Opera - In Memorium - Funeral Traditions - No holiday cards at B & N - Poems for the Departed

We're gonna hear Act One now of The Queen of Spades from the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. It's by Tchaikovsky and is considered a "dark opera."

"I feel afraid" is sung by various quartets in the opera.

Starring Aleksandrs Antonenko as Hermann, Lise Davidson as his devastated lover Lisa and Larissa Diadkova as the Countess, the titular Queen of Spades, who Herman hounds for the secrets of the cards.

I submitted Motherless Child to Pure Slush, having worked on it in the middle of the night. My sister Lynn gave me the thumbs up.

I've totally run out of Holiday Cards. Wanted to send them to a few neighbors. Scott went to B & N to buy some more.

The only cards are single ones, not boxes.

Memorials to:

Jim Berry, our former accountant
Jim McCauley, comedian who died onstage while performing
Lillian Moss, Ada's mother
Judy Diaz
Roberto - Robert Howard Lokoff

Green funerals. In the United States, more and more people are opting for environmentally friendly burials. This means skipping embalming processes, nixing traditional concrete vaults and getting biodegradable, woven-willow caskets, which decompose into the ground. The Green Burial Council has approved 40 environmentally friendly cemeteries in the U.S. — way up from a decade ago. Another option: becoming a memorial “reef ball.” A company called Eternal Reefs compresses remains into a sphere that is attached to a reef in the ocean, providing a habitat for sea life. [Newsweek, Wall Street Journal]

Balinese cremation. “Strange as it seems, it is in their cremation ceremonies that the Balinese have their greatest fun,” Miguel Covarrubias wrote in the 1937 book, Island of Bali. In 2008, the island saw one of its most lavish cremations ever as Agung Suyasa, head of the royal family, was burned along with 68 commoners. Thousands of volunteers gathered to carry a giant bamboo platform, an enormous wooden bull and wooden dragon. After a long procession, Suyasa’s body was eventually placed inside the bull and burned as the dragon stood witness. In the Balinese tradition, cremation releases the soul so it is free to inhabit a new body — and doing this is considered a sacred duty. [The New York Times]

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Jim Berry, our former accountant

Jim McCauley, comedian who died onstage while performing

Lillian Moss, Ada's mother

Judy Diaz

Robert Howard Lokoff

MISSING YOU

Your number came up
or perhaps it did not
still you no longer
inhabit this world of
summer greenery
of porch chairs
and kitty-cats

of drive-by clouds
moving in slo-mo
across the effervescent sky

Cars and trucks of all sorts
pass us by, oblivious of your
passing.

The only way to defeat death
is to concentrate for one brief
moment. Think of something you love.
A baby's open mouth. The sturdy oak
in your front yard. The face of
your sleeping lover.

Death begone!