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Wishes for Good Weather



Director Fred

Well, this is it. This is the day of the Dominic Greco band's finale concert to be played in the lovely small-town-cute park with stone walls, giant old trees, a real carousel with the original 1900s-something horses, and the band shell. After this sign-that-summer-is-over concert, we will all pack up and race down town for a second concert (a musical double header) that will be part of the town's Long Night of Music.

The town couldn't be farther from Vienna--in every imaginable aspect!--but they're trying. They're trying to be something better than the beige of Middle Ohio by hosting an evening patterned after something that someone sometime heard they host in Vienna. It's a "long night of music" with hour after hour of bands, etc. Our slot is from 9 to 9:45, and we'll be playing on the same portable stage that the Cleveland Orchestra uses for their portable performances.

So, what's the problem, since this is a day that should make me happy? Rain is the problem, scattered thunderstorms actually. Of all days. My grass is crisp from no rain. We've had to add water to the pool with the garden hose from no rain. My single pot of flowers is a pot of dried up sticks from no rain. But today, rain.

I'm holding out for a changing in the wind, for a shift in the system that might take this weather pattern north just 20 miles.

My music-for-occupation friends mock me for my enthusiastic relishing of these concerts, my novice/childlike excitement when I get to play. There must have been time in their earlier years when they felt the same yippee thing--I'm just sorry that my happy face doesn't rub off on them. Oh well. Their loss.

Please, God, no rain today for small-town-cute concerts. The dying grass can wait!

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