"Thank you for being a car"

[zirconium]

Charmed by: picture books about mail-critters, including Angela Cronk's Monster Mail (disclosure: I'm one of the book's backers) and Marianne Dubuc's Mr. Postmouse books.

Starting the month with:

remembering how my iron works (oh hi, reset button)

not remembering how to update my website

skipping the gym (something in my back twanging hard)

not listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (I cannot take any more takes on cults this week)

enjoying some garlic I pickled back in November (the plague has been knocking out colleagues left and right...)

not engaging further with a forum troll ("Never wrestle with a pig...")

planning a crockpot full of Slap chili for a company cookoff. (A friend gave me a spice mix called "Slap Ya Mama" which I am doctoring into my "Slap the Patriarchy" variation. Because.)

Just read: Shiv Ramdas's And Now His Lordship Is Laughing (short story; h/t Mary)

Also reading: the Wildsam field guide to Charleston

Rehearsing: Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium, which the chamber choir read on Wednesday and will perform tomorrow (February 2), along with Gwyneth Walker's Prayer of Compassion. Services are broadcast and archived on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVB2xDLhfjQnrXx-2zWmfeA/featured

Ahead:

Poetic Medicine plans to publish "Eichengrun in Terezin" later this winter

Grand Magnolia: immersive theater at Oz Nashville this June. I'm in the cast! [The subject line is what was said to me at the end of the callback audition, which included creating scenes inspired by the story of the first interracial wedding in Chattanooga -- in particular, the blockade set up by friends of the couple to prevent disruptions. Hence me channeling a Buick Skylark getting bumped into and sinking down as its tires flattened out ...]

Comments

[okrablossom]

Woohoo for poems and plays!!! Also, hearing from you!

[zirconium]

xxxooo

[kirbyfest]

I love that Lauridsen piece. It's beautiful, and sis one of the pieces that makes me feel part of something much better and bigger than anything I could do alone. (Lots of choral music does that, but this is one that does it especially well.)

[zirconium]

My choir director has stories about studying with Lauridsen. I'm not remembering specifics at this point, but he's apparently a character.

[kirbyfest]

That is not surprising, somehow. :)