The Warm Glow

It's cold. If you open the door you can smell it inviting you outside to see the moon as only winter can show you. It's that college-town cold smell - always tinging of possible snow and cars that run on prayer and extra oil in these months. We're glad to be alive these days. Many things are going on, but relationships are built best this time of year, erected like the capstones of mighty towers giving shape to the imaginiation - especially while mysterious dreamy essences drift from the kitchens of our friends and families.

Playing on Karen Reynold's show was a blast. A very gracious thank you to those who listened in over the airwaves (or the world wide web). Karen's show is one of a dying breed that deserve to be played over those old radios that were furniture. The WDVX station is like that too. They still put the cds in by hand and switch them out every song, and they have a turntable hooked up and ready to spin the occasional vinyl. I must say, it was a new and interesting experience singing for an audience that I could neither hear nor see, and it took a degree of faith to wonder whether anyone was listening at all. But, we know that there are folks who never miss the show - folks like Carl and his wife. This sweet old man who always listens to Writer's Block called us in tears after finding out his wife now has brain cancer. Pray for them. Karen was wonderful enough to record the show, so (if the infernal machine worked) we might have a recording of the whole bit. Keep your ears out, and I'll let you know.

I'm running lights this weekend for Turning Pointe Studios' Christmas recital at Gentry Auditorium in Jefferson City. They're performing scenes from Tchiakovsky's Nutcracker Suite. I always loved the music to the Arabian dance, and Uncle Drosselmeier, somewhat resembling the Magician in the Magician's Nephew. Drosselmeier has that wonderful idiom of having something up his sleeve. His eye gleams to see boys with swords and girls with dolls and to lavish gifts upon those near him. Increasingly, as Kat and I tilt away from the business of decorating and lean toward giving - and remembering - the very air during this month seems to posess a secret that is never told, but only known. Running lights for the recital has become a yearly tradition for me, and I have to say that I've always enjoyed it. Besides the fact that I, as a non-recovering control freak, get to sit in a booth and subject the lighting to my every whim, I love being given this electric palette and told, "Paint." So, my humility probably doesn't grow so much in the endeavor, as I'm quite content to be unheard of throughout the evening. It reminds me of sitting behind the sound booth in church as a kid, trying your best not to explode with laughter at what your friend is doing next to you - it being all the harder because you can't laugh in church. But I can't help but believe that God laughs the loudest of us all, booming like the Ghost of Christmas Present, "Come in, and know me better, man!"

Gather 'round the warm glow of the radio tubes.
Good tidings, of great joy......