Ed Sweeney

For years I used public transportation to commute from our Rhode Island home to the Silk Road Project office when the arts organization was in residence at Harvard University.  I took the MBTA from Wickford in Rhode Island to South…

I had a reputation in my family of being the kid who never really finished anything I started. I had taken Piano/Organ lessons. I lost interest a few years later.  I think there were some other things, but it feels…

Confession: I used to read and collect comic books.

I don’t remember exactly when comic books entered my life. I guess I started when I was nine or ten years old. My childhood friend Kevin Fraiser and I would go…

Bass guitarist Carol Kaye is being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year in recognition of her many musical and artistic contributions.  She is 90 years old, and she isn’t going to the ceremony! Why? Because…

“Chain of Command, Part 2” is a Star Trek (TNG) episode that first aired on December 19, 1992. 

In it, Captain Picard has been captured by his adversaries, the Cardassians, and is being tortured.

His torturer’s sole purpose was to…

I went to an all-boys high school (class of 72) run by the Xaverian Brothers. We all wore sport coats and ties every day. One of the classes we had to take was Religion.

One day in our Sophomore religion…

On the front page of a recent Providence Journal was a reminder of one of the many reasons I am a “recovering” Catholic. 

The front-page photo features people giving public veneration to the skull of St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived…

There are experiences that have changed me. I had one of them ten years ago (July 2014) when I traveled to Taiwan to perform with my friend Yang Wei. 

I hadn’t done a lot of performing or recording between 1989…

I had finished teaching for the evening. As I walked to my car a group of fiddle students were walking in for their lessons.  I heard a voice say, “I hear you have a zipper too!”.  

She smiled as I…

When you connect to something artistically it can produce an emotional response as strong as religious faith. Sometimes, for me, those responses are physical. My mother would tell stories of how hard it was to bring me to Sunday Mass…