Flashback Weekend

I had a very busy weekend. Friday night I practiced for a gig tomorrow with the hardcore Mideastern band, then Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market and saw a friend I hadn't seen in several weeks, with her toddler son I hadn't seen since he was a little baby. As we were talking, a friend I hadn't seen in over a year came up and said hi, so we started talking, and THEN a person I hadn't seen since high school said, "Are you... Famous Hat?" Was that ever random! Especially since I don't live all that close to where I attended high school.

In the afternoon I went to a party hosted by a woman with purple hair and tattoos who raises bees, and there I ran into several people I hadn't seen since my days in the Medieval recreation society! It was just a "Blast from the Past" kind of day. In the evening I went to a bonfire at a county park, where we played "Telephone Pictionary" while the light was still good, and then when it got dark one guy threw copper pipes with pieces of rubber hose in them into the fire, which then burned all sorts of colors, teal and violet and green and red and blue as well as basic orange. It was so beautiful! One guy made a film of it, and I asked him to email it to me, but so far he hasn't so I can't post it here for your viewing pleasure.

Yesterday I spent the whole day in Milwaukee. First Ethel was getting her fifth rugrat dunked, and a baptism is always a big deal with her clan, so they had a big party with tons of food and piñatas for the kids. After the kids bashed the piñatas open, they put the pieces over their heads and ran around pretending to be space aliens. Ethel is the youngest of nine herself, so there were plenty of nieces and nephews of various ages around, and I played sheepshead with some of the older ones and various other relatives of hers. Then I headed to a breathtaking chapel in a Catholic convent, where oddly enough the Lutheran Association of something (church musicians? ministers?) had the opening liturgy for their conference. They had invited my OTHER choir to sing there. The only odd parts of the liturgy were the ribbons on a stick that one woman waved as she processed up the aisle, and the sermon. The woman minister was talking about how she saw a man holding a sign that said: "Homeless and hungry," and when he looked into her eyes as she waited in her car at a stoplight, she said, "I realized he was free and I was trapped." Liberal guilt that does not result in action does not appeal to me at all; when she then just drove away, I decided I'd had enough of her sermon and wandered off until it was over. After all, if she really thought he had it better than she did, why didn't she offer him her car and then she could have taken the sign? Because she knew he did NOT have it better than she did, that's why. I could only imagine that if they had changed places, maybe his sermon would have been much more entertaining!

Speaking of my OTHER choir director, a couple of years ago he had us sing "Which Was the Son of..." by Arvo Pärt for the All Saints' Day vigil service. I can't help wondering if someone said to Pärt, "Yo, Arvo! Bet you can't take the most boring passage of Scripture and set it to music that will move the listener!" If such a bet did take place, that buddy of his lost. The words are just the geneology of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, but the music is incredibly beautiful, and by the time we got to the end, "... which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God," we were practially in tears. And what has that got to do with the price of tea in China? you are surely wondering. Two of the names in the aforementioned geneology are Arphaxad (the grandson of Noah, the famous ark builder) and Amminadab, and that is where my fish got their names.

By the way, Minnie and Max are no longer looking for a permanent home. My officemate's mother decided to keep them herself.

Famous Hat