What's in Dave's Head

Executive summary:     Donna and Kate sang at Carnegie Hall!      We met up with old friends      St. Patrick’s Day fun      My first NYC subway ride and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge   Carnegie Hall On St. Patrick’s Day, Donna and Kate, both alumnae of St. Mary’s College (SMC) in South Bend, Indiana, performed in Carnegie Hall in New York with a choir comprised of the school’s current women’s choir, alums of that choir, and choirs that are directed by SMC choir alums. In all, 250 women performed, under the baton, as they say, of Dr. Nancy Menk, the choir’s director for 35 years, and accompanied by a 30-piece orchestra. The singers had gotten the music months ago so they could learn it. Dr. Menk sent links to YouTube videos of the songs being performed and detailed notations for pronunciation, breathing, and technical matters way over my pay grade. Then, once the singers arrived in New York, rigorous rehe...

I have an interest in peoples’ names – how they got them and what they might tell us about the person’s background. For instance, my dad was named after his father, Paul Manuel Douglass. I remember asking him where the name Manuel came from – it looks Hispanic, although I’m unaware of any such lineage.   (It’s pronounced “Man-u-el,” rather than “Man-wel.”). He didn’t know and had never inquired. Maybe my dad didn’t share my curiosity. There’s a motherlode of interesting names on my mom’s side of the family. My maternal grandmother’s family, the Harpers, were farmers in central West Virginia. John David Harper, who I appear with in an old black and white photo as an infant, had a wooden leg; I believe he lost it in a railroad accident. I don’t know anything about his wife, Lucinda Jane Evans, other than she bore 10 children whose names, and those of their spouses, are listed below: Child Married Florence Emma Steve Stevens ...