Happy 91st birthday, Stephen Sondheim!

Thank you for redefining musical theater. For redefining music. For redefining theater.

Thank you for composing music that's at once asymmetrical and balanced, halting and fluid, atonal and lush, messy and perfect.

Thank you for finding lyrics that explore the outer limits of rhythm and structure and rhyme, that tell a story or define a character or celebrate a moment or break a heart in sometimes just a handful of words, that always seem fresh, that always seem timeless, that always seem effortless.

Thank you for creating an apotheosis of creative and intellectual order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony.

Thank you for inspiring as only you can an enraptured young writer to think outside his own thoughts, to feel outside his own feelings, to never stop searching for the perfect word or the lyrical phrase or the essential defining idea in a universe of creative entropy, to always make sure he's proud of how he creates and proud of what he writes.

And thank you for the phrase that I rely on almost daily to turn an undefined someday into a compelling now ... to pull me out of inertia and propel me sometimes through a bipolar fog and sometimes just through my own complacency to run a marathon, broaden my perspective, take on a challenging writing project, upgrade to a difficult tap class, find a solution, emerge unscathed or at least unbroken, or some days to just show up.

Careful the things you say; children will listen. And sometimes they'll turn your inspiring lyrics into kick-ass tattoos.

Feel the flow,
Hear what's happening:
We're what's happening!
Long ago
All we had was that funny feeling,
Saying someday we'd send 'em reeling.
Now it looks like we can!
Someday just began ...

Family: Ruthie Bjonerud

Robert, Edna, Neva and now Ruthie Bjonerud were finally reunited three years ago today on the hereafter family farm, where the pastor at Ruthie’s funeral declared that all the cats are nice.

Ruthie was my mother’s cousin and the undisputed keeper of all the family history and lore on the seven-brother-and-two-sister Bjonerud family tree, the diaspora of which came from across the country to reunite at her funeral—probably for the last time—in our easy, loving, treasured geniality to reminisce about Ruthie and catch up with everyone else in our extended Norwegian family. 

Ruthie had been in deteriorating health and had finally agreed to move into the Aase Haugen Home for Lingering Norwegians, where less than a week later she by all accounts died peacefully in her sleep. It’s all anyone could want as far as a way to go, and in her memory her beloved—but now aging, far-flung and busy with our big-city lives—extended family buried her in the Calmar Lutheran Cemetery family plot among the generations of sturdy Norwegian ancestors whose lives in rural northeast Iowa extend back to America’s Civil War. 

And then we—as did those generations before us—gathered at Calmar Lutheran Church for sandwiches and slices of cake prepared by the church ladies and enjoyed the fellowship of family, old memories, new stories and remembrances of the woman who'd spent her life tirelessly, lovingly chronicling it all for us.