On Monday nights in the month of November Scott and I drive down to Paris TN to participate in the community choir Messiah rehearsals.  Paris is a small Southern Bible belt community — smaller than my town by a good bit.  It has its poor black neighborhoods.  It has its socialite class.  It has its numerous churches.  It has its Walmart.  And – surprisingly – it has a vibrant arts association that gets a lot of neat things to happen, including the biennial Messiah production.  Its public school’s music program includes a string program; my town’s schools do not.

The rehearsals and performance are hosted by the First Baptist Church of Paris, presumably because their large facility can accommodate this.  They actually have a dedicated rehearsal room, with tiered seating area, Kawai grand, music library, etc.  And for the performance they have a choir loft above an orchestra pit at the front of their sanctuary.

Tonight in the choir rehearsal room I noticed a flier on the wall about a “Madrigal Reunion”.   I overheard our director informing the First Baptist music director that if he ever needs a bassist for orchestral productions, he should call Scott.  It flooded in upon me that in our American culture where efforts at high art are increasingly rare in the daily life of regular normal people, this Baptist church in a small Southern town is putting money towards keeping musical art alive; providing a supportive place for youngsters to get started and for oldsters to share the music they studied in college and loved then and now.

You remember that Bach was a Lutheran organist.  You remember all the great music that originated as church music.  What I am appreciating tonight is a small-town  Baptist church in the Bible belt that stands in this tradition. That cares enough about music to outfit a choir rehearsal room with a nice Kawai grand.  That is on speaking terms with madrigals and the arts council.    That hosts the community Messiah production.  Twenty years from now, the musical bar will be set a little higher in our area because this church took a stand alongside the arts council and the public school for musical education, participation and performance.  Thank you!!!

Not every church should do this.  It takes a lot of money, I’ll warrant.   But those that have a compelling gift in this direction should do it!

Last year our little church hired itself a 3-person choir of university vocal students – they sounded great!   The plan was to start with a nucleus of hired singers and gradually add and then transition to congregant voices.   This year we are down to one wonderful soprano from the university together with 3 or 4 older gentlemen from the congregation.  In all this time, no women have joined.   So the choir is pretty low key (heh) and its primary role is just to undergird the congregational singing.

Now that the worship service has been moved back to 10:30 AM, Scott and I were asked to consider joining the choir.  We considered for about 5 minutes and decided to jump in.  For me it’s all about the black and white Anglican choir vestments.

This is not my church!

And the procession.   Just kidding (mostly).  I love to sing, but I struggle with a quiet voice and vocal cord problems from years of silent reflux that went unaddressed.  I’m starting to get a handle on that now, though.   Singing hymns is one of my favorite parts of the church service and I hope that I will have something to offer – and maybe my presence will encourage other women to join, knowing they won’t be the only one.

Recently I revamped my business website and in the process I thought about what I have to offer that sets me apart from other web developers.   Two things sprang to mind:  most of my experience is in working with musicians and artists, and secondly, I really treasure the personal approach that I have the luxury of bringing to a project.

So I reworded my website to mention those things and recently I landed another client – a band.  Now, the fact is that I have been blessed to have pretty much the right amount of work — neither too much nor too little — the entire time I’ve done this, but it was really neat to have a band on the other end of the phone saying, “we want to hire you.” The extra work I’d done to think about my business made me appreciate the call all the more.

And they’ve been *adorable* to work with.  Once the project is over I’ll tell you more about them.  It’s  a grown up family band who are enormously talented and terrific entertainers.  The more I work with their material, the more excited I am that there’s a band like them in the world, and I hope that they’ll have the continuing success they very much deserve.   I love my job!

“SweetB” aka my friend Barb Kilby stopped by the house the other day to show me a new drawing she created for one of her clients.  I thought it was so sweet.  If you know anyone needing a special way to honor the birth of twins, you can send them to the Etsy listing for this piece – Barb can customize one just for them.

This has been so fun!  With Jennifer Fairbanks in town, not only is there the gallery I mentioned in an earlier post, but she’s also teaching oil painting classes.  I am so thankful a couple of friends mentioned having taken an art class with Jennifer when she was in town for a summer a few years ago.

I do not think of myself as the painting class type, but I didn’t really think of these friends as the painting class type either, so that helped me get over that misconception (that I need an art pedigree before taking an art class.)

My friends had described the painting class as a welcome change of pace in their day.  I didn’t know what that meant, but I thought that if they enjoy it, I’d probably enjoy it.  So I joined the new class.

A change of pace is exactly what it is.   It is extremely absorbing.   You step into another world, shutting out politics and economic woes and strife and illness and focus on one little problem:  paint what I see.  Of course that fans out into many interesting problems – including identifying what I really see – but bit by bit the problems seem solvable for the most part.  Or if not, I say to myself, “oh well, this is only my third painting, I will improve.”

Jennifer creates a very supportive atmosphere and is a good teacher.  I have already learned a lot in my three classes so far.  The artwork of the women who have had more classes is really inspiring!   So I really do think I’ll improve and already my eye is improving.

Hard to imagine a better birthday!  A little family outing on a beautiful weekend, and all the boys were involved!  I just loved it!  We were down in Sewanee to see Punch Brothers.

And next morning we enjoyed visiting the Chapel (or cathedral) which was across the street from the cabin where we were staying.

If you’re in my town you need to go visit our friend Jennifer’s new venture over on 3rd Street just off the court square and if you’re not in our town, you can check it out on the web:  Gallery 109.   The above will be hanging in my home when the current exhibit is over.  We are SO excited about that!

Some other favorites hanging in the gallery (and for sale!) right now:

This drawing is beautiful, large and has so much presence.  It’s also beautifully framed.

This is a small piece but it’s mesmerizingly lovely in person.   You can check the prices of these things on the gallery site.  Very reasonable for such beautiful, true art.

This is one of my favorite desserts:

For the blackberries:

Mix in a heavy pan or dutch oven and bring to boil:

• 1 12 oz bag of frozen blackberries
• 1/2 cup sugar
• sprinkling of salt to taste
• orange or lemon extract (several drops)

—————————————————————————–

For the dumplings:

Mix together:

• 2/3 cup Bisquick (or whatever brand of biscuit/pancake mix stuff)
• 1 tsp sugar
• REAL grated nutmeg 1/8 tsp or so…I don’t measure.    REAL means get an actual nutmeg and grate it.

Then:

• Quickly stir in 3 TB milk (or so) to dumpling or wet biscuit dough consistency.

Then:

• Drop by teaspoonful into the bubbling blackberry mix.
• Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes or until the dumplings are done (when you stick in a toothpick and it comes out clean.)

Serve with vanilla ice cream.

Oh my goodness, it’s good.

The above is enough for two generous servings.

One of my favorite color combinations for bouquets.   The yellow is all Molineux.  The pinks are. from left, face-downward Abraham Darby, pale pink Souvenir de la Malmaison, a spray of Ballerina (the little “wild rose”-looking thing) and the rest are Belinda’s Dream.

My friend Darlene has so much style – a style that is uniquely hers.    One thing she cares about deeply is mothers and children, and as she gets older she has found ways to continue to be involved and supportive.  In this charming blog entry, she shows through photos how she held a tea party for 8 little girls (and their moms):

http://lestermom.livejournal.com/139155.html

And don’t miss the video, here:

http://lestermom.livejournal.com/139400.html