I had a wonderful time last night with a friend who is another opera freak. She got a coupon or something for two-for-one tickets for a showing of La Boheme. The show was put on by a small, local company called Theater Latte Da. Since it was a preview besides, tickets were REALLY cheap!



It was fabulous! The theater was the Southern -- small, intimate theater. They dealt with orchestration by having a small ensemble of piano, guitar, violin, and synthesizer / keyboard set to an accordion sound. It fit the story and the stage setting really well, and whoever did the re-arranging did a great job. All of the singing was fabulous. And, of course, the music is some of the most beautiful ever written.



A plus with the intimate setting is that none of the singers was miked. There was no sound system and no electrical ambiance to get in the way of the human voice.



The sets and costumes gave a feel of artsy types in Paris in the Thirties and Forties.



I was especially blown away by the tenor singing Rodolpho. A really good tenor who can really hit the high notes just about makes my toenails melt -- and this guy could do it. He had the resonance and the timbre to really add passion to the role. Interestingly, his blurb in the program was very short. The impression I got was that he is very young, maybe only a couple of years out of college. If so, I could have been watching a future star.



Of course, most of the audience was slightly weepy at the end. Part of the point of opera is getting to cry at the end when the soprano dies of consumption.



No dinner or drinks afterward, though, because it was a work night. Still a lovely evening. I'm glad I went.

I've gotten a couple of crafty projects done recently. I finished a top-down raglan cardigan sweater, crocheted. I was inspired by Luna's sweater in "Order of the Phoenix" but ended up with something that looked different (does that make sense?). The sweater is gray acrylic with a solid double crochet yoke and a slightly lacy v-stitch body, three-quarter length sleeves, one button on top. I also finished a BRIGHT RED hat and scarf. The wife of one of the professors at work is due to have a baby right around Thanksgiving. They're refusing to say if it's a boy or a girl, and I hate pastel baby blue and pastel baby pink anyway. So, I decided that vivid, in-your-face red was a perfectly good baby color.

Yes, you may have heard on the news that the strike is ended. And a lot of people are not real happy with the U right now.



I'm almost afraid to say / write too much while it's still this fresh.



I guess my overall reaction is:

- my co-workers at the dental school are sweet people

- the people I met on the picket lines were strong and loving and I loved being with them

- it felt good to me to stand up for something I believed in, even when it meant the risk of losing pay

- the students who were involved with us are amazing, and I feel hopeful about the generation coming up now

- the University administration is cold-hearted and mean-spirited



The University Human Resources website is still insisting that the raises are 4.25% for clerical and technical and 4.5% for health-care workers for each year of the contract. That is such a lie that even the normally anti-union mainstream TV stations and newspapers are saying (correctly) that the pay increases are actually 2.25% / 2.5% per year.



From what the negotiating team told us at the meeting, the state-appointed mediator was not very happy with the University negotiating team by the end of the 15-hour-long session. She was tearing her hair out and asking the union negotiators what the heck was up with these people.



One last thing - I looked at a video from Channel 11 about the end of the strike. They did a good and fair job of showing the striker's disappointment and reporting exactly what the offer consisted of. The announcer then quoted the written statement from Bruininks saying how glad he was that the strike was over and that the union was presenting the University's proposal for a vote. Mr. Obempls' reaction was, "Wow, they made Bruininks sound pretty lame!"

AFSCME and the U of M are both in mediation / negotiations right now.

I attended a very unusual event today. A large contingent of faculty at the U held a silent protest in front of the administration building. Faculty members were simply standing and looking at the building. Some were holding signs, many had surgical tape over their mouths. The presence of that many people being very deliberately silent was eerie and powerful. A lot of non-faculty were there, and almost all of them were so caught up in it that they also became silent. The silence lasted for exactly one-half hour, followed by one minute of LOTS of noise. Wow.