Just because you needed a little love note today, we wanted to pass along to you this email sent by a reader early this week. As you may have noticed, Beacon is decorated right now with pianos in seemingly random locations. You may occasionally hear the sound of Beacon from several street corners as people sit down to play whenever they feel the need. In fact, A Little Beacon Blog has published an essay by Izdihar (Izzy) Dabashi capturing the sounds and beauty of most of the pianos - read it here.

Dear A Little Beacon Blog,

Just wanted to share these photos of our winged bear with you.

We were New York City middle school teachers for 30 years...music and drama. About a month after 9/11, our school received a gift from J.C. Penney - hundreds of teddy bears arrived delivered in giant boxes - one for every student, teacher and employee in our school.

As you can imagine, the teddy bears provided great emotional comfort for all and we have kept our bear all these years.

When we saw the beautiful winged piano in Beacon, we just thought our bear was a perfect match.

Many thanks to all who bring us these beautiful pianos each year... we play each one and look forward to their return next year.

Thank you Little Beacon Blog,

Jeff and Anita Cashman

The organization behind the pianos in Beacon is BeaconArts, known for their public art projects that appear and disappear all over town, all year round.

We have a feature story coming out about this, so stay tuned because that’s where you’ll be able to learn more. In the meantime, enjoy the pianos while they are here. They will be rolled away soon and stored for next year.