Category Archives: Blog posts
Kilimanjaro Videos
Tanzania is coming to eat our lunch
I went to Tanzania in eastern Africa recently and climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. There will be pictures and a writeup on that. Some of what I saw there made me think.
Let’s Climb Kilimanjaro
Eldest kid Sam was coming off several months working in a COVID ward in New York City and wanted to do something big before she started medical school in August 2021. Some of her medical buddies suggested going hiking in Iceland, because Iceland was letting people in. With COVID testing, of course. Other voices thought going to Africa and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro would be fun. Tanzania was also letting people come. We climbed Mount Fuji in Japan in 2014. That was fun and a real adventure. How much harder could Kilimanjaro be?
Lots harder, as it turned out.
Collected Videos
I’ve been playing around with making videos of myself singing, multi-tracking with myself and with others. This post is a collection of the videos I’ve put out there on Vimeo and Youtube.
Picture book of Claude and Mary Warren
This was apparently a gift to Dick Warren on the occasion of his Ph.D. from Stanford. It is a collection of pictures of his parents Claude and Mary Warren and their life growing up.
Connie Larson Frayer interview 3-25-93
I interviewed my Aunt Connie back in 1993, using a little cassette recorder sitting on her kitchen table.
Jean Larson interview on May 30, 2018
I asked my Mom a bunch of questions about her life and she had a lot to say. After we were done, she added, “I really liked to darn socks. The little cross stitches.” That didn’t make it into the recording.
Interview Mom 5-30-2018
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you doing this?”
Regal Blend is my barbershop quartet. We go out singing Valentines on February 14. While we’re traveling around town, we like to visit schools and sing for the chorus classes, to give them a little demonstration of what adults do for fun. The classes enjoy the change of pace, and we can do a little tutorial on barbershop singing.
Of course, the first thing we do when we get to a school is report to the office to check in. As long as we’re there, we sing for the secretaries and administration. It always draws a crowd, and not so subtly shows that people keep on singing long after they leave school.
One of the students this year asked that question above. I mumbled and stammered about how much fun it was. But she made me think about it. There are more reasons than “fun” to sing in a quartet, a chorus, a band, even alone in the shower. Continue reading “Why are you doing this?”
Robert Siegel and the Polish polka band from Wisconsin
Every summer in Washington DC the Smithsonian Institution puts on a big Folklife Festival cultural show in the National Mall. They feature cultures and countries from all around the USA and the world. As it happened, Wisconsin’s 150th anniversary as a state was 1998, and Wisconsin was one of the featured cultures that year. Continue reading Robert Siegel and the Polish polka band from Wisconsin