Month: June 2015

Tonight is the Night at the Museums event. And this is all over the news: “A chance of showers and thunderstorms … mainly this afternoon. Some thunderstorms may produce damaging winds … heavy rainfall and frequent lightning this afternoon.”

You should hear them go on about the lightning, which, by the way, I pronounced and misspelled as lightening for many many years, like we were all getting our hair done whenever it stormed. Danger, danger, danger, they’re all crying. (Images of John Oliver dancing in his chair just went through my mind.) I went to this last year and had a lot of fun. You’ve got four hours to run from museum to museum, and it’s quite a challenge, even with out freaking Armageddon going on around you. I planned to make it to all the museums I missed last year. Now, I don’t know. We shall see.

A stroller full of Yorkies on Christopher Street, on Make Music New York day.

I hope to come back with more pictures, and maybe a video, but this is one of my shots from yesterday’s Make Music New York. When this band said their name I wasn’t sure if they were saying Black Flyer or Black Fire. It must be Black Fire.

If it isn’t pouring rain, I plan to walk around and catch the various performances in my neighborhood that are part of Make Music New York. There is a Bach sing along right near me, but I have a sore throat and I keep coughing. If I do it and cough a lot I’ll wreck it for others. I should really be more considerate and just listen. It will be hard though, especially during the B Minor Mass bits, which I love so much. They’re singing the Et incarnatus est chorus, my absolute favorite! So haunting and soaring.

Except I’ve always sung that sop1 and I’m a sop2 now and my high notes aren’t what they used to be. Plus, I don’t know the sop2 part at all and I’m not a good sight singer. In any case, I recommend going to Cornelia Street Cafe, 29 Cornelia Street, at 4, to listen or sing along.

Mushrooms growing out of solid rock (or is that tar?) in the West Village. How is that possible?

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I love the windows of Jackson Square Pharmacy. It’s near me on 8th Avenue in the West Village. They always do very charming windows at Christmas. Right now they have old-time bottles and measuring devices, but the best part is a scrapbook of prescriptions from 1917.

Here’s a closer look. I spent some time looking at it, hoping to catch a famous name or an interesting drug but I didn’t have any luck.

I think I slept two hours, and that was this morning, between 5:30 and 7:30. Ugh. I feel like a total zombie, and I want to cancel everything I had planned for the day but I think I should push through it.

Anyway, I think I did okay at Yale! Not great, but okay. But I met some of the loveliest people. Thank you so much Jeffrey Douma for inviting me to participate, I had the best time. I guess it comes as no surprise that conductors have a lot of good qualities, it makes sense. They spend so much time immersed in great music and facilitating the experience of that music for other people. It does something to them. Something really good.

I found this picture from the Yale International Choral Festival on Facebook. That’s Donald Nally, Lone Larsen, Jean-Baptiste, and Francisco J. Nunez at the podium. Francisco Nunez is in New York, and is something of a big deal here. He’s the founder and director of the Young People’s Chorus of New York City (and he got a MacArthur fellowship in 2011). I spoke to him briefly and he was the sweetest guy. I wish he was my next door neighbor.