Good morning, Friends! On this day - January 27 - in 1756, the composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was born. To a lot of my former music students and to a lot of people, classical music (with a lowercase c) means - you know, that stuffy long-haired music that’s not generally popular. 

But Classical with a capital C refers to a particular era in music history - roughly from 1750 to 1820.  Mozart is one of the foremost composers of that era. 

Although I grew up listening to a Mozart record my parents had, I wasn’t introduced to  Mozart’s Horn Concertos until I found a cassette tape of these concertos in the glove compartment of a used car we bought years ago. They are some of my favorite Mozart compositions. 

Listen to a little Mozart today!

Happy Monday!

 It’s a chilly Monday here in southern Louisiana - a new week - a clean slate. It’s all too easy to focus on what’s wrong in the world. I know. I fall into that trap too often. There’s no denying that there’s a lot wrong with the world, and we should not be blind to it. Jesus said, "Be wise as serpents." Being wise does not mean being in a constant state of denial about the evil in the world. 

But Jesus also said, "Be innocent as doves." Don’t participate in the world’s evil. Do all the good you can and speak the truth. And don’t fall into thinking, "I can’t do much, so I won’t do anything." 

You can trust God to multiply the little good you do. You can’t imagine how much a simple word of appreciation and encouragement can do for another human being. So look for the good and the beautiful in nature and in other people. I hope your day is full of good cheer, goodwill, and lots of laughter. ❤️

Valentines

Good morning, Friends! It’s been one of those mornings. I feel like I’ve been riding off in all directions at once. I hope I can tick enough things off my list today to get a couple of hours in my craft room. Retirement shouldn’t be so busy! 

I’m working on Valentines in the craft room these days. In elementary school Valentine’s Day was a favorite holiday. It fed my postal fettish. We decorated shoe boxes, cut slots in them, and stacked them on a shelf. That was our ”post office.” We started bringing Valentines two or three weeks before Valentine’s Day when we all got to open our shoe box.  

It was important that we give a Valentine to everyone of our classmates. I don’t remember if that was an official rule or just the teacher’s suggestion. Anyway, nobody was to be left out - and that’s as it should be. 

But that meant that a great deal of thought had to go into choosing Valentines for our classmates. There were what we called “mushy” Valentines - the ones that talked about love and kissing and - well, mushy stuff. And there were general Valentines that just wished the recipient a good day. 

It was a grueling process. After all, you didn’t want to send a mushy Valentine to that obnoxious boy that kept pulling your hair. But did you even want to send a mushy Valentine to a boy you liked? I mean  - when you’re in the fourth grade, that could be embarrassing. No telling what the repercusions might be. A lot of my mushy Valentines ended up being un-sent. 

These days I think of Valentine’s Day as a celebration of not only romantic love, but a celebration of God’s love for us - the Sacred Romance. 

I hope your day is good! ❤️ Don’t forget to do small things with great love.