A new era

Our choir director and organist at church recently retired, and though I will miss her, I am blown away by her replacement. I think my excitement has something to do with the anthem he chose for his first Sunday with us, "My Dancing Day," a traditional English carol that fit perfectly with the lessons and allowed us to sing with a joy and freedom that I, personally, have not experienced in a long time. It's amazing how the right kind of music can enhance worship, and how music chosen or performed poorly can completely flatten it.

I'm also excited because the new organist found out about the major cataloging project I took on in the music library years ago, way before K was born, and wants me to finish it and presumably take on the role of music librarian. (D had cooked up a database for me to make the music library (SMML) more accessible -- at the time the only access was through a set of notecards that covered about 1/10 of the music we had on file -- and I had gone through the music files one by one and counted, repaired and cataloged them. I had gotten through about 2/3 of the files when I realized that no one was going to actually use the data I was collecting -- so I stopped.) I'm thrilled that our SMML database will finally be put to use, and that our efforts will be appreciated.