December 21 is our great-niece Floey’s tenth birthday, and I’m giving her the gift of a lifetime: on Monday she’ll come along to watch an ocularist polish her Great Aunt Beth’s fake eye. Eye surgeons did all they could to restore my vision when retinopathy set in thirty years ago. One of my eyes is still […]
The biggest surprise in last Thursday’s performance of Bel Canto at Chicago’s Lyric Opera came in the second act. and it didn’t happen on stage. I wrote a post last week about preparing to see (okay, hear) my first live opera. I reread the book Bel Canto. I heard the book’s author Ann Patchett talk […]
It was a lucky day for me when Regan Burke turned up for one of my memoir-writing classes. A civil rights activist, Regan was a White House staffer during the Clinton presidency and has colorful – and moving – stories to tell. She files away unusual words she hears and cleverly shoehorns one or two […]
My first opera experience last night was a huge success, and while I work on paring that grand experience down into a piece short enough to publish here, as long as we’re on an orchestral bent, how about I share some thoughts about Steve Inskeep’s interview of Itzhak Perlman on NPR’s Morning Edition a couple […]
The opera Bel Canto (based on Ann Patchett’s novel by the same name) had its world Premiere at Chicago’s Lyric Opera Monday night, and I’m going to tomorrow night’s performance. It will be the first time ever that I’ve attended an opera. When I was a kid, the only opera I knew was the Merrie […]