Sunday and Monday

Sunday was Mother's Day. I was leading choir at the Dummerston Church, and I had chosen to have the choir sing Bobby   McFerrin's version of the 23rd Psalm, which he dedicated to his mother, and uses the feminine pronoun throughout: "She makes me lie down in green meadows," etc., and also ends with a daring "Glory be to our Mother, and Daughter ..." That went fine. But Shawn was preaching on Psalm 139 ("Whither shall I flee from thy spirit..." ), and that provided the perfect opportunity to sing one of my favorite shape-note hymns, titled DANIELS, by Neely Bruce, which is a paraphrase of verses from Psalm 139.  The problem is that it has a wickedly difficult and very high soprano line, and my key soprano, who loves DANIELS  (we sang it at her mother's funeral) called in sick Sunday morning. So I had to scratch it at the last minute. But overall the service went well, and Shawn had a brilliant sermon. 

The rest of Sunday we took it easy doing the Spelling Bee puzzle from the NYTimes, and listening to Public Radio. But we learned at church that our friend, Nancy Miller, who had pancreatic cancer, and for whom we had sung at her home on Friday, had died early Sunday morning. Word had gone out that the family would appreciate meals, so on Monday, Ellen spent much of the day preparing food while I worked on books. We took the meal over at 5:30, but no one was home! We found a way to leave it in the frig, fortunately. Nancy was an orchardist, and her trees were in fantastic bloom! It was like her trees were honoring her. 

        Nancy Miller's orchard in bloom

On the way down her road, we had to stop to let a turtle cross the road! He was moving slowly, but he made it safely. 

        Old Man turtle!

Then Ellen suggested we go see the movie Chappaquiddick, at the Latchis, and I said, "Sure," so we did. Popcorn was our supper. We were in the small theatre #3, and who should come but Andy and Robin.  About eight people altogether - not a crowd. It wasn't a great film, but it was worth seeing. The Latchis has a lot of Grecian murals. E.g.:

We talked with Andy and Robin a while after the film and came home.