About the Author

When I was in graduate school decades ago (writing lengthy papers on such fascinating topics as rural development in Bangladesh, and comparative ethnic relations in Syria), I read a book called Unobtrusive Measures. Its authors were interested in neutralizing threats to the validity of social science research that can arise when people under observation are aware they’re being observed. One way around the problem, so they argued, lay in devising creative means of obtaining information on the sly. For example, by measuring the relative height of fingerprint smudges left on the glass enclosures of selected museum exhibits, researchers can estimate the items’ appeal to various age groups.

Reading that book unlocked a personal insight having to do with, of all things…my clarinet playing. When I was 7 or 8 years old, my parents presented me with a beautiful Martin Freres clarinet housed in a stylish, velvet-lined, black and white stitched leather case. Soon thereafter I began taking private lessons from a wonderful teacher named Peter Zukovsky, a balding, middle-aged man with an ulcer and gobs of patience, who was a former clarinetist in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (His son, Charles, also a clarinetist, would marry Michelle Bloch, who would become the principal clarinet player for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, with which she was resident from 1961 to 2015.)

“Mr. Z,” as his students called him, taught out of his modest, wood frame home on Satsuma Avenue in North Hollywood. Working from home enabled easy access to a refrigerator stocked at all times with a supply of milk, then the standard treatment for the relief of ulcer symptoms.

Each time I assumed my place at the outset of a lesson, I took note of a trash can reliably filled with empty pint-sized cartons of milk, tucked beneath Mr. Z’s desk. It was only upon reading Unobtrusive Measures, however, that I both remembered and understood why Mr. Z. sipped milk from quart-sized cartons during my lessons! Call it the return of the repressed, or whatever. I was getting my money’s worth out of grad school!

And there you have it. I may know a thing or two about social science research, but can’t play the clarinet worth a lick. I don’t know the first thing about music theory. When it comes to legitimate criticism, I’m decidedly lowbrow. A hick….rube…hayseed, whatever. But I’m a keen listener and perpetually aspiring aficionado of diverse genres. (When I was a teenager, I made a vow to myself that if and when I ever became a parent I would never utter the words, “turn down that noise” to my kids. I’m proud to say it’s a promise I succeeded in keeping.)

Of course, there’s much more I could say about myself. But this isn’t a resume.