Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Happy Birthday, Antonio Vivaldi!



Today is Vivaldi’s birthday, and so I went to an organ concert over lunch, hoping maybe to hear a Bach transcription of a Vivaldi concerto. The first piece was in fact by Bach, though not a transcription of a Vivaldi piece, and as I listened to it, it seemed to be speaking directly to me. I couldn’t make out the exact words, but just as Michaela knows what I mean when I say, “Michaela is a good dog!” even if she doesn’t understand every word, I could make out the sense of this. It is the same message I read in nature, and I know who the message is from: God. It says something like this: “You were made for something beyond this created world.”

Have you ever had to do an icebreaker? I have often had to do one called “Two Truths and a Lie,” and I have two great truths: that I was born in Rochester, New York but grew up in Rochester, Minnesota; and that Pa Hat was a monk and Ma Hat was a trapeze artist. I usually just have to think of a good lie, like that my dad translated one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (In college I really did work for a professor who had translated one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.) Once, however, the icebreaker was naming your favorite color. People said the usual, blue or red or purple, but when it was my turn, I said, “The point where blue meets green,” and then a bunch of people said, “Oh! That’s mine too!” I also love the point where pink meets orange (in fact I’m wearing it today), and the point where blue meets purple. Of course, these colors do have names: teal, coral, and indigo. But really I love all bright colors. Why are buildings always such muted colors around here? Are they afraid of offending those who like beige? Why do they get more consideration than those of us who would love to see the world splashed with bright colors? Or is that as futile as asking why the world is set up for early birds, and we night owls are seen as morally defective rather than just having a different internal clock?

Remember when I said my band was told there would be no live music at the maple syrup fest we have played at for decades? Hardingfele checked out their website, and it prominently advertised live music at the event, so then we wondered if they hadn’t changed the description on the website, or if they had actually hired another band and then lied to us. She left a post wondering what kind of music they would be having, and they deleted her post and made it so nobody could post a comment. The plot thickens…

Famous Hat


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