A Regular Fellow
Sunday. My uncle Ed was a singer. He was also a doctor, but his heart was the heart of a singer and one of my first memories, my first experience attending a musical event, was hearing him sing the lead role in Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince at the Seattle Aqua Theater in the early 1950's. Needless to say he was a soloist in church, at weddings (many many weddings), at funerals and at concerts with the local Seattle and Portland symphonies.
My cousin Jon had recordings that were made by my aunt Vivienne on an early, not very sophisticated, tape recorder of his performances turned into a CD by a family friend who works in audio and was able to massage these relatively primitive recordings into something special and sent it to our scattered family. The sound is good, given what he had to work with, and this portion of “Serenade”, from The Student Prince, is from one of them. And yes, that's my aunt Vivienne at the end of the performance, tape recorder safely in her lap. It doesn't bring back memories, it brings back worlds of memories.
Wednesday. A little recap here. I talked with the doctor and we made an appointment with an ear, nose and throat guy down the street who can take a look at the sinuses and see if they're kosher. One does not want to be harboring non-kosher sinuses at my age. I was thinking three weeks seemed a long time to wait, but I've been putting up with non-kosher sinuses now for a long time, what's another three weeks? And today, the middle day of another ever so long week, was a comparatively good day and I was happy to rationalize. I didn't walk into any walls, the world did not fuzz over or do somersaults and, although the day went slowly, I did get some things done before going home and sampling a fresh bottle of sake.
Ah, you say, a bottle of sake.
Well, yes. It makes the evening flow more smoothly, improves the attitude and allows me to sleep like a regular fellow.
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