Opinion
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From Call It in the Air
Inorganic Psychology
By: - Aug 20th, 2026'I was joking.' Joanna's voice was soft. It sounded far away. He visualized the miles of phone line his voice was crawling along to reach her. It bothered him that he couldn't touch her. His words were not enough; he didn't trust the line with the nuance he was giving his words. Or would give them. If he ever made sense again. 'It doesn't matter,' Joanna added after a pause.
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Death of an Eagle
What Two Bald Eagles Showed Us About Human Evolution
By: - Aug 18th, 2026The death of the bald eagle known as Jackie has left millions of people grieving. Very few of them ever caught a glimpse of her in-person soaring over Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino mountains of California, but they feel they know her personally. She and her mate Shadow were YouTube stars, influencers, you might say, of an audience that followed the lifestyles of the feathered and famous.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Accidemts are Preventable
By: - Aug 12th, 2026Best Friends! Until they were twenty-one. This was the pact they had struck in their boyhood. A unique understanding. A covenant that Joey had kept and preserved. For ten years it had jogged quietly with him, the stride indelibly paced by the sustained and persistent flipping of his Canadian penny. Gary and him. He and Gary. As intrinsically bound together as the two sides of the coin.
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The Architecture of a Moment
Illnesss, Impermanence and the Mundane
By: - Aug 11th, 2026When you’re this sick, the present moment doesn’t feel like a sanctuary. It feels more like a heavy, itchy wool coat that you’re stuck in and can’t unzip. In the middle of all this, I’ve found myself clinging to one simple, almost silly thought. It’s become my anchor: “This moment is my life with shingles; the next moment will be my life without shingles.”
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Tanglewood Learning Institute
Fifty Events September to May
By: - Aug 07th, 2026The Tanglewood Learning Institute (TLI) is pleased to announce the 2026–27 fall/winter/spring season, the most expansive yet, with over 50 events at the Linde Center for Music and Learning on Tanglewood's campus and in the Berkshires community. Marking the third year of year-round TLI programming, the upcoming season offers a wide-ranging performance lineup of exciting classical, jazz, Broadway, and dance talent as well as the TLI Cinematics film series, new TLI Focal Point photography classes, and community engagement events.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
The Mission
By: - Aug 06th, 2026Two backyards from Gary’s house, Gary suddenly stopped and pressed himself back against the corner of a garden shed. He pulled Joey down beside him. 'Look,' he said, pointing to a second-storey window in the next yard. 'The light's still on.' It was the first light they had seen in their mission. 'We have to be careful here, Joey.'
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The Evolution of Music
From Stone Age to Rolling Stones
By: - Aug 01st, 2026The author posits that music arose from the rhythms of everyday life, later joined with dancing and flutes. By the classical music era rhythm was no longer prominent, but it arose again with the invention of electric music, which enabled musicians to create new sounds never before encountered by human ears or brains.
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STORYWERKS
Courtyard of MASS MoCA
By: - Jul 29th, 2026Please join us for the opening day of STORYWERKS right in the courtyard at MASS MoCA, on Saturday, August 1, from noon to 6:00 PM. STORYWERKS is a place where words and stories spark creativity, connection, and meaning. Come explore our thoughtfully curated gifts and SW Gear, check out our podcast booth, share a story—or simply stop in to say hello.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
The Promise
By: - Jul 29th, 2026Joey promised Gary that he would not let him die. 'I promise you, Gary,' Joey said softly in the cemetery. Then he paused. He was alone. Everyone had gone home. After Gary's funeral, he cycled back to the cemetery to make his promise. Then he started his promise again. As he made it, tears streamed down his face; millions of them, more tears than he had experienced before; more tears than he believed possible..."
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The Long Exhale
Making Waves
By: - Jul 28th, 2026To face the end of our physical time is not a medical failure, nor is it a tragedy or a battle to be fought to the bitter end. It is the ultimate expression of Wu Wei—effortless action. We are not fighting a losing war against time; we are participating in the natural, necessary exhalation of the Dao.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Gone With the Wind
By: - Jul 22nd, 2026'Gary?' Joey called, his voice slipping into sound in the darkness of his London bedroom. He couldn't sleep. He was seated at his table, flipping his penny.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
The Report Card
By: - Jul 16th, 2026By the time summer of 1962 finally came around, shelving another endless year of school, Joey had tossed his 1936 penny with the strange dot exactly one thousand, three hundred and seventeen times. Sad, he admitted. Less than four hundred a month. And, to his amazement, he had checked off six hundred and ninety-one heads and six hundred and twenty-six tails.
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The Alchemy of Mapo Doufu
Cooking as a Daoist Art
By: - Jul 14th, 2026Ultimately, the alchemy of Mapo Doufu reminds us that the spiritual path is not a matter of retreating into a sterile, bland world free of friction. We do not find exceptional health or internal peace by avoiding the sharp, spicy, or intense elements of life.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Jo and Joe
By: - Jul 08th, 2026College Days. And then a flood of warm nostalgia. It startled Joey, catching him unaware, the unlikely cause tumbling out of a two-day-old edition of The Times which he'd dragged out of the dustbin after breakfast. He had purchased the newspaper on his way back from the aborted lunch with McDougal but had been too incensed to read it. Now it sat on his lap, jolting his memory and attaching his attention to a short, news-in-brief item at the bottom of the page.
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What's Next
Tabula Rasa
By: - Jun 30th, 2026In the early 2000s, there was a popular television drama, The West Wing, that followed the hyper-fast, high-stakes lives of the political elite inside the White House. Whenever the fictional president finished a grueling debate, resolved a global crisis, or wrapped up a staff meeting, he would look around the room, slap his hands together, and utter a signature two-word phrase: “What’s next?”
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Dan Spear
By: - Jun 28th, 2026It was the truth. Well, close. His mother had said something like that after another dumb incident with his uncle. It had happened one evening when Frederick—having nothing better to do, Joey guessed—nudged his nephew with his foot while they were watching television and mused that if he dropped Joey's baseball and his rubber eraser from the same height, they would both hit the floor at the same time.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Calculating the Days
By: - Jun 18th, 2026To Joey, barely eleven years old in 1962, flipping a penny one million times did not seem an unreasonable task. He wasn't sure how big it was—he knew it was big—but it was a number he'd heard people use in connection with lots of things, so it had to have an end. Some people, like Diane's father, even made a million dollars in one year.
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Consistency in the Ordinary
By: - Jun 16th, 2026This is the second writing in the trilogy, a supporting essay to The Alchemical Ash. The third will come in two weeks.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
Typhoon George
By: - Jun 10th, 2026The thought caught Joey, broadside. Yeah, he mused, slumping back into the plush leather sofa George's company thoughtfully provided out in reception, maybe that's it? He's being fired.
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Yo Yo Ma at Tanglwood
We The People: Our Shared Past, Present, and Future
By: - Jun 03rd, 2026Yo-Yo Ma joins Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and special guests in We The People: Our Shared Past, Present, and Future, a weeklong residency curated by Ma. This series of concerts, conversations, and gatherings (Aug. 1–9) offers a window into Ma’s perspective on the American experiment, inviting us to celebrate community and common purpose, consider our relationship to one another and to the land we share, and imagine a hopeful future.
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From the Novel Call It In the Air
The Blemish
By: - Jun 03rd, 2026Sarah's 1936 penny had not aged a day during the intervening quarter-century since she had purchased it. She had not let it. The meaning it held for her was still as clear as it had been on August the twenty-sixth, the day she bought it, brand spanking new, a souvenir of her eleventh wedding anniversary which fell on that day
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The Alchemical Ash
Part One of Three
By: - Jun 02nd, 2026The scholar had spent three years tracing the lineage of a single, rare manuscript on the Heavenly Horse Water Form. When he finally tracked the old teacher to a drafty shack in the northern hills, he carried the text in a silk-lined case like a holy relic. He wanted to debate the translation of the third stanza. He wanted definitions.
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Florida Arts Funding
Fewer Non Profits Get Support
By: - Jun 01st, 2026The budget provides $20 million in programming support, less than half of the $51 million recommended by the Florida Council on Arts and Culture to fully fund grants for 563 non-profit organizations.
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Call It in the Air
Chapter Two Birthday Presents; Ottawa, Canada, 1962
By: - May 27th, 2026On that day, back in 1962, Joey was given two gifts that stood out from the "stacks" of others he'd received. (He liked to tell his friends that he got "stacks of presents".)
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The Met, Money, and New York Times
Adam Nagourney Meets Peter Gelb
By: - May 21st, 2026Is Adam Nagourney 's interview of Peter Gelb nepotism at work? At least the topic of financing the arts came up.
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