Recently I wrote about my extremely brief theater career when I played the lead in my high school musical. I had the role of Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. It was a glimpse into the future about how I would become a skinny, occasionally delusional old man with impossible dreams.  You may know that the play is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth century novel Don Quixote. The musical unfolds as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes on the character of “mad knight” Don Quixote and he assigns roles for the other prisoners. In my earlier post I wrote about one spiritual takeaway from the play. How the gentle “knight errant” viewed the harlot Aldonza was the subject of that article. Quixote saw a lady and gentle spirit buried deep beneath the hardened and bitter exterior. Eventually she believed what the
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For reasons I still don’t understand I was cast as the lead in our high school senior musical many, many years ago. I had never acted and I was not a trained singer. That stellar resume got me the lead role of Don Quixote. Go figure. The play was called Man of La Mancha and I realize almost forty years later how daring that choice was for small town Chillicothe, Ohio. Man of La Mancha was pretty edgy for that era. You may know that the play is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth century novel Don Quixote. The musical unfolds as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes on the character of “mad knight” Don Quixote and he assigns roles for the other prisoners. The musical is best known for it’s signature song “The Impossible Dream”. I did not realize until recent years how you could draw
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Thirty-five years ago today (July 17th) my beautiful bride to be “pledged her troth” to me. To a recovering hayseed that sounded mildly naughty but I learned it meant that she promised her fidelity to our relationship. She meant it. Today we celebrate well over three decades together. Hard to believe. Just for grins I went back and took a look at some of the top music in the year we got married. There were some hits that did not make the cut for the solo at our modest wedding. For example, Paul Simon’s “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” was axed. Go figure. Joni rejected The Captain and Tenille’s moving rendition of “Muskrat Love” without allowing debate. I felt like Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” would be a great crowd warmup. Rejected. “Shake Your Booty” by KC and The Sunshine Band was summarily dismissed. But one song from 1976 that was not wedding solo worthy still describes how I feel about the lovely Mrs.Burchett. Orleans
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(Published earlier at Worldmag.com) OK, I admit it. I like country music. I also like rock, Motown, jazz, pop, folk, gospel, and classical music. But I once tried to distance myself from country in an ill-fated attempt to be sophisticated. To quote an old family idiom, that effort was like putting earrings on a hog. I am a small town boy and my roots are in the hills of Kentucky. So I no longer deny that I have a few banjos and some fine squirrel recipes in my genetic pool. In addition to my chromosomal predisposition toward Nashville, I am developing a deep appreciation for the honesty of country music. It is one of the few safe places to discuss God and country and marriage and old-fashioned values without fear of politically correct busybodies getting their undergarments twisted. We all laugh at a few outrageously titled country tunes, but there are many songs that reflect exactly who I am: a
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My bride and I will celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary in a few days. I wish I could say it has been 33 years of wine and roses. Or,  for my legalistic friends, 30 years of Welch’s and practical cut flowers. But it has not always been easy. Neither one of us came into this little nuptial adventure with any idea of what we were doing. So I was a little disturbed to find an article that would have told me everything that women wished that men knew. How helpful that little bit of intel would have been in 1976 instead of 2009. But I decided to proceed to see if I had figured anything out by trial and consitent error. The survey was a joint effort of Woman’s Day Magazine and AOL. The title of the article is “What we wish men knew”. Here are some of the findings with my totally objective self-evaluation of my beginning marriage grade and current grade.
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