Praise the Lord!

When I worked in the bookshop I used to get a regular ezine from Bob Burroughs on music for church worship - and quite a bit more. We corresponded occasionally, and at one point he sent me a copy of each of the CDs he'd produced with the Florida Baptist Singing Men and Women. I used to play them often in the shop. The choir(s) are rich in sound, and have a superb ability to be strong or soft when needed. (That might sound obvious, but not every choir can do it - and this choir is all the more extraordinary in that it consists of volunteers from cities all over Florida.).

Backing the choir is a great band, with excellent brass in particular. The CD I've been listening to again recently is simply called Praise the Lord!

I like a lot of the tracks, but there's one that always amazes me. In it, for a few brief phrases a tenor called Rhon Carter sings. He comes sweeping in across the choir starting way up high, and climbs still higher. Not only that he's singing a phrase with the words, 'Whom shall I send?' and the word 'send' is at the end of the phrase and higher than the rest. Yet he soars up there without seeming effort, and sings what is an awful word to sing up high with consummate ease. Just wonderful.

It's only when I look on Google for this choir that I find that 'singing men/women' is a common title for choirs in the States.

On a less positive note, the Dell computer I ordered on the 19th of January has gone AWOL. The printer arrived a couple of weeks ago, but nothing else has come in. I've been in touch with a woman by email who's supposed to be handling the problem personally, but I haven't heard a peep out of her today, even though she promised some information. It's becoming hard to digest it as time continues to pass by. It was only when I started to make a fuss that anyone did anything. Prior to that the order had got to the point of vanishing off the horizon altogether. Scary, when you've parted out cash in advance.

To give them credit, the last time we ordered a computer from them (the laptop) it arrived safe and sound on time and has worked perfectly since. So will this one, no doubt, once it gets here....finally!

Birthdays

As we begin the new year, and old friend of mine turns 60 today, and one of his sons turns 21. I tried to find a fun, celebratory e-card, but plainly the greatest inspiration in this field isn't delegated to 60th birthdays. The few cards I found were twaddle, and inappropriate. So by way of compensation, I sent him some suitable quotations that I found on a site. Most of them have something wise to say...including the one I wrote myself at the end.

A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.
Arnold Bennett

May you live all the days of your life.
Jonathan Swift

Let us respect gray hairs, especially our own.
J. P. Sears

Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look behind, and count each birthday with a grateful mind.
Alexander Pope

The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.
Plato

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night.
Author Unknown

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
John Burroughs

A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.
Chinese Proverb

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Groucho Marx

May you find that turning sixty is no worse than turning thirty, no more difficult than turning forty, no more aging than turning fifty, and still ten years from turning seventy!