Selfless or realistic?

Or maybe both.

Here's the great Renata Tebaldi in a 1995 interview in the New York Times (link requires registration):

"I was in love many times," she said, flashing her dimpled smile. "This is very good for a woman." But she added, "How could I have been a wife, a mother and a singer? Who takes care of the piccolini when you go around the world? Your children would not call you Mama, but Renata."

Truly one of the greatest voices of all time, and a terrific singer on top of it all. Jussi Björling, in his final broadcast interview, listed her as one of his favorite singing partners. And it is heartening to know that she didn't inflict a life of loneliness and absent parents on putative children. That's really making a sacrifice for your career, for art and for the world.

She will be missed.

EDITED TO ADD:

I do NOT mean that refraining from marriage or from having children is normally a good thing; but if you are in a very dangerous profession, like skydiving instruction, or a highly public, demanding profession, like being an international opera star, it is certainly better to refrain than to have children and then treat them like baggage or put them in the kennel for weeks at a time while you go galivanting around the globe. So when I say she made a sacrifice for art, I mean that she gave up whatever measure of happiness and fulfillment she might have had from marriage and childbearing to fulfill the incredible gift God had given her.

Other singers have reduced their public performing commitments (like Eileen Farrell, for instance) to spend more time with their families, but I won't condemn Tebaldi for choosing the other road. After all, it's also possible that she considered herself the center of the universe and might have made a miserable mother; so it seems to me she chose best for her own situation.

Good Boy!

You know, they don't call them Golden Retrievers for nothing.

I love that he not only did the heroic deed, but stood guard over the booty until the rightful owner could catch up to him.

Good boy! There'll be an extra Gelbwurst in your Weihnachtsstrumpf this year, I bet!

Weihnachtsmusizierensstresse

Or Christmas Music-making Stress. (Don't you love German compounding?)

Sometimes, about this time of year, I feel as if, if I get one more funeral, or one more thing piled on my plate, my head will explode. But I remind myself that in a few days, weeks, whenever, there will be some relief.

Apparently this poor colleague doesn't have the same coping skills. At least, they must be weaker than mine. Imagine killing yourself two hours before curtain! What a wet blanket!

If I were to consider such a selfish act as suicide, I hope I would be considerate enough to fulfill my obligations beforehand. Geez. The Show Must Go On is not just a hollow platitude, you know?

Anyway. I thought about titling this post How to know you've got too many Christmas gigs, but that doesn't really seem to be the case with this one. But no doubt further details will come out.

I should hope so . . .

Your Dominant Intelligence is Musical Intelligence

Every part of your life has a beat, and you're often tapping your fingers or toes. You enjoy sounds of all types, but you also find sound can distract you at the wrong time. You are probably a gifted musician of some sort - even if you haven't realized it. Also a music lover, you tend to appreciate artists of all kinds. You would make a great musician, disc jockey, singer, or composer.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

I should hope the test would come out this way. Otherwise all those years and all that money spent on music school would have been a WASTE!

Off the Elf!

Okay, I can't just let this one go by.

Cacciaguida writes in the comments to this post that Catholic parents shouldn't teach their kids (or allow them) to believe in Santa Claus because children can't "distinguish between a 'childhood fantasy' and a supernatural truth."

Boy, isn't that the truth! You can't build your credibility with anyone, especially not with the people who should trust you most, by telling them simultaneously to believe truth and 'harmless childhood fantasies' -- that is, outright fiction, and on behalf of the Coca-Cola corporation, no less! If you want to complain about the commercialization of Christmas, look no further!

I note that Miss Dashwood has also written with great vigor about this custom. Well, let me tell you, it can have disastrous consequences.

To wit: my brother once had a charming girlfriend from the mill village here in my little southern town. She was a very sweet girl, good-natured and with an excellent sense of humor. But she told a tale of woe about a Christmas past, and the horrors wrought by the idolatry of the Jolly Old Elf.

It was Christmas Eve, 1972 or so. She was about six at the time, and she and her slightly older sister were wound up and buzzing with excitement over the midnight appearance of the Baby Jesus.

No, wait, that's not right! They were waiting for Santa Claus. And because they were so excited, they simply could not be still and go to sleep. And the real Santa Claus (here in the South, we usually call him "Daddy") was exhausted and frustrated, because he had two bicycles and various other toys to assemble before morning. He kept working, but trying to be quiet because he knew the girls were still awake. Finally he had had enough: He took the shotgun out in the back yard, fired a couple of shells into the air, and came back into the house. He ran to the girls' room and told them that, because they had been so bad and wouldn't go to sleep, he had shot Santa Claus, and there would be no Christmas for them.

I'll leave it to you to imagine the wailing and gnashing of little teeth that ensued. The girls cried themselves to sleep that Christmas Eve, but were delighted the next morning to come out to the den and see that Daddy and Momma had, in fact, prepared all their gifts.

Now, by the time I heard this story, the girl was 19 or 20, and she told the story for laughs, but there's no doubt in my mind that the kids were badly traumatized at the time. One thing's for sure -- if they believed in Santa Claus before then, they didn't after! And it would have been a lot easier for her Daddy and Momma if they had never fostered the false belief in the first place.