It’s official: One half of this blog is going back to school. I've just started my first semester of the MFA program at Warren Wilson College just outside Asheville, NC. A mountain town with a full-bodied musical presence, Asheville boasts an interesting roster of residents...

A bland bedroom patio and an impulse buy were the two things that conspired, 16 years ago, to initiate Barry Levine into the practice of bonsai. This was while he was still a bachelor living in Brentwood. “The patio had nothing on it but a chair...