Spring Forward Smørrebrød

This was my nod to the all-too-premature "spring forward" Daylight Saving Time command last night--a spring-like addition to our regular Saturday evening Danish smørrebrød, simply because I happened to have fresh asparagus in the house. Asparagus is not a usual accompaniment to Danish open-faced sandwiches, though it does appear occasionally on ham with Italian salad, I now recall. But it is not usual with us, since we concentrate more on good, healthy herring (shown here in the five smaller tidbits circling the spring sandwich).

We washed down our five different herring and the spinach-egg-tomato-asparagus-shrimp-dill mayonnaise concoction with a less healthy Carlsberg beer and aquavit. It was delicious, as always. I have been doing some thinking this weekend about the distinction between a habit, a tradition, and a ritual. A habit is done regularly, but without thinking. A tradition has been done before--a few times anyway--and tends to acquire meaning in the fact of being handed down. A ritual is also performed on a regular basis and has meaning; it is ceremonial and, according to Merriam-Webster, has "religious, courtly, social, or tribal significance."

I have been making smørrebrød for almost fifty years. It wasn't until we lived in Spain and had easy access to the ingredients (yes, Spain) that we started to enjoy it every week. Now, back in Cincinnati, we also have easy access to many, though not all, ingredients (bless Ikea and Jungle Jim's). Our Saturday evening dinners go beyond habit to tradition and ritual.

Turning the clocks forward or backward is just an annoying habit.

Music Live with Lunch

So soon (just three days) after the Mack and Mabel performance at C-CM, and here comes another great musical experience. This week it was Music Live with Lunch, a series hosted by Christ Church Glendale, usually on the second Wednesday of each month. These are short concerts, starting at 12:05 and over by 12:35 or so. Some of the ladies of the church prepare an easy-to-eat, but hot and nutritious lunch, that you may purchase for a few dollars and eat during the performance, if you are truly on a lunch hour. I am not, and 12:00 noon is early for my lunch, so after the first one earlier this year, I've just showed up for the performance. It really is an opportunity to be able to leave my desk at 11:45, drive to the next town, park, hear a half hour or so of good music, and be back at my desk (after taking my lunch out of the refrigerator) by 1:00. You can almost do that without telling anyone you are taking time off. And you come back refreshed, inspired, and/or at peace.

Last Wednesday's musical menu featured Michael Unger playing the fabulous new organ in the chapel at Christ Church. Not all the performances are held in the chapel, but all three that I have been to have been in this modern, multi-purpose room with flexible seating and a multi-level pipe organ as center focal point. It was particularly fitting for the four organ pieces played by Mr. Unger, who is, among other roles, Assistant professor of Organ and Harpsichord at UC's College-Conservatory of Music. I wish I was more educated about organ music, or even music in general; all I really know is that this was grandiose in the good sense, and Unger clearly appreciated this great organ and venue. The program:

Concerto del Sigr. Torelli in A minor, arr. J.G. Walther (1684-1748)

[Allegro]

Adagio

Allegro

Herzlich tut mich verlangen, Johann Peter Keller (1705-1772)

Andante with Variations in D Major, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

Fugue No. 2 on BACH Op. 60, No.2, Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel, according to Wikipedia, is a musical first produced on Broadway in 1974, which received eight Tony nominations--including Best Musical--but which won none. The original Broadway production starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters and closed after just eight weeks. It tells the story of the romance between Mack Sennett, movie director, and his leading lady, Mabel Normand. between the years 1911 and 1933. It also tells the story of the early film industry in Brooklyn and Hollywood, Mack Sennett's comedic "two-reelers" starring Mabel Normand, then Sennett's Bathing Beauties, then his Keystone Cops, and finally the demise of "movies" after the incursion of the "talkies."

After seeing the production at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music (CCM) this afternoon, it is hard to believe that the play was a flop in its original production. Spectacular choreography and costumes, original stage settings, expert music, and powerful and energetic stage performances transformed it into an experience to remember. Then, too, it was the first performance I have ever seen at CCM, a leading school for music in the U.S., with no fewer than five performance venues. I have heard of CCM since we came to Cincinnati two years ago, but somehow the timing was never right to get there. But the timing was right today, and off we went. It will not be our last excursion.

I have loved theater since the first productions I ever saw, two musical comedies in Dayton, Ohio, and two summer Shakespeare plays in Yellow Springs, Ohio, when I was in high school back in the 1960s. When I attended Tufts University I was pleased to discover bi-weekly Cup and Saucer performances in Tufts' small Theater in the Round during the school calendar terms, performance put on by the drama department, with discussions of the plays after each  presentation. Somehow I got myself admitted to a program in London for my junior year, designed for drama and English literature majors, though I was neither, and I went to every single play showing in the West End of London during the fall of 1967. There were theater performances at other times after I returned to New England, in the Merrimack Repertory Theater in Lowell, Massachusetts when we lived in the Boston area; the Yale Rep and the Long Wharf in New Haven when we lived in Connecticut; and occasional Broadway productions. I've even gone to a few live theater productions in Denmark on my many trips there, and attendance at the summer musical revue at Bakken north of Copenhagen has become an almost annual event. But attendance at live theater dropped off dramatically during the decade that we lived in Spain, replaced by mostly classical musical performances, which bridge the language barrier. So it had been a very long time indeed since I had experienced the energy and life of real theater. Until this afternoon. And I loved it again.