Weekend Collision of Good Things.

     We sometimes find ourselves creating a weekend of collisions of good things, and they are all for a good cause; it just works out that way and we must deal with it.  So every year our town has the Azalea Festival, it's a two day affair of fun, sunshine and masses of blooming azalea bushes. The festival is a carnival atmosphere packed with vendor's selling homemade offerings that we must have, music, children's games, dog shows, you name it; it's probable here.

      Our PFLAG Chapter had a table this year, we weren't selling anything, or giving away prizes or candy; we just wanted to let the community know we are here and they gotta learn to deal with us.  This first photo is our celebration and reward for setting up the basics and tent.

This year I decided that we needed to up date and simply our PFLAG poster to show the issues in a more positive way, so I chose Safe Schools, some photo for the bathroom issue and support for same sex marriage.  Simply and straight forward I thought.

       There was quite a crowd of Saturday and a smaller one on Sunday.  We had great conversations with old and young, a few signed up for the email contact list and heard the story of how one young lady came out to her Grandmother after talking to one of our board members.  Very proud day and that one young lady made our weekend for us.  She just confirmed the reason why we need to be at the festival, be more visible in our communities and tell our stories.

        So that was part one of the weekend, another side story for us, was the interview Kay and I did with a student for her Sociology project Friday afternoon, before we set up the PFLAG table at the festival. As Advocates, we speak to several classes at the University (VSU) to tell our story of a Married Same Sex Couple in the state of Georgia and how that happened.  It's our story that we gladly share when asked.

                            

        But the Biggest story for me was being able to sing Haydn's Creation with a chorus of 120+ voices and full orchestra.  A performance like this always requires dedicated rehearsal hours; so for us it was one night a week for 9 weeks and 3 full rehearsals with orchestra before the performance on Saturday evening.  The final 'dress' rehearsal for me was of course Saturday morning for 2 1/2 hours, which meant that I could not be at the PFLAG table for the first hours of the festival.

   The soprano, was Tamara Hardesty, the bass, Nathan Stark and the tenor soloist was Mr. Stanford Olsen. I was particularly interested in meeting Mr. Olsen, (who is standing to the left of the conductor) as he has his Operatic debut in 1986, singing opposite Joan Sutherland, who I think, is one of the Queen's of the Metropolitan stage. His playful antics during the dress rehearsal made for a pleasant singing experience.

 

     It's always takes quite a lot of time, to put on a performance of such a grand scale, combining 3 University groups, and 2 community groups; but the performance was grand indeed.