Blogging on the Powwow

I've been on sabbatical for the past year, which among other things, has allowed me to play in not one, but two, community bands. Yes, these are the things that academics do on sabbatical. Rather than prepping lectures, I was squawking away in rehearsals in New Hampshire. Rather than grading student papers and fielding emails from panicked students, I was practicing. Every night. Okay, almost every night. It's been awful and wonderful at the same time.  It was just about four years ago that I was facing the fantastic opportunity of my first year away from teaching - a year-long fellowship at full salary. It's hard to beat that. Better  than sabbatical, in fact. I don't even remember why, but I got the crazy notion to take up the oboe again, a topic that I covered in a previous post . With the exception of a 5 month period when I played in one of Neil's student groups in 2000 or 2001, I had been away from the oboe for 19 years. Count them...19 years. But, I decided