Busy weekend
Dec. 7th, 2009 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuWe had a packed weekend. My parents came to visit, in part to celebrate ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oma_greene's birthday which is this week, and in part to come to the Zamir Chorale's party celebrating the choir's 40th anniversary; as part of that even they were honoring four alumni (one from each decade) and one current singer who has been a member for 37 of the 40 years. (Yay, Sue!) I was the honoree for the 1990s.
The party turned out to be a delightful if long evening. It was held at the JF&CS offices in Waltham, just down the road from Adobe's new offices (so we swung by there on the way over and oohed and aahed at the exterior). It was great to see a lot of people that I used to sing with and to catch up; of course many of us are on LiveJournal and/or Facebook, so in some cases it wasn't so much "catching up." But I did bring a copy of my siddur to showoff around, and there were several people there who don't read Facebook. :-)
In particular, I was able to have a great chat with Shawn Weil, who succeeded me as bass section leader, and another with Chaya and Hillel Bromberg, whom I don't get to see often enough. We shared a table with Phyllis Werlin, which was very nice. Unfortunately, I only got to exchange the briefest of hellos with Bruce Creditor, with Johanna Ehrmann, with fellow honoree Heather Zacker, with Chazan Scott Sokol and Francene Sokol, and with many others too numerous to list here.
My honor was presented by my good friend Susan Rubin, who clearly knows me too well. She presented an acrostic collection of impressions, "from 'Andrew Greene' to 'Zamir'". Both the content and the form were touching. I hope Susan will share the text here. I am grateful to Zamir for honoring me in this way, and (as I said in my remarks) I am incredibly fortunate to have been shaped by the fifteen years I spent learning from these people, starting with Josh Jacobson but encompassing the hundreds of others who made me who I now am in ways large and small.
At the end of the evening, we sang the Zamir anthem, "ha-Zamir," and I had to go stand next to Johanna. At the beginning of each season, Zamir holds auditions, and each audition ends with the candidate singing "ha-Zamir" (which they've been sent in advance) in quartet with the other three sections' leaders. So for eight years, in every soprano and tenor audition, Johanna and I would sing the alto-bass duet line together, and after a few years we could tell whether the audition was a success or not based on whether she and I were making eye contact at that point (because we were enjoying the moment) or staring at a fixed point on the wall (so we could keep a straight face). So when the room started singing "ha-Zamir", I had to go stand next to her so we could have "our" duet together.
And then the party was officially over, and it was almost midnight and it was snowing and we had to let the babysitter get home, so we had to book it out of there.
As I said, it was wonderful to see all these people again, and to sing some old favorites. But bittersweet as that was, it confirmed in my mind that I'm not ready to go back yet.
Thursday night I had been asked to lead Sunday morning's Cub Scout den meeting in starting to work on their "Maccabee Emblem", which is basically "Third-grade Jewish literacy 101". Given that the "Maccabee Emblem" curriculum is aimed at a wide spread of Jewish scouts, and that all these boys go to Jewish Day Schools, it was mostly a matter of reviewing what they already know rather than teaching. But it still required prep time, and coming up with an activity (thanks,introverte, for the blank dreidles!)
And Sunday afternoon I made my molten chocolate cakes for a molten-chocolate-cake-recipe-comparison party with a family we're friends with. The afternoon was delightful and fun, and I think now, thirty hours later, I may be ready to eat again.
oma_greene's birthday which is this week, and in part to come to the Zamir Chorale's party celebrating the choir's 40th anniversary; as part of that even they were honoring four alumni (one from each decade) and one current singer who has been a member for 37 of the 40 years. (Yay, Sue!) I was the honoree for the 1990s.The party turned out to be a delightful if long evening. It was held at the JF&CS offices in Waltham, just down the road from Adobe's new offices (so we swung by there on the way over and oohed and aahed at the exterior). It was great to see a lot of people that I used to sing with and to catch up; of course many of us are on LiveJournal and/or Facebook, so in some cases it wasn't so much "catching up." But I did bring a copy of my siddur to show
In particular, I was able to have a great chat with Shawn Weil, who succeeded me as bass section leader, and another with Chaya and Hillel Bromberg, whom I don't get to see often enough. We shared a table with Phyllis Werlin, which was very nice. Unfortunately, I only got to exchange the briefest of hellos with Bruce Creditor, with Johanna Ehrmann, with fellow honoree Heather Zacker, with Chazan Scott Sokol and Francene Sokol, and with many others too numerous to list here.
My honor was presented by my good friend Susan Rubin, who clearly knows me too well. She presented an acrostic collection of impressions, "from 'Andrew Greene' to 'Zamir'". Both the content and the form were touching. I hope Susan will share the text here. I am grateful to Zamir for honoring me in this way, and (as I said in my remarks) I am incredibly fortunate to have been shaped by the fifteen years I spent learning from these people, starting with Josh Jacobson but encompassing the hundreds of others who made me who I now am in ways large and small.
At the end of the evening, we sang the Zamir anthem, "ha-Zamir," and I had to go stand next to Johanna. At the beginning of each season, Zamir holds auditions, and each audition ends with the candidate singing "ha-Zamir" (which they've been sent in advance) in quartet with the other three sections' leaders. So for eight years, in every soprano and tenor audition, Johanna and I would sing the alto-bass duet line together, and after a few years we could tell whether the audition was a success or not based on whether she and I were making eye contact at that point (because we were enjoying the moment) or staring at a fixed point on the wall (so we could keep a straight face). So when the room started singing "ha-Zamir", I had to go stand next to her so we could have "our" duet together.
And then the party was officially over, and it was almost midnight and it was snowing and we had to let the babysitter get home, so we had to book it out of there.
As I said, it was wonderful to see all these people again, and to sing some old favorites. But bittersweet as that was, it confirmed in my mind that I'm not ready to go back yet.
Thursday night I had been asked to lead Sunday morning's Cub Scout den meeting in starting to work on their "Maccabee Emblem", which is basically "Third-grade Jewish literacy 101". Given that the "Maccabee Emblem" curriculum is aimed at a wide spread of Jewish scouts, and that all these boys go to Jewish Day Schools, it was mostly a matter of reviewing what they already know rather than teaching. But it still required prep time, and coming up with an activity (thanks,
introverte, for the blank dreidles!)And Sunday afternoon I made my molten chocolate cakes for a molten-chocolate-cake-recipe-comparison party with a family we're friends with. The afternoon was delightful and fun, and I think now, thirty hours later, I may be ready to eat again.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 04:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-08 05:00 am (UTC)