MARIETTA, OH, USA - Sometimes you get it right and nobody cares. The silence from the masses can be deafening. But when you get it wrong, prepare for readers' diligence in letting you know.

It's humiliating how a presumption took a wrong turn and sent me careening and bouncing down a steep hill. Writing "Powerssound" on a weekly basis occasionally becomes more of a duty that I would have imagined. Such was the case with last week's column. I made assumptions based on a faulty memory, thereby making me a likely candidate for the nearest rest home.

I wrote a long sentence in which I started to say one thing, veered in nearly the opposite direction, backed up, and ended by demonstrating my complete ignorance about tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander....MORE

MY GLASS HOUSE:

by ROD AMIS

NEW ORLEANS - I wrote this the day my computer died:

9 APRIL, 2002: One of the things I love about My Darling (Dragana gave her that name) is that I can take a sultry, overcast afternoon off from the world and myself and take a stroll down by the bayou, Bayou St. John, with her. I can explore the neighborhood. I can make mental notes about the birds who remind you how near you are to the traffic, competing with each other in song, dive-bombing the surface of the slowly moving water, calling down from trees in those staccato bursts you only hear in movies of places where birds still abound. Then we can come back along the embankment and just sit watching the dark waters roll. She can play a favorite tune or two (like "The Captain of the Heart") and I might even be moved to share it all with you. Yes, she is a darling.

A woman might stroll by with a friendly dog, which dashes up to lick my face. Darling is well-behaved if the pooch is not. She plays our music and awaits my return. ... MORE