Ahh. The Opera.

I don't know what to say about Thanksgiving. It was special in that nothin' special way of all good family gatherings. It was just nice to hang out with kin. It was amazing to see cousin Caroline all grown up into her own person all of a sudden. Aunt Barbara took the old table segregation technique to a whole new level to accomodate the record turnout. There were no less than four tables spread throughout the first floor and back yard. One was for old people, one was for adults, one was for kids and one was for toddlers. There was some cross-pollenation; Ruth and Brant were at the old table and I get the feeling that the majority of the conversation there was directed toward them. This left us hip, young adults to banter away about our careers, politics, world events, and food while the numerous children and young adults (William is like fourteen or something) generally took care of each other. It was a masterpiece of social planning and I think all parties involved ejoyed it.
Anyway today, Mom and I drove down to College Station for my sister Ruth's last recital as a vocal performance major at Texas A&M. There were about eight students taking turns doing short opera pieces accompanied by piano until each had done three songs in three different languages. All of them were female sopranos. The order was such that we heard all the other girls before we heard Ruth and Ruth also got to sing last. All of them were good and most were very good, but none of them prepared me for when Ruth took the stage and just nailed a gorgeous piece in French. Ruth is a small person with delicate features and thin bones, but that voice of hers could fill a stadium. She then did a more modern piece in English by an American dude in the twenties which was interesting because there were some traces of jazz influence in his chord voicings, but it was still a classical piece. Ruth's final song was a very challenging aria from W.A. Mozart's Don Giovanni. Her accompanist even had trouble keeping up as Ruthie raced through the complex piece with skill and flare appropriate to the flirtatious tone of the lyrics. I've always been proud of my sister's singing and even more so since she took up classical instead of country, but I haven't actually heard her sing in years. I was blown away. She has really developed her talent to masterful heights. Anyway, that's all for now but I am really going to try tomix in some more introspective posts in the future. The purpose of this blog is primarily a diary, but it is also for simply practicing writing and hopefully just to help increase my creative gas mileage if that makes any sense. And if you actually got to the end of this post, you may qualify for a FREE HUG! (Payable any time you see me, some restrictions apply, void where prohibited)