1. Not long after I returned home this afternoon from Spokane, Debbie called. She and Adrienne's family have weathered the heavy snow and frigid temperatures in Valley Cottage, NY well. School was only closed one day this week. Debbie witnessed snow plows working the street they live on regularly. They didn't lose their power. This was all good news.
Last week, Patrick had flown on business to Portland from Cincinnati and his flight out of Portland last Friday was delayed because of the snow and ice in Cincinnati. Debbie wasn't sure exactly when he arrived back in Cincinnati, but he's home now.
Meagan sent out two pictures from their Cincinnati apartment. The main water line to their apartment building broke this morning and, in one picture, Patrick is melting snow so they can flush their toilet. They can look down on the Ohio River from their apartment, and the other picture is of sheets of ice floating down the mighty Ohio.
2. I guess it's obvious that I enjoy public lectures.
After all, I'm spending a couple or three hours a day listening to a series of forty-eight lectures on classical music.
At noon today, for the second time this month, I drove to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and attended the Spokane Symphony's music director and conductor's lecture on the concert the Symphony will play this weekend.
As with James Lowe's lecture I attended a couple of weeks ago, I loved his presentation today.
This weekend's program is called Stolen Melodies and features how composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Paul Hindemith, and Grace Williams reworked pieces written by earlier composers and transformed them into works of their own.
The concert will close with Spokane writer Jess Walters giving his own take on the narration to Benjamin Britten's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.
By playing recorded excerpts from these works and commenting on them and by going on a couple of enjoyable digressions, the first dealing with modern musicians playing centuries old works on period instruments and the second on Welsh language, James Lowe prepared us splendidly for the program coming up this weekend.
3. Just as I was getting ready to leave this morning for Spokane, two packages arrived from Better World Books.
Gibbs rarely pees in the house, but for some reason he did so last week just one time and dampened the book I bought at Booktraders, so I ordered a replacement.
I made another order and didn't quite understand what I ordered but was pumped to discover what I paid for.
This lecture series about classical music I'm listening to has a coursebook to accompany it.
I thought this coursebook was in six volumes since what I ordered was in six parts.
But, no, the coursebook is a single volume.
The other five parts are DVDs of the lectures!
Just for the record, taken together, before sales tax and a minimal shipping cost, the book and DVD cost $8.20.
And they are in pristine shape. I think they are brand new.
Now I have the lectures to listen to on audible, the lectures outlined and highlighted in the coursebook, and I have them on a bunch of DVDs to watch on our television when I want to.
I entered a whole new world of ignorance is bliss today.
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