A couple of years ago I contacted the chief recruiter of Navy chaplains and offered my services. His response (I'm loosely paraphrasing here) was "This is a job for young men." When I mentioned my prior service (7 years as an enlisted Marine) he said that ".....even with prior service you're (I'll spare you and me the embarassment of the actual number)                       years too old to serve." So it was with real interest that I read this story last week about a man MUCH more "chronologically gifted" than me serving in Iraq. To be fair, I'm not training to run a half marathon and I'm more than a decade his junior. Still......

I hereby confess to a guilty pleasure. One of the most frequently downloaded types of songs on my iPod goes into a playlist I labeled "Female Jazz Vocalists". I find it relaxing to listen to Peggy Lee sing "Fever" (for some strange reason it reminds me of my Grandfather) or the Andrews Sisters' harmonize on "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time". One of my favorites for some time now has been Blossom Dearie, whom I discovered as part of the Verve Jazz Masters series. I love her take on "Little Jazz Bird" or "The Party's Over". You can listen to her take on "I Won't Dance" here. I was saddened to learn of her passing this week when I read the NY Times obituary. I think I'll fire up that playlist sometime this week. She was an original.