If you've ever driven on Queens Boulevard, you know that there's a long string of cemeteries smack in the middle of Queens. But you may not know that a little farther north, about where the Brooklyn Queens Expressway meets the Grand Central Parkway, there's a nice little cemetery on Astoria Boulevard called St. Michael's. In …
Author: Eric Peterson
Conductor, hornist, singer, business analyst, New Yorker. Happily gay-married. Knit and ice-skate for fun.
Sidestepping
Thanks, everyone, who's commented on the last few blog posts. As Brad pointed out, this is cathartic for me to do this storytelling, and will help down the road when I'm wanting to revisit. Some nice comments on the writing (awwww! thank you!) and several comments on how brave I am to put this out …
Clocked with a frying pan
Over the next week, and indeed up to now, I've been slightly manic and overly perky, particularly when interacting with other people, as if I'd had not quite enough sleep (completely true) and way too much coffee (not true at all). My friends were eying me askance, wondering when I'd break down. ("How is he …
So, what the hell happened?
How did a man in his mid-'60's, so close to retirement he could taste it, suddenly leave us behind? Close friends and family know most of this already. The last few years for our household (as for most of us) was a shitshow. I'd gotten laid off at the end of 2018, then spent most …
Charles is gone
Charles Keiser, 1955-2022 He was always my angel. His memorial page is here. You can still watch his funeral service on-demand from the church website, although I don't know how long that will be up. I'll follow with more (much more) detail later. I've got enough blog material for the rest of the year, maybe. …
Gibberings Grim and Ghastly
The Sorcerer is minor Gilbert & Sullivan. It was the first full-length 'Savoy opera', although they'd done a Christmas pantomime (Thespis) and they didn't really take off as powerhouses until their next show, HMS Pinafore. But there is much to like about Sorcerer, especially its tuneful score. My friend Gary Slavin is a very talented …
Hernias and Spiked Teapots
Some bitzies to get you caught up before I describe this bizarro 4-day weekend. Let's see: We've been rehearsing for next weekend's QUO concert. A few weeks ago, we had an organizational kerfuffle where our wonderful assistant conductor up and quit. She raised some valid concerns about how the orchestra deals with trans and non-binary …
Fandom
I know I'm way behind in blogging. I kept almost blogging, and then thinking nothing I had to blog about was of interest to anyone. This is a writer's trap, I know, and also made me wonder if it was a sign of depression. And then I thought, "no, it's not that my life is …
Oscar the Grouch
Some years, we make the effort, and this was one. After the Oscar Nominations, I printed out the list and we made a good faith effort to see all the big stuff. By this past weekend we'd seen all of the Animated Features, most of the acting nominations (sorry, Penelope Cruz), and all the best …
Crumbling Eyeballs
So, last October, I was warming up at home for a concert that night and suddenly I got floaters in my right eye. I'd never had them before, but I knew what they were. This was like having a tangle of hair wafting vaguely back and forth. "Well, fuck", I opined. So I scheduled an …
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