However uplifting Messiah and the Christmas Oratorio may be, even after all the recordings and annual performances, I’d grab for Heinrich Schütz’s Christmas Story (Historia der Geburt Jesu Christi) even if it meant consigning to the deep the cherished masterpieces of Bach and Handel, both born just thirteen years after Schütz’s death.
Posts published in “Essays”
Why does the presence of mistletoe — a parasitic plant that roots in oaks and other host trees — confer the right to kiss whoever you're with? The answer occurred to John Lee, MD, a…
Max and Maureen sailed White Bird, a sleek 42-foot trimaran, across the Pacific from Lahaina to the San Francisco Bay, where Max would oversee some refurbishing, purchase new sails and rigging, and get the vessel…
I spent several days in mid-December in the Sierra. Most of the time was occupied with backpacking from the Donner Summit area north by northwest to the Peter Grubb Hut. It was constructed in the…
“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — William Shakespeare My father was extremely neurotic. A psychiatrist by profession, one of his more pronounced neuroses was the inability to complete anything, which…
Getting to the balloon festival was quite a trial. The traffic jam rivaled anything I've endured in LA. It even tried the patience of the stalwart May Maung Tun. But the general mood was festive…
Alexander Cockburn, who died of cancer at the age of 71 on July 21, 2012, was a prose powerhouse who left an admirable body of great columns about all manner of matters political and cultural.…
The Buddhas are big and small, cement, stone, brick and mortar, plastic, maybe wood; they nestle against each other under pendulous stalactites of limestone. Some of the smaller chambers are claustrophobic, some of the passages so narrow that I and my backpack can barely squeeze through.