Jim Brown writes about a couple of points with which he takes issue in a recent Rifftides piece, Harmony And History. First, I take great pleasure in sitting in a Starbucks or other small restaurant and hearing QUALITY music in the background (or even the foreground). It appears that Starbucks did a lot to make this practice widespread, and I applaud it. In fact, many of the restaurants that my wife and I patronize for the food have adopted quality jazz as their background. A few years ago, I … [Read more...]

I am working tonight in an airport hotel. Tomorrow morning, I shall clamber aboard an airplane and head for Quantico, Virginia, and a reunion with a bunch of guys who took their commissions away from the Marine Corps a long time ago. Most of us haven’t seen each other since. Someone told me that our first reunion event is a twenty-mile forced march with eighty-five-pound field packs followed by hors d'oeuvres and white wine. I think it was a joke—the white wine part. While I’m in the … [Read more...]