Prehistoric!

I had planned to be away for this Diamond Jubilee birthday, so I booked a trip to Japan, to be able to take in the Bach Collegium Japan concert. As it turned out, however, I returned last Monday, several days before my actual birthday because I didn’t want to be gone longer than a week. I thought that perhaps I might spend a quiet night at home watching Netflix.

However, at the last meeting of the Executive Board of the Hawaii Chapter American Guild of Organists, the current Dean, Margaret Lloyd, suggested a meeting on my actual birthday, perhaps an opportunity not only to get to know one another better, but it also would be a birthday party for me. For the program, I would present a slideshow and video from my Japan trip.

I wouldn’t be alone after all, but would celebrate my birthday with “my peeps,” my fellow organists!

Margaret Lloyd asked people to come up with one word adjectives to describe me and some of the words they came up with were:

Efficient …
teacher …
patient …
traveler …
kind …
polyglot ….
(You have got to be kidding me!)

(I hardly think of myself as a polyglot, although I’ve been studying Spanish for six years and French only for the last 6-8 months, plus four years in high school.)

Here we are in the Long House of Honolulu Park Place.

We had 23 people RSVP with 2 cancelling because of illness and so there were 21 of us organists and significant others. We came upstairs to watch the slideshow and videos of my trip, and everyone seemed to go home happy.

Barry Wenger, current Music Director and Organist of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, where I was for 35 years, brought a delicious cranberry and apple cake. He lit the candles and started walking towards me, only to have the wind blow out all the candles before he could get close enough, forcing him to relight them! (Photos by Roger Koopman)