Kith & Kin

The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me in my whole, entire life happened in my own living room. It happened around 3 am. And it happened when I was completely alone. The early ’90s, of course, were the pre-cell-phone and pre-Internet era. And sometimes in that era, a TV network would broadcast a live show that viewers could call into and ask a question. On this night there was one such live, national show: Lt. Col. Oliver North was interviewing radio personality Rush Limbaugh . At that time, you could hardly have named two people who were more widely known than Oliver North and Rush Limbaugh. It’s not worth belaboring why—the point is that both were tremendously famous. Having come across the show, I thought, “What an opportunity!” I had often thought about calling in to Limbaugh’s daily AM radio program, but (1) I doubted I would actually get through and (2)   talking to him live while 15 million people listened in was a pretty daunting idea. But that n...

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yes, this is a true story, related as accurately as I can, considering that the events occurred thirty years ago. Have you ever heard the expression “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule”? According to this article , the saying “is a proverb meaning that one should have learned the lesson the first time. L. Mendel Rivers (1905–1970), a Democratic U.S. Representative from South Carolina, used the saying many times.” For some reason that aphorism comes to mind when I recall turning pages for Samuel Sanders as he accompanied the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman at the Peace Center in January of 1994. I had already been kicked by the page-turner mule once, but when the house manager asked me if I wanted to do it again when Perlman came, I bent over and said, “Yeah! Kick me again!” If you’ve read my previous blog post, “ Adventures in Page Turning, Part 1 ,” you will know that in October of 1993 I had the privilege of turning pages for Emanuel Ax,...