I zipped down to San Antonio Friday afternoon to hear my son's middle school orchestra perform for the Texas Music Educator's Association annual conference. Apparently it's enormous. His orchestra was selected to perform as essentially the top middle school (in Texas that means grades 6,7, & 8) orchestra in Texas.
I had a meeting in the morning, so I dashed out right afterward. Though the flight was delayed, and of course there was the rental car / airport construction / directions / looking for parking downtown / finding remote parking at the Alamodome / throwing myself in front of a shuttle bus to keep things interesting, I amazingly trotted into the performance no more than two minutes before the first announcements! <whew>
On the flight down there, I sat next to a little old lady who was telling me about her niece, a flute player that had spent time in Ireland and managed to stay there a few months longer by busking on the streets of Dublin. (NO, busking is the perfectly honorable profession of playing the street for money given by passers-by. Downtown Dublin, especially on Grafton Street between Trinity College on the north end, and the lovely St. Stephen's park on the south.) "Very nice, very nice," I said as I tried to fall asleep.
"Then she went off to the west coast to perform, and met and married Dale Chihuly."
"Excuse me?? She married who???"
"Dale Chihuly." 
"Not just a Dale Chihuly, the Dale Chihuly?"
She proceed to regale the now-fully-awake me with stories of the couple going to the Clinton White House for dinner with the Russian Ambassador, and Dale wearing sneakers. Not just any sneakers, apparently, but sneakers that he paints and customizes!
The kid's performance was terrific. I say that objectively; there were music teachers in the audience during the performance shaking their heads in wonder at the violin and cello solos in Capriccio Espagnol, and the violins (especially the firsts) had a very polished sound for the Faure' Pavane. Audience members were very enthusiastic in their praise of the students as they passed by on their way out.
I had enough time to walk a couple blocks over to the Alamo (there's an NPR StoryCorp trailer there), and have a Lone Star beer at the history Menger Hotel bar literally next door. A quick dinner at a pricey restaurant on the Riverwalk, and I was off back to the airport!
I did have one other interesting episode. P.S. - I did a little research, and it wasn't the Russian ambassador, it was Boris Yeltsin himself, in 1994. Apparently Leslie can speak Russian, so she was in heaven. And yes, the New York Times specifically mentioned his sneakers.
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