Yesterday, May 8, was a national holiday to celebrate the end of WWII. Last night I went to a midnight holiday concert. The concert was held at the Synagogue and the Church that are both on my block. I think they had it at the two venues because they expected more people than would fit in either, since both are small. But it was also a symbolic gesture, I'm sure. The concert was called Oneness Light and there were spotlights set up outside that kept panning the two buildings and uniting them visually.
It really started at 11:00, which was good because it didn't end until 12:45. I had trouble maintaining my enthusiasm for going because I was quite sleepy about 10:30, but I decided to at least walk over and see what they would do with the spotlights they'd set up. Then I got a second wind and stayed; I'm glad I did.
The artists moved back and forth between the venues so that everyone heard everything. There seemed to be some audience members who moved too. Maybe some people wanted to hear a performance twice, or were friends with an artist... I went to the church and it was full...about 50 people.
First a group performed parts of Mozart's Requiem and Handel's Messiah. Then a children's choir performed about 4 different Glorias and a couple of Jewish pieces.
That was followed by a woman who sang two amazingly plaintive Jewish pieces, accompanying herself on violin. The church was quite dark and she walked all around the altar area and around us while she performed, making it seem as if she was almost a ghost haunting the building and the audience.
An electronic keyboard had been set up in the altar area and the artist who played it had war in his fingers. His music vibrated the floor and came up through your feet as well as echoing down from all the arches.
The final performer was a violinist who did two Jewish pieces. He had the whole church darkened which put the focus more on his music than him. But he was a wonderful musician...the kind who makes you wonder how a person can make an instrument do what he's making his do. His pieces were alive and full of energy...very uplifting to the spirit, after the impressively war-like pieces that preceded him.
The concert was the highlight of the time since I returned from Slovakia. But I have been busy with other things as well.
I did a presentation for corporate giving officers at a meeting of the Donors Forum. Companies often evaluate their corporate giving by measuring how much they give, how well the grantee used the money, and what results the grantee had. My talk was about the value of also measuring what good the giving did for the company. I think that is important in order to justify continued and increased giving, particularly when times are hard and giving must compete with advertising, or marketing for corporate dollars. It was great fun because the participants liked it a lot. Today I was at a meeting with a foundation leader and he said that he knew what I talked about although he wasn’t there because one of the corporate people told him about it. That was a great feeling!
The weather has been as beautiful for the past couple of weeks as it was cold in the winter. Taking advantage of that, I went to the Prague Zoo and Botanical Gardens on Saturday with Susan. The zoo is very nice, but the gardens are even better. We went early and got back in time for me to work on student end-of-semester papers. Then I went to dinner with another friend at Cowboys, a relatively new restaurant with a rooftop terrace. It was a beautiful place to spend a gorgeous evening.
In my computer time, I have been grading lots of student papers and preparing presentations for my remaining commitments. It takes a surprising amount of time to do both tasks. After a day of such efforts, I met Susan for a pizza at the St. Nicholas Café, where Meg, Steve, and I spent some cold afternoons getting warm. They had live guitar music and it was wonderful. Like the previous night, the walk back across the Charles Bridge was too pretty for words.
This week I am trying to meet with each of my contacts one last time before folks arrive and it is time to start packing up. I did three meetings today, including my first visit to a Czech family home. I met the three-week old baby of one of my new friends. Sweet.
I’ll post photos soon.
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