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Sometimes I write words too, I put them here.

Writing an Opera Is a Wild Thing to Do

I started thinking seriously about this opera about six years ago after watching an HBO documentary called Alabama Snake . It tells the story of Glenn Summerford, a former Pentecostal preacher from Scottsboro who has been denied parole for more than three decades after attempting to murder his wife using the snakes he kept at his church just outside of Sand Mountain. That eventually led me to Dennis Covington’s book Salvation on Sand Mountain , which became the real jumping-o

I Hear The Zoo Is Great

I spent the last three days in Nebraska judging a show and exploring the city. Omaha is nice. The art museum’s in a beautiful building,...

A Week at Mount Saviour

I just spent a week at a remote benedictine monastery in upstate New York. Mount Saviour, a 1,000 acre farm, is home to 100 sheep and 10...