How many collectors do you know? Are you a collector, yourself? I think that most people become collectors eventually, whether intentionally or otherwise. My husband, as a boy, collected fossils. He roamed the woods and hillsides near his home in Northeastern Pennsylvania all the time, and along the way he found treasures among the rocks and rubble…

The first time I ever heard or sung today’s Hymn of the Week, almost thirty years ago, it was during the ordination Mass of a good friend, who knew what great church music was all about, while so much of it was still new to me. The closing hymn was one we’ve featured here, He Who Would Valiant Be, and I may say that if a priest lacks valor, he’d be…

There’s a funny thing about the music of Glenn Miller, at least in the way I experience it. Whenever I hear one of his pieces, it’s my favorite. So of course today I’m giving you my favorite Glenn Miller song, “In the Mood.” But when I someday write about, let’s say, his signature song, “Moonlight Serenade,” I’m likely to claim that one as my favor…

When I was discussing our Word of the Week, mood, I had occasion to recall Plato’s powerful and illuminating metaphor for the soul, as a charioteer with his brace of horses, one wayward and sulky, representing the appetite, and the other noble and almost rational, representing what in English we don’t really have a single word for — courage, aspira…

At the end of the week which we began with the word “blackbird,” it likely won’t surprise too many of you to learn that Sometimes a Song is … a certain Paul McCartney recording from The White Album. I might have asked Tony to postpone blackbird until spring … but he’d already written his essay for the week! So here we are, not “in the dead of night…

For today I’ll set aside our Word of the Week, blackbird, because after all it’s Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), and that brings my mind to New Orleans (pronounced NAW-lins by the natives), with its boisterous musical creativity, and this our Hymn of the Week, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It’s one of those songs that we Americans seem always to have…