The day after I created a blog, I had a moment of panic when I thought I should very quickly delete it! I already had a following (even though it doesn’t show here). What was I thinking?

Eventually, I let my mind wander to the object of all this. Look at the photo. My dad and my uncle are both life long musicians, family men, veterans of WWII, part of the great generation. So the blog stays for now.

My dad loves kites. Any dime-store variety will do. In fact, I remember him building his own box kite and teaching me to build the more average (diamond) shaped kites out of the Sunday funnies. We built a mini-model once from colored tissue paper and he flew it from a spool of thread. The great thing about this kite was that, once aloft, it appeared to be miles away (because of the perspective of such a small kite against the sky). People would comment on that in passing, and then he would show them that he was flying it from a spool of thread. “Incredible!” their eyes would say. We loved that reaction. Continue reading →