Day 5 ~ A Star is Born

Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God. ~ Vonnegut

I no longer have to fret about making a spectacle of myself on board. I accomplished that quite handily last night at the show. We were treated to another evening with the superb violinist, David Klinkenberg. Toward the end of his program, he asked how many people in the audience played an instrument.

I should have suspected a trap right then, but lots of hands were raised. What was the worst that could happen?

Then he asked who could play something on the piano. I started lessons when I was eight years old and played all through high school and college. My hand stayed up. And it was evidently the only one, because he asked me to come up and play something—anything—on the shiny grand piano, while he improvised a duet with me.

I haven’t touched a keyboard to do more than pound out notes to learn parts for choir in years. But with fear and trembling, I walked to the piano and wondered what on earth I’d do without a sheet of music in front of me. The only thing that came to mind was…Silent Night.

After a few bars, David joined in with soaring tones.  I was intensely grateful and hoped he masked the worst of my fumbling. I lost the melody at one point and began simply rolling through the chord progressions. Fortunately, the violin had the melody more than covered. Then I found the tune again toward end and was even able to toss in a modulation from the key of C to A flat and back again. (Oh! And in honor of my mom, the Queen of Plinkies, I added a little four note run up to high C at the last.)

I was blessed with an extremely uncritical audience. To reward my gullibility, David gave me a free CD of his music. So I guess that’s a fair trade for a few moments of terror.

Today, I tried hula again, but found it harder now that the class was dancing faster. I had trouble maintaining good O2 sats even with Herkimer. But, as the teacher says, hula can be danced even while sitting down. I kept up with the hand motions just fine.

Our Trivia team placed second again with 17 correct answers out of 20. We really enjoy the others in the group and have fun with it.

The Harmony Choir continues to grow in size each day. We worked on “Any Dream will Do” from Webber’s JOSEPH AND THE TECHNICOLOR DREAM COAT.

This afternoon, we attended a lecture on new research into the culture of primitive hunter/gatherer societies. The theories advanced were intriguing. I’m completely willing to believe they were much more advanced than we give them credit for. People have been coming into this world with the same wants, needs, potential for creative thinking and good or evil behavior since the Garden.  But I’m less sanguine about a secret code about the superiority of the hunter/gatherer culture supposedly buried in the world’s earliest known writings. 

May 9, 2018 update: Especially since those writings were produced by the people who first developed agriculture, which allowed them to abandon the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, and have leisure to invent niceties like writing, mathematics and the wheel. I sensed a highly romanticized "noble savage" view of hunter/gathers in this lecture. It wouldn't be the first time someone has tried to prop up the primitive by claiming heretofore undiscovered positive aspects.

Of course, the fact that I married an Iowa farm boy may mean I'm biased in favor of agriculture! 

I rediscovered the spa and spent some time on the treadmill. Because of the motion of the ocean, I tricked my pedometer into believing I'd climbed 18 flights of stairs.

The meals are always a big draw on any cruise. When I  travel, I try to get out of my comfort zone and try things I either can’t get or wouldn’t make at home. For 50 points, can you guess what kind of dish this is?

I’ll  post the answer tomorrow.

PS. Today is Australia Day. According to some of the Aussie's on board it's a great celebration in their homeland to commemorate the coming of Europeans to Oceania. 

However, like Columbus Day in the US, it's become somewhat controversial because the Aboriginal peoples don't feel like celebrating the end of their Dream Time.



May 9, 2018 Update: One of the many things that impressed me about Princess was the way they respond to their passengers with special needs. There were a few deaf passengers on the first leg of our journey (from LA to Sydney) and Princess provided a couple of deaf interpreters to sign the content of lectures, entertainment and accompany the deaf passengers on excursions. The young woman in the picture below is one of those interpreters.

At the first show, our cruise director asked the rest of us to reserve an area to the left of the stage for the party with deaf passengers, so they'd be able to see both the performance and the interpreter.