A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
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.
If you’re going to be in New Haven tomorrow, I’m going to be speaking at the Yale International Choral Festival on a panel titled, What happens in rehearsal and performance, at 10:45am. It’s part of a day long symposium titled Choirs Transforming Lives.
And they do. The trick is finding a way of communicating that to people who don’t already know.
As per usual, I’m stressing about doing a good job. It would help if my audience showed up and blew thousands of bubbles my way.
Last night people descended on Union Square to blow bubbles. I took tons of pictures but I made myself edit them down to a reasonable selection of seven. As you can see it was a blast. Try and watch hundreds of people blowing bubbles without smiling. Can’t be done. If only you could push a button and order a crowd blowing bubbles whenever you’re depressed or had a terrible day.
And I made a very short video.
Lots of high points! If there are still tickets available you should go.
