It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?
I essentially quit writing earlier this year for several reasons. I broke my hand; I was busy with work, which includes much typing and was progressing much more slowly than usual due to the break; I had done no art for more than a year; and my life was very uneventful and I simply had nothing to say.
The hand has healed, mostly, although it’s still not quite as it was. I’m busier than ever with work, for which I am extremely thankful. I still haven’t done any art.
But for some reason, a couple of months ago my husband decided after 34 years of marriage that perhaps it was time to go out and do things. Social things. Visual and performing arts things.
It started late in the summer, I think. We had gone to several of the summer classic movies at the Alabama Theatre, a 1927 movie palace extravaganza in downtown Birmingham. At one of them I noticed a poster advertising a performance of the Nutcracker by the Moscow Ballet, scheduled for the Alabama late in November. I made some general comment about not having been to a live ballet since elementary school, and he asked, completely out of the blue, “Would you like to go?”
Then he started wondering about seasonal events. I started checking local calendars and setting up things for us to see and do. So far, just in the past month, we’ve
- seen an exhibition of artifacts from Pompeii: Tales of an Eruption at the Birmingham Museum of Art;
- attended a performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Alabama Civic Chorale;
- visited an exhibition by many of Alabama’s famous folk artists, including Thornton Dial, Mose Tolliver, Nora Ezell, and Lonnie Holley;
- attended a performance of Christmas music by Colla Voce, a 30-voice ensemble, presented at a local church.
The ballet is Friday night. On Saturday night we go to another Festival of Christmas Music at Samford University. There’s another one Sunday afternoon by the Birmingham-Southern College choir, and an orchestral performance the following Sunday. I have at least one more art exhibition I want to see, The Black Madonna at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
So I will have some things to talk about for a while. I’m looking forward to comparing the various choral groups’ performances, because there are great differences even to my untrained ear.
It isn’t fiber art, but hey. I’m getting there.
