The Incomparable Sweet Emma Barrett in her prime, complete with jingle bells on her garters. I learned my love for jazz at the knee of my first cousin Erik.   He was a clarinetist and played a little sax in his high school and college days and along with his buddies preferred traditional music to the mainstream sounds of the 50’s and 60’s.   We would sit in his bedroom in Catonsville and listen to Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, and Pete Fountain records by the hour. We probab

As I implied in my last blog, driving in Scotland was not my finest hour. It had been years since I last drove in the UK. My maiden voyage in the late 70’s involved renting a compact with a stick shift in downtown London and embarking on my journey at rush hour. I was young, cheap, and foolish. I would never make those mistakes again, but there were many new errors awaiting the older, wiser me in Scotland. The adventure began at the rental counter in Glasgow Airport. I had pr

Glasgow traffic in the rain. Not easy for an old driver on a new side of the road. As some of you know, I have just returned from a trip to the west of Scotland. My ultimate destination was Greenock in Inverclyde, the home of my first cousin once removed. Her dad and my grandfather were brothers. She and her husband raised their family in this historically major port and shipbuilding center. Greenock is now the administrative center for the council area and a cruise ship term

Tredegar Town Clock on VE Day. Tredegar is a town in the Sirhowy Valley of South Wales, UK and the 19th Century ancestral home of the...