Elton John in Lubbock, America

As the first concert performance in the Texas Tech Spirit Arena 10 years ago, Elton John returned to Lubbock April 9, 2010. 

Seeing and hearing this music icon perform for nearly 3 hours without a break is believing that Elton John came to entertain his audience. 


Watching the crowd, it occurred to me how to distinguish between performers and entertainers. 


A performer performs because of how entertaining makes him feel. 

An entertainer entertains because of how performing makes his audience feel. 

The audience felt appreciated. The crowd could feel the love that night. EJ wore Tech colors and held his guns up. 

Being there brought back memories as only music can. Doing dishes while the radio played "Your Song," I felt as if the artist "put down in words how wonderful life is while you're in the world." 

Phenomenal. 

James captured some video of "Your Song"which I edited for youtube. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5qElk4xQdM


But if you want to hear more, someone posted "Circle of Life," the song Elton John said changed his life.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4GG-K1rlBQ

Ring Bears as Ring Bearers

A movie footnote to Jordan and Stephanie's wedding, nephews Beau and Beck dressed in bear costumes for the wedding rehearsal. No one expected the ring bearers to growl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvdHKL2_JcE

A Pampa Footnote: "Circles inside of circles, inside of circles"

Although a number of women traveled 120–150 miles round trip from surrounding areas to attend, Janice flew from Dallas to Amarillo––up and back in a day––rented a car and drove by herself the 60 miles each way to and from Pampa contending with a 50+ mph crosswind. Janice had dressed for Spring, but nary a complaint about the Panhandle weather crossed her lips.

                                           Janice, me, Pat, Sue and Danina

Thank you, each and every one who got out on such a blustery day, Saturday past, to hear me speak at Faith Bible Church. When I overheard some women saying that the bad weather had made it possible for them to attend because ball games and various outdoor activities got canceled, it struck me how hollow my prayers sound when I ask for comfortable conditions, the removal of obstacles and the wish that things I value would come easy.

Since graduating from Dallas Theological Seminary in 2008, I have sought to discover and develop a speaking/writing platform. Based on remarks and written evaluations, I am encouraged to continue in this direction, to continue as Prof Hendricks tells his Creativity classes, "plussing," to make ideas better.

Several asked about quotes used in my talk, indicating that they wished these had been written out. Most of the quotes came from the books I recommended, titles and authors printed on the back of the outline I had prepared, then distributed.

Without repeating the full outline, here are a few quotes corresponding to each heading. 

I. Reading …
"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." C.S. Lewis

II. Writing …
"You are the custodian of your memories and they are perishable." William Zinsser

III. Creativity…
"All people are born originals, but most die a copy."
"The tragedy of life is not in the fact of death but in what dies inside us while we live." Both of these quotes come from the revered Dr. Howard G. Hendricks, who this year celebrates his 60th Anniversary as a professor at DTS.

IV. Transitions …
"The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask." Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Circles inside of circles, inside of circles …," my story reads better because of you.

Speaking of Pampa

I will be in Pampa, TX on Saturday March 27, 2010 to speak at Faith Bible Church, 10:30–12:30. http://maps.google.com/places/us/tx/pampa/w-kingsmill-ave/110/-faith-bible-church?gl=us


Which, speaking of faith, I must exercise my faith to trust I will have a voice by then. Laryngitis struck with whatever the last 60–70 mph. wind blew into Lubbock the day before yesterday.

My subject is Story. The main points are Reading, Writing and Creativity, with a post script, Transitions.

One of my favorite books, Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, offered inspiration underlying the message I hope to deliver.

The movie, Castaway, a portion of which was filmed in the Panhandle, near Pampa, captures visually how like the ocean that part of Texas is. An intentional parallel, I might add.

Vast, with islands of inhabitants, the land creates its own geographic isolation where the treasures of friendship wash up onto the shores of individual stories.

A Gift to be part of and to know some of these stories, I look forward to seeing familiar faces, hugging necks, meeting new people and reinforcing the ties that have bound my heart forever to Pampa.

A New Mrs. Frugé

 
Stephanie Reneé Reinhart became Mrs. Jordan Frugé a week ago today.

It seems so much longer ago––is it the time change? 

A Mary Poppins wedding, "practically perfect in every way."

Welcome to our family, Stephanie.

My pictures fail to capture how radiant Bride and Groom looked, how wonderful the ceremony was, and how much fun our whole family had throughout the wedding weekend in Horseshoe Bay. 

Here's a peak at a few pictures the wedding photographer took.
http://tylerschmitt.blogspot.com/2010/03/wedding-stephanie-jordan-austin-texas.html 
  

Jordan's nephews, aka. my grandsons Beau and Beck, were Ring Bears. A surprise during the rehearsal, the twins played their parts and kept their secret, which was their mother's great idea. No costumes worn for the actual wedding though. 

No wedding is complete without its crisis and its hero. Here's Charlie, the guy who risked life and limb to break into Stephanie's house to retrieve her veil.

When Stephanie realized late Friday night that she had forgotten her veil in Houston, desperation led Jordan to tell Charlie to use a golf club to break a window. A vigilant neighbor stopped Charlie mid-entry––stopped him with a .357 Magnum pointed at his backside. 

This story has a happy ending. Charlie got the veil, he delivered it in time for the wedding, and Jordan and Stephanie via cell phone made fast friends with their new next door neighbor.  

"You did it!"

In My Fair Lady Colonel Pickering sings to Professor Henry Higgins:

    Tonight, old man, you did it!
    You did it! You did it! 

    You said that you would do it,
    And indeed you did. 

    I thought that you would rue it;
    I doubted you'd do it. But now I must admit it
    That succeed you did . . .

 

 Though at times I doubted I could, my husband said to me after every performance, "You did it."

And words from this song have run through my hat-less head for the past week.

Friends came from near and far to watch, Pat from Pampa and Jocelyn from Lubbock. 

And Kathy from Amarillo. Thanks for the smiles, applause and affirmation. Guess I have yet to give up the performer's ghost.

After the Saturday matineé, local Red Hat Society women asked to have their picture taken with some of the cast members dressed in their costumes for the Ascot scene.

According to comments heard, when the curtain opened the audience gasped, stunned by the effect of seeing everyone dressed in black and white or gray, frozen in a pose to convey the sense of superiority of class distinction. 

In fact, Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw http://www.bartleby.com/138/, the play brilliantly adapted by Alan J. Lerner (lyrics) and Frederick Lowe (music) as My Fair Lady shows how language elevates. Persons trapped in an otherwise rigid social web can through educated language increase their opportunities to enjoy a better life.

     "I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of selling at the corner of Tottenham Court Road," Eliza said. "But they won't take me unless I can talk more genteel…"

     "… It's almost irresistible. She's so deliciously low––so horribly dirty!" Higgins says when he decides to take Pickering's bet. "I'll take it! I'll make a duchess of this draggle-tailed guttersnipe."

And he did it. 

And in the process, Eliza makes a human being out of Professor Henry Higgins––a human being with feelings for someone other than himself.

Hats off to Director John Packard and Musical Director Chris Betts who presented a wonderful production of this premier Broadway musical to the Lubbock community. 

The participants view their contributions as a way to use their God-given talents to bless others. 

      At times I thought I'd die of fright, 

      Never was there a momentary lull …

      You should have heard the oooh's and ah's

      Everyone wondering who she was …

I'm so glad I did it.

World Trade Center Photos Released

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, these photos just got released. Taken from police helicopters flying over Manhattan, the last frozen images of the World Trade Towers before their collapse signaled the end of the era: the freedom to fly friendly skies.

Stunning. No special effects here. Even from the air it looks like the end of the world.

A terrifying national emergency similar to when JFK was assassinated, most people can recall where they were and what they were doing as these events unfolded.

As Roosevelt declared when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, "a date which will live in infamy," 9-11 erupts in our national collective memory. Americans had to recalibrate their worldview.

See 12 of the more than 2,000 photos in this NYT slide show.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11groundzero.html