The Constant Harper

The power of nature is rooted in its diversity. The same can be said of the human race. Nowhere is this more in evidence than at the annual Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle.
During this four day celebration spanning the Memorial Day weekend Seattle’s always vibrant music community explodes with talent, old and new.
The known performers [...]

They cluster together, eyes bright, chins up, studying the mob staring at them through the glass.
And the meerkats stare back with equal intensity.
It’s Saturday morning at the Woodland Park Zoo and the facility’s newest stars, the meerkats, have already attracted a sizable crowd of jostling, jabbering, photo-shooting humans, eager to experience first-hand the meerkat mystique.
At [...]

It’s two a.m. and I’m awake again.
You’d think that after walking around for sixteen hours in a foreign city I’d be exhausted. And I am. But sleep eludes me.
The pull of time, past, present, future, swirling around me stirs up so many thoughts. It’s like trying to sleep on a moving bus full of drunken [...]

Does anyone else think that there are enough crime shows on TV? How about medical investigation shows? And am I the only person on the planet who loathes “American Idol”?
It could be argued that there are more despised forms of entertainment. Mimes are not universally appreciated. Serious poetry will always have an empty seat next [...]

Humans are a fun-loving species.
We’re born to mock. It’s in our DNA.We can even laugh when the joke’s on us, though of course, it’s always funnier when someone else slips on the banana peel.
A certain school of humor is rooted in humankind’s blithe self-assurance, as evidenced in the frequent Internet “Fixed It!” mailings, which feature [...]