A random glance through the local free paper recently led to the realization that Chris Botti was coming to play the Ryman. Over my protests, my daughter purchased tickets, and so it was that Wednesday evening was spent in awe, and my iTunes are still stuck on my Botti playlist. Music may be my second language, but I still don't know the words to describe jazz. My initial fear was that he would be some blow-hard (pardon the pun), stuck on himself pretty boy who only wanted the spotlight on him. How wrong I was. He celebrated everyone's contribution onstage, was self-deprecating, and was genuinely fun to watch. It's almost as if he had come to play in my living room, entertaining a few hundred of my friends. We were thoroughly entertained by a master showman and trumpet player, and his supporting band members. And I will never look at Google's "did you mean" the same way again.
Like a bad penny.... We used to scuba dive as our hobby, a hobby which eventually led to the procurement/construction of a small dive trailer to haul four sets of gear and four cylinders. It was a simple but elegant design - a box on a single axle frame, with the beginnings of a mural painted on both sides, and dive flags at either end. The kids had helped paint it, with Stephen taking special pains with the sharks. When we moved to Nashville, we sold it. We didn't dive as often, and we had no place to store it. Nearly ten years have passed since that October in '99 when we came up here, and I hadn't thought much about the trailer. I thought I had seen it the last time we went to Greenfield, but I wasn't sure. Then Saturday my mother-in-law called to say the neighbor across the street had our trailer for sale. The neighbor was asking a certain price, and we offered a little less. She called back later to say it was ours for the picking up. Sunday we made the trip to fet...
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