we were on a break!

I understand. Things come up, rehearsals, life changes, Spring and warm weather beckon you to go outside...but the bloggy world is just not the same without constant updates and trials and tribulations of people's lives that I like to peek into.
So come back!

I am not on a break right now, so I'll share about literature:
Haroun and the Sea or Stories by Rushdie. I will read this to my children as if it is a fairy tale, and one day when they grow up they'll understand the overriding allegory to the freedom of speech, the power of language, and the beauty of words.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong. I only picked this up at B&N because it was on the cheapie special rack, but it's actually quite interesting. She does pretty good research and presents in a historical way the foundations of religious beliefs, the stories of how it was that people of a certain area started worshiping a certain god, and what that god meant in their religion- tangible, attainable, or not.

And one more note about all of the posts about competitions and the age you have to be, and the age that people are winning, and all of the past A house experience that they have supposedly had.
People have runs of good luck with competitions. There are names that pop up every year for a number of years, they win the cold hard cash, and they have either already worked really hard to do it just like everyone out there, have gotten the chance to be in a famous young artist program, have been hand-picked by the Met or Chicago or wherever to sing some lead role, and yea, could be already famous with gigs lined up until 2010. Is that going to dissuade me from sending in my application and a fee of thirty five dollars?
No.
Because I have my 5 lined up too, and I have hopefully just as much of a chance of winning as any of these other people.
If it's not this year, then at least the people heard me and may remember my name for next year.

So stop complaining about :
a. only the young kids getting it
b. only the old kids getting it
c. only people that have already sung with Lindemann, Chicago Lyric and Houston Grand getting it
d. only the people that have performances scheduled at A houses for the next 5 years getting it
e. only Wagnerian 25 year olds and 19 year old basso profundos getting it
f. the companies taking everyone's money and then just picking finalists that are already famous
g. anything else that has to do with you being bitter that YOU didn't get it.

Because in the end--who cares? It's money. There are OTHER ways of getting it too.
It's nice to have, and easy if you win a big competition to know you're a bit better off now, but if you don't get it, it's just like any other audition, and there aren't page long threads about how so and so got into whatever YAP and they have too much experience...
Or is that to come once everyone starts yapping about that?

-g