Last Saturday was Mer’s date day, and she started off by sleeping in, which I was quite happy about. She then happily took me to breakfast at Friendly’s since we had a two-for-one coupon. Happily full, we made our way back home for a mellow and kitty-rich listening of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me while we lounged in bed.

Once we were ready to face the day itself, we headed out and ran a few errands. Since one of the errands took us to downtown Akron, we used the excuse to swing by and check out the University of Akron’s Artspace. Artspace is a small gallery where the university displays various student work, and this collection was highlighting work by promising art students. I’m very proud to say that one of my former Fools and a friend of mine has two paintings being displayed (I’m proud even though I had absolutely nothing to do with anything artistic in her life!).

I liked Artspace. It was small, but it still held about 40 works. They were mostly paintings, but there were a few sculptures and some photographs. There were abstract and modern works and there were more traditional works, but I liked them very much. Obviously I was biased towards Michelle’s (my friend’s) work, which was a painting of her sister as a sort of dryad with her hair tangled in the branches of a tree, and a painting of a fallen native American surrounded by various animals (with just a touch of the fantastic about it). Above and beyond my bias though, there were some other works that were very good. There was a simple painting of a tree that was excellent – lots of black paint layered up to produce textures of the tree – well done. There was a thought-provoking painting of a woman sitting on the floor holding a small glass globe where inside was a woman holding what appeared to be a bloody knife. What struck me was the larger woman’s expression – it was kind of glazed over – almost bored. I also liked a paining of a winter scene where a woman was tied to the wrists of another man, and she was blindfolded. Mer was disturbed by the picture, as was I, but I liked the color and the rendering of the woman’s expression on her face (she was obviously scared). Mer and I both liked a whimsical painting of a bunch of fantastical monsters at play (with two licking ice cream). That was a fun piece. So, Artspace was a big hit! Oh – Mer and I were both able to identify Michelle’s work without reading the placard. That made us happy.

After Artspace, Mer took me to an early supper at the ubiquitous Olive Garden. We had a nice supper on our gift card, and even took home food for lunch on Sunday.

We went home and quickly got ready for the main event of Saturday. I had been happily given 12 free tickets to take some CVCA students (mostly members of the Irish Dance club) to go see Summit Choral Society’s “Parade of Irish Music” at the Akron Civic Theater. I love the Civic Theater. It is a wonderful 1920s theater that is pretty much garish in its over-the-top ornamentation of the entire space. For some reason it works. There is gold leaf and fancy woodwork and all sorts of classical statues everywhere, and I just love it. The best part of the theater’s decor is the ceiling – it is a sky, with lights as stars and clouds that really move across the sky. I have never come up with a good explanation of how the clouds work. What a wonderful theater.

We had good seats – our group was on the right-hand side of the theater, about 12-14 rows back. That put us over by the small but excellent band the Choral Society brought in. They had a keyboard, pipes, whistles, a hammer dulcimer, a bodhran (Irish drum), normal drums, guitar, and fiddle. The director said these musicians do not normally play together, but they had a great sound.

The Choral Society did a bunch of songs. The started with three pieces from the Irish church, and followed that with a drinking song (and probably said much about Ireland right there!). They sang dance songs and ballads, and even had a sing-along in the second half. They had a smaller group that performed several songs from Riverdance during the second half as well, including a song that we do not have on our CD of Riverdance (a song about freedom from poverty, where the lead was sung by a powerful tenor who was black – nicely done). It was great.

They also invited along a school of Irish dance, in full costume. I think that is what my students liked best. They were very good. They were mostly girls (there were two guys out of about 30 dancers), and they looked to range in age from about 4 to about 18. They did probably five different numbers or so, and even danced a Ceili (social) dance with some of the members of the Choral Society.

I am not always a shy person, and so I talked to the pipes player during intermission. He was very nice and took the time to show me his pipes. He was playing the Highland small pipes, which are played like the traditional Scottish bagpipes, but are smaller and are played with a bellows driven by the elbow (as opposed to breathing into a bag as one would with the traditional pipes). He also gave me the name of a man in Cuyahoga Falls who builds the very cool Irish bagpipes (the Uilleann pipes). I love talking with musicians.

The kids seemed to enjoy the evening, and they were very well behaved. It was, once again, a very fine day.