Michaelmas

Michaelmas is not a well-known feast day of the church, but it is one that our family adopted, along with Candlemas, St. Nicholas Day, and Santa Lucia Day, to celebrate in our own family context. We tended to have activities planned for St. Nicholas Day and Santa Lucia Day, but Candlemas and Michaelmas were simply in our remembrance. We called our house, Candlemas and meant for it to be a kind of sacred and peaceful place. We had read Thomas Howard’s book, “Hallowed Be This House” (long out of print now) and were very much influenced by it.

Michaelmas represented a dream for us as the name of a community, a commune of our old age in “the autumn of our lives” just as Michaelmas announces the fall. Whether this dream is ever realized or not, I still have this day in my eternal consciousness. This video is for my family on Michaelmas Day. It is my way of loving them from a great distance.

Dr. Who teaches the past tense

I used to love Dr. Who. PBS ran the series for a time. Tom Baker was the best Dr. Who ever, but I loved tje cheesy and cheap effects and the Dalacks. "Exterminate! Exterminate!" I thought I could use the time travel idea to talk about tense to ESL students This is mostly for fun though and a chance to be Dr. Who.

Going Home

I put the words to this song on my blog site a while back, but I thought I would put the song here now that I have finished it. I'm not a great musician. In fact, I don't think I'm a musician at all. I frequently go flat or sharp and I can't really keep a beat, but I like to tell stories. This is a story poem within a longer story poem called Peter the Pirate: the Commodore's Journey that I have been working on for years. I don't play any instruments, and the drum you hear is my fingers pounding on the desk. I have several "songs"in Peter the Pirate. This is the best of the bunch so far (which may not be saying much) For the sake of context, Peter and his Pirates sing this song to a ghost called Sammy Kirkendhal. It is a part of a rite that will allow Sammy to speak to them for a short period of time and give them guidance. I hope you enjoy it!