Support the Fort Worth Opera

A little plug for our local Opera Company, one of the 14 oldest opera companies in the nation, and the oldest continuously performing opera company in Texas, the Fort Worth Opera. As of the end of the 2007 Season, the company has produced 219 main-stage operas.

I mention this because the FWO just received a plug in the July, 2009 magazine, Opera News with a headline article featuring our new Director, Darren Keith Woods.

It may surprise visitors to "Cowtown" but little old Fort Worth has possibly the premier piano competition in the world in the Van Cliburn*, one of the top ten music halls in the world**, and an opera company that is serious about bringing top-tier opera to Texas.

But they need your support.

It is a year away but next season features one of my favorites: Mozart's, Don Giovanni. I will be there, probably more than once.

http://www.fwopera.org/

* "The most prestigious classical piano contest in the world..." (Chicago Tribune)

** "Bass Performance Hall is one of those rare halls in which the music heard by the audience is the same as that heard by the performer. The clarity of sound heard throughout the entire range, in addition to the warm, welcoming environment, makes Bass Performance Hall one of the very best." --- Yo-Yo Ma

Speaking of aging . . .

If you watch TV (and I do) you will have noticed that drug companies promote the notion that by taking a pill we can have the vitality of a twenty year old.

The most recent televised target: low energy. I figure that's a pretty big audience of prospective buyers -- like everybody I know. This particular commercial named the cause of the lower energy , "Lower T." The suggestion was that even though I am 56, overweight, and under exercised, I should have more energy, and that if I were to take one of their pills I would have more energy.

Also recently, I have learned that if my eye's tear ducts aren't working I can take Resistrol, and that if my prostate is malfunctioning, and I am embarrassed by frequent men's room visits, I can take ... oh I forget ... and there is Lipitor for my high cholesterol, and I haven't even mention the dreaded V/pill and its all natural cousins.

I am certainly not suggesting that there are not wonder drugs. The lowly aspirin is one of them. Where we would we be without Penicillin? I do not object at all to those who do need to take one pill or the other. I am thankful that we have them. But I do tire of the drug commercials on television, their actor-doctors and nurses with feigned interest in the actor-patient's health, and all the silver-haired men and woman who suggest that life can be extended forever in full vitality by taking this pill -- the one they produced, of course.

I remember thinking how odd where the stories of Ponce de Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth, but we are not that much different.

Jack in the Box Ad (Hey, this is a food blog)