Involuntary Hiatus, Vacation, Larry Santoro and Poetry Review. In that order.

So, it's been a while. I was starting to believe the universe was trying to tell me something, but I wasn't sure what, exactly. Maybe that I should slow down and rest and not stress out about things I've tasked myself to do, but which I do on a volunteer basis? Perhaps, but instead of slowing down, things came to a screeching halt. And I had a job, which paid actual money to do.

First, just as my husband went off on a long business trip, during which I could've gotten lots of recording and writing in, my The hard drive on my Mac decided to die a slow death. At first, I didn't know what the trouble was and it took awhile of investigation, chatting with the Apple "geniuses" and trying everything known to man to determine this was probably the trouble (or maybe the fan was broken) and I had to wait a week to get an appointment at the Apple Store. Hard Drive it was and fixing it could take up to a week. Ugh. Well, thankfully they only needed two days and I thought I was going have my computer back soon! Magnus had made a back-up just before it started acting strangely, so no worries there. HA!! When I flipped the switch on the external back-up hard drive nothing happened. Nothing. Just some flashing lights, but no whirring and no recognition that it was even on by the computer. Huh. A friend did some research for me and said this had apparently come up fairly often for this HD. The problem? Something in the start up software and it would either magically start up if you kept trying or it would need to be replaced. The end of this story is that miracles DO happen!!! And my computer is now in working order again!

I got one evening of recording in when a very bad cold hit me like a sledge-hammer, leaving my voice a ravaged mess. Needless to say, that was the end of that. Luckily, my paying client is a patient man. Likewise, with the myriad people waiting on me to produce various reviews and narrations.

We went on a 3 week vacation to Italy, to visit family and the beach in Bibione (on the Adriatic Sea between Venice and Triest). It was a very relaxing vacation, even if beach holidays aren't my favorite (too hot, too much sun for this lass of Irish decent). I read a lot. Not just poetry and Faceboook, though. I managed to read an entire novel (gasp!) in a week's time (keels over in shock!)! I re-read one of my favorite books (The Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb), so it was good fun.

Now we are back home and have settled in. Dante is still on summer vacation through the month of August, so the routine is not quite the same as normal, but still... And then my dear (mostly internet) friend, colleague (I think I'm allowed to call him that) and mentor, Larry Santoro passed away. He had been ill only briefly. He was diagnosed with Duodenal cancer only a couple of months ago, but it had already spread to his liver and kidneys and other spots and he was already to weak for the chemo to help much. He was taken care of by his wife of 11 years, the wonderful beautiful Tycelia. It's heart-breaking. We lost him too soon and too quickly. I was able to speak to him on the phone in June, but I had intended on calling him again this past Saturday, the day after getting home. He'd passed the night before. Reading all the tributes and the out-pouring of love to Tycelia just confirms what our brief friendship had already shown. That he was a warm, funny, compassionate, passionate, giving person, whose voice over the ether was like something of a by-gone era. His podcast, while the fiction was not really my favorite (again, Horror), was a pleasure to listen to, just because he made you feel at home and like he was chatting with you, a friend. I will miss you, Larry, as will more people than you knew.

But nevertheless, my most recent genre poetry review has been published on Amazing Stories Magazine. It is of Chad Hensley's dark poetry collection Embrace the Hideous Immaculate. Here's a snippet:

But what is horror anyway? We’ve been having a very interesting discussion on the SFPA Yahoo Group (which, by the way is actually open to others interested in genre poetry, not just members. It is, however, often used to announce and discuss SFPA business) about the nature of horror literature. Is it a true genre or rather a mood which is created. The general consensus seems to be that it sends but can be either or both. Michael Arnzen posted this, which, in addition to being a bit of poetry in and of itself, hits the nail on the head, in my opinion:

Horror is a church. Its blood-stained glass both colors and reflects its readers’ worldview. It sacrifices many readers on the altar of repugnance....

Go here to read more! Poetry – Embrace the Hideous Immaculate, C. Hensley

Now that I have one small thing on my list checked off I'm feeling the pressure of all the rest of the things waiting for me! Hopping to it!

* * *

Recording projects in the bag!

Just in time to go home on vacation, I've finished all recording projects!

Tony gave me a great story by Kim Stanley Robinson to narrate for StarShipSofa, and I had the second half of Poetry Planet No. 5 on Time Travel to finish.  I had my work cut out for me, but I made it! Yea me!!!

Keep your eyes open for them on StarShipSofa.com in the near future!

-----------------

USA Trip - part III - Missoula, Montana

The trip out to Missoula was uneventful except for me feeling like doo-doo. We skipped breakfast at the hotel and opted to eat at the airport after checking in. I stupidly decided to eat only fruit salad and drink coffee, forgetting that they weren't going to give us anything at all on the plane. And they didn't! Not even pretzels. I was weak when we arrived in Missoula, but it was lunchtime so we went to this great Burrito place immediately. Tom, Barb & Sam had come to meet us at the airport, so that was a treat, getting to see the whole family right away. Tom had to go back to work after lunch, though.

I hadn't been to visit my brother since they'd finished the addition. The last time I was there, it was just the raw building and they were still living in the old part of the house. Now it looks fantastic with a wonderful 2 story Great Room and the master bedroom upstairs above the new garage.

Our first evening there we made a production of making homemade pasta with a fish Alfredo sauce, which was just divine. We tried to use the KitchenAid pasta making attachment, but the recipe was too sticky so we ended up using the hand-cranked pasta-maker. It's basically the same as the one we have, but we have a motor attachment. It was fun, everyone got involved.

I celebrated my 40th birthday on July 8th and Tom, Barb & Sammy got me a pedicure treatment at a local fancy spa. We managed to get an appointment on my birthday, so I had beautiful feet and bright red toenails for the rest of the trip! We went out to dinner with Barb's sister, Nancy and her husband, Shawn. The boys (who are of an age) stayed with the babysitter. We went to The Silk Road an interesting restaurant which serves an eclectic collection of international dishes in tapas size. You are meant to share and it was wonderful. You can even vote on the coming month's offerings on their website. After an extended dinner we headed back to Nancy and Shawn's and had cake and fireworks. They bought me a grasshopper cake. Let me just say that mint and chocolate are just about the perfect combination. Peanut butter and chocolate ranks up there too though. :-) I decided that the first day I don't have any of my birthday cake is the day my birthday is officially over. We ate cake for the next 4 days at least. The boys were so excited about doing the small fireworks they'd saved just for this occasion. We adults played with the sparklers.

We took a drive one day to a Mountain Fire Watch tower on a mountain south of town, the name of which is escaping me. It was a beautiful drive with views of Missoula and the surrounding countryside. We were able to drive all the way to the base of the tower, which is a tall wooden structure with a room at the top with windows on all sides and a walkway all around it. The stairs to the top are more like a ladder, but I had surprising little trouble with them, considering my pregnant condition. Just took it slow - the climbing gets me out of breath in a hurry! At the top we had a view of the entire area and the ranger (who lives in the tower 24 hrs a day 10 days on, 6 days off) pointed out all sorts of things.

On Friday after my birthday, we had a cook-out in the backyard and many friends and their kids came over. We had fish on the grill, including Tom's famed 85 lb. paddle-fish caught a few weeks earlier. There was also salad fresh from the garden and pizza. We played Sam's version of Croquet with the kids. It was a hoot.

On Saturday, we drove up to Seeley Lake, which is only about an hour away. We were going to go all the way to Glacier Nat. Park, but decided the drive was too long. Tom's friends the Pryor's have a cabin right on the lake that we could stay in and it was beautiful! We went on a hike to Morrell Falls, a huge waterfall after an easy 1 and a half hour hike. Afterwards, some of us went for a swim and some of us couldn't get into the glacial waters past our knees! As reward for the hike we went to Lindey's Steakhouse right in town. You go there to have steak, steak or ground steak, with salad, sauteed mushrooms, potatoes and homemade bread. There are no other options. Since the steaks were just huge, Barb and I opted to share. It was the perfect size and a beautiful meal. Magnus' craving for a really good steak while in the US was more than satisfied.

Unfortunately, the evening was slightly marred for me when my insulin pump started acting crazy. Just before dinner (after I'd ordered my virgin strawberry daiquiri) the buttons started acting funny. Barb even drove me back to the cabin to get a fresh battery, since that was the error that came up at one point, but that didn't help one bit. I finally had to leave the battery out and use my emergency set up (my old pen that I used before I got the pump). After dinner I used the one functioning mobile phone among us (Barb, the mother!) to call the Minimed Customer Service. After waiting on hold for an hour (!) the rep told me it sounded like "Severe Static Shock" and I should leave the battery out for at least 2 hours and try again with a completely new battery (not the one I'd already tried). Unfortunately, it was the only spare I'd brought to the lake with us and it was already past 10pm. I decided to make do for the night and buy new batteries in the morning. Needless to say, I didn't sleep very well, but my blood sugars were pretty good over-night anyway. The rest for the pump did the trick. Thank God! I was not looking forward to 3 days of the old system before getting back to Germany. Apparently, the Medtronic pumps are susceptible to static shock, which makes the buttons stop functioning. The explanation was that Montana is so dry and we had been on a hike for 4 hours that afternoon. Ugh.

The flight home on Monday consisted of 3 flights (Missoula-->Chicago-->Munich-->Hannover) and 16 hours of travel. We had the worst seats ever, but after having originally declined to trad with us for his window two-seater that he had to himself, a man offered to let me sit there for a couple of hours, so at least I could stretch out and get a little sleep! I was dead when we arrived home and it took me several days to recover and more than a week before I felt at all normal again.

If you'd like to see pictures of this portion of the trip please go to my Facebook photo album.

------------

USA Trip - part II - Chicago

Since Magnus had never spent any time in Chicago (although we've flown through or to it several times on the way home to Madison), we decided to leave Madison a day early and do a bit of the tourist thing there. Our flight to Missoula was the next day at 10am, so that was another reason to go a day before: the trip to Chicago from Madison is about 2 and a half hours and so that would have meant leaving by 6am at the latest. We prevailed upon my dad to spend the day with us there, serving as chauffeur as well. He's always game to drive someplace and it had been many years since he'd been in Chicago too.

Our plan was to drive to Larry Santoro's place near Wrigley field and then make our plans from there. Larry is an author, a director, a movie buff, who I met through StarShipSofa. He's had several stories aired on the podcast and has been active on the forum connected to it. I thought, since we were going to be in Chicago, it would be fun to meet him face-to-face.

Larry lives in a cave. Well, not literally, but he lives in an upstairs apartment (above a restaurant) at the back of the building and there are only windows at the back (short end of the one room), which makes the whole place sort of dark. But cozy! He and Tycelia (his wife) have used the shelves and shelves of DVDs as well as couches to delineate smaller spaces. He must have thousands of DVDs and books. And the biggest TV I've ever seen.

We went out for lunch nearby. I wish I could remember the restaurant's name. It was a Swedish place and they had the best cinnamon rolls ever. Think Cinnabon, but actually good. Not overly sweet, but in a good way. The pecan roll wasn't too shabby either. I had a lovely omelet as well.

After lunch we headed into the city on the L, running commentary courtesy of Larry. It was like getting a guided tour. Our mission was to get on a river boat tour. Unfortunately, we had to wait a bit, due to faulty info we received on the telephone. But that was fine with me. Larry posted his pictures on Flickr. Check them out! The tour was great. We rode first "down river" past all the architecture and then back "up river" toward Lake Michigan. Sound backwards? Well, yes, it is. The City of Chicago, lo, these many years ago, in a feat of engineering diverted the Chicago river to the Mississipi so that they could get fresh water for the city from the lake. We went out onto the lake for a view of the buildings on the lakefront.

From there we walked down Michigan to Millenium Park, where we ogled the "Bean", a huge reflective silver sculpture, in the shape of a bean. It has another, more official name, but damned if I can remember what it is! We also took a look at the bandstand designed by Frank Gehry. I'd love to go to the free open air concerts there!

My dad drove us to our hotel near O'Hare and we went to TGI Friday's for dinner and conversation.

All in all a great day. It was a hoot meeting and getting to know Larry and Tycelia. I bought his book of short stories, "Just North of Nowhere". You can read his Blog "At Home in Bluffton" where he says some very nice things about me, my singing and my narrations. Thanks Larry! It was a pleasure to meet you and spend the day with you.

----------------

Trip to the US - last one for a while

This is not at all career related, but I expect my blogging in that respect will take a back seat to more personal themes in the coming months. Hope that's ok with you!

So now that I've entered my official 7th month of pregnancy, I won't be traveling very much any more. No more airplanes for me.

We returned last week from our last overseas trip. This time to the USA. We visited family in Madison, Wisconsin and Missoula, Montana as well as a pit-stop to meet the famous Larry Santoro in Chicago in between.

We arrived much later on Wed. 1 July than I had realized we would. When we got out of customs and baggage claim at O'Hare airport, it looked like we just might catch the 4:00pm Van Galder bus to Madison after all, so we went chasing from Terminal to terminal, but no luck, it left without us. The next one didn't leave till 5:30pm and it was a good thing actually because when we sat down with ice cream to wait and I went to check my blood sugar, I realized I must have left my monitor on the plane. Panic!! But Swiss Air was amazing. I went to the ticket desk and they called it in and while I waited (maybe 10 minutes) someone showed up with it! Phew! We arrived in Madison at about 8:30pm and my mom picked us up. We went straight home and had sandwiches for dinner.

The next few days were basically filled with spending time with my parents, eating, doing some shopping, eating, sleeping and eating some more.

We celebrated Independence Day with fireworks at Elver Park (with my dad) on July 3 and by watching the annual Greentree 4th of July parade, which begins at my old elementary school (Falk) and ends at the park (Clayton), and always goes right past our house. Magnus and I helped my oldest childhood friend Naomi and her son Riley decorate his bike, which is an essential part of the tradition. This year the weather was unseasonably cool and it rained for 5 minutes on either side of the 5 minute parade (for a total of 15 minutes). After brunch with friends and neighbors we went down to the park for the festivities. I was looking forward to games and contests (3-legged race, potato sack race, dunking machine) and other attractions (food, drink and a pony ride), but was bitterly disappointed. There were only a few games for the kids and some food and pop. Later they did have a great magician who performed for about 20 minutes. He was fun. Patty, one of my best friends from High School and CapitolAires Drum Corps came by briefly with her sister. It was great to see her again and catch up. Naomi invited us to her house for a cookout that evening.

On Sunday, the day before we left Madison, my dad hosted a cookout and I made a blanket invitation to my friends in Madison. A few key people came (Wendy & Jim, Kathy, Laura) and a couple of people I haven't seen in ages (Diane + newish family and Lola - friend Matt from HS's mother). It was delightful to see all of the them. And my dad served the world's biggest steaks from Jacobson's Meat. I complained bitterly that my belly might be growing beyond all proportions, but my stomach is getting inversly smaller!

Some pictures:



The grand set up in front of Falk Elementary School



Off we go!



Riley and his glorious bike



The masses watching the parade

Part II - Chicago next!

Madrid, Spain

Got back from Madrid late yesterday evening. We were supposed to arrive home at about 6pm but our flight was delayed in Madrid already. Ugh.

We had a great time. We arrived on Friday evening and met the groom-to-be and a group of his home-town, Italian friends for drinks and dinner. I think we ate dinner at about 10:30 pm. Which, by the way, is totally normal in Spain. A little difficult for me, because I've been in bed by that time of late... We visited the La Latina quarter and had a great meal.

We stayed at the Hesperia Hotel, which is a 5 star, and worth every star. Especially since it was only €130 per night! I don't know if that was a special rate Antonino got for us wedding guests, but I'm not complaining.

The wedding was lovely, Alicia looked so Spanish in her veil. The wedding reception was at our hotel - a blessing! We had finger food and drinks until about 4:30pm and then moved on to lunch (!). Yes, lunch. That's what they called it anyway. The food was fantastic. I had a bit of trouble with the start of the finger food, because it was all raw. But then they brought out some yummy things I could eat. It was really too bad, being in spain and not being able to eat the Iberian cured ham (basically raw) and a lot of the fish finger food. But I didn't starve!

We spent a lot of time with Antonino's Italian friends, and had a great time. They didn't complain about my slow pace or need for frequent breaks. I expect they barely noticed. Italians can't walk and talk at the same time anyway, so I often found myself walking even slower than I needed or out-pacing the pack! We took the subway everywhere and someone always got up to give me their seat. It was very sweet. We visited the main tourist attractions: The Royal Palace, the Cathedral, Plaza Mayór, Plaza del Sol, Gran Via. Drank cheap beer (well, I didn't!) and ate great, but inexpensive food. Nom!

We forgot to charge the camera batteries, so no pics at this point. We used Magnus' phone instead...


----------------

Catching up - UK trip

Wow, I'm a bad blogger. I have fun and perhaps interesting things to blog about and I don't manage to get around to it...

2 weekends ago Magnus and I attended some friends' wedding in Sheffield, England. We took the opportunity to visit some other friends in N. England and had a bit of a whirlwind trip because of it. We stupidly flew to Manchester instead of Newcastle, which would have been wiser, because we then jumped into a rental car and drove the 3 hours to visit Tony Smith of the StarShipSofa.

This was our first face-to-face meeting, in the flesh, as it were and it was quite exciting! Tony records the new weekly Sofanauts show on Friday afternoons and so I appear on episode No. 5 as a live studio guest! What a gas! You can listen to all or a bit of it here: Sofanauts No. 5 In case you don't know, the Sofanauts is a new panel-type podcast in which Tony invites 2 or 3 guests and there is much talk and discussion on current events or issues in the Science Fiction community. It's fun, but perhaps only if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Tony and Mrs. StarShipSofa are gracious hosts and the kids are great! Their house is beautiful, full of bright colors and quirky art and character. Tony's daughter vacated her room for the night so Magnus and I had a bed to sleep on - thank you E! Tony receives complimentary copies of several new books each week and they are starting to pile up. He practically begged us to take a few off his hands. So we did. Titles by Hal Duncan, Cory Doctorow, Anne and Todd McCaffrey, Patricia Biggs and Alison Goodman. We had a lovely evening just gabbing about various and sundry over dinner and into the evening. Unfortunately, we had to leave relatively early the next morning to drive to Sheffield for the wedding, which started at 1pm.

The wedding and the reception were beautiful and we knew a couple of other people at the wedding. The couple being married were Jane and Anthony and Jane and I sang in the CtK Choir together in Frankfurt and Jane took singing lessons from me for about a year. I suppose I met Anthony at the same time as Jane, because he came to Frankfurt to visit our choir director, Stephen Hartley, and sang with the choir when he was there. It was lovely to see Stephen and Joyce, whom I haven't seen since he left Frankfurt. We never managed to travel to York to visit them while we were living in London. For shame! I fizzled pretty early and we skipped the Ceilidh in the evening, which I would have loved, but I think fast energetic dancing is out for the time being... (more on that later).

On Sunday we drove up to Lancaster to visit our friends Andy and Lizzy and their 8 month old Phoebe. We had a great time just catching up. We visited the Butterfly House in Williamson Park near the Ashton Memorial and I took some photos with my new Nokia, but they're not so great. Let see:

Wedding #2

This was Magnus' friend Francesco's wedding in near Arezzo, Italy. That's in Tuscany. It's beautiful. And if you've ever been there, you know what an understatement that is! It's also the home of famous medieval music theorist the monk Guido of Arezzo, famous for the "Guidonian Hand" a method to teach the Hexachords or "scales" in use back then. Don't ask me how it works, I don't remember!

Anyway, this blog is turning into more of a travel blog than a music blog, so those of you more interested in music than travel will have to bear with me, I promise I'll be posting more on music soon.

M & I traveled to Florence on Friday night. On my brother's recommendation we stayed at the Hotel "Il Bargellino" in central Florence. It's a lovely little hotel with a gorgeous roof courtyard which is open to guests.
On Magnus' sister Manon's recommendation we went to a great restaurant very close to the hotel called "da Mimmo" where they have the real Fiorentina steaks. We met our friends Pierpaolo and Yaki and we all ate these huge, yummy steaks. Tom, I'm sorry I didn't know about them when you and Barb were there!

Saturday, we met Manon and Francesco who were on their way to visit Francesco's parents. They went with us to pick up the rental car and then led us a ways towards Arezzo. We went on our way, visited the Pieve di Romena and the castle nearby, met Francesco who showed us his home town of Poppi, and then wandered around Arezzo a bit before having dinner. Francesco's father had graciously and generously bought us tickets to the famous jousting games . We watch a bit of the parade. The participants of the Joust paraded through town in costumes, with horses, horns and drums, and flags. We had a great time at this ancient competition. And I think it's worthy of its own post. Stay tuned!

The wedding was pretty early on Sunday - 11:45am. By that time it was already around 33°C/91°F and unfortunately the wedding was a bit long and boring, but it was in a beautiful little abbey church in the hills and I enjoyed Alessandra's (the bride) sister's singing. She has a sweet, clear soprano voice and has just started taking lessons (at 30). I hope the lessons don't ruin her voice! :-) I know, I'm terrible!

After the wedding we drove to a Villa where we stood in the HOT sun (or crowded under the few umbrellas) for an hour drinking champagne and eating trifles, then we repaired to a large tent where we had "lunch" (or dinner?!?) at about 3pm. After dinner, we went inside, where it was blessedly air conditioned for desserts. Mmmmmh. The food was glorious.

It was still early after the reception and so we decided to go with Danilo and Manuela (D is a friend from Karlsruhe) to the celebrations of the winning jousting team (Quartiere di Porta Crucifera) and watch the European Cup (soccer/football) semi-final between Spain and Italy. We had good food (which we were basically still too full to eat) and good company. Unfortunately, Italy lost.

Next day, we took it easy, packed, went shopping for Italian food staples and drove back to Florence and flew home. A lovely weekend.

Weekend in Helsinki

M has to go to Finland every 2 or 3 weeks for business. Until now, it's been winter (no fun for vacation) and/or his meeting has been in the middle of the week. This time his meeting was on Monday and since in Germany May 1 is a holiday and NO one works on a Friday after a Thursday holiday here, we made a LONG weekend out of it. We were there for 5 days and we hit the weather jack-pot! It was sunny and "warm" the whole time! I guess that's pretty unusual. It was between 60° and 70°, but the breeze off the sea was still pretty cool. One day I ended up carrying my jacket and my sweater around all day!

We walked our feet to bloody stumps! I didn't bring great walking shoes and we did a whole lot of it. Ouch. We had bought a brochure detailing 6 or so walking tours of the city and an island fortress and we did at least 4 of them! The brochure gave the details of the more interesting buildings, churches and statues, parks and even some historical cafes! The island with the fortress on it was beautiful, we had a fun picnic eating Finnish bread and cheese on a bastion overlooking the sea where the huge ferries come in and out. And since the weather was so fantastic there were also lots of cute sailboats on the water.

We ate fabulously all weekend, trying various typical Finnish dishes. The first night we went to a cute restaurant called Lappi that specialized in food from Lapland (the area above the arctic circle). We ate a taster platter with deer sausage, reindeer steak and moose/elk steak with root veggies. I had a cool cocktail with sort of pale pink blackberry sort of thing called cloudberry. :-) The second night, at the Seahorse M had deep fried Baltic Herring and I had Finnish meatballs. mmmmmh. The atmosphere wasn't so great though. The third night we took a boat out to an island just off the coast to a restaurant called the Boathouse and had grilled salmon. oh, was it good! Here we had the whole second floor of the restaurant (which was round with huge picture windows overlooking the sea) to ourselves. It was lovely. Not sure why business was so slow. It was only their 3 day open for the season...

We went to the movies twice! The movies in Finland all have Finnish and/or Swedish subtitles, as opposed to in Germany where everything is dubbed. So we took advantage and saw Darjeeling Limited and There Will Be Blood. Both were very good, but There Will Be Blood was a bit creepy. Mostly I think it was the soundtrack that gave me a weird feeling all the time, but the main character, one of the first oil barons in Texas, was such a violent person lacking in any moral fiber. Darjeeling Limited on the other hand was a delightful movie. You should go see it if you haven't already! It's about these 3 brothers who meet on a train to go across the Indian countryside ostensibly to go visit their mother who's become a nun after their father died. They are wacky characters and much hilarity ensues. I'm sure you'd get a kick out of it.

One of my pupils here in Hannover is huge fan of the Finnish band, Him, and asked me to buy her a CD she couldn't get here. The singer, Manna, is married to the guitarist (I think, well someone) from Him. So we went on a little treasure hunt. It wasn't too hard to find the CD once we found the shop! That was a bit of an adventure - we got lost in the department store Stockmann's! Back at home I've listened to the CD and it's really great. I can recommend it highly. I think it is possible to get it through iTunes. Manna writes the songs and lyrics for the most part and sings. She has a lovely light voice, which is clear and the words (in English) are perfectly understandable. The music is not loud, more on the folky/pop-y side. Very nice.

We also bought a graphic novel version (in English!) of the Kalevala, which is the Finnish folk epic kind of like Beowulf or the Canterbury Tales. We asked for a version of it in English and they showed us two paperback editions, one was cheap quality and one was super expensive and we wanted a nice one that was maybe illustrated or something. Just to have, who knows if we would read it! Then I had the idea to look in the comics section and there it was! A nice hardcover edition in black and white and in English! Amazing.

Brussels

This is off-topic, meaning it has nothing to do with my career, but I thought you might enjoy hearing about my travels anyway.

Thursday, M and I flew to Brussels for the weekend. We stayed in the swank hotel Crowne Plaza for a night and then stayed with friends, Andrea C and his girlfriend, Silvia. Andrea picked us up at the hotel on Thursday night, where we had a drink - my first Kriek (bier fermented with cherries) of the weekend! Andrea took us to a Lebanese restaurant which was quite tasty.

M had a business meeting on Friday (which was the main purpose of our visit) and I wandered around the heart of Brussels. I took the subway to Centraal and visited the beautiful cathedral nearby. There is a spectacular oak pulpit which depicts events from the fall of Adam and Eve to the Redemption. It was the highlight, in my opinion. I then walked into town, following my nose, more than anything. I had nothing particular in mind to see, since I've been in Brussels several times already, but it was a nice day, so I walked past all the familiar sites. I found a table at a cafe where I had a long lingering lunch with my book (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein) and was entertained by a tap dancer as well. Unfortunately, lunch was nothing to write home about. I continued to explore, this time with the vague objective of finding a "drug store". I found millions of Pharmacies and a few so-called "Bandagistes" (whatever that is!), but no pharmacies... Shrug. I did find a popular cafe with tables outside in the sun and I sat there for what seemed like ages while I waited for M to get out of his meeting and meet me in town. Made good headway on my book though! :-)

When M arrived we went to view the Mannekin Pis - the fountain of a little boy peeing into a large shell. I have always found it a bit disappointing - there are statues sold around town which are bigger than the real thing. But it's a symbol of the city. We wandered around some more, having a look at a medieval tower, St. Catherine's Church and the Begijnhof and eventually made our way back to the hotel where Andrea was to pick us up. We went back to Andrea and Silvia's place and had a lovely Porcini Risotto!

The next day we had a lazy breakfast and then went into town. Eventually we went to the Rubens exhibition at the Musee des Beaux Arts. It was very well done. I actually prefer many of the sketches and models he made before the actual painting was executed, often by others working in his studio. Ice cream afterwards was divine - a special banana split with Dark Chocolate, Speculatius and Honey/Ginger flavored ice cream. AFter that we passed by a Chocolaterie, where we bought some designer chocolate. Dinner that night was a the Spanish Center, where we met several of their friends, some of whom we'd met in Paris last year. We waited an eternity for the tapas, but it was wonderful. And Jose had brought a tray of baclavá(or whatever the Moroccans call it) for dessert. It was fun, but the place was unbelievably smoky and loud. Really makes me appreciate the smoking bans in the 3 places I spend most of my time (UK, US and Italy)!

Sunday saw us sleeping in and going to Patisserie Pierre for a breakfast of Tartes. Then we went to the Musical Instruments Museum, which is fabulous. If memory serves me, I had been there many years ago, when it was housed in a different building. Now it's in a beautiful Art Deco building called, of all things, "Old England". We had lunch with Andrea at another Tarte cafe, this time savory AND sweet. I don't know what was wrong that day but in both Tarte cafes the service was TERRIBLE. But we did eat eventually.

Our flight to Vienna was uneventful and I'll be going on a boat cruise on the Danube shortly!

Chester

Poscimur sang in Chester on August 10/11.  
M came along, and we took the train up on Friday evening.  We had a nice meal at a pub along a canal and had a stroll through the center of town.  The town is full of cute half-timbered houses and they have the most fantastic shopping streets.  The shops are on two tiers, one is street level and another up a short flight of stairs to a covered gallery walkway, great for rainy England I'm sure!  We had fantastic weather though.  On Saturday we took a walk along the medieval walls, which go right around the center of town.  Beautiful vistas all around. I had to rehearse and sing in the afternoon, so Magnus went on a 2-hour guided walking tour of Secret Chester.  They were shown places which your average Joe doesn't have access to. The choir was singing wonderful music this weekend - Faire is the Heaven, by Harris; The Te Deum by Stanford; The Tomkins Responses; Mags and Nuncs by John Ireland and Stanford; the Mass setting by Harwood; Cantate Domino by Pitoni; My soul, There is a Country by Parry; Never weather beaten sail by Campion; Turn thy face from my sin by Attwood and A Litany by William Walton.  After the Evensong on Saturday we ate at a fantastic Grill restaurant and had an early night.  Sunday morning I was busy singing, but we met for lunch and went to a new Italian shop and restaurant. The food was good and Magnus stocked up on some pasta, wine and cheese!  Then more singing and off back to London...

Ten days in the States

I'm just about to end my tour of the US.  Just kidding, I was only in Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City. I had a concert with the Voices Found Singers (formerly known as the Lady Chapel Singers) at Bryn Mawr college in Pennsylvania yesterday.  It went extremely well, especially given that it was a completely new program.  But it's a wonderful program, full of fun music from all over the Americas - Cuba, Mexico, Canada, the US (folk songs, spirituals and modern compositions). I had a great time.

Last Tuesday Lisa Thomas and I gave a presentation on Voices Found and a bit about Hildegard von Bingen at Rowan College. Another member of VFS, Lourin Plant, teaches voice there and is co-teaching a class entitled "Songs of Protest, Songs of Praise", for which we gave the presentation.

From there I went to New York City for lessons with Cornelius Reid.  He looked well, but complained a bit about disintegrating - he turns 96 later this month!!!! My lessons were great and restored my confidence greatly.  I also went to Patelson's Music Store and bought the last remaining book of Cornelius', his Dictionary of Vocal Terminology. Now my collection is complete!

While in NYC I spent a lot of time with Anna Levenstein, a member of Elysium. We had some stuff to do to prepare for our concert in Salem, OR in March.  It was lovely to spend time with her. I also took advantage of Tower Records' closing sale and bought several DVDs ("Good Night and Good Luck", "The Big Sleep" and Peter Sellars' opera production "Cosi fan tutte") and CDs ("The Magic Flute", Mozart; "Don Pasquale", Donizetti and "The Cries of London").

So, that was that.

 

Greetings from Vienna - the wedding saga continues

It's almost all completely behind me! In a couple of days I'll be flying back to London to "resume" my "normal" life... We are in Vienna this week - Magnus is at a conference here.

Hmmm. Where did I leave off? Ah yes, my mother arrived in London on Wednesday. We spent about 2 days at home, she rested and Magnus and continued getting ready for the wedding. Namely, we had the program to make. Mom helped me get ready for the WNA gala dinner performance by accompanying me on my piano. I wanted to memorize the songs, but memorizing text has never been my forte!

My brother, Tom and his wife, Barbara arrived on Friday. I let them fend for themselves getting to the Tooting train station on their own. They made it! They settled in a bit and then we all went out to have a drink and dinner at a pub in town. Magnus met us there. Tom, Barb and my mom loved it. I'd forgotten it was Friday and so it was VERY lively at the pub, with the clientel spilling out onto the street of course.

Saturday Tom and Barb went sight-seeing and were out carousing for a very long time! They met some real characters in their pub trawlings - a lesbian bachlorette (hen) party and a local man at a pub near Tooting Broadway Tube station named Bill. Magnus and I managed to finish the programs and started printing them. We ordered Indian and ate in - yum!

Sunday we managed to get our act together and get downtown to St. Paul's Cathedral and to the Eucharist. It's the 2nd time I've been there and the Cathedral Choir hasn't sung either time. The music was great though! We had lunch in a local pub and Tom and Barb went off again on their own. We had a steak and potato dinner which T & B had conceived.

They left at about 4am to catch their plane to Pisa. I couldn't fall back asleep of course, because we had to get up only an hour or so later to catch our own plane to Brescia with Mom.

To be continued...

USA Trip Part 1 - Wisconsin/Iowa

What a whirlwind!

I've been in the US for most of the past 4 weeks, visiting
family, singing, singing and singing. Now that I'm back in
Germany I've been singing (!) and moving house. More
about that in a subsequent post - first things first!

I flew first to Philadelphia and spent only a night there.
The Lady Chapel Singers graciously covers my travel
expenses, but only to Philadelphia. I flew on to Madison,
using frequent flyer miles, the next morning.

I had one of the most embarrassing things ever happen
to me that night in Philadelphia. I was staying in the
guest apartment in Lisa and Charles building (as usual)
and I went up and went to bed pretty early, I guess
around 10pm). I set my alarm for 6:30 because my flight
was early and I was to have breakfast with Lisa. I got up
when it rang, took a shower, got everything packed up
again, and went down to their apartment. I knocked and
knocked, no answer. Finally, Charles came to the door,
which was the final clue that something was amiss,
because he should have been gone to work already. It
turned out that I'd forgotten to change the time on my
alarm and it was only 1:00 am! Omigod! I was mortified.
Needless to say, I went back upstairs, set my alarm to
the correct time, got back into bed and slept another 5
hours!

In Wisconsin it was business as usual, I called all my
friends to see who had time to spend with me. I saw
Naomi, my longes friend, she came over for dinner. I
went to Julie and Mike's for dinner (who had nearly
forgotten me!) and spent some time with their 3 beautiful
little girls. Mom and I spent a day together. We heard a
recital given by a voice faculty candidate at the UW and
afterwards we went to the Union for coffee with my
favorite music history professor and now friend Charlie
Dill. We went to Ward Brodt Music House where I
bought a new metronome (thank you Tom and Barb!) and
we went to see the move Ray at the 2nd run theater. We
had a great time. I had a fabulous homemade breakfast
at Kathy the Mezzo's, catching up with her. I never did
speak with Wendy personally :-( Next time I hope.

My dad and I took two days and drove to Ruthven and
Spencer, Iowa (north western Iowa) to visit my
grandmother. Recently, following some bad spells with
her health, she'd been moved to a nursing home in the
town she's lived in most of her life, Ruthven. It's just like
a hospital, and she can't really do anything independently
anymore which is just awful for my Gram. But she
looked pretty well, if a lot thinner than I last saw her. She
was in pretty good spirits but it seemed like a terrible
effort for her to even just speak. She says she sleeps a
lot. Not as much as her roommate (who I guess is
always sleeping) but still a lot. She just seems worn out,
but not as depressed as usual. She still has her feisty
streak, which is good to see, but she's gotten much more
cuddly.

Next installment:
USA Trip Part 2 - Philadelphia part 1 and NYC

The Big Apple

I'm in New York City!!!
Got here yesterday and of course it's so overwhelming...
I've been here quite often before, but you forget how much is really going on.
Tomorrow I will have my lesson with my beloved teacher Cornelius Reid. I can hardly wait. Unfortunately, it will be the only one this trip. He is taking his wife to the hospital. I hope she will be OK. But I'm disappointed nonetheless. But at least I will have one lesson!
M. the cook will be joining me here tomorrow and I'm sure we will have a wonderful time exploring this place together.
More later.