Shooting

Boy, are we famous!

And for all the right things! Not only are we the harbor that welcomed Werner von Braun and his Rocket Boys (this is a good thing); not only are we the place where Sean Hannity started his career for 18k/year on our local HateRadio station (this is a bad thing); but we are now also the home of a disgruntled professor who didn't get tenure and decided to solve her problems with a semi-automatic bequeathed to her by our Second Amendment!

And a number of students felt that things would be better if they were allowed to carry their registered guns on campus! Great idea!

And it happened in the Richard Shelby Center! Yep, he who is the Prince of Pork, yet decries all pork (but only if initiated by Democrats), and who held up the appointments of 70 people because he wanted more Bama pork! Wow! Am I ever proud of our Senators! And Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is another! Another rich, privileged white peckerwood who made good in this state of only 4.5 million benighted, undereducated, repressed people. (BTW, the coach of the Bama football team makes one dollar for every man, woman and child in the state = 4.5 mil/year!)

And they charge the full 8% sales tax on FOOD!! Wow! Ain't that progressive?!?!

What a state!

K-Girls

Last weekend we had a glorious time when Kelley O'Connor and Karen Schrock came to visit us, Kelley from Fresno en route to Birmingham, where she will perform Lieberson's Neruda Songs, and Hong Kong, where she will perform Mahler 3. Karen came in from New York, where she has lived since 2003, studying, working and partying. Both were four-year members of the USC Chamber Choir and both traveled on THREE foreign tours with them. Pic above is from my retirement party in 2007: Karen at your left; Kelley at your right.

Karen now is an editor for Scientific American Mind, the premiere scientific mag in the country. She uses half of her USC double major and all of her NYU masters degree in her work. She is a whiz, writing and editing in the field of neuroscience, including an article about why men fall asleep after sex (I forget the reason; I think I fell asleep immediately after reading it, even without sex).

Kelley is now a citizen of the world; a superb mezzo-soprano in the prime of her career and in demand around the world as a soloist with orchestras and in the occasional opera. While here, she received news that John Adams wants to write an opera for her that will be performed several times here in the States and later around Europe. She is under fine management with IMG (so is Tiger, but that's another story), loves her agent and is busy literally every month of this year. You could look it up: www.kelleyoconnor.com.

The four of us had a great time together, including a Saturday Saturnalia at two of Huntsville's gay bars (don't ask, 'cause we won't tell) that featured the three women drinking ten Manhattans and eating forty pounds of barfood garbage at the first one, then watching drag queens cavort at the second. Oh, and Karen and I played a round of pool, which I won by a single ball.

They are both wonderful people, smart and talented, and are a joy to be around, no matter what we are doing. Sam loved them to death, of course, and they endured his attentions with aplomb.

Can't wait to be together with them again. Y'all are welcome anytime, darlin's.

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And so would you be welcome. We have room, so y'all come see us now, y' hear?