in boxing, the punches that hurt the worst are the ones that come out of nowhere. a week ago monday our good friend rich markwart passed away unexpectedly. rich was a great, very smart person. he was from indiana, and went to cmu for computer science. he had close friends back in indiana that he stayed close with his whole life. he had a house in indiana that he visited two weeks out of the month, and he had an apartment in new york. he loved both places and didn’t want to choose between either one. 

rich loved nyc and was always up for some exploring on the weekends, my fondest memory of rich is a day we spent exploring city island in the bronx, and drinking pina coladas and eating french fries on the pier. rich had the worst diet of anyone I’ve ever met, and he explained to me that day that diabetes helped him in this regard because his body burned fat instead of sugar. I never saw rich either get upset about anything, or say a bad word about anyone. he was a kind, giving, easygoing person who enjoyed his life very much, and was always happy to see us and hang out. another great memory I have is when brett connor (a friend from college) came to visit us when we first moved to nyc, we went out for indian food with rich and after a 20 minute meal brett pulled me aside and told me he liked rich a lot, and that he was a really good person. this is not a normal thing for brett to say, so you know rich had to be a special person for him to say something like that so soon after meeting him.

 although rich is gone from our life, both sarah and I feel lucky to have known someone as great as him for as long as we did. it is small comfort, but things could be much worse than they are now. we could have never met him at all.

I am a pretty big sucker for christmas traditions, and general holiday stuff like making your own eggnog, which we did this evening. it still has to age for a few weeks in the refrigerator, but we tried a bit and it was pretty good already.A few years back, I recorded a bunch of christmas tunes as a gift to my family. I figured I’d post them here, since it’s that time of year and all that. The trio tracks feature dan schlessinger on tenor sax, and the amazing ameen saleem on bass.

• let it snow!
• have yourself a merry little christmas – the original lyrics to this tune are super depressing
• christmastime is here - my favorite christmas song, from charlie brown! arranged for 5 guitars
• christmas without you – this is a song I wrote after a friend of mine lost someone very close
• a child is born – the thad jones tune arranged for 5 nylong string guitars
• the christmas song -my second favorite christmas song, written by mel torme!

Hope you enjoy!

here is me playing john coltrane’s beautiful ballad “central park west” which I think of every time it snows, as it did today. it’s got a melancholy character to it which I tried to preserve.