pt at large

Porch Sitting Monday June 26, 2023

Thursday 8:31 PM 2023

In the evanescent minutes before sunset, cirro-cumulus clouds look for a pillow before ceding the cosmos to twilight ... joined in a gavotte by gentle zephyrs that insistently caress the boughs of the giant oak trees on the stage across the street from my porch. Three robins swoop from a power line to forage for tiny insects. Within minutes, their internal alarm will sound curfew.

Porch Sitting Sunday June 25, 2023

Sunday June 25, 2023
8;01 PM

Evening porch sitting, David Bigelow green tea in hand. Utter Sunday stillness. no cars or trucks on the asphalt still damp from afternoon rains. Newly born rabbits pad about in their new world. soft, Reliable breeze comes courting from the southwest to rise leisurely up Oliver Street, late for dinner robins peck through the grass for a late night appetizer If you were looking for the heart of Sunday night atop Oliver Street, you’d be pumping through its atriums and out its ventricles right here.

Summer Solstice June 21, 2023

8:25 -  8:34 PM

In the evanescent minutes before sunset, cirro-cumulus clouds look for a pillow before ceding the cosmos to twilight. Gentle zephyrs insistently caress the boughs of the giant oak trees on the stage across the street from my porch. Three robins swoop from a power line to forage for tiny insects. Within minutes, their internal alarm will sound curfew...they silently wing it to find their perches for the night.

In 9 minutes, daylight will merge into twilight then night. The longest day of daylight will take a bow, to return next year. The hours of daylight will imperceptibly diminish for a few seconds a day until the winter solstice...a reminder of the passing of time and a not so gentle reminder that solstices are immutable...our time on earth,  not so much.

 

Last call for dinner...

Mr. Robin and family nesting for the night...will be up early tomorrow with foreknowledge that the early birds get the worms.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Intimations of a forest primeval

 Tuesday, May 13, 2023

1:30 PM Eerie quietude, not a decibel registers, robins on radio silence. Butterflies flit on shimmering  gossamer wings. An early afternoon breeze, induced by updrafts from the steadily warming earth, arouses the broad oak leaves on the hill with a lover’s caress. Intimations of a forest primeval, pristine, pure, transform the moment in amber.

Photos by  Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

 

Tiger Moan Testifies at The Burren

Sunday June 4, 2023

The Full Flower Full Moon overhead was in its waning gibbous phase. There was no energy waning inside the walls of the Back Room at The Burren in Somerville when Amy Kucharik and her A - List musicians, with special guest Cheryl Arena, stepped onto the stage.

Full moons are notorious for casting energy with the sweep and intensity of a cosmic purse seiner. The Burren was in its thrall from the jump. Tiger Moan promises “Vintage and modern blues with sass and class.” Add the sense of call and response heard in a Sunday morning clapboard church south of the Mason-Dixon Line and you get the idea.

Tiger Moaning? No sir…Tonight was Tiger Testifying.

Scores of blues and swing dancers deftly swirled around the packed dance floor with uncanny radar they’ve acquired from dancing at close quarters to smoky blues and syncopated swing. From the jump, the crowd was ready to rumble. They were not disappointed.

Amy Kucharik - vocals, ukulele, guitar; Greg Toro - bass; Erica Risti - saxophones, backing vocals; Tim Lewandowski - trombone; Michael Valdez - piano; Stephan Chaggaris - drums’ and special guest Cheryl Arena were locked and loaded.

There was nothing rote about solos by Kucharik, Arena, Toro, Lewandowski, Valdez, and Risti. Their eyes were not focused what was in front of them but what was spinning a mile a minute as the music spilled like a geyser from their brains into the fingering or mouthpieces of their instruments. Fresh paint, fresh newsprint, still wet.

Performances so uniquely creative that several dancers stood transfixed to admire the sheer artistry. You had to see it to believe it.

 In the midst one smoky blues number, the only sound from the stage was Stephan Chaggaris’s soft subtle brush work accompanying the kind of  slow drag that blues dancers love. Not one iota of energy was lost in the the downshift.

The gold standard for blues dancers, this is Tiger Moan’s second year of residency at The Burren. In these turbulent times, their music is a restorative elixir that, for a few transformative hours, lifts our load, fortifies our resolve, joins us in affirmative community.

Amy Kucharik - vocals, ukulele, guitar; Greg Toro - bass; Erica Risti - saxophones, backing vocals; Tim Lewandowski - trombone; Michael Valdez - piano; Stephan Chaggaris - drums’ and special guest Cheryl Arena

Cheryl Arena...

Ensemble

Tiger Moan testifying...

Hitting the groove...Energy from last night’s Tiger Moan show still keeping time in the marrow of my bones.

Hallelujah. 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.