Back from vacation

During my vacation I got to be thinking about how much I've been revealing about myself. While I am still concerned about someone googling my name and discovering this blog (I'm still not ready to tell my Catholic sister-in-law about my orientation), it is highly unlikely that someone will search on other words, such as International Handbell Symposium (the event I attended last week), find this site and conclude it is me. Or if they did I'm not so concerned about them figuring out that I'm gay. That sister-in-law and her kids are not going to be searching the web using handbell words.

So, yes, I had a wonderful time in Orlando. It was hot but we rarely went outside the massive resort/convention center (it was a 7 minute hike from my room to our meeting site). The Symposium was a chance for 850 bell ringers from 11 countries to meet, ring together, see what each other has been doing with the art, meet old friends and make new ones, and generally have a good time. The 11 countries are USA, Canada, Britain, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Puerto Rico. The Japanese groups were amazing in their precision, a Singapore group demonstrated their ethnic richness, and the Puerto Ricans were simply hot as they kept the Latin beat going. After a week of rehearsal the massed ringing (all 850 of us together) came together (even on the modern Japanese piece) and by the time we closed with the American Tapestry (a march, jazz/rag, and spiritual performed with wind ensemble and church choir) we had the place rockin'.

That was my 10th Symposium. I've followed it to Canada, England, Japan, Korea, and Australia. I doubt I'll go to Osaka in 2010 but I'm looking forward to Liverpool in 2012.

The National Handbell Seminar that followed the Symposium wasn't quite the stellar event, but it did allow me to have one of my pieces played at the Unpublished Reading Session and to talk to a few publishers.

I spent the last day of the trip at Kennedy Space Center. Even nearly 40 years later I still get chills when I hear, "Tranquility Base. The Eagle has landed." That was part of the moon landing theater at the Apollo/Saturn Museum (the show also dramatized how close they came to aborting the Apollo 11 landing). There was one small disappointment -- I paid extra for the Kennedy Up Close tour which takes you right up to Launch Pads 39A and B (where the Shuttles fly from) but as we pulled up to the perimeter fence a thunderstorm let loose and obscured the view. I'm now puzzled why NASA's successor to the shuttle -- the Constellation / Orion rocket system -- will have only enough space for 4 crew, down from the current 7. And they intend to take this back to the moon? But they're Rocket Scientists and I'm not.