Around these parts, summer is a season of annoyance. When memorial day rolls around the local population explodes which means in addition to uncomfortable, muggy heat there are traffic jams, careless bicyclists abound (seriously people, Orange Street is ONE WAY, even if you’re on a bike!), and people just straight up milling around in the street. It’s easy to let one’s self experience the season with a permanent set of angry eyebrows glued to one’s forehead. And it’s easy to forget that despite the crowds and lines and street-wanderers, that we actually live in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

I had a wonderful reminder of this fact on Saturday evening. Some friends and I, while heading out to the car to go to our book club meeting, were met with the most spectacular sky. The clouds were so majestic looking, and all in all everything seemed to promise an impressive sunset. So instead of heading straight to the meeting, we decided to take a little detour down to the beach to watch the show. We were not disappointed.

On a somewhat different subject, initially I had intended this blog’s purpose to be a place where I could post all of the art that I’d been up to. So far I’ve shared a little bit about my dabbling in self-portraits, and my love for cake, and even mentioned my recent foray into jazz, but I haven’t yet had a good opportunity to post a recording of me actually singing. I’m going to rectify that today, though.

I’m a regular member of the choir at the Unitarian Universalist church here, and sometimes I’m lucky enough to get to do a little bit of solo singing. During the summer this is a particular pleasure of mine as the services are held upstairs in the church proper instead of in the basement, and singing up there is just such a treat. Sunday morning I had the upmost pleasure of being allowed to sing “Summertime” from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess for the postlude. Click the play button below for a recording!