Okay, I’m going to force myself to post, but only because I’m off the rest of the week and do not intend to put anything up, unless I find myself with a strong desire to drunk-write, which is always a possibility, or if I take a picture of something particularly compelling (particularly disgusting diapers, or maybe my wife drooling whilst a-napping) and need to get it on the internets for posterity. I’m also not taking any responsibility for anything that follows being funny, ’cause if you think I’m going to worry about making you laugh at 2:18pm before my day off, well, in the words of Sean Connery, your mother’s a whore.
Yesterday I got to skip most of my workday to catch a bus to Baltimore with the Chancel Choir of First & Central Presbyterian (so named because they were both First, and the most Centrally Located, which makes the other Presbyterian churches like totally SO jealous) to sing at the American Guild of Organists Region III Convention. This may sound very similar to getting to go to, say, the Nebraska State Ophthalmalogy Opthamogoly Eye Doctor Convention, except that Eye Doctors are better dressed and usually less, well, girthy.
The ride down was largely uneventful, unless you were the driver, in which case apparently EVERYTHING is an event; he alerted us that when passing over the Susquehanna River, you could look to the right and see the Conowingo damn, which I guess is useful tourist information, but he also pointed out a Weigh Station, The Place Where You Drop Off Family Members Who Are Going On Cruises, and some $350K Condos. By the end, people were just yelling “SHUT THE #*$& UP” every time they heard the mic click on.
We were to sing in the Baltimore Basilica, which is notable for being the first Catholic cathedral built in the United States. The cornerstone was laid in 1806, and construction complete in 1821. In 1937, the cathedral was raised to the rank of “Minor Basilica” by Pope Pius XI, but by the mid50s the powers-that-be had decided that the building suffered from a condition they described as “being surrounded by FAR too many crackheads” and they scurried the See off to the suburbs. Now the Basilica is a “co-cathedral,” which is kinda like being a cheerleading co-captain: half the respect, and twice the teenage drama.
But I joke. The building is actually BEAUTIFUL, and since it’s mostly space and stone walls, the reverb in there is unbelievable. Since I mostly sing in carpeted rooms that suck sound right out of the air, listening to plainsong chant and Russian hymns bounce off the walls for 3-4 seconds after we stopped singing was fascinating.
We rehearsed there, and then had some time to kill before dinner, so some us went a-wondering around Baltimore. The Basilica is just a few blocks from Peabody Conservatory, which you may recall I went to for a few years before realizing how annoying other vocal performance majors usually are, so I wandered over there to see if things had changed, which of course they had. I got loads of pictures of the mid-town area, the best of which I’ll get online at some point. We had dinner, consisting of sandwiches, chips, and other knick knacks, at a nearby Unitarian church, and then went back to get dressed for the service.
The service started with a 30 minute concert by Mary Beth Bennett, who is most notable because she looked REALLY REALLY familiar to me and I couldn’t figure out why, and then about an hour of singing and praying and all that good timey religious stuff. Then we piled on the bus, drank some beers, and headed home.
Oh, also, I went to the Phils game on Sunday; they won, and I got a million pictures, which I’ll post later. Other than that, the only thing that was notable was that I went with two Mets fans in full Mets regalia and didn’t get peed on by anyone! It was stellar.
