pt at large

Westport Dawning

4:11 AM.
The Westport countryside is wrapped in the dark cloak of night.

“Chirrup...”  
One solitary note breaks the stillness. The summer night rolls over for a few more minutes of silent repose.

4:24 AM.
“Chirrup...”
The faintest hint of light glows from under the eastern horizon.

4:31 AM.
As if Mother Nature has sounded some diurnal alarm clock, the birds of the neighborhood seem to awaken in unison. Trees and bushes become the bleachers for choirs of songbirds to announce the dawning of another day.
Chipping sparrows, black capped chickadees, robins and their neighbors all vie for air space and proclaim territory.

5:05 AM.
A look out the window reveals that they are not yet in flight but are in some primordial process of waking up, perhaps their equivalent of brewing coffee before flying off to work in our lawns and fields, foraging for their food before returning to their perches at day’s end.

Soon we listeners will begin our own days, preparing our morning elixirs, going about our business, and returning later to our own nests. And probably envying what we see as the uncomplicated lives of our winged neighbors on this planet, wishing we, too, could be “free as a bird.”

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Westport, MA

First Job, A Memoir of Growing Up at Work: A Picaresque Coming of Age Book

First Job, A memoir of Growing Up at Work, by Rinker Buck

Random chance, riding the wave, or premeditated planning... it’s all good, according to Rinker Buck, author of “First Job, A Memoir of Growing Up at Work.” The memoir, marbled with reflections about friendship, nature, and sexual intimacy, is a young man’s romp through the early 1970s and his own early 20s.

Although the book purports to be about his first job, it’s really about his first acquaintance with life in the real world. And then there’s his name. Anyone named Rinker Buck was born to do something original, wild, or creative and he doesn't spoil his chance.

The first pages unfold in a succession of seemingly coincidental events and random decisions that will mark his life for the next two years. A magazine article pinned to the bulletin board of a back roads diner leads to a spur of the moment detour to the Berkshire Eagle offices in Pittsfield, MA where within seconds he literally bumps into the eccentric editor, has an impromptu job interview and is hired, at the bottom of the reportorial chain, to write obituaries.

From the first interview, one gets a sense of Buck’s natural curiosity, audacity, and roguish charm; he’s not above embroidering the truth even with the editor of the best small town newspaper in the country. During the next two years of picaresque adventures, this inexperienced, immature but increasingly self-aware guy develops a moral code that helps him stay inside the bounds of likability.

“Fix bayonets, charge downhill!” serves as both a specious Civil War story he gleefully invents during his job interview and his mantra to himself when he starts slipping on the gravel details of his life.

Although he would have us believe he is a slacker, he actually works hard. The beauty of the book is that he doesn't realize that work is, especially for a reporter, observing and living life, whether it’s playing pool at the local dive, chopping wood (which he fixates on either to sublimate sexual frustration or expel energy left over from sexual release) or hiking in the pristine Berkshire woods. That point is brought home to him in a touching exhange between him and an accomplished senior writer who helps Rinker learn the ropes of reporting.

The sub-textual story is Buck’s growth from a talented, somewhat obsessed, self-centered kid into a card-carrying adult. Three themes drive this unevenly entertaining book: his groping toward success as a writer, his education from women about the mysteries of the female sex, and his extraordinary relationships with three older men, each of whom enliven the Berkshire Eagle.

Buck’s a good story teller, and First Job is at its most poignant and occasionally hilarious when he’s under the wing of any of these three, most especially the esteemed Roger Linscott, a crusty but open hearted Pulitzer Prize winning writer, as eccentric as Rinker is horny. Linscott, older by a generation, given to eloquent polysyllabic repartee, a unique speaking style, and self-deprecatory wit, is a hoot. 

Linscott is every bit as off-center as Buck. Their relationship is cemented not in the newsroom, but in the mountains and gorges of the Berkshire Hills, ‘the purple majesties,’ as Buck calls them. The time they carve out to indefatigably hike through the highlands of the Berkshires is infused with camaraderie, their insights inspired by the mutually appreciated grandeur of nature surrounding them.

What inadvertently prepared Buck for his life as a reporter and suitable companion to a Rushmore of a mind like Linscott’s is that Rinker grew up as a “book turd,” omnivorously devouring books about everything from geology to geophysics. What made him an outsider as a kid informs him beautifully as a reporter. The commentaries Buck tosses off about the flora, fauna, and geology of mountains and meadows of the Berkshires read like travel writer Bruce Chatwin’s when Chatwin’s in a groove about the Australian outback.

Buck is not as proficient at concluding his book as he is in telling its stories. The last abrupt pages yield to cereal box moralizing, a marked contrast in style and voice to what preceded it. When he’s busy spinning a yarn about a babe or the bonhomie between him and his eccentric mentors, though, he’s in his own element.

Making The Grade: Unpublished Piece - "Creating The Right Environment For the 'Right' Answer"

pt contributed to the Brookline TAB and the Watertown TAB between 2000 - 2004 (see on "Categories" list) A month-long reorganization of my computer files uneathed this unpublished column from 2002.

Creating The Right Environment For the "Right" answer. February, 2002

Remember the time you sat in an audience, thought about responding to a question, then hesitated as you wondered whether you actually had the “right” answer? And the worry that if you were indeed wrong, the person at the head of the room might laugh at your answer or allow others to do so? Whether it was yesterday or years ago I’ll bet everyone remembers an occasion like that which bulked up a resolve to let others do the risk taking while you cautiously and safely observed from the sidelines.

Last week, I was showing my fourth graders how use logic to solve certain math problems. Remember the problems that say "Four fourth graders meet on the beach while they are on vacation. Their names are Debbie, Dawn, Becky, and Cathy. They are from California, Illinois, Utah, and Texas. Becky is from California and Dawn is not from Illinois. If Cathy is from Utah, where is Debbie from?

I knew you’d remember those! I began to draw a chart on the board.

"To solve a problem like this, you can use logic. Actually there's a phrase some people use to describe this strategy, it's called the process of... “ here I paused, awaiting a response.

Sam’s hand popped up as if sprung from a jack-in-the-box. "Yes! It's the process of discrimination!" he said with conviction.

My eyes lit up with delight. “Sam, I love it! Well, you're close, it's called the process of elimination!" The boy sitting in front of Sam chimed in with, "Kids say the darndest things!” which got us all laughing together.

“You know, Sam, you really could make a case for it being called a process of discrimination, too, because when you discriminate, you favor one thing over another. In this case, I suppose you would be favoring what’s logical over what’s not logical.”

"That's something I love about our class. I’ve encouraged you all year to participate in lessons. I keep saying that you’ll learn something every time you participate. Even if it turns out to be funny when you don’t intend it. The best thing is that we laugh with each other not at each other." The kids in 4T knew that was true.

Finally, with plenty of chuckles about Sam’s “discrimination”, we solved the problem. (For those of you about to pull out a piece of chart paper, if Becky's from California, logic tells you that she's not from Illinois, Utah, or Texas, so you can eliminate those possibilities!). This delightful episode will make it into our “highlight film” of the year. Why?

For me, it was an opportunity to use an incorrect response to reinforce a sense of trust in the learning process and to define who we are as a class. My job is to transparently incorporate children’s mistakes into the learning environment. When I ask, “Tell me what makes you say that”, to a student’s seemingly incorrect or unrelated response, the answer often holds a new insight I hadn’t thought of. And if they’re really off the mark, I can point them in the right direction.

Teachers who ask questions notice that mistakes often demonstrate thinking that represents unique ways of looking at or solving problems. Remember how Edison said that invention was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration? Well, an elementary school classroom is often like that. (Actually I think there’s a higher percentage of inspiration but that’s grist for another column!)

There’s lots of “perspiration” in an elementary school classroom and kids who are learning often make mistakes. Watching them as they learn from mistakes is one of the daily rewards of my job. Truth be told, we teachers aren’t exempt from mistakes, either. My good-natured response, “If you were as observant with your own work as you are with finding errors in my work, I'd have a lot less correcting to do!” has been heard more than once this year. Acknowledging our miscalculations and showing how we revise them is a healthy model for our students.

In his book Weird Ideas That Work, Robert Sutton, professor at Stanford University, says, “The domain of creativity is risk and a high failure rate.” He quotes Babe Ruth’s optimism when the slugger reportedly said “every strike brings me closer to a home run.” to illustrate that people who are persistent and who try hard have many failures to go along with their achievements. Babe Ruth struck out a lot too, didn’t he?

That’s the message for teachers who want to create a culture of responsible risk taking in school. I guess I like being surrounded by a bunch of perspiring optimists in my classroom!

Clemens Kalischer and Norman Rockwell: Two creators, poles apart

An epic month-long re-organization of my files unearthed several unpublished posts from ancient times…like this one from February 2005

Berkshire Weekend, Stockbridge, MA
Clemens Kalischer and Norman Rockwell: Two creators, poles apart

How does an artist find art and present it? Two creators, one a renowned photographer, the other a celebrated artist, couldn’t be farther apart in their views. Both men were driven use their art to tell stories, both strove to say something about the human condition. In a recent trip to Stockbridge, MA, pt at large visited the studio of Clemens Kalischer and the Norman Rockwell Museum (then located on Main Street, a short walk from Kalischer's Image Gallery) and was struck by the conceptual gulf between these men.

In my youthful roamings through Stockbridge, I had often admired the black and white photographs of Clemens Kalischer, not realizing that the man had contributed to Edward Steichen’s acclaimed “The Family of Man” in 1955 and had photographed for Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, and was a freelance photographer for the New York Times. In a recent trip to Stockbridge, The Adventurer, not having the prose to put this politely, was surprised that Kalischer was not only alive (at 85) but sitting behind the desk in the same gallery he’s maintained for nearly half a century. And talkative. Sort of.

The burning question one wants to ask an artist is "Why do you make these pictures, what do you want to tell us?" I asked him but Kalischer just doesn’t want to play Q and A.
Q. “What did you want to convey with this photo?”
A. “I find a subject that appeals to me and I take a picture.”

Q. “Well, are you aiming to make a comment on poverty, or war, or a vanishing way of life?”
A. “That’s up to the viewer to answer,”  he replies. “I don’t want to tell the viewer what  to think. If I were to write titles to my photos, I’d be leading the viewer to make conclusions. I want viewers to make their own conclusions.”

I tried asking the question in several other clever ways and still the same  response. “When I feel moved to take a picture, I frame it and shoot it. It’s up to others to judge it.”

He certainly had a feel for it, even though he wouldn’t wax poetic about it. His visions of people, places, and history resonated universally; his work is included in the Library of Congress’ “Masters of Photographers” collection.

Norman Rockwell, on the other hand, wanted the public to understand his art and did everything he could to align our perceptions with his. The Adventurer’s visit to the Norman Rockwell Museum, built in Stockbridge in 1993, revealed an artist who had no trouble taking control of his art and the message he delivered from the 1920s to the 1960s. His illustrations were a fixture on covers of Look, The Saturday Evening Post, and Time Magazines.

“I do ordinary people in everyday situations . . .  And I find that I can fit most anything into that frame, even fairly big ideas.” Themes of kindness, tolerance, democracy, and freedom recur in his paintings, which are often awash in gentle humor, compassion, or admiration.  Many of his images, The Four Freedoms, for example, are iconic visions of mid twentieth century America.

A man of social conscience, Rockwell didn't shy away from using his art to comment on the war in Viet Nam or the bloody violence in the South where young members of SNCC were murdered, martyred in the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s. Rockwell prepared for his paintings meticulously. He chose the models, selected the clothes, coached the expressions, thought out the backgrounds of each painting. He photographed the scene then painted it and repainted it until that everyday situation  represented something about his view of the American psyche.

There you have it: two artists, one who telegraphs his intentions without pretense, one who sends it untitled into the world. Both had a passion for creating, commenting, and connecting with the world. Both are acknowledged for their art.

Does it matter how we create our art? We each have a palette with which we shape our worlds and create our futures. Some of us are the Rockwell designers, thinking ahead, planning methodically, and transparently communicating our visions. Some of us are Kalischers, seeing opportunities, taking our shots, and letting others find the value in what we do. Either way, pt at large admires those who fill their frames with ideas that matter to them.

 

Bauhaus to Bartley’s Burger Cottage

An epic month-long re-organization of my files unearthed several unpublished posts from ancient times…like this one from January 5, 2005

Bauhaus to Bartley’s Burger Cottage, my aesthetic and gustatory senses are overloaded. Today’s pt at large adventure covered three square blocks of Harvard Square that house treasures of art history and one award-winning college hangout that’s in no danger of being put out of business by some upstart yuppie establishment selling concept coffee and croissant confections.

I don’t recommend this concentrated tour for those without sufficient random access memory to hold, categorize, and analyze mammoth amounts of color, shape, text and texture. My three hour tour was the equivalent of a three credit college course in art history. Images, bits of information, historical data, impressions, conversations with informed docents are spilling out from the edges of my brain like the lettuce on the Bartley’s Best Gourmet char grilled hamburger I ordered for lunch (that hamburger, seven ounces of choice ground beef, ground daily, could be the subject of an essay all by itself).

My first tour began with a 12:15 pm “Art Encounter” in one of the Fogg Art Museum’s modern art rooms. A museum docent, a middle aged woman with specious opinions about art, parked us in front of wall sized James Brooks painting titled ‘Triptych’. We five observers shared our interpretations of Brook’s painting. Being merciful, I’ll spare you the details of our musings but the painting is actually fun to look at.

Muted primary colors, a sort of settled organic composition which had a recognizable flow and was a counterpoint to the other abstract impressionist paintings in the room which were much more rigid, geometric, and linear.  I didn’t know that artists could be anal as well as organic; there was alot of primary colored left brained painting by Morris Louis and Ken Noland. The paint surface makes a difference. Pollock, de Kooning, Klein, and these guys discovered that unsized canvas absorbs paint, affecting the visual result. Hans Hoffman, who painted in NYC and Provincetown, a precursor of these painters, was one of the first to use unsized canvas.

After thirty minutes of this, I was becoming aesthetically inebriated. I succumbed to a huge Jackson Pollock (1902-1950) piece that was framed in the doorway leading to the next gallery.  The mixed media piece about 3’ wide, 10’ high, on canvas stapled onto black ground and framed in simple black was a gorgeous implosion of spattered, dripped, caked paint. Who knew black and beige could be so elegant?

Total trivia: acrylic paint was discovered in 1957.

I ricocheted from the Fogg to the Busch Reisinger right next door, where I bumped into another docent. This lady knew the history of German abstract impressionism like guys from South Boston know the names and batting averages of every Red Sox player for the last century.

This next paragraph is my memory of her spiel. Germans may be evolved in design and mechanics but they were slow on the uptake of European impressionism. Manet got that ball rolling in 1863 with his painting subject matter. The Germany psyche was not ready to indulge in color rhapsodies like French. They needed to have a social component to their new art, depict angst and social concerns more consciously than the French.

German painters arrived in Paris in about 1888, though, and began to catch up.  Louis Corinth’s painting, a big canvas portrait of sculptor Friederich, 1904, shows brush strokes, classic pose, the man being the controller of his art, implied by the small sculpture he holds in his hand. Note the interplay of light on the man’s back, his strength, dignity, and Roman nose.

Parked next to this is Corinth’s painting of Salome looking at the head of St John the Baptist, the Salome theme familiar to many Germans from the Straus opera. The left side of the painting has the traditional Madonna arc, but the middle is pure budding Salome, teen aged and nubile, luminous pink nippled breasts, full red lips...and a power to be reckoned with.

“Now you will look at me John,” she says as she reaches into the basket holding his just severed head and opens his closed eyelid. Some interpret this as a comment on the movement of women’s rights in Germany at the time (divorce laws were being loosened). I am personally relieved that the women’s movement in America featured bra burning as opposed to beheading in order to make a point.

Max Bechmann was an impressive German painter, writer, shaker and mover. His self-portrait, assured, standing in full formal attire, implies an artist’s importance in society. His broad brush strokes show the classic observer. The composition flows left to right from opaque to full light. Is this a comment on the nature of the society he observes?

Around the corner and I see the influence of Walter Gropius. In the late 1920s, early thirties, he early founded the Bauhaus movement which spread to architecture, furniture, painting. He was the Henry Ford of art, wanted to make art and aesthetics, an elevated sense of design, more available to the common person, a departure from the strong baroque influences earlier in the century.
The chrome and canvas Breuer chair on display there could be mass produced.
You can see its offspring in modern furniture stores today.

Ah, and there’s a painting by Feininger, who, I discovered, was a boy wonder musician who abandoned music in favor of art, which overwhelmed him when he traveled to Europe to study music.

At this point, my brain cells were close to melting with information overload. It was time to visit Bartley’s Gourmet Burger Cottage on Mass Ave across from the ‘yard’. At 1:30 pm on January 5, 2005, I tasted a hamburger that ascended the heights of hamburger heaven. It is the measure by which I will assess ground sirloin for the rest of time. I will create a paean to that establishment in another edition of pt at large.

Fortified with red meat, I walked two blocks to the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. Target: Marks of Enlightenment, Traces of Devotion: Japanese calligraphy. The main surprise of this exhibit is the demonstration of how Japanese calligraphy evolved during the centuries from extremely disciplined to free flowing and artistic.

I conclude with a poem from the exhibit, complementing the inclement day I ventured out, an aesthete amongst the snowflakes.

Muso Soseki 1275-1351, Japan

From heaven fall icy petals;
In the sky not a spot of blue remains.
A dusting of jade covers the ground
And buries the blue mountains.
The sun rises over the mountain peak,
The chill pierces my bones.
Silence prevails.

The Acela Quiet Car: RIding the Rails in Serene Silence

June, 2012

Riding the rails is a throwback to the days when the railroad was the fastest way to get from here to there. It’s still one of the most convenient ways to get from Boston to New York City.

As the Acela Regional, destination Penn Station, slows to a halt at the Route 128 stop just outside Boston, a car labeled Quiet Car passes in front of me. I head for it. It turns out to be a heavenly halcyon surprise.

As the train pulls out of the station, a conductor gets on the intercom to spell out the rules of the road. First, no cell phone conversations. Yayyyy. And use headphones for your DVD player or music device. If the volume can be heard by others nearby, turn it down…or leave.

And no talking. Really. People just sit and read, or work silently on laptops or text away on their phones. If we weren’t rattling along at high rates of speed, you could have heard a piece of Kleenex fall on the floor. A conductor asked two chatty riders to take a conversation into the next car or desist. I loved it. So did everyone else. This is as close as a fifty-ton piece of railroad car can come to a spa.

A stroll back through the cars between the Quiet Car and the Café Car is a jarring reminder of how much auditory clutter we’re immersed in everywhere else in our lives.

Back in the arms of the Quiet Car, the low rumble of the train was a lullaby. I felt like I’d returned to the womb. I could feel myself relaxing, then rejoicing at the enforced serenity. Aside from the conductor reminding travelers to watch their step as they alight from the train’s next stop, the silence was golden. This is the next big thing in mass transit.

As I was having lunch in the Café Car, a conductor came on the air to say that the train would slow to a halt for a few minutes to allow another train to pass on the adjacent track. I joined the conductor, a trim fellow in his navy blue uniform and short-billed conductor cap, his silver ticket puncher dangling from his pocket, to view the rail bed a few feet away. By the time the train resumed its march, I’d learned a bunch of facts about the Acela train and you, my lucky readers, are the beneficiaries.

The old creosote soaked ties were ripped up, replaced by concrete ties in the 1970s.

The ties are crescent shaped, thicker at the ends where the rails exert the most force on them and thinner in the center where the force is less. This also saved money on the cost of concrete.

The ACELA can run 3% faster on concrete vs. wood ties since the concrete is more rigid.

The Acela Express is faster than the Acela Regional because it makes fewer stops and has two engines, one in front and one at the rear, to propel it.

The two engine Express can accelerate faster than Regional with one engine. Its top speed is 150 mph; the Regional top speed is 125 mph.

The Acela Express cars are coupled together more rigidly so they can tilt and travel at faster speeds around corners. The Acela Regional has old style freight car couplings that can be uncoupled in twenty minutes if there’s a problem with a car. If the Acela Express car has a problem, the whole train has to be taken off line to repair it because the interlinking couplings are so sophisticated in design.

The First Class car is usually the first behind the engine, followed by Business Class then the Quiet Car, then the other standard coach cars and the Café Car.

There is no extra charge for the Quiet Car. Don’t tell Amtrak but it’s a premium deal.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Birch Street Bistro: "Blues in the Village"

My friend Rebecca Wilson tried to find a pen to begin writing about it on a damp napkin - that's how great the music was at the Birch Street Bistro in Roslindale Thursday night. We both ended up writing reviews for our respective "lists" from memory. Aside from one song, I don't remember the set list. I just remember that i was damn glad i was there.

Birch Street Bistro
“Blues in the Village” Thursday nights at the Birch Street Bistro
14 Birch Street, 
Roslindale, MA 02131

"Common Ground" features bandleader Bill Walsh on guitar, Diane Gately on drums and Gary Barcus on bass.  The band  has been playing Thursdays at the Bistro for the past five years.
First set usually begins around 8:30 PM

May 31, 2012

The spontaneous combustion that engulfed the Birch Street Bistro Thursday night was a bonfire of massive musical proportions. "Sax" Gordon Beadle’s tenor sax spread the accelerant, singer Lisa Marie’s lungs applied the oxygen, Johnny Juxo’s keyboard lit the match, and Bill Walsh’s tight trio “Common Ground” fanned the flames for the better part of three sets at this unlikely hotbed of music tucked into gentrified Roslindale Square.

9 PM. The first bawling notes of Beadle’ s sax shut down every conversation in the house for a moment.

Beadle doesn’t just wail on that horn. He cradles it, rocks it, dips it, sways with it and channels the groove with joyously sinuous body language. He makes that horn squeal, honk, bray, beseech, beg and seduce. Hey, we’re three minutes into the set and Beadle’s infectious energy sets the tone. Even patrons with a tin ear are on notice that this is gonna be a night to be reckoned with whether you’re on the dance floor or trying to sit still in your seat.

John "Juxo" DiTomasso, frizzy hair sticking out from the black fedora perched atop his head, sings some great boogie-woogie and blues from his seat at the electric piano. The man has a playful style and great chops on the keys. If I closed my eyes, I would have sworn I was in Louisiana when Johnny brought out his accordion and pitched a New Orleans style song with Gordon and the band swapping solos behind him.

This. Was. Really. Hot. Stuff.

And it got better.

My jaw dropped when Lisa Marie walked to the mic.  This woman is a natural born blues belter. Great husky voice, impeccable timing and phrasing, and a repertoire of saucy sexy songs sung at full throttle or with a soulful drag. Except for a couple of songs written by Johnny Luxo, Lisa Marie sang covers. But be clear. Lisa Marie does not imitate. She creates. You’ll recognize the lyrics but damn, that throaty and sassy voice, that’s all Lisa Marie.

The ensemble tore the place apart with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Into The Mystic.”  Keyboardist Juxo, lead guitar Walsh, Beadle’s tenor sax, and Lisa Marie emoting from some mystical place in her big heart, traded miraculously lyrical solos. This is one of the best live band moments I’ve ever experienced.  

A split second after the song’s last beat, the Birch Street Bistro went nuts. The gray haired woman sitting at the bar was on her feet, arms raised in salute, her ponytailed husband, a dozen men with sleeveless biker jackets and tattooed arms, and the rest of the regulars from thirty-something on up were shouting as if in a revival meeting tent. “That was the best version of 'Into The Mystic' I’ve heard my whole life!” one woman shouted ecstatically.

The Birch Street Bistro is the Clark Kent of local venues minus the phone booth. For most of the week it’s a handsomely renovated local hangout with good food and a good vibe. Then there’s Thursday night.

No stage. No risers for the band. No separation from the patrons. Instead of a phone booth, the bistro owner removes a couple of tables from the front corner and Walsh on guitar, Gary Barcus on bass, and Diane Gately on drums, take it from there.

Who needs a red cape? Common Ground band leader Bill Walsh assembles a guest list of musical talent. Popular local singers, songwriters, musicians of every stripe are featured every Thursday and more of them show up unannounced to jam with the band for the late sets.

Blues stylist Diane Blue, guitar man Big Jack Ward, local singers Bobby Mac, and a redheaded singer named Alison who swiveled like Gypsy Rose Lee when she was not singing, plus men named Dave and Roscoe who sat in at drums all took a turn singing or playing.

I’ve been here four times. The first time was fabulous. This one was dynamite. Every Thursday won’t be a barn-burner but I can guarantee that you’ll hear solid music every time.

Note #1 to dancers: The “dance floor” is a small space one step inside the front door and right next to the band. There’s always room to dance, even if you have to maneuver around people entering or carting ‘take out’ food from the bistro.

Note #2 to dancers: Most of the regulars are listeners, fewer are dancers so bring your own dance partner.  I would have been devastated if not for my friends Rebecca and Nicki, who both love to dance.

There’s nothing like dancers to add to the glorious energy from the band. Last night at the Birch Street Bistro, whether you danced or listened, you heard one of the best sets for spirited live music you'll hear this year.