Author Archives: Ben

Wow; what a week­end! Now that I’m finally com­ing back down to earth after all the excite­ment of Mighty Uke Day III and the weeks lead­ing up to it, I’d like share a few thoughts about it all with you. When … Con­tinue read­ing →

Tiger Sta­dium and Fen­way Park opened on the same day 100 years ago; April 20, 1912. Both open­ings were mostly over­shad­owed by the sink­ing of the Titanic a week ear­lier, but their true glo­ries were cel­e­brated over the many years … Con­tinue read­ing →

I had a nice write-up on my late dog Jake and song “Dog is My-Copilot” in The Bark mag­a­zine this week. Read it and watch the video here and, for a lim­ited time, you can down­load an MP3 of the Blue Jello … Con­tinue read­ing →

I first pub­lished this in my old blog the day after Jake died in 2009. I looked it up for some back­ground on a piece that a mag­a­zine may do on my song “Dog is My Co-Pilot” and I thought … Con­tinue read­ing →

Fri­day evening, we hopped on the sleeper train to Xi’an and to see the Ter­ra­cotta War­riors. I had some reser­va­tions about the 16-hour jour­ney; my thoughts were that the train would be extremely dirty, we’d end up with a cou­ple … Con­tinue read­ing →

What a great Thanks­giv­ing Day we had at Hohai Uni­ver­sity in Changzhou, China. We spent the morn­ing pop­ping in and out of class­rooms with my uke and gui­tar, singing and talk­ing about the songs and their mean­ings. We took turns … Con­tinue read­ing →

I landed in Bei­jing Fri­day night around 10:30 after a 14-hour flight. Luck­ily, I ended up with a whole row to myself and could lie down and sleep, which I did for about 1/2 of the trip. My friend and … Con­tinue read­ing →