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I remember 2025 like it was yesterday...and in that long-forgotten year: I posted 459 times on The Daily Parker, down 21 from 2024 and 41 from 2023. But the blog had it's 10,000th post sometime in August, which is something. I flew less in 2025 than in the previous three years, with only 7 flight segments totaling 8,371 flight miles. I didn't leave the US in 2025, about which I am sad. And I only visited five states: Tennessee,  Washington, Wisconsin, Texas, and California. Strangely, I didn't even make...

Just so I can keep track, my month so far: Mon Dec 1, Messiah dress rehearsal, Millar Chapel, EvanstonTue Dec 2, chorus fundraiser planning committeeMon Dec 8, Messiah rehearsalThu Dec 11, Messiah tutti rehearsal, Holy Name Cathedral, ChicagoSat Dec 13, Messiah performance, Holy Name CathedralSun Dec 14, Messiah performance, Millar ChapelTue Dec 16, Messiah sing-a-long, EvanstonWed Dec 17, Christmas Eve rehearsal, EvanstonSun Dec 21 (morning), 4th Sunday of Advent service, EvanstonSun Dec 21...

At concert time yesterday, the temperature at O'Hare had barely made it above -13°C (9°F), and the -21°C (-6°F) wind chill didn't help. At least it was sunny. Even at intermission, about an hour before the sun set, the stained glass at Millar Chapel was amazing: The audience were facing the massive stained-glass window on the south end of the chapel, which really enhanced the music, I think. We really enjoy performing there. And as forecast, the temperature bottomed out around midnight and has gotten...

It's late October, so the days are shorter. Then on Sunday, we get an extra hour of sleep at the cost of an hour of afternoon daylight. Which is all to say I ran out of time today doing actual work and taking meetings at odd times because the UK switched their clocks yesterday. And now I have to walk two dogs, feed two dogs, and run to rehearsal. More tomorrow.

I thoroughly enjoyed our performance yesterday. After the No Kings demonstration, between the dress rehearsal and the concert, and well before the rain hit, Millennium Park looked pretty nice: After the concert, I did not enjoy the rainstorm that greeted us when we walked over to the place where we had our post-concert drinks and snacks. I got home well after midnight, which fortunately Cassie didn't mind because she was at sleepaway camp.  Cassie, now home, seems to be recovering from the trauma pretty...

I'll be in tonight's Ear Taxi Festival performance at Harris Theater in Millennium Park, singing Damien Geter's African American Requiem. I'm really enjoying the piece. Even though our call time (1:30pm) makes it impossible to participate in the No Kings demonstration happening just 400 meters away from the concert venue, I think the chorus are doing their parts as Geter's message is relevant to the day. If you're in Chicago, come for the demonstration and stay for the concert! If you're not in Chicago...

The Microsoft Surface Pro 3 that I got over 10 years ago continues to work just fine; in fact, I'm writing this post on it. Sadly, Microsoft will stop providing updates to Windows 10 in a week, and the tablet is so old I can't update it to Windows 11. Not only does the prospect of spending $600 to replace something that doesn't need replacing annoy me, but it also means I'm going to have to spend several hours installing and configuring everything. And next week I have 5 rehearsals and a performance, so...

Former Chicago Opera Theater artistic director Lidya Yankovskaya, with whom I have worked several times, has started moving to London because she doesn't want her children to grow up in the anti-humanities environment the United States is becoming: “I want to be sure that my children can grow up feeling like they can always express themselves freely. I want my children to live in a society that really takes care of its people. I want my children to live in a world that really values things like the...

Despite getting back to a relative normal in 2023, 2024 seemed to revert back to how things went in 2020—just without the pandemic. Statistically, though, things remained steady, for the most part: I posted 480 times on The Daily Parker, 20 fewer than in 2023 and 17 below the long-term median. January and July had the most posts (48) and April and December the fewest (34). The mean of 40.0 was slightly lower than the long-term mean (41.34), with a standard deviation of 5.12, reflecting a mixed posting...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago has performed Händel's Messiah 145 years in a row. Our 146th will happen at 7pm Saturday December 14th at DePaul's Holtschneider Performance Center and at 2pm Sunday December 15th at Millar Chapel, Evanston. We've gotten really good at this. And Josefien Stoppelenburg is the absolute queen of melismas. Don't miss this!

I had planned a longer post this evening, but I had about 2 hours of chorus work to do and I didn't have any energy for half an hour after getting home. We may have our hottest night of the year tonight, with a forecast low of 26°C, before having our hottest day of the year tomorrow. (We had 36°C on June 17th; tomorrow could be 37°C.) So I'm going to drink another glass or two of ice water and pat Cassie for a bit, then gird myself for tomorrow's sticky walk to doggie day care.

I've got a performance this evening that requires being on-site at the venue for most of the day. So in a few minutes I'll take two dogs to boarding (the houseguest is another performer's dog), get packed, an start heading to a hockey rink in another city. Fun! If I'm supremely lucky, I'll get back home before the storm. Since I also have to travel to the venue, I'll have time to read a few of these: Jamelle Bouie warns that the convicted-felon XPOTUS has even less preparation for a possible second term...

On this day 200 years ago, Ludwig van Beethoven conducted the premier of his 9th Symphony at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. The Apollo Chorus performed it almost exactly a year ago, inspiring one of our members to express in meme form one of the more fun passages of the piece: And how did one of the 19th century's greatest composers follow this up? He decomposed.

After a week of rehearsals capped by two performances of some really challenging works by French and Swiss composers, I finally got a full 8½ hours of sleep last night. What a difference. Not just the needed rest, but also having a much smaller inbox (just one task for the chorus left until next week) and less to worry about. Until I open a newspaper, of course: The head of the political arm of Hamas, the terrorist group and de jure governing party in Gaza which has called for the annihilation of all...

Cassie and I got over 2 hours of walks yesterday, and spent most of the day outside. By the time we got to Spiteful, Cassie needed a nap: Her day ended pretty well, on the couch getting lots of scritches, but between our 10 km of walks, the dog park, and meeting new friends along the way, she got a bath. Instead of struggling and trying to escape, though, she mournfully stepped into the tub and awaited her fate. Such a good girl! Later today, the Apollo Chorus will conclude its season at St Michael...

I spent almost 10 hours outside yesterday, almost all of them with Cassie, so I didn't have a lot of time to read or write. And I've got an event in 90 minutes. So contra the two A-Z challenges I did in 2018 and 2019, this April looks like thin gruel for blogging. It looks like I get my life back next Monday, after our long week of 3 rehearsals and 2 performances.

I tried for a little more than 6 months to read a book of humorous essays by an author I really like, and just couldn't finish. It pains me. But I feel a tiny bit of relief at not seeing the book on my nightstand anymore. Since I started reading it, I read—no exaggeration—24 other books, which suggests I really didn't find it all that interesting. Sometimes you have to just move on, no matter how much you like someone's other work. Meanwhile, tonight is our annual fundraiser/cabaret, for which I need to...

Through next weekend I'm going to have a lot to do, so much that I've scheduled "nothing" for the back half of next week going into our annual fundraiser on April 6th. I might even get enough sleep. I hope I have time to read some of these, too: Eileen O'Neill Burke has won the Democratic Party primary for Cook County States Attorney (called a District Attorney just about everywhere else), and is therefore the presumptive successor to outgoing CCSA Kim Foxx. Andrew Sullivan sees the XPOTUS hawking $59...

We always take a week off after our Choral Classics concert, which saves everyone's sanity. I in fact do have a chorus obligation today, but it's easy and relatively fun: I'm walking through the space where we'll have our annual Benefit Cabaret, Apollo After Hours, and presumably having dinner with the benefit committee. I'll be home early enough to have couch time with Cassie and get a full night's sleep. Meanwhile: Former presidential speechwriter James Fallows annotates President Biden's State of the...

Chicago Classical Review reporter Tim Sawyier liked what he heard last night: The number of American performing ensembles that can date their lineage to the Romantic era is small and dwindling. Yet it is striking to consider that Anton Bruckner was still in his forties when Chicago’s Apollo Chorus was founded in 1872, in the wake of the Great Fire; the group was entering its second decade when the composer completed his Te Deum in 1884. The Chorus also offered three smaller, a cappella Bruckner...

We're just a few hours away from our Choral Classics concert celebrating the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner's birth. Tickets are still available! But I've got a lot to do before then, not least of which is making sure that Cassie and I get enough walkies today. (Lots of standing and sitting at concerts, if you're performing.) But before I take a nap continue preparing for the concert, I want to point out that people finally have come around to the idea that English isn't Latin: Late last month...

Almost always, during the last few days before a performance, a huge chunk of my working memory contains the music I'm about to perform. I have two concerts this weekend, so right now, my brain has a lot of Bruckner in it. I feel completely prepared, in fact. Unfortunately, I still have a day job, and I need a large chunk of my brain to work on re-architecting a section of our app. Instead of loading data from Microsoft Excel files, which the app needs to read entirely into memory because of the way...

For Reasons, we have the dress rehearsal for our Saturday performance on Saturday. That means poor Cassie will likely go ten hours crossing her paws between the time I have to leave and when I'm likely to get back. Fortunately, she should be exhausted by then. Tonight's dress rehearsal for our Sunday performance won't put her out as much, thanks to Dog Delivery from my doggy day care. Still, I'd rather have a quiet evening at home than a 3-hour rehearsal and an hour-long car trip home... Meanwhile, in...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra will celebrate Anton Bruckner's 200th birth anniversary next weekend. We perform Saturday at the Glenview Community Church and Sunday at the Elmhurst Christian Reformed Church. Here's a sample, from our rehearsal last Monday: Note that we're only doing this and two other a cappella motets on Saturday. Our Sunday performance will have Mozart's "Linz" symphony instead. Both performances will feature Bruckner's Te Deum and Psalm 150, two...

Last year continued the trend of getting back to normal after 2020, and with one nice exception came a lot closer to long-term bog standard normal than 2022. I posted 500 times on The Daily Parker, 13 more than in 2022 and only 6 below the long-term median. January, May, and August had the most posts (45) and February, as usual, the least (37). The mean of 41.67 was actually slightly higher than the long-term mean (41.23), with a standard deviation of 2.54, which may be the lowest (i.e., most consistent...

Our performances at Holy Name Cathedral and Alice Millar Chapel went really well (despite the grumblings of one critic). But part of the fun of serving as president of the chorus meant I got to go back to Holy Name this morning to sign off on 128 chairs and 4 dollies getting into a truck: They say Mass at noon every day. The window the rental company gave me was "ESTIMATED to arrive one hour before or after 10:53 AM." They actually showed up at 11:37. Fortunately, I had 4 of the 13 stacks you see above...

With all my rehearsals and performances this week, poor Cassie feels deprived of love and affection, as you can tell: Regular posting resumes Monday.

After waiting over two hours for our vendor to deliver the orchestra and chorus chairs to Holy Name Cathedral this morning, and our dress rehearsal tonight, plus two performances this coming weekend (the second one at Millar Chapel in Evanston), posting may decline slightly. That said, come to the concerts! We still have seats (pews) available. I just hope I get enough sleep between now and Sunday...

Tomorrow I have a quick trip to the Bay Area to see family. I expect I will not only continue posting normally, but I will also research at least two Brews & Choos Special Stops while there. Exciting stuff. And because we live in exciting times: The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York has charged an Indian national with a murder-for-hire scheme in which our "friend" the Government of India put out a hit on a Sikh activist living in our country. The US Dept of Defense has released its...

I closed a 3-point story and if the build that's running right now passes, another bug and a 1-point story. So I'm pretty comfortable with my progress through this sprint. But I haven't had time to read any of these, though I may try to sneak them in before rehearsal: The XPOTUS has started using specific terminology to describe his political opponents that we last heard from a head of government in 1945. (Guess which one.) Says Tomasky: "[Republicans] are telling us in broad daylight that they want to...

I've had a few things on my plate this week, including a wonderful event with the Choeur de la Cathedrale de Notre Dame de Paris at Old St Patrick's Church in Chicago. We had a big dinner, they sang for us, we sang for them, and then some of us hosted some of them in our homes. Tonight I'm hearing their real performance at Alice Millar Chapel in Evanston. Sunday night I saw comedian Liz Miele at the Den Theater. I'm totally crushing on her and highly recommend you catch her on this tour: And naturally I...

I woke up this morning feeling like I'm fighting a cold, which usually means I'm fighting a cold. One negative Covid test later, I'm still debating whether to go to rehearsal tonight. Perhaps after a nap. And wearing an N-95. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum ran the world's fastest marathon yesterday in Chicago, finishing the race in 2:00:35, 36 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09 set last year in Berlin. David Ignatius reflects on the massive intelligence...

Not a lot happened today, except that I and other members of the Apollo Chorus sang at the wedding of one of our own. She asked for some pretty challenging repertoire, but we nailed it, and we may have been the second-best thing about the afternoon. The best, of course, was watching our friend get married. Regular posting resumes tomorrow.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) lost the first procedural vote to prevent a second vote aimed at kicking him out of the Speaker's chair, which will probably result in him getting re-elected in a few days. The Republicans in Congress simply have no one else who can get 218 votes for Speaker. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) would get 214, but no Republican would ever vote for him. And my party's caucus have absolutely no interest in helping the Romper Room side of the aisle get its own house in order. Fun...

Every time I perform a major work like a Mozart opera, I'm tired and uncreative for about two days afterward. I often forget this. So yesterday and today are more for recharging than creating, which is fortunate as the story I'm working on at my day job just requires changing a label to a text box and adding a Save button. (I should have all that done in a couple of hours.) I expect regular posting will resume tomorrow.

i just pushed a new build of Weather Now that corrects a problem no one else knew about in the way it managed time zones. The work took about 3 hours over several days this week, sneaking half an hour here and there between rehearsals, performances, and my day job. I also worked on some code to interface with my home weather station. I've gotten it to download and parse reports from my Netatmo devices, and to refresh (and securely store) the API access token. I figure it'll take about 3-5 more hours to...

The Martin Theater at Ravinia Park yesterday: The Chicago Symphony Orchestra sold out both of our Magic Flute performances in the Theater this weekend, but you can still get lawn tickets for 7:30pm tonight or 1pm Sunday. And if you take Metra, you can ride to and from the park for free.

I had a rehearsal for next week's Mozart performances this morning, then I walked the dog and went to the grocery store. Somehow it's almost 6pm now. One quick thing: Good Omens Season 2 hit yesterday, and I watched the first three episodes. In episode 2, starting at 22:35, David Tennant has a scene with someone he knows really well. And in episode 3, at 28:33, look carefully at the manufacturer's name in the close-up; it's a lovely nod to Sir Terry. I might not post tomorrow as I'm taking a day trip to...

I'm just over a week from performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, so as I try to finish a feature that turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought, I'm hearing opera choruses in my head. Between rehearsals and actual work, I might never get to read any of these items: Jesse Wegman describes how to tell a political prosecution from a real one, which would be great except the people doing the political ones don't read the Times. Meaghan O'Rourke points to...

During the weeks around our Spring Concert, like during the first couple of weeks of December, I have almost no free time. The Beethoven performance also took away an entire day. Yesterday I had hoped to finish a bit of code linking my home weather station to Weather Now, but alas, I studied German instead. Plus, with the aforementioned Spring Concerts on Friday and today, I felt that Cassie needed some couch time. (We both sit on the couch while I read or watch TV and she gets non-stop pats. It's good...

If you haven't got plans tonight, or you do but you're free Sunday afternoon, come to our Spring Concert: You can read these during the intermission: The National Association of Government Employees has sued President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen—both of whom they support politically—to force the Administration to ignore the debt ceiling. Sci-fi author Ted Chiang, in a brutal essay, suggests a metaphor for AI: think of it "as a management consulting firm, along the lines of McKinsey &...

Today got away from me. I performed Beethoven's 9th Symphony last night and caught up on Cassie time today. We had beautiful, warm weather until about 8pm, too, so I didn't do any work at all. Tomorrow we have crappy weather, so I'll post as usual.

I'm taking a quiet day after our annual fundraiser. I should find out by next week exactly what our fundraising haul was. I do know that one of my friends outbid me for something I'd stored at my house since our 2019 fundraiser, which means I'll have to store it at my house again for a couple of weeks until they pick it up. Otherwise, a really fun evening, with something like 800 photos that I have to go through now at some point soon.

The Apollo Chorus annual fundraiser/cabaret is on April 1st, and tickets are still available. If you can't make it, you can still donate. Meanwhile, in the rest of the world: From February, Tommy Craggs writes in New Republic that Lyndon LaRouche's zombie ideas still walk the land. The New York Times has collection of photos from Northern California of the atmospheric river they're getting right now. Annie Lowrey thinks "you should be outraged" about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. But Molly White...

After my work conference this week, and flying home yesterday, I had a rehearsal this morning and I've got a performance tomorrow. I'll try to catch up on some posts tomorrow morning.

Just a pre-weekend rundown of stuff you might want to read: The US Supreme Court's investigation into the leak of Justice Samuel Alito's (R) Dobbs opinion failed to identify Ginny Thomas as the source. Since the Marshal of the Court only investigated employees, and not the Justices themselves, one somehow does not feel that the matter is settled. Paul Krugman advises sane people not to give in to threats about the debt ceiling. I would like to see the President just ignore it on the grounds that Article...

We've now got two full years between us and 2020, and it does look like 2022 got mostly back to normal. The Daily Parker got 487 posts in 2022, 51 fewer than in 2021 and 25 below median. As usual, I posted the most in January (46) and fewest in November (37), creating a very tight statistical distribution with a standard deviation of 3.45. In other words: posting was pretty consistent month to month, but down overall from previous years. I flew 10 segments and 16,138 flight miles in 2022, low for...

Both of our Messiah performances went well. We had too few rehearsals and too many new members this year to sing the 11 movements from memory that we have done in the past, which meant that all us veterans sang stuff we'd memorized with our scores open. So like many people in the chorus, I felt better about this year than I have since I started. We got a decent review, too. Also, we passed a milestone yesterday: 1,000 days since my company closed our Chicago office because of the pandemic, on 16 March...

Between my actual full-time job and the full-time job I've got this week preparing for King Roger, Cassie hasn't gotten nearly the time outdoors that she wants. The snow, rain, and 2°C we have today didn't help. (She doesn't mind the weather as much as I do.) Words cannot describe how less disappointed I am that I will have to miss the XPOTUS announcing his third attempt to grift the American People, coming as it does just a few hours after US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) announced his bid for Senate...

I'm taking a day of doing nothing today lest I completely implode. After two 3-hour rehearsals this week, another three next week, and two performances next weekend, I'll need all of Thanksgiving week to catch up on The Crown and Warrior Nun. (Don't snicker at that second one; it's a great show!) Regular posting should resume soon.

Wow, yesterday went on a bit. From getting on the bus to Peoria to getting off the bus back in Chicago, I spent 18 hours and 20 minutes doing something connected with the Peoria Symphony's performance of Beethoven's 9th yesterday. I think it went quite well, and I expect they'll ask us back the next time they do a huge symphonic choral work. Right now, Cassie has plotzed completely after two nights in boarding, and I need to figure out what I'm eating this week. So I'll post something more interesting...

We're performing with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra tonight, which means we need to get our butts to Peoria this morning. Which means I woke up way too early. Normal posting resumes tomorrow, assuming I recover by then.

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to the US Treasury Secretary) Kwasi Kwarteng (Cons.) announced significant tax cuts along with £72 billion in new spending to forestall higher energy bills this winter. Unfortunately, this massive stimulus comes during some of the highest inflation the UK has seen in a generation, estimated to be nearly 10% annualized as of this week. Consequence? This, as of just a few minutes ago: Sterling hasn't gone below $1.10 since 1985, and it probably won't again during...

This was such an amazing experience! Exhausting, but amazing. Backstage at intermission; Maestro James Conlon is front and center: And we, the chorus of Roman Citizens, after our curtain call: I should fully recover by...maybe Thursday?

I'm spending a lot of time here through Sunday, performing two Mozart operas (as previously reported): Tickets are still available.

Today, though, I've got a lot of debugging, and several chorus meetings on various topics, plus a condo association meeting that I really don't want to attend. Since I'm president of both the chorus and the condo association (one voluntary, one voluntold), I can't shirk either. Meanwhile, some of the grain silos that remind Beirut of the massive government incompetence that led to a massive aluminum nitrate explosion two years ago today collapsed, fortunately before the memorial began. And one of the...

We've got a (soft) product release tomorrow afternoon and I've got an opera rehearsal tonight, so a real post will have to wait. I did like Matt Ford's brief note that we've taken the gloves off in the Senate, which is about time. I might have to declare news bankruptcy tonight, though, and return to the world after we launch.

In just a few minutes I will take Cassie to boarding, then head up to Northwestern for a rehearsal (I'm in the chorus at Ravinia's upcoming performances of La Clemenza di Tito.) I'll then have to pack when I get home from rehearsal, then head to a hotel by O'Hare. Ah, how much fun is an 8:30 international flight! As I'll have some time at the airport in the morning, and no time now, I want to queue these up for myself: Jonathan Chait says Senator Joe Manchin (D?-WV) didn't kill President Biden's agenda...

It's not too late to get one of the remaining tickets to Terra Nostra:

Yesterday I had a full work day plus a three-hour rehearsal for our performance of Stacy Garrop's Terra Nostra on Monday night. (Tickets still available!) Also, yesterday, the House began its public hearings about the failed insurrection on 6 January 2021. Also, yesterday was Thursday, and I could never get the hang of Thursdays. Walter Shapiro believes the January 6th committee might "have the goods." Slate's Dan Kois describes the efforts of L.A.'s Crosswalk Collective and the UK's Tyre Extinguishers...

Tonight our chorus has its (sold out!) fundraiser. This will be the first year since I joined the chorus that I won't be performing, and the second where I'm not running the event. I finally get to just enjoy the night. Except one of the co-chairs has Covid. And the reason I'm not performing is that one of the ensemble I put together also has Covid, and another got called up for his Army Reserve weekend unexpectedly. But, hey, it's going to be fun...and did I mention we sold out? We did find a couple...

Now that I've got a few weeks without travel, performances*, or work conferences, I can go back to not having enough time to read all the news that interests me. Like these stories: The Economist examines how Putin might be punished for war crimes in Ukraine. Max Boot wonders why Tucker Carlson still loves his old Uncle Vlad. The IPCC says we have eight years to cut greenhouse emissions by 50% or the planet will pass the 1.5°C warming threshold no matter what else we do. Welp. Via Bruce Schneier...

The Apollo Chorus performed last night at the Big Foot Arts Festival in Walworth, Wis., so I haven't done a lot of useful things today. I did take a peek at the other weather archive I have lying around, and discovered (a) it has the same schema as the one I'm currently importing into Weather Now 5, and (b) it only goes back to August 2006. Somewhere I have older archives that I need to find... But if not, NOAA might have some.

We're about to get back on the road for our 700 km drive back to Chicago. Before leaving, I just wanted to highlight Ravinia Festival's upcoming 2022 season. In particular, note who they're partnering with for these performances of La Clemenza di Tito and Don Giovanni. Oh, yes, I will be there.

We had two incredible performances of Bach's Johannespassion this weekend. (Update: we got a great review!) It's a notoriously difficult work that Bach wrote for his small, amateur church chorus in Leipzig the year he started working there. I can only imagine what rehearsals were like in 1724. I'm also grateful that we didn't include the traditional 90-minute sermon between the 39-minute first part and the 70-minute second part, and that we didn't conclude the work with the equally-traditional pogrom...

Even as the East Coast gets bombed by an early-spring cyclone, we have sunny skies and bitter cold. But the -12°C at O'Hare at 6am will likely be the coldest temperature we get in Chicago until 2023. The forecast predicts temperatures above 10°C tomorrow and up to 16°C on Wednesday, with no more below-freezing temperatures predicted as far out as predictions can go. Meanwhile, I'm about to leave for our first of two Bach Jonannespassion performances this weekend. We still have tickets available for...

Two weeks from today, the Apollo Chorus will join with the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra for their performance of Bach's St John Passion. Our performance is the next day in Lakeview, Chicago. Today we had a 2½-hour special rehearsal, after which I needed to do some shopping, then give Cassie a bit of exercise. I will now nap. Tomorrow will be easier.

Winter officially has another week and a half to run, but we got a real taste of spring in all its ridiculousness this week: Yesterday the temperature got up to 13°C at O'Hare, up from the -10°C we had Monday morning. It's heading down to -11°C overnight, then up to 7°C on Sunday. (Just wait until I post the graph for the entire week.) Welcome to Chicago in spring. Elsewhere: Republicans in New York and Illinois have a moan about the redistricting processes in those states that will result in...

When I got home from our Messiah performance yesterday, my car ended up here: If you don't have International System conversion factors ready to hand, just know that one statute mile is 1,609.344 meters. So right before I got to my garage last night, my car hit 10,000 miles exactly. And how about that average fuel economy? For the luddites, 2.2 L/100 km is about 105 MPG. If you recall, I bought the car just shy of 3 years ago. So in three years, I've driven about 10,000 miles and filled up the car 12...

Pity Cassie, who had to stay home alone yesterday for about 8 hours and will have to do the same today. She trusts that I will eventually come home, though, meaning she just crossed her paws and waited for me. While she slept in various positions on the couch, I sang Händel's Messiah for the first time in nearly two years. It's great to be back on stage. And here we go again... Regular blog posts resume tomorrow.

We're all set to perform Handel's Messiah tomorrow and Sunday, which got noticed by both the local news service and local TV station. Otherwise, the week just keeps getting odder: Monkees singer-songwriter Michael Nesmith died today at 78. Consumer prices rose at an annualized rate of 6.8% in November, the highest rate in 39 years. Catherine Rampell wonders who would ever design a political system like ours. Kate Riga explains the dog-whistle Justice Amy Coney Barrett (R) used in last week's oral...

The temperature bottomed out last night just under -10°C, colder than any night since I adopted Cassie. (We last got that cold on February 20th.) Even now the temperature has just gone above -6°C. Though she has two fur coats on all the time, I still think keeping her outside longer than about 20 minutes would cause her some discomfort. Add that it's Messiah week and I barely have enough free time to give her a full hour of walks today. Meanwhile, life goes on, even if I can only get the gist of it...

Having a day off with no real responsibilities gives me the space to take care of some niggling projects I've put off for a while. First, I finished updating a document for the Apollo Chorus that lists every sit and stand cue and every score marking for our Messiah performances. That took about 8 hours altogether. I also updated my main NuGet packages to .NET 6. As a nice bonus, because of a quirk in how .NET assemblies get versioned, today's release is version 4.2.8000. (I kept the previous release...

I've spent today alternately upgrading my code base for my real job to .NET 6.0, and preparing for the Apollo Chorus performances of Händel's Messiah on December 11th and 12th. Cassie, for her part, enjoys when I work from home, even if we haven't spent a lot of time outside today because (a) I've had a lot to do and (b) it rained from 11am to just about now. So, as I wait for the .NET 6 update to build and deploy on our dev/test CI/CD instance (I think I set the new environments on our app services...

I'm troubled not only that it's already November but also that it's already 5pm. I've been heads-down coding all day and I've got a dress rehearsal tonight. I did, at least, flag these for later: The Times reports on how traffic stops turn deadly for a lot more people than one might think, and certainly a lot more than one would want. Josh Marshall worries about the proportion of the Republican Party who believe political violence solves all problems. I need to check out this new feature in Adobe...

671 days. The Apollo Chorus of Chicago last performed in public on 15 December 2019, 671 days ago. This morning we performed at the Chicago History Museum, outside, without masks, to an audience of about 100 people. It is absolutely wonderful to be performing again. The cool, sunny weather helped, too. And the decision not to wear tuxedos.

Tonight the Apollo Chorus of Chicago has its first in-person rehearsal since 12 March 2020, almost exactly 18 months ago. We're in a new rehearsal space with lots of new people and new challenges (like mandatory mask-wearing while singing). Poor Cassie won't see me for several more hours. Tomorrow I expect a little more breathing room. Today, though...yikes.

Local restaurant review show "Check Please," which was to begin its 20th season on the local public-television station WTTW, will instead end its run after the station proposed contract terms that the producers couldn't accept: I'd like to say our upcoming 20th milestone season will be our best one ever!  However, WTTW/11 and I want to go in different directions and pursue other opportunities, so it's just not to be. Crain's has more: The show's last contract ended in the spring of 2020, just as the...

In a few minutes I'm hosting only the second in-person thing my chorus has done in the past 18 months: our last board meeting of the summer. We're all set to start in-person rehearsals on the 13th, though we will probably have to wear masks until our performances. That'll be weird—but at least we'll be in the same room. Other choruses in Chicago have the same challenges: “COVID shut us down completely because singing is a superspreader event,” said Jimmy Morehead, artistic director for the Chicago Gay...

On my horizontal monitor, I'm watching Apollo After Hours 2021, our chorus's annual benefit. Last year we deployed the 7pm video about now. This year we deployed it yesterday. I've spent the last six years working very hard to spread the gospel of boring software deployments. I'm overjoyed that we had one this year with Apollo After Hours.

...and I still have another one to do, though I'm not sure if today's the day for it. This year, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago annual benefit cabaret/fundraiser Apollo After Hours will once again go virtual, necessitating a lot more individual work and a lot less fun than doing it in person. I've just completed the easier of the two songs I need to record by yesterday. With rehearsing it, learning it, recording the audio, setting up the video, and uploading the audio and video files to Google Drive for...

Bit of a frustrating day, today. I spent 2½ hours trying to deploy an Azure function using the Az package in PowerShell, before giving up and going back to the AzureCLI. All of this to confirm a massive performance issue that I suspected but needed to see in a setting that eliminated network throughput as a possible factor. Yep: running everything completely within Azure sped it up by 11%, meaning an architecture choice I made a long time ago is definitely the problem. I factored the code well enough...

We released our spring concert last night. Check it out:

This morning I posted about some frustrations in getting our CRM system to import donations from our fundraising events so that we can then match donations with addresses to send out end-of-year tax letters. The frustrations have grown to the point where naming names seems appropriate, if only because Neon One, the CRM company, has a web-based ticketing system that doesn't really handle the level of detail their developers will need to (a) understand the problem, (b) understand the frustration, and (c)...

I'm president of the Apollo Chorus of Chicago. One of my jobs is to send out letters to all of our donors acknowledging their donations for the previous calendar year. These letters should have gone out by January 31st, but...well...OK, I'm a little delinquent. And for no other reason than I really, really did not want to merge all the data by hand. You see, we use a smallish CRM system for all of our institutional data, which works pretty well, especially with our membership and tech-savvy donors. Many...

Thank you, Tom Lehrer, for encapsulating what this season means to us in the US. In the last 24 hours, we have seen some wonderful Christmas gifts, some of them completely in keeping with Lehrer's sentiment. Continuing his unprecedented successes making his the most corrupt presidency in the history of the country (and here I include the Andrew Johnson and Warren Harding presidencies), the STBXPOTUS yesterday granted pardons to felons Charles Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone. Of the 65 pardons...

We're in the home stretch. We have 14 days until 2021 starts, and 32 days until the Biden Administration takes office. As Andrew Sullivan said in his column today, 2021 is going to be epic. Meanwhile: After giving away billions in tax revenue to the richest Americans in 2017, the Republican Party suddenly doesn't like budget deficits again, coincidentally with them losing the White House. Fascinating. Atlantic City is raising money for charity by auctioning off the right to blow up one of the...

Winter began in the northern hemisphere this morning, which explains the gray cold enveloping Chicago. Nah, I kid: Chicago usually has a gray, cold envelope around it, just today it's official. And while I ponder, weak and weary, why the weather is so dreary, I've got these to read: Writing in the New York Times, Die Zeit columnist Jochen Bittner explains why Germans worry about the Republican Party's lies about the election. (Hint: Germany remembers 1918 differently than we do.) This year's Festival of...

I was in meetings almost without break from 10am until just a few minutes ago, so a few things have piled up in my inbox: Writing in the Washington Post, Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule explains why conservative justices vote with liberals more than the reverse (tl;dr: our system of government has a well-known and intentional liberal bias). NBC's Jonathan Allen calls the president's re-election campaign "desperate." The Mayor's Office in Chicago has put out a 100-page plan for how we can repair...

Welp, it's July now, so we've completed half of 2020. (You can insert your own adverb there; I'll go with "only.") A couple of things magically changed or got recorded at midnight, though. Among them: The Lake Michigan-Huron system finished its 6th consecutive month of record high water levels, with June 2020 levels a full meter over the long-term average. Illinois' minimum wage went up to $10 per hour, and Chicago's to $14. Both minima will increase by $1 per year until they reach $15. China has...

In November, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago performed in the Chicago Opera Theater production of Everest, a 2015 opera by Joby Talbot. After the second performance, Talbot and a number of the soloists met some of us out for drinks nearby. Andrew Bidlack, who sang the role of Rob Hall, mentioned they were going to London to perform the work at the Barbican. I told him I'd be there. That performance should have taken place tonight at 7:30 BST. Obviously, it's cancelled, and even if it weren't, Covid-19...

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 14-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in May 2019, and the world has changed. So here's the update. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. The weather. I've operated a weather website for more than 20 years. That site deals with raw data and objective observations. Many...

Happy May Day! Or m'aidez? Hard to know for sure right now. The weather in Chicago is sunny and almost the right temperature, and I have had some remarkable productivity at work this week, so in that respect I'm pretty happy. But I woke up this morning to the news that Ravinia has cancelled its entire 2020 season, including a performance of Bernstein's White House Cantata that featured my group, the Apollo Chorus of Chicago. This is the first time Ravinia has done so since 1935. If only that were...

Today's news: President Trump claims he knew COVID-19 was a pandemic all along, even though he had a strangely ineffective way of showing it. COVID-19 has caused a food security crisis as entire industries lay off vulnerable workers. The University of Illinois has cancelled graduation, devastating thousands of seniors. The World Health Organisation recommends avoiding Ibuprofen to treat COVID-19 symptoms; use paracetamol instead. Bob Cesca in Slate asks, "Why do we keep electing Republicans? They're no...

Last night I had the wonderful experience of performing Bach's Johannes-Passion with the Apollo Chorus of Chicago and the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra. I say "performing" because, recognizing that we had already cancelled our performance on Saturday and would probably cancel Sunday's as well, this was our one shot. Three months of preparation, hours of study and practicing German diction, gone. And I'm on my second half-personal-day at home dealing with the cleanup, which has included a few hundred...

We just sent this out: Apollo community, After much deliberation, and in consultation with Music Director Stephen Alltop, the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, and both of our concert venues, we have decided to cancel our concert at St Luke’s scheduled for this Saturday March 14th. The ESO has agreed that tickets to Saturday’s performance will be honored on Sunday at 3pm at the Elmhurst Christian Reformed Church performance. If you bought a ticket through our online system for Saturday’s performance and...

The Apollo Chorus performed Joby Talbot's Everest a few weeks ago, and to prepare for the opera I read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. (The opera is based on the events described in that book.) I concluded that climbing Mt Everest is insane. That didn't stop about 100 climbers from attempting to summit on May 23rd of this year, contributing to one of the deadliest days in the mountain's history: [T]wo decades on, the Everest experience often seems to have devolved even further into a circus-like pageant...

Somehow, it's December again: winter in the northern hemisphere. Another 8 weeks of sunsets before 5pm, sunrises after 7am, and cold gray skies. At least it builds character. For me, it also means two weeks of non-stop Händel. Rehearsals tomorrow, Thursday, next Monday, and next Wednesday; performances Tuesday, Friday, and on the 14th and 15th. Two of those won't be Apollo performances per se. On Tuesday a few of us will visit a local retirement community and help out with their annual sing-a-long of...

As Gordon Sondland throws the president under the bus (probably because (a) he's under oath and (b) the president would do it to him soon enough), there are actually a lot of other things going on in the world: David Graham sees the administration "is in free fall." Again. Alexander Hurst worries that the president's unhinged supporters will resort to violence as this happens. Iran has disconnected from the Internet. Yes, the entire country. Transport experts favor Mayor Lori Lightfoot's ride-hail tax...

Chicago Classical Review attended our performance of Everest and Aleko this weekend: There are a myriad of reasons why an operatic adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air should not work. And yet it does. Composer [Joby] Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer have crafted a compelling 70-minute opera adapted form Krakauer’s nonfiction book about the disastrous 1996 Everest expedition in which eight people died. Scheer wisely narrows the scope to three mountaineers, alternating their increasingly desperate...

The audience loved last night's performance of Everest and Aleko. Everest composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer attended, and I had the opportunity to meet them backstage at intermission. They both reported being overjoyed by our performance. Nice. I discovered in researching this post that the BBC Symphony Orchestra will perform Everest at the Barbican on 20 June 2020. Hell yes, I'm going. If you don't want to wait until June, you can hear us this afternoon at Harris Theater.

In about four hours, I'll be warming up for tonight's double bill of Everest and Aleko with the Chicago Opera Theater. Chicago's last remaining classical radio station, WFMT, went to our rehearsal on Monday (when I was in London, unfortunately for me): n this staging, both works employ a large chorus made up of over 100 members, including members of Apollo Chorus of Chicago. Their function, Yankovskaya explains, is akin to a Greek Chorus: "In Everest, the chorus serves as the voice of the mountain often...

My 207-day streak of 10,000 steps per day ended, as I suspected it would, at midnight GMT tonight. Traveling from Chicago to London takes 6 hours out of the day, and it's hard to get enough steps before 7am to get to 10k by 6pm when most of that time is on an airplane. Anyway, I'm in the Ancestral Homeland, about to finish the book that inspired the opera I'm performing in next week. And then there's the other opera that requires I sing rapidly in Russian, without rushing. I brought the score for that...

It was a lovely afternoon for a concert. We performed selections from Händel's Messiah, Rachmaninoff's Aleko, and Bach's St John Passion in the gorgeous St Michael Catholic Church in Old Town, Chicago: Inside, just before the concert: Our next performances will be with Chicago Opera Theater on the 14th, 16th, and 17th. Then some of us will be back at St Michael for Messiah on December 6th. It's going to be a hectic couple of months.

What I did on my autumn vacation: About once a year the Apollo Chorus does a day-trip to somewhere nearby. Yesterday we went to the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Champaign, Ill., on the University of Illinois campus. Fun but exhausting.

October began today for some of the world, but here in Chicago the 29°C weather (at Midway and downtwon; it's 23°C at O'Hare) would be more appropriate for July. October should start tomorrow for us, according to forecasts. This week has a lot going on: rehearsal yesterday for Apollo's support of Chicago Opera Theater in their upcoming performances of Everest and Aleko; rehearsal tonight for our collaboration Saturday with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony of Carmina Burana; and, right, a full-time job....

If you haven't checked out the Apollo Chorus of Chicago's season this year, now's the time. Our first concert, on November 3rd at St Michael's Church in Old Town, is totally free and will showcase our entire season. Right now I'm entering all of our just-accepted new members into the official member database. Looks like we have some really good singers joining tomorrow.

Now that Apollo After Hours is behind us, I can start plugging our Spring Concerts: Tickets are $35 in advance. It's going to be a really cool concert.

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago's annual fundraiser has consumed my weekend and will continue to munch away at my week.  Tickets are still available. Come out and hear us! It's wicked fun. And somehow, I'll write the next six A-to-Z posts on time...

It's been a busy week with lots of Händel. Last Saturday the Apollo Chorus performed Messiah with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra, which involved a 3-hour bus ride each way and enough downtime for a long game of Cards Against Humanity. Monday we had a regular rehearsal. Tuesday some of us sang in a local retirement community's Messiah sing-along. Wednesday, caroling at Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. Thursday, dress rehearsal with orchestra. Today at 7pm and tomorrow at 2pm, full performances at Harris...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago performed yesterday with the Peoria Symphony, which involved two 3-hour bus rides and two complete runs-through of Händel's Messiah. Coming up this week, we have two full rehearsals, two community outreach events, and two more performances next weekend. Then after a committee meeting Monday, I'll actually have...one night off. So there's a lot going on this month. But today, I need a nap.

The weather today inclined me to spend a lot of time outside in my neighborhood, except for the part that I had to spend inside working on the new Apollo Chorus website. (We're launching this week!) Regular posting will probably resume tomorrow.

The Apollo Chorus is joining Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music this weekend in two performances of Rachmaninov's The Bells. Thus, no real blog post today. But if you're in Chicago, swing by the Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park at 6:30pm for our free concert.

It's entirely possible that I'll have more free time after today, at least for a week or two. It's entirely possible that I have just looked at my calendar for this week and laughed at the previous sentence.

In advance of the largest expansion in the airport's history, the Tribune has a cool timeline of the airport's history. Concerts tonight and Sunday; another, private performance tomorrow. And then I get a week off of choir.

Day 18 of the Blogging A-to-Z challenge...is postponed until tomorrow. And day 19 will be late as well. (Good thing I have Sunday off!) But hey, if you find yourself near Uptown Underground tonight and want to contribute to an excellent chorus, come on in!

Two weeks ago I started writing my A-to-Z posts and got all the way to today's before my life became nuts—as I knew it would—with 4 chorus-related events and a huge increase in my work responsibilities. And with the Apollo After Hours benefit this coming Friday, this weekend will be pretty full as well. I use my email inbox as a to-do list, and right now it has 35 messages, 30 of which relate to the benefit. I'm very glad the A-to-Z Challenge gives us Sundays off, because I don't know how I'm going to...

Yesterday Parker got fitted for a new E-collar after I discovered that his long nose and long tongue were just long enough to lick his sutures. Fortunately the incision doesn't seem irritated or infected, probably owing to the massive doses of antibiotics we've got him on. As for the primary injury, that seems to have healed remarkably well in the few days since his surgery. He's putting more weight on the leg, and has less trouble standing up. He still seems a little shaky in some postures...

In the last seven days, these things have happened: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (the worst Secretary of State in modern history?) got kicked out in typical Trump Administration fashion (i.e., without notice and on Twitter). This may have had something to do with him stating firmly that... ...Russian operatives attempted to assassinate a former Russian spy in Salisbury, England, resulting in... ...the UK government expelled 23 Russian diplomats after determining that the assassination attempt...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago are performing Verdi's Requiem at the Holy Family Church, 1080 W. Roosevelt Rd., tonight at 7:30. Tickets are $40 at the door, and well worth it.

Yesterday I did, in fact, hit 25,000 steps. I ended the day with 28,828. I considered going for one more 15-minute walk to hit 30,000, but decided I'd had enough for the day, and went to bed—and got 7½ hours of sleep. This morning it was once again clear and crisp (but above freezing), so I walked to work, just over 6 km and one hour of walking, and about 7,000 steps. So at 11am, I've already got 9,200. With a forecast 11°C and an Apollo Chorus rehearsal 5 km away, I might hit 20,000 again today....

Yesterday started with a performance on local television and ended with a three-hour rehearsal and midnight showing of Star Wars. I'd already planned to go into work late today, but Parker didn't eat dinner last night and he refused breakfast this morning, so I'm waiting to see if I can get him to the vet. With that and other things up for grabs today, plus two more performances this weekend, posting might suffer a bit.

I'm on the Board of Directors for the Apollo Chorus of Chicago, and information technology is my portfolio. Under that aegis, I'm in the process of taking all of our donor and membership spreadsheets and stuffing them into a new Neon CRM setup. So far, it's going well, and it's going to make the organization a lot more effective at managing membership, events, and donations. That said, in the last 24 hours I've logged five bug reports, including one of the most frustrating user experience (UX) bugs...

If you're in the Chicago area, today is your last chance to see the Apollo Chorus "American Masters" concert. We're performing Jeff Beal's "Salvage Men," with Beal himself in attendance (and playing flugelhorn on his "Poor in Sprit" later in the concert). Tickets are still available, $35 at the door ($15 for students), this afternoon at 3pm at Alice Millar Chapel in Evanston.

Things to read today: Chicago Magazine bemoans the loss of two-flat apartment buildings in the city, citing increasing average rents. Josh Marshall catalogs all the times President Trump was surprised by knowledge that was only new to him. VIA Rail in Canada is offering a 10-day, Montreal to Vancouver rail journey to celebrate the country's sesquicentennial. Marin County, Calif., has an app that lets you try to mitigate climate-change induced flooding. Good luck. And finally, the Chicago Tribune has an...

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago held its annual benefit on April 7th, with me as benefit chair. We raised more money than at any previous benefit, as far as we know. I've got some photos to post; here's the first, of soprano Meaghan Stainback and alto Molly Mikos:

Our choral benefit is tonight, and I'm benefit chair, so posting will be sparse. And hey, come to Uptown Underground at 7pm with an open checkbook! We've got a few tickets left.

The Apollo Chorus of Chicago are literally in the mix of the upcoming Netflix show Sense8. You can hear us in this promo. We haven't been able to share this information until just now. The chorus recorded a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at our November 21st rehearsal. (I unfortunately missed the rehearsal, so I'm not singing in the episode. Boo.)

Yesterday the Apollo Chorus of Chicago sang Händel's Messiah for (possibly) the 274th time since we first sang it in 1879. We're going to do it again this afternoon. Our local ABC affiliate has more: For nearly a century and a half, the Apollo Chorus has brought beautiful music to Chicago. On this night, the all-volunteer choir is rehearsing for one of the city's most cherished holiday traditions: a performance of Handel's "Messiah.""When we sing Messiah, since Handel wrote it - think of how many...

We had perfect weather this weekend, including for last night's performance of Mahler's 2nd, and it's still pretty epic, which is why I haven't posted a lot. Except for a brief interval to do a stupid task in my office, and after catching up on Game of Thrones, it's time to take a walk. Not sure when I'll be back. I haven't hit 25,000 steps since March 8th, and I've only hit 30,000 steps once. I don't think I'll hit either today, but if I do, I'll blog about it.

Tonight and Sunday evening I'll be performing Mahler's 2nd Symphony with the Apollo Chorus and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra, University Chorale, and Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble. If you've never heard this piece, you have to come to one of the performances. Tonight's 7:30 p.m. performance, at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall on the Northwestern University campus, will have the best sound. But Sunday's 6:30 pm performance, at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park in downtown...

With two performances and two rehearsals over the weekend, I didn't have any time to post. I also didn't have as much time as I wanted to walk, though I did manage 20,249 steps for the weekend. (That was a little disappointing, especially because yesterday's weather was perfect for being outside.) Meanwhile, the chorus have finally put up videos of our April fundraiser. So, yeah, we did this: I'll leave finding videos of me holding a puppet as an exercise for the reader.

Yesterday, some of us from the Apollo Chorus were on WGN-TV in Chicago promoting our upcoming spring concert. Take a look. Our concerts will be next Friday, May 6th, at 7:30pm at the 4th Presbyterian Church in Chicago, and Sunday May 8th, 3pm, at the First United Church in Oak Park.

Friday went long, so yesterday was pretty quiet. The Apollo Chorus had its annual fund-raiser on Friday. As one of the volunteers, I tagged along to the official after-party, which turned into two subsequent unofficial after-parties, and a completely lazy day yesterday. We should get preliminary results on the total fundraising take by tomorrow's rehearsal. We did get a pretty good haul at the door, and during our "Money Song," which included a challenge grant that got completely used. So, in all, great...

This weekend I've had a lot going on, resulting in yet another blog miss on Saturday. Friday was C2E2; Friday night was Whiskyfest; yesterday was a pair of rehearsals for Apollo After Hours. Today? Errands, mainly. And catching up on stuff—like the news. Sometimes my life is just this exciting.

First, 7am Friday: Yeah, thanks guy. Wet nose in the ear before my alarm clock goes off. And 7pm Saturday, at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, just before we sang "Elijah:"

Too many things showed up in my RSS feeds this morning. Fortunately, I've got a few days off this weekend and next. Jerry Seinfeld got some time with President Obama Catfish are cleaning up the Chicago River Book early to take advantage of airline schedule changes What you should ask about every new job Apollo got a pretty good review All blue-eyed people apparently have one common European ancestor And now, a conference call.

The Apollo Chorus performed Händel's Messiah yesterday and Saturday both, which explains the radio silence here. This is my second year with the Chorus. Though last year's performances were really good, this year's were better. Here's the view from the stage to our sold-out crowd yesterday afternoon: And those who have followed The Daily Parker for a while know that I have had a troubled relationship with bow ties. For this weekend's performances, I might have gotten it right:

We have a crystal-clear, crisp October morning, perfect for spending three hours in a rehearsal for the Apollo Chorus...sigh. It's also a good morning to test the new blog engine and posting from my friend's car.