Dams, Hamm's, Grahams, but no more Graeme

February 18, 2013 Oak Point Nature Preserve 

A beaver dam in Plano, Texas? Is that even possible? Don't beavers live in Jellystone with Yogi and Boo-Boo?

On my walks at Oak Point Nature Preserve I've slowly realized that there's a dam on the stream flowing under Jupiter Road. Haven't spotted a real live beaver beaving, but after the incident of the real live bobcat bobbing, a beaver sighting would be welcome.

As for Hamm's, that beer was brewed in the "land of sky blue waters".  It was Hamm's, the beer refreshing! I still see the revolving Hamm's lighted sign above the darkened bar in Columbus, Nebraska.  The Hamm's bear was paddling the canoe The beaver was slapping its tail.

Susan Graham was wonderfully eerie in the finale of "The Aspern Papers" performance of the Dallas Opera yesterday. The opera music and libretto are by Dominick Argento, loosely based on the Henry James novella of the same title. Last fall I struggled through the novella waiting and waiting for something to happen!  I loved Argento's reimagining of the story interwoven with a fictional opera about Medea. Yup, hell hath no fury...

Hell hath no s'mores either. Surprised to find several preschool students call graham crackers "s'mores". The graham cracker is just the foundation for a "s'more". Sylvester Graham, a preacher on the temperance lecture circuit in Jacksonian America, was the father of the food movement.

[Martha Graham was one of the seven creative giants detailed in Howard Gardner's Creating Minds : An Anatomy of Creativity. Stravinsky is another of Gardner's subjects, and I've got "Rite of Spring" in the cd player. I get it mixed up with Debussy's "Afternoon of  a Faun". A spring afternoon is a very good thing as long as one looks carefully in the rearview mirror.]

Graeme Jenkins, Dallas Opera music director, has been a gem in the cultural scene for seventeen years. Damn, I'm sad to see him leave, but wish him the best.


© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder