Michigan Governor Austin Blair

Have you heard of our long-ago Michigan governor, Austin Blair? He was an extremely effective and generous head of our state who literally helped the north win the Civil War. I just wish I could have known him, for he was a great fellow in many ways.

Blair was born in New York in 1818 and helped his father farm for his first 17 years. Then he went to college and graduate school there in New York to become a lawyer.

After graduating in 1841, he moved to Michigan for the rest of his life. He practiced law for a couple of years in Eaton Rapids, but he quickly became extremely upset about the sad situation of the slaves in the south, and therefore he moved to Jackson, Michigan, where he could more easily became involved with politicians who were concerned with eliminating slavery.

In 1849, when he was 31, he married Sarah L. Ford, who was also from New York, and they had four boys.

Then in 1852 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Jackson County and two years later he served as Parliamentary Leader in the Senate.

By 1861 he became our state’s 13th governor. At first it seemed to him to be a part-time job, but as the war quickly became a huge problem, he gave his all and became known as Michigan’s finest “War-Time Governor.”

He was remarkably generous during the war, giving a lot of his own salary to help get more troops of soldiers involved. He was requested to contribute just four regiments, but he was so caring about the poor blacks that he went on to establish the fifth, sixth, and seventh regiments, and he continued to supply troops for the Union forces throughout the war.

In addition, he personally helped to raise about $100,000 to organize and equip the troops. As a result, when Blair left office in 1864, he was almost destitute, despite the famous quote from the past by Anne Frank, “No one has ever become poor by giving.”

Sadly, because our state had so many men in the war, we suffered considerable losses, especially at the Battle of Gettysburg. Altogether 14,753 Michigan soldiers died in service, roughly one of every six who served. Approximately 4,500 died from combat, while over 10,000 died from disease because of what Wikipedia describes as “disease, a constant fear in crowded army camps with poor food, sanitation and exposure issues and pre-modern medicine.” Though Michigan was a fairly new state at that point, it suffered the sixth-highest losses among the Union States.

Nevertheless, Michigan people in all political, religious, ethnic and occupational groups were enthusiastic and appreciated Blair’s deep caring.
Of course this state was far away geographically from the problems of the South, but it supplied not only many troops but several important generals. It’s touching that Abraham Lincoln said of our state, “Thank God for Michigan.”

After the war, Blair ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, but then, from 1867-1873, he represented Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. He then returned to Jackson to resume his law practice. In addition, he was was a member of the University of Michigan Board of Regents from 1881 to 1889.

Blair died there in Jackson in 1894, at age 64, and was buried there.

He was certainly loved by our state, for just after his death the Michigan legislature appropriated $7,200.00 for a statue in Blair's memory. It was to be placed on Capitol Square, the only time that an actual person has been honored with a statue on the capitol's grounds.

My Life of Teaching

Teaching has been my delightful job ever since I was 14 and helped my mother teach three-year olds at our Congregational Church in Wilmette.

When I was in college, I worked in Vermont one summer teaching religion to children for two weeks in each of four or five different churches. Then the next three summers, after my family had moved to California, I had a full-time summer job there, teaching young children at a nursery school.

At my graduate school, Emory University, in Atlanta, I taught one class of poetry to college students. Then, while I was still there finishing my doctorate, I taught for one year full time at Spelman College, a liberal arts college for black women.

That was in the 60s, when the nation was going through some really difficult problems and some of the other white teachers were busy trying to help blacks and to make white citizens more sympathetic. Sad to say, I felt I was too busy teaching four different new classes to join those other teachers, even though I certainly agreed with them.

After that I taught part-time at Ohio Northern University for a short time where my then husband taught. Then he and I and our boys went to France for three years where he teach English at Grenoble University. I taught English there, too, and several years later we both taught English for one year in South Korea.

After we came home to Ohio, I taught at a community college in Lima, Ohio and then at the prison in Marion for one year. My college students at the prison were extremely smart and hard working. Most of them had completed high school there in prison and really wanted to get more education. That was almost 40 years ago, however, and not as many prisons have college classes anymore.

Later that year, after our divorce, my sons and I moved up here to Michigan, and I taught English full time at Olivet College for twenty years. I truly enjoyed my students and colleagues there and, even though I’ve been retired for 17 years now, I am still friends with a number of people from the college. I’ve volunteered at the Oak Chest there in Olivet for those 17 years, as well. It’s a secondhand store which raises funds for scholarships for students at the college.

Soon after I retired from the college, I kept teaching, but for old folks in the Institute for Learning in Retirement through Kellogg Community College. Because my undergraduate and both graduate classes were in literature, I taught a number of classes about novels and poems. After my open heart surgery and stroke, however, I found I had more trouble remembering enough of a novel--or even a poem--to teach it.

I therefore started teaching music, my other passion, and also playing my violin, and my students seem even to prefer those classes. They don’t need to buy and read a book in advance. They simply come and listen to classical music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Gershwin, and many other composers, and we talk about how they feel about the music.

I’ve now taught 34 classes there in both literature and music. All of my various teaching classes over the years have been extremely enjoyable for me, with students all the way from my three year olds to folks in their 70s, 80s and even 90s.

Robert Dixon, a Kindred Spirit

Robert I. Dixon is a delightful fellow from Battle Creek and Bellevue who loves music as much as I do. We both worked in different fields from our passion of music, and we really enjoyed our work, but we have also been very involved in music for most of our lives. And now that he and I are both retired, we seem to love music more than ever, and we seldom say no to any invitation to sing or play.

Born in 1934, Bob grew up in Bellevue and has moved back to this town now. Bob explained to me that he realized when he was quite young that he was not athletically inclined and not interested in fishing or hunting. On the other hand, he played both clarinet and saxophone in school and sang in junior and senior years at Bellevue High School and then in Summer School at Michigan State.

He joined the Battle Creek Barbershoppers group 50 years ago, when he was almost 30, and in 1983, when he had been there for 18 years, he was elected “Barbershopper of the Year” for the Battle Creek Chapter.

He was active in its district administration, and in 1979, he was named “Area Counselor of the Year” by the pioneer district. He is still a very happy member now, after a half century, and he will be going to Tennessee next year to receive a 50-year award.

Because of his regular job which involved selling propane equipment all over the United States and also all of Canada, he wasn’t able to go to many International Conventions with the barbershop group, but he did go to one in Chicago back in 1966 and another in Detroit, in 1982, and loved them both.

Bob’s favorite kind of singing is with quartets. As he puts it, “There is nothing that can be compared to four voices perfectly turned and creating an expanded sound.” Over the years he has been a part of numerous local quartet groups including “Millionaires,” “Circuit Breakers,” “Village Rambles,” and “United Sound Assembly.”

Then, after he retired from his job in 2,000, Bob also joined the “M-66 Express,” and now the latest quartet he’s joined is called “Hometown Sounds.” He also sang in the choir of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek for 30 years.

Bob’s first wife died 11 years ago, and though he was of course very sad, he remarried in the next year. His new wife is a lovely woman named Ione, whom he had known since way back in 1969. She has two children, and several of Bob’s children babysat for them years ago.

It’s not surprising that Bob had parents who were very musical and an aunt who is an organist and choir director in several churches in Windsor, Ontario. And all six of his children are musically talented as well.

One son, Chuck Dixon, had a master's degree in music education and serves as an assistant band director in Pennfield. Another son, David, performs at the Zarzuela Restaurant in Marshall on open-mic night. And Bob’s daughter, Carol, got to go to Europe to play her bassoon with Blue Lake Summer Program. Bob now has nine grandchildren and three step grandchildren, and he feels sure that they all love music, as well.

As a response to all of these years of musical joy, Bob especially loves the song “Thanks for the Memories,” and I feel sure he would happily sing it for you if you asked him.

The Great Songster, Stephen Foster

I’ve played classical music with various orchestras since I was in middle school, back in 1952, and believe me, I love it all.

For the past five years, however, I’ve been playing popular songs mostly for old folks, and I love playing them, too. I don’t have to practice difficult music anymore, and I am fortunately able to play any song I know by ear. That is really appreciated by old folks, for I can walk to their table or bed and play their requests without having to have any music or stands.

A favorite composer of many old songs I often play is the very talented composer from the 1800s, Stephen Collins Foster.

By the time Foster was just six years old, in 1832, he had taught himself the clarinet and could pick any tune by ear. He started composing as a young teen and did it the rest of his life. Sad to say, he lived only for 37 1/2 years, from 1826 to 1864, but he composed over 200 songs, including such jewels as “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Black Joe,” “Beautiful Dreamer,” and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.”

He grew up in Philadelphia, but he moved to New York with his wife, Jane Denny McDowell and daughter in 1860, for what would be the last four years of his life. Unfortunately, his wife and daughter left him when he was just 34, and he would live for only three more years.

He became impoverished while living there and also had to stay in bed for some days because he had a high fever. While he was so weak, he fell against a washbasin and wounded his head. Just three days later, he died.

Foster didn’t make a lot of money during his life, partly because back then it was not common for people to make a living creating popular songs. Also, he was not a very good businessman and simply gave some of his songs away for no money.

Even now, however, many of his songs are still well known and loved. “My Old Kentucky Home” is the official state song of Kentucky, for example, and “Old Folks at Home” is the official state song of Florida.

Unlike many composers, Foster also wrote the words to most of his songs. Here is a really good example from one of my favorites, “Beautiful Dreamer.”

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,

Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee.

Sounds of the rude world heard in the day,

Lull’d by the moonlight have all passed away.

Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,

List while I woo thee with soft melody.

Gone are the cares of life's busy throng,

Beautiful dreamer awake unto me.

Beautiful dreamer awake unto me!

Foster is still well honored in Pittsburgh, where he was born and where he lived during quite a bit of his life. At the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, there is a landmark building called the Stephen Foster Memorial. It contains a “Center for American Music” and two theaters as well as a museum about Foster’s life and his achievements.

Foster has been rightly acknowledged as "Father of American Music." He was added to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010.

I suggest you go to YouTube, where you can hear a number of his wonderful songs. “Beautiful Dreamer,” for example, is available in nine different renderings.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Distinctive American Artist

I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore. "  - Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe was an amazing woman who painted thousands of pictures and created some sculptures as well throughout her extremely long, successful life.

She certainly loved painting, for she kept doing it until two years before her death at age 98. Her eyesight finally started to fail when she was 90, but she nevertheless kept creating pictures until she was almost 96.

Georgia started painting as a young child, as her two grandmothers had done, and by the time she was 12, her family arranged for private lessons, for they realized that she was extremely talented. A child of a large family, she was very satisfied, saying later, “I seem to be one of the few people I know of to have no complaints against my first twelve years.”

It’s interesting that she was also talented in music and played the piano very well. As she said rather amusingly, as a young adult, “Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression, but since I cannot sing, I paint.”

Georgia eventually married the photographer, Alfred Stieglitz, when she was 37 years old and he was 52. Alfred was born in 1864 in this country but spent almost a decade in Europe as a young man. They had met much earlier than their marriage, and over the years they exchanged some 25,000 letters, some of those letters being 40 pages long.

Stieglitz had promoted her first “Solo Show” in 1917, and he truly admired her amazing skills. Both Georgia and Alfred were extremely independent, however, and their marriage, though it lasted for 22 years, was hardly ideal. For one thing, Georgia loved the southwest and often went there for months without her husband. As Laurie Lisle says in her book called “Portrait of An Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe,” he was not happy about it, feeling that “Her infatuation with New Mexico might be stronger than her loyalty to [me.]”

Georgia did realize that the marriage was not perfect, saying at one point, “I think I would never have minded Stieglitz being anything he happened to be if he hadn't kept me so persistently off my track.” She also said about spending so much time in New Mexico, “I chose coming away because here at least I feel good — and it makes me feel I am growing very tall and straight inside.”

Eventually, when he turned 80, Albert felt very weak, and he died at 82. Though Georgia said honestly that she missed him, she lived for 40 more years happily alone. From what I’ve read about her, I think she actually preferred being alone and concentrating more fully on her painting. As some people put it, she was a "loner, a severe figure and self-made person."

I learned a lot about this extremely talented lady by reading Lisle’s book about her, and I recommend it to anyone who loves art.

I always wish I could let you hear some tunes when I do columns about music, but you can easily can get tunes on “YouTube” on your computer. And now I wish I could include a number of O'Keeffe's wonderful art works in this one. But there is another book about her called “Georgia O'Keeffe” by Charles C. Eldredge, which has over 100 of her pictures. Also, you see a number of her paintings simply by going to “Georgia O'Keeffe prints” online.

Tchaikovsky, depressed composer of beautiful music

     Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840–1893, was an amazingly successful Russian composer, but, sad to say, he was also very depressed for much of his life.

     The first sad occasion in his life was that his parents sent him, against his will, to the School of Jurisprudence for a career as a civil servant when he was just 10 years old. It was 800 miles away from his family’s home, and he had to stay there for nine years and study law for seven years. Also, his mother died when he was just 14, and he suffered from her death for the rest of his life. As he himself said, "Every moment of that appalling day is as vivid to me as though it were yesterday." 

     Though he studied law for such a long time, he also involved himself in music and went to a conservatory to study. He then became a Professor of Music Theory at the Moscow Conservatory and started composing seriously. 

     Eventually he composed six symphonies and three wonderful ballets, including “Swan Lake,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” and, of course, “The Nutcracker Suite.” He also composed eleven operas, five concertos, three for piano and one each for violin and cello, and over 100 other works, including many songs. 

     His personal life, however, despite his success, was full of problems. They were probably largely because he was homosexual, and that was, of course, an even bigger problem back then. He lived as a bachelor most of his life, but in 1877, at the age of 37, he married a former student, Antonina Miliukova, perhaps just to appear more “normal.”  They had huge problems, however, from the very beginning, and lived together for less than a couple of months. They never divorced, probably only because it was not at all common or easy back then, but they never lived together again. 

     He had another relationship as well, this time with Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow who really helped him by giving him money each month. It was a large enough amount that he was able to stop teaching music and focus exclusively on composition. Their relationship was extremely odd, however, for she said she purposely never wanted to meet him in person. They did stay in close contact during those 13 years, exchanging over 1,000 letters, but they never saw each other.

     She said of their relationship, "I am very unsympathetic in my personal relations because I do not possess any femininity whatever; second, I do not know how to be tender, and this characteristic has passed on to my entire family. All of us are afraid to be affected or sentimental, and therefore the general nature of our family relationships is comradely, or masculine, so to speak."

     After he created many successful works and became very popular, Tchaikovsky traveled a great deal all over Europe and even into this country. He always enjoyed going back to Russia, however, even though his music was extremely influenced by Mozart and also by other composers in Europe. It’s therefore not surprising that he was much admired in many countries besides his and was even awarded an honorary Doctor of Music in England by the University of Cambridge.     He died quite suddenly, at just 53, either from cholera or from suicide. Apparently it has never been known for sure just what caused his death, but it is certainly known that despite all of his success, he was often depressed by his mother’s early death and by the many problems he had to face because of homosexuality.

My Dear College, and How Much it has Meant to Me

I want to tell you just how much I loved my college in South Dakota, even though it was forced to close in 1984. By that point 28 members of my family had graduated from either its high school or its college, both of which were part of the same campus way back in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

My grandmother, who lived in one of those very small towns in South Dakota, went to Yankton High School where she met my grandfather who was in college there from Chicago. If her little town had had a high school, therefore, I wouldn’t even exist and wouldn’t be writing columns for you.

It’s strange that I went to one of the country’s finest high schools, New Trier, in Winnetka, Illinois, and yet I was much happier in a poor little college in South Dakota . The best teachers I ever had, from grade school, high school, college and graduate school were at Yankton College. The main one was Dr. Cummings, a brilliant English teacher who truly inspired me. Before I had him, I didn’t even think of myself as a graduate school student, much less a professor, but he persuaded me that I could and should be both.

Another powerful professor was J. Laiten Weed who was the finest music teacher I ever had. I don’t even know that I would have kept playing my violin for the rest of my life had I not been so encouraged by him. In addition, I would guess that I wouldn’t have had free graduate school had I gone to a college in a more wealthy, successful part of the country. As it was, there in the midwest I was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and, as a result, a National Defense Fellowship. I therefore got to go free to Emory University for both advanced degrees. Of course I had some fine teachers there, too, but nobody was as inspiring as Dr. Cummings.

Also some of my still close friends were students there. Bill Charland, for example, was also a English major and friend at the college. Since those days we have gotten together many times, as well. After we went on to graduate school, we met again in Atlanta, where we both taught at black colleges just down the street from each other. Later, he came to visit me in Ada, Ohio, where I taught, and we also met in France, where I taught English for three years. And we have since met in Chicago, Colorado, and back for a reunion at our dear former college.

Sad to say, the college is now a prison. It’s a very minimum security place where the gates aren’t always kept locked--or sometimes even closed. The problem with prisoners leaving, of course, would be that, if caught, they would not be returned there but would have to go to a different prison with much tighter security. Also, they’d have to stay there for a longer time since they had escaped their previous prison.

Bill and I have many similarities, including the fact that we’ve always loved to write, and we both still write for newspapers, his in Silver City, in southwest New Mexico. We email each other often and send our works to each other. In fact, it was he who suggested that I do a column about our dear college.

I’ll send this one to lots of my friends from Yankton College, and I feel sure they will reply with similar feelings for our loveable school.

Thoughts on Mortality

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die.” Ecclesiastes

I realize that I recently did a column about how I am determined to live to December 3, 2039 so I can marry my sweetheart on my 100th birthday. And of course I hope to make it. But I also realize that Ecclesiastes is right about our inevitable “time to die,” saying it is not just an occasion for some but as something we all will go through, sooner or later.

In my case, I’ve had polio, breast cancer, open heart surgery and a stroke, so of course I don’t know but that my time will come before 2039.

I just read an excellent book called “Being Mortal” on just that subject. It is by a prominent doctor and writer named Atul Gawande, whose parents came here from India. His book is about our inevitable deaths, and he quotes Ecclesiastes, though of course he says that our health care is very different now than it was back in the third century BC. This very old message is nevertheless still true. We all eventually have “a time to die,” and much of Gawande’s book is about just that.

A subject he emphasizes is that of hospice, a program which makes the end of life more bearable. It’s amazing that this practice first existed back in the 11th century in Europe, no doubt for much younger people. Of course not much is known about those early days of end-of-life care, but today those admitted have been advised--and have therefore chosen--not to go through any more risky operations or other extreme kinds of help. They simply are cared for by loving specialists, are given medications to help with pain, and are helped with their emotional and spiritual needs for the six or so months of life remaining to them.

Some people get this kind of care in a special part of a hospital, but even then their care is about one third the cost of what it would be in a regular hospital situation.

For these reasons, hospice has become more and more popular, so that these days about 45 percent of Americans die either at home or in an institution, but with hospice care. As Gawande puts it, “People are truly cared for with services for anything from pain control to making out a living will.”

Another important aspect of the end of life, Gawande feels strongly about is that “People who have substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish.”

There is an obvious complication for us all about dying, nevertheless, says Dr. Gawande, for “People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come--and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.”

A doctor’s obligation, he says, is “helping others deal with what medicine cannot do as well as what it can do.” But in addition, doctors need to consider two possible poor choices: “the mistake of prolonging suffering or the mistake of shortening value life.”

Of course I hope my readers are far from their deaths, but I nevertheless recommend Gawande’s book, “Being Mortal.”

Stories about Hymns

If you love hymns as much as I do, you will enjoy reading a book called “101 Hymn Stories” by Kenneth W. Osbeck.

Osbeck was born here in Michigan in 1924 and got two degrees from the University of Michigan. He then taught for 35 years, first at a Grand Rapids School of the Bible and Music and then at the seminary there.

He also served as a music director for various churches here in Michigan and for the Radio Bible Class, and he has written a number of books about hymns.

Osbeck and his wife, Mary, stayed on here in Michigan after he retired, and since his retirement they have given over 600 dramatized hymn story programs for churches.

Of the 101 hymns he describes in his book, he discusses the words first, and it’s not surprising, as he says, that most were written by ministers. He also makes several interesting remarks about the importance of hymns:

“Historians have stated that Martin Luther won more converts to Christ through his encouragement of congregational singing than even through his strong preaching and teaching.” (16th century)

“Of the Wesleys it was said that, for every person they won with their preaching, ten were won through their music.” (18th century)

Some hymns are extremely old. For example the words to a favorite hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King,” were composed by Francis of Assisi in 1225, just before he died. Friedrich Spee created the tune four centuries later for a Roman Catholic hymnal in Cologne, Germany.

Another old one is “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” for which Martin Luther, 1483-1546, composed both the music and the words. Osbeck says about it, “It is the single most powerful hymn of the Protestant Reformation Movement.”

A much more recent favorite of mine, “How Great Thou Art,” was composed in the 20th century and was made famous by Billy Graham and his Evangelistic Team.

Many of us sang the hymn “Jesus Loves Me” as children, but it’s interesting that it is also sung in Asia as “Yes, Buddha Loves me.”

“Amazing Grace” is especially familiar for me because our Olde Tyme Music Group plays it at the end of each of our nearly 60 performances each year. It was composed by John Newton who in his early years collected Africans as slaves and eventually got his own slave ship. Fortunately he changed radically and eventually became an Anglican minister and a prominent supporter of abolitionism.

“Rock of Ages” is another favorite hymn composed by Thomas Hastings in this country, using words by Augustus M. Toplady, from England. Hastings wrote music for over 1000 hymns and texts for over 600. It is especially amazing that he was so successful, for he had only a little musical training. He was nevertheless rightly rewarded with a degree of Doctor of Music by the University of the City of New York in 1858.

Yet another favorite of mine is “It Is Well With My Soul.” Horatio G. Spafford composed the words almost immediately after he had lost his four children in a terrible shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean. He was so committed to Christianity, however, that he wrote extremely positive words at that point:

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea-billows roll,

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.”

These are only a few of the many stories in this most informative, enjoyable and recommended book.

The Power of Music

Though I studied music only as a minor in college and it was never my career, I have played violin and truly loved it for most of my 75 years. My mother was a fine pianist and loved to play with me, even when I must have sounded terrible because I had just started.

I played in the Battle Creek Symphony for 31 years and really enjoyed it, but then I retired and started playing mostly by ear for old folks. And I’ve come to love that even more.

Part of the reason I so enjoy playing by ear is my very poor memory following my open heart surgery and stroke. I have a lot of trouble remembering words in general, especially people’s names, but my memory for music and my ability to play by ear seems to be untouched. I am extremely pleased that I can still play just fine and thank God daily for the joy that music brings me.

I’ve lived here in this part of Michigan for 37 years and would never want to move away, for I have too many friends who seem to appreciate my music a lot and don’t want me to leave.

For the past five years I’ve played my violin with the Olde Tyme Music group six or seven times a month, mostly for people in assisted living places and nursing homes. And I play for other groups, as well. In fact, in the month of December, 2014, I played 18 gigs of music, four at the Congregational Church in Battle Creek, and the rest for older people. I loved each chance to play and never even got tired of any of those Christmas songs and carols even though I played each of them so often.

The elderly seem to love music even more than the young. They sometimes have trouble reading because their eyes are failing them. In addition, many have suffered from losing their spouses and friends, and some seldom even get to leave their beds. Music therefore seems to be one of their main joys in life.

In fact, one time when Brooks Grantier and I played at Sterling House, just south of Battle Creek, on Lois Drive, one man said to me, “This was the happiest hour I’ve had in all of the two years I’ve lived here.”

Some of the most appreciative audiences I’ve encountered are at Marion Burch, a day-care center for people who can’t stay home alone during the day and at The Oaks which is connected with Northpointe but is for full-time care for quite old people. I play at Marion Burch twice a month, once with our Olde Tyme Music group and once by myself, and I play alone each month at The Oaks. As I tell them each time I play at both places, those are the fastest but most enjoyable hours of the month.

Elena Mannes, a much awarded woman, wrote a book called “The Power of Music: Pioneering Discoveries in the New Science of Song.” As she explains, music stimulates our brains more than any other force. "A stroke patient who has lost verbal function — those verbal functions may be stimulated by music."

I’ll close with a memorable quotation from Plato: “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”