A Proud Parent Boasting
February 25, 2007
Indulge me, please. I am a very proud parent. Last November, our daughter Rachael appeared professionally in the opera, Venus and Adonis, produced by the Toronto Masque Theatre. Opera Canada magazine has now published its review of the performance, from which I delight to quote:
Soprano Rachael Harwood-Jones (Venus) is headed for a sterling career. She is a beautiful young woman with a gorgeous, lilting, expressive voice that also has substance layered over delicacy. 1Rachael completed her Master’s degree last Spring, and is now out in the cold, cruel world trying to build her career as an opera singer. She has performed in some productions, and is auditioning for more. Reviews such as this are a tremendous lift.
And in other news...
It has been a quiet but productive winter for this old retired guy. I’ve given a couple of lectures and am preparing another; and (in addition to my normal participation at St. Luke’s) I’ve preached at three different churches – mostly replacing clergy who were able to take brief winter vacations.
Speaking of winter, there were two or three weeks here in Winnipeg when it was particularly cold (daily highs in the -20°C range, overnight lows often approaching -40°). The sky was a sharp blue, without a cloud, the sun brilliant, accompanied quite often by “sun dogs” (an illusion, arising from the presence of ice crystals in the air, in which two bright lights appear on each side of the sun). Frankly – and to the complete disgust of many around me – I loved it. “This,” I declared, “is a real Manitoba winter.”
Oh yes, and I am spending quite a lot of time as St. Luke’s volunteer webmaster. Currently I work more on that site than I do on this one! It’s fun,2 and the people of St. Luke’s seem to appreciate it.
I continue to think that retirement is a wonderful thing, and greet each morning with a shout of triumph.
1 Opera Canada Volume XLVIII, Number 1 (January/February, 2007), page 38.
2 If you have any geek in your blood, you may be interested to know that after years of building all my web pages in HTML 3.2, I've begun to learn CSS, and this very page is written in HTML 4.01 – a much more demanding protocol.