Morbid Academy March 16th

I’m going to be a guest at Mitch Horowitz’s Morbid Academy on March 16th at 7pm, if you’re going to be around that night. The Morbid Academy is:

“A monthly series of provocative and useful dialogues with artists, writers, filmmakers, and scholars who broaden our understanding of the ill-considered and the unknown, hosted by PEN Award-winning historian Mitch Horowitz.”

The Academy events are held at the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and you should definitely come early so you can explore the Museum before the panel starts. We’re going to talk about what I learned when I researched the Parapsychology Laboratory of Duke University.

The picture below is one my my favorite shots from the collection that is now at the Rhine Research Center. It pictures three of the scientists working at the lab: Bill Davidson, Betty McMahan and Betty Humphrey.

BillBettys

WYPR – Choral Arts Classics

On February 23, 2016 I participated in a show on WYPR titled: 50 Years of Choral Arts. From their website: “A retrospective look and listen as Choral Arts gets ready for its 50th Anniversary Concert (March 20, 2016). Tom talks to chorus members and special guests who have played an important role in the story of Baltimore Choral Arts, as well as Stacy Horn ….”

Choral Arts Classics is hosted by Tom Hall, who also hosts Maryland Morning on WYPR Radio. In addition to being a well known radio personality, and an Emmy award winner, Tom is the Music Director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.

If you like you can listen to the show I was on here.

They’ve got some great shows coming up as well. This one speaks to me the most.

May 3, 2016 9:00 pm
Quest for Peace: On April 26, 2015, one day after the large protest against the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, and one day before the violence that erupted after Mr. Gray’s funeral, Choral Arts presented a concert entitled Quest for Peace. We’ll hear music from that concert by the Baltic composers Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks, and Tom welcomes Chic Dambach, a peace-builder who has worked to end conflict around the world to talk about music’s special role in peace building.

My brother Douglas has always been a generous supporter of my choir, the Choral Society of Grace Church, and that’s him in the audience at one of our concerts. Oh God, so many people have demon eyes in this photograph!

Douglas

I need a Nap

I’m sitting on my couch, trying to relax. Bleecker wasn’t tormenting Finney for a moment, but that just ended. He’s had a snack and now he’s trying to entice Finney to play.

Update: Bleeck chased Finney out of the spot to my left, and now he is napping beside me. (That smoke is my humidifer, which operates 24 hours a day all through the winter. I think the fact that I’ve always used a humidifer in the winter is one of the reasons I have good skin.)

It’s so unfair to Finney. I will have to make it up to him.

Bleecker

Charlotte Bronte’s Nurse

I was doing a search on the Workhouse on Blackwell’s Island, the section I’m working on now, when I came across this January 30, 1885 article about Charlotte Bronte’s nurse who was now an inmate of a Workhouse. There were a bunch of articles here and abroad about collecting money to get her out …

Charlotte Bronte

But they didn’t succeed. She died there the next year. This inspired an effort to raise money to give her a decent burial (the one below is from April 18, 1886). Sadly, I didn’t find any about the outcome. If they’d succeeded I think there would have been lots of article about the nice funeral they’d given her.

Charlotte Bronte

What a Week!

Well, we had another Echo catastrophe yesterday. I need to plan a mental health day for myself, but I can’t take it yet, and I’m supposed to start jury duty on Monday. I was actually looking forward to jury duty, but I don’t see how I can serve now (I’m the only one to respond to certain problems) and what if they don’t excuse me??

I had a really nice time on Sunday doing a Skype chat about my singing book with the North Shore Choral Society, a volunteer choir from Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Thank you for inviting me, Linda Faller! It was a lovely break in the midst of a lot of madness. Choir people truly are the nicest people in the world. As if singing itself wasn’t a good enough reason to join a choir. But it’s really the singing and the people. Inseparable.

I have no new pictures because I’ve been inside either working or stressing about Echo. Here is yet another picture from the ballet rehearsal I went to recently. Before the nightmare began.

Ballet1

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