James Derkits

Yesterday I was listening to radio coverage of the recent shooting in Colorado. The host was taking calls from across the nation, inviting people who had had similar tragedies in their cities to call in and share stories of their experience, and the short term and long term learnings. One caller was a journalist who was on the scene at Columbine, releasing the first reports of the shooters. He along with many others initially described the shooters as unpopular loners who were taking revenge on "jocks" at their school. On the phone call yesterday, he said something like, "I was wrong, we were all wrong, but that's what he world remembers about those guys." I was caught up in the stories I was hearing about other tragedies, about communities coming together in the aftermath of such shootings. I heard a woman say that in one case when the criminal received the death penalty, the town and victim's families lamented that it was just one more death, and didn...

Confession: before Sunday night, I had never been to Fitzgerald's (nor Zelda's, downstairs.) I've been to quite a few music venues around town, and sadly, seen a few close up shop. Fitzgerald's recently reinvented itself, renovating the interior, and reigniting the spirit of the place (so I'm told.) Laura Derkits spent her fair share of time there when she was in High School. She has history with the place, so when we showed up Sunday night during the opening band ( Lost Lander ) she was giddy with anticipation. We were there to hear Blind Pilot . We got a couple of their CD's from some friends for Christmas, so I knew a little bit of their music, but didn't realize how much I would enjoy the show. Wow! For the first band, we stood on the floor, and we enjoyed their music enough to buy a CD. Then we made our way upstairs and found a great perch where we could peer down from stage left. It is a powerful experience to watch people make music. Th...