Lift Up Your Hearts!

Here's Vivienne's story.  Janet's here.  Joseph's here.  Stephan's here.

Voting closes in about an hour, I'm afraid, but it's worth a try.  You can vote for them all; probably multiple times, but I don't like ballot-box stuffing.

Correction:  Voting closes October 13; it was submitting the stories that had to be done by today.  But vote now anyway; you'll be surprised how soon a week will pass!

Yesterday I published Joseph's entry in the Seats for Switzerland contest; now it's Janet's turn.  Vivienne's will be up soon, I hope; we've been having some trouble with it.

Thank you for your votes in favor of getting the cousins together!

Seats for Switzerland is a contest run by Swiss Airlines for uniting separated loved ones.  To win, you must tell a convincing story and be chosen by a combination of voter participation and judges' decision.  You also have to be a resident of Switzerland, or you can bet we'd have written our own stories.  Instead, we're publicizing those of the people we want to be reunited with.  Here's is the link to Joseph's story, where you can cast your vote for him.  (It's easy; you only need to provide your name, an e-mail address, and agree to some non-threatening "terms and conditions.")

Y'all know I generally don't like the "vote for me in this contest" idea—but this is for our grandkids!

I'll publish links for the rest of the family when they're up, so you can vote for them, too.  :)  Thank you, thank you.

And all the extroverts out there will never understand why going to a party is a ministry and a sacrifice.  But I'm in the middle of two enjoyable projects with close deadlines, very much in "flow" right now with one of them.  Why would I want to leave the house?

I plan to enjoy myself, of course.  But oh, how my fingers are itching to work!

From the Department of I-Could-Have-Told-You-That:  The air is cleaner than it used to be.

From a University of Rochester study in Greenland:

A first-ever study of air trapped in the deep snowpack of Greenland shows that atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in the 1950s were actually slightly higher than what we have today. This is a surprise because current computer models predict much higher CO concentrations over Greenland today than in 1950. Now it appears the opposite is in fact true.

Mind you, it's nice to have it scientifically established that atmospheric levels of at least one worrisome pollutant are lower than they were in the 1950's, even though anyone who breathed back in the 60's and 70's could tell you that we've made huge strides in cleaning up the air.  I'm not saying that levels of carbon dioxide are not important, but it's nice to have some documentation beyond my own memory that our efforts to control toxic emissions have born significant fruit.  And that computer models can be wrong.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Christopher Wilkins, conductor
Jon Kimura Parker, piano

Ron Nelson:  Savannah River Holiday
Mozart:  Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor
Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben

This is the first time in my memory that Maestro Wilkins hasn't opened the season with a big choral work—a neat device that brings in friends and relatives of the choristers as well as others who don't normally attend orchestral concerts.  Even so, there was a good house for this concert.

It was a good concert, too.  The Orlando Philharmonic has grown a good deal as an orchestra since its early days, and is a pleasure to listen to.  The only reason I'm disappointed is that the "big event" of the evening, the Strauss, left me unexcited.  Oh, it's exciting enough to have so many musicians on the stage—just one short of 100, according to Wilkins—but Ein Heldenleben isn't my favorite of Richard Strauss's works.

Jon Kimura Parker did wonderfully with the Mozart, however, and even granted us a short encore:  Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G major.

The Mozart may have been the best, but my favorite piece was Ron Nelson's Savannah River Holiday.  Nelson wrote the piece in 1953, while he was still an undergraduate at Eastman.  Well, that's what the program notes say; his biography says he received his bachelor's degree in 1952.  I'm still impressed.  Here's a quote from his webpage:  "In 1993, his Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H) made history by winning the "triple crown" of major wind band composition prizes."  I include that because I'm pretty sure at least one of our children played that in band.  At least, I'm sure I've heard it performed live somewhere, and that's the most likely place.

Our choir anthem for Sunday, September 29, 2013:  I Thank You Lord (Joseph M. Martin, Hope Publishing Company, C 5614).  Yikes, it's been more than a week since a real post.