When I have attended full day music festivals, my ears and brain have tipped into overload. I don’t get to savor or recall the individual delights that have been offered. I suppose a remedy is to stop listening, take breaks, go to the bathroom a lot, or just leave before it’s too much. I know that many people don’t share my point of view on this. More power to them.
Tonight I was part of a benefit concert that offered four different acts, which involved a bit of mixing and matching performers. It was great fun. Better yet, I made an absurd amount of baked goods, not recalling that the local senior center that was the beneficiary of the concert was going to supply lots of cookies. Somehow I don’t go into overload on dessert options. The good part of having baked cinnamon chocolate chip walnut cookies, brownies with chocolate chips in them, and butter brickle oatmeal cookies was that almost all of what I baked got eaten. I am a baking snob, and take pride in the unhealthy fodder that comes out of my oven for special occasions. The bad part of my baking accomplishments today was that I can’t recall eating anything much that was good for me. Part of good baking is tasting it to check for quality (hah!), and once you find out how good it is, you don’t care much about anything else. So you continue to check to make sure the quality holds up. It did.
My dear friend Annie, who is a gifted professional watercolorist, organized this concert. She and I sang three songs together, all originals. I’m going to post her ecumenical song “Some Love Jesus”, as rehearsed at my house. She has a fine alto voice, and hears many harmonies at a time in her head, which she erroneously mixes up with multiple personality disorder. I’m going to include a photo of her recent (2020) portrait of Jesus, created from snippets of people from all races, ages and time periods. You can find her beautiful and unique artwork on her website, anniegifford.com. She won the the Bolder Boulder poster competition several times, and wins awards for her work frequently.
“Some Love Jesus” by Annie Gifford (sung by Annie and me)
Susan Rose: Singing Grandma 