Monday, March 7, 2016

Three Beautiful Things 03/06/16: Tallis Gives Me Inmost Joy, Back to Bagel Place, Ninkasi Nostalgia

1.  As the Holy Communion ended this morning at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, the choir sang "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say", a hymn set to a gorgeous tune by Thomas Tallis.  I remembered back to January of 1996 and a concert by the Mozart Players at Beall Hall at the Univ. of Oregon and the first time I ever heard "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis", composed by Ralph Vaughn Williams. That tune has lived with me in deep and abiding ways ever since and this morning hearing the choir sing it brought me inmost joy.

2.  It's been months since I strolled over to the Bagel Place in College Park to have a cinnamon raisin bagel toasted with cream cheese with coffee, but, today after church, I did just that. I grabbed myself a copy of the Washington City Paper and enjoyed reading about all the musicians who are coming to this area and seeing the listings for all the plays being performed and imagined myself going to them all, chuckled, finished my snack, came back to Earth, and jumped into the Sube, turned on RadioLab,  made my way to Rt. 201, and drove back to our apartment home.

3. Molly's birthday celebration continued today. Hiram invited a bunch of friends and their thousands of children over for beer, snacks, and birthday cake. The Deke and I popped in, enjoyed some excellent conversation with the youth of today, and, filled with hope, piled back into the Sube and drove over to the Quench Tap Room and each enjoyed a somewhat nostalgic pint of Ninkasi's Total Domination IPA.  I had hoped for a glass of Tricerahops, but that keg was empty. It was fun drinking a Total Domination and imagining myself sitting in the Ninkasi tasting room in the Whitaker neighborhood, happy that, in Eugene,  I once lived so close to so much fine beer before moving here to Maryland.

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