When preparing for Barber, the chorus worked to get away from the musical theater sound, and into that of opera. Music theater developed around microphones, radio, records, and television. These mediums allow artists to reinforce certain parts. They allow, and their audiences demand, a tighter and more intimate sound out of the performers. Even with my past in choirs, this is the musical tradition I grew up in.

Opera demands an open and free sound that can be heard over the orchestra without amplification. By the time Oprea had me for a month, I was using more of my body to sing than ever before. I was tuning my consonants to cut through the background, not to sound good on a microphone. I was louder and straining my voice less.

At my best, when I was regularly performing in oratorios, I did not have the stamina that would be needed by the principals of Barber for just a few runs. Between rehearsals and show, I watched our cast perform the show eight times in a week, and still give it all to the final audience on Sunday. In particular, there is a point in the show where Blake, for comedic effect, stripped his voice its resonance and still filled the hall above the accompaniment. He did this and continued singing for another hour. This was when I stopped being a tourist.

I have loved work-songs for as long as I can remember. Through the nomadic part of my life, I still carried a large and prized CD collection made mainly of working songs wherever I went. I learned an extensive repertoire, mostly from music recorded in studios under the most optimum of audio conditions. The artists were contemporaries of music theater, radio, and television. Their audience, which included me, demanded the intimacy that comes from close mic work, but that’s not what my beloved work-songs were made for.

In my month at the opera, I learned to more fully appreciate what acoustic singing was, and what it could be. A song that keeps 20 sailors in time as they turn a capstan, that keeps a dozen farm-hands reaping, or keeps a milling frolic working does not have the pretty mic work I’ve learned. A song sung on the picket-line can’t rely on electricity. These are songs that rise above the wind and work to unify the workers. It’s the open and free sound of opera that makes this possible, not the tight and intimate sounds recorded on my CDs.

And, I now have the tools to learn these songs anew. I have the means to retrain my voice to cut through the wind and haul up the sails. This was a fantastic trip to the opera.

The average total debt to equity ratio for the S&P 500 is around 0.88. Our national debt to equity ratio is around 0.075.

By rational business standards, if we don’t take on a lot more debt (at 3% interest) to invest in the future, we are not providing a good return for our shareholders.

No good business would let it’s basic infrastructure crumble while worrying about a 0.075 debt to equity ratio. No informed shareholder would stand for it.

I was walking the dogs past a quintessential Alaskan lake. You know the one, shared by people fishing skiffs, paddling kayaks, swimming and landing seaplanes. As I walked around the lake I was admiring the fireweed, some of it up to my shoulder (*gulp*) and I found myself unconsciously counting the number of flowers yet to bloom.

You see, we have this… superstition. You can tell the severalty of the coming winter by the hight of the fireweed, and the winter will start 6 weeks after all of the buds bloom. It’s kind of like a very weird courting candle; once the fireweed blows out, the date is over.

Here’s the thing… we also count the start of summer with the arrival of the fireweed. We have literally created a mythos where the very beginning of summer heralds its end. How cleverly fatalistic is that?

I love Alaska.

The whole effect is rather less mystical than one might imagine.

You don’t need a Twitter account to read it. Go to Twitter, and put #survivorprivilege in the search window.

My privilege surrounds me like a castle. I cannot leave the castle, and, I cannot look back upon it. I cannot see it as others can. I imagine what it looks like, but everything is distorted when I look down from the walls.

There are people on the outside. People I love dearly. They can’t come in unless I dismantle the walls, and I can’t dismantle something I can’t understand. So, it’s my responsibility to listen and hear what is said about my castle.

I have been a part of several online discussions about sexism and misogamy since last Friday. Generally it breaks down to women saying “this thing is a thing,” and men saying “it can’t be THAT big of a thing.” It’s the difference between looking up the outside of a wall, and looking down the same wall. The wall looks a lot smaller from the top. From the top, it really does not look like that big a thing.

#yesallwomen and the Everyday Sexism Project gives us the opportunity to look at that castle in a safe environment. You don’t need to respond, just go over there and read. Don’t worry about defending yourself (or us), you don’t need to share your thoughts or have them evaluated, just read the experiences of others.

They were the first to witness the miracle. Angles flat out told them about the miracle, but they still could not see it until The Miracle spoke their names. “Mary,” Jesus said, and in that moment, she knew what angles themselves had been unable to convey.

I don’t think we’re that different today. We are surrounded by miracles that we are unable to see, even when they are described to us. Yet, when one of those miracles speaks to us directly, we learn something as if we have known it all our lives.

Happy Easter.