizzy’s beret to Monk’s trilby to Zawinul’s skullcap, the denizens of improvised music have long been recognizabl…
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Stereo No More
When I was growing up, we had one stereo in the house. One. It belonged to my Dad, as did the albums that surrounded it. And I do mean surrounded: scattered on the floor, crammed into the shelving, l…
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Eternal Life of the Digital Solo
At the start of a course on vocal improvisation/scat singing, one of the first things I ask my students is to discuss what, exactly, defines musical improvisation. The room usually goes silent for a…
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Known Unknowns
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are t…
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Evans, Outside the Box
I am a musician, and jazz is my primary idiom. I perform, teach, compose, and arrange; I play piano (classically trained growing up, jazz trained at the California Jazz Conservatory) and have accomp…
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Generation Bubble-Wrapped
It seems to me that certain standards of childcare are pretty much universal: we all want to ensure the physical safety, emotional well-being, and intellectual development of our offspring. Taking go…
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"No-neck Monsters"
“One of those no-neck monsters hit me with some ice cream… You can't wring their necks if they got no necks to wring. Isn't that right, honey?” Maggie the cat, from her precarious position on a hot t…
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R - E - S - P - E - C - T
Children often get to the heart of a matter with spectacular efficiency. They just speak the truth in plain language and in doing so cut through mountains of bullpucky (I’m starving the swear jar) lik…
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But Is It Good For the Musicians?
The recording industry, collectively represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), like any industry in our capitalist economy has always been all about maximizing profit. And w…
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The Good Wife. Kinda sorta.
My husband, journalist and author Thomas Claburn, recently completed his second novel, Oversight, and I just finished reading it. So this is where the good wife says nice things about the old ball an…
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The Swear Jar, or How My 12-Year-Old Daughter Set Me Up
There is a plastic cup with a lid that lives on the kitchen counter, in the corner next to today’s (and yesterday’s and the day before’s) New York Times and last week’s Economist. It’s one of those 7…
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A New Look
Welcome to my new website. More news shortly.…
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