It's been a week of culture here at the Styling homestead. During the summer, a nearby historic house hosts weekly free jazz concerts, so Andrew and I walked over and attended one. It was raining when they started, so they moved the concert inside, providing us with a peek at the interior of the house. The Riversdale Mansion was built by the Belgian and British founders of the tiny town in which we now live. It was lovely to sit in an old drawing room, listening to live music, and to imagine sitting in that same room 200 years ago listening to live music.
My parents visited us over the weekend, and my father is the kind of guy who can't pack enough into a weekend. So I soaked in even more culture. We saw a play, then attended the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. This annual festival features one country and two topics of cultural interest. This year we learned about Hungary, endangered languages of the world, and African American fashion and dress. I must admit that I actually skipped Hungary, because I was entranced by a lecture on African-American church hats. I wear hats, but I couldn't wear any of the hats they showcased; small women in big hats tend to look like mushrooms, I'm afraid. I also really loved the performances on endangered languages, because they were almost universally about cultures I've never heard of. It was pretty amazing to hear poetry written in a language I had never heard, translated into Spanish, and then translated into English. I think perhaps the literature student in me is lurking under the scientist suit I wear every day.
1 comment:
When we talked to your Mom this weekend and she told us about the three things in the cultural event my sick mind naturally assumed the three subjects were combined into one cultural event which leads to the traditional presentation by Hungarians in Afro-Amercian hats of lost languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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