Kith & Kin

For full context, please read Part 1 and Part 2 . Part Three The Concert: A Few Words from Dorothy After Psycho ’s last note echoed through the great edifice and the applause subsided, Dorothy Herrmann approached the chancel: it was time for her to share some warm—and humorous—memories of her beloved dad. Well, before I tell you this story, I’d like to thank all of you for coming tonight. I know that it would have meant a lot to my father. I don’t think he would have ever believed that such a nasty, morally corrupt piece of music would have been played in such [a] divine setting! First of all, my father had reservations about Psycho from the beginning, and that had to do with the money that he was to receive for the score. Hitchcock wanted to make a movie very cheaply, and so he cut down on the budget. And one of the first things that his eagle eye looked at was the music budget. So he wanted to offer my father a car instead of his usual fee. And, as a matter of fact, I wish that m...

Robert Berks ’  twelve-foot-tall statue of Einstein, Washington, DC. For context, please read my post from September 2, 2024,  “Psycho” in the Cathedral, Part One . Part Two A Day in DC The next morning I was up early and getting ready to drive to DC. My plan was to spend the day sightseeing and then go to supper . . . with Bernard Herrmann’s daughters! Yes, Herrmann’s daughters, Dorothy and Wendy, were attending the concert, and they had invited anyone who was interested to join them for a meal before the concert. I jumped at the chance! But first I spent the day sightseeing. As I prepared to head to DC carrying a change of clothes and my phone, Louise suggested I might want to take along something to eat or drink. “Oh, no, I’ll be fine!” She (wisely) insisted I take two oranges along. And later in the day, after trudging for miles around DC in the heat, I ate those two oranges, and they were the most delicious oranges I had eaten in my life! Like Jona...

A Note from Steve: Hello, all. This post started off as a simple account of a concert I attended a few years back at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, but it kept growing and growing until it threatened to overwhelm me and started thinking it was in charge! In fact, one night I awoke around 3 AM, and it was standing over my bed, its i ’ s in bold and its italic hands around my throat. “ What do you think you ’ re doing !? ”  I cried.  “ Oh, uh, nothing, nothing! ”  it replied, rapidly pulling its hands away as they returned to normal font.  “ Have a good night! ”  And it slouched out of the room in its Times New Roman size 11 shoes. Chagrined, I realized I was going to have to act promptly and brutally to re-establish my authority. So the next morning while it was sitting cross-legged on the floor eating all the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms box and watching Bluey , I snuck up behind it, my red editor ’ s pencil poised, and chopped it into three hum...