On Tuesday nights in the North Seattle neighborhood of Wedgwood the backroom of the Wedgwood Alehouse is taken over by an Old Time jam. Instrument cases pile up under the pool tables, chairs and stools are brought into tight concentric rings, a melody will be offered up from a fiddle somewhere in the corner, and then the room is off and running. If you know the tune, you play it. If you don't, you learn it as you go. In between tunes, drinks are drunk, gab happens, and th

I was feeling old in December. Not "wise" old, not "old soul" old, but "everything hurts" old. I think part of this stems from a return to more regular physical labor. I've been doing some building projects at home, which have included activities like overhead sheetrocking, stooped installation of wood floors, and the lifting and carrying of heavy objects. All of this would, no doubt, be of little impact to a younger man's body, or even to an older man's body accustomed