Jan 18The Difference Between Music & CoffeeBy Steve Wiest Mmmmm…smooth foamy latte, iced nitro Colombian bean goodness, a perky large helping of caramel with cappuccino, some seasonal pumpkin spice or peppermint mocha! And when one tosses some coins into Rome’s Trevi fountain and sits down to relax on an epic early autumn day, a nice hot…Coffee5 min readCoffee5 min read
Oct 28, 2022On Gratitude(Or: Always Remember How Good You Have It) (Or: I Can Buy a Damn Coffee Whenever I Want!) So…even though I am giddy with happiness and over the moon with joy much of the time, I DO find myself dipping down to the doldrums every so often. Those who know…Gratitude2 min readGratitude2 min read
Jun 12, 2022Like, Yeah…No! I’m Kinda Scared, or Whatever! (The Decline of Spoken Language in the U.S.)By Steve Wiest So…first off, let me begin with a heart-felt mea culpa and disclaimer DELUXE: As a chronically verbose jazz musician who enjoys flowery over-the-top use of hyperbole and slang of all types (not to mention inorganic parenthetical tangents and digressions) I have no credibility AT ALL when discussing…Language6 min readLanguage6 min read
Jan 18, 2022The Quite Satisfying World of “Quiddit”Installment #1 By Steve Wiest In my polymath wanderings through the years, my first career idea was cartooning. I absolutely ADORED the comic strips in the daily papers of old. How cool was THAT? –every day a collection of news, sports and comics delivered right to your house. Such a…Comic Strip2 min readComic Strip2 min read
Jan 17, 2022Maynard Ferguson, Sponge Bob, Rabbits, and a Scary Handshake(The Director’s Cut) By Steve Wiest The time has come to put forth the definitive version of the story behind the video at the end of this article. It seems that, as long as…Maynard Ferguson12 min readMaynard Ferguson12 min read
Dec 20, 2021Captain Kirk and Climate ChangeThinking About Interstellar Travel and Extraterrestrial Life (No biggie🙃) I really enjoyed watching “Shatner in Space”today on Amazon Prime. While I am not a fan of most everything Jeff Bezos (my favorite Space Baron is Richard Branson), I AM a big fan of all things Shatner. To see him…NASA2 min readNASA2 min read
Dec 19, 2021When Sci-Fi Becomes Sci-FactThe James Webb Telescope If all goes well-and LAWD there’s a whole lotta STUFF that needs to go well-this incredible bit of wizardry will launch from French Guiana on December twenty four. What will it do? Quite possibly (actually, if the 300+ “fail points” operate correctly…I think it isn’t just…James Webb Telescope2 min readJames Webb Telescope2 min read
Dec 11, 2021Indistinguishable From Magic(Or, how the Apple Watch saved my life by calling forth an electro-knight and slaying a chest dragon) I love to use a quote from Sir Arthur C. Clark to describe many other things in my life. The original comes from Clark’s famous three laws found in his 1962 book…Apple Watch8 min readApple Watch8 min read
Nov 16, 2021Credit Where Credit’s DueIn happy celebration of the present, I’d like to step back in time to what I believe to have been the shameful past–a tradition of “that’s just how it‘s always been.” I’m speaking of what was that strange moment for every musician in the audience at a movie while enjoying…Movies5 min readMovies5 min read
Nov 11, 2021Hattiesburg, Pine Straw, and Jimmy PankowWAY back in the day…I’m talkin’ 1974ish, I was a young man living in a mixed bag of opportunity and a “glass cage of emotions” in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Blessed with wonderful siblings (two brothers and a sister) we were all dealing with the slow death of our mother’s marriage to…Redemption2 min readRedemption2 min read