Oklahoma City

Torrey and I left Dallas on Wednesday morning and headed toward Oklahoma City. We met his son Christopher for lunch in Carrolton. Christopher was on his way back to Dallas. In "The City" as they call it, Torrey gave me a drving tour of the downtown including the memorial to the victims of the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.

We headed for Bricktown and took a tour on the canal's water taxi. At the end of the twentieth century the town developed the area of abandoned warehouses into an entertainment district with the canal, restaurants, a movie theater, and the baseball stadium. Public art includes the Devon Mosaic, murals of old postcards, and the sculpture monument of the Oklahoma land run.

The reason we headed straight to The City instead of Torrey's home in Weatherford OK was for the rehearsal of the Canterbury Choral Society joined by other choral groups and a large orchestra and two additional brass ensembles at the Civic Center. This was in preparation for their program on my birthday in which they would perform Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms and William Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. Getting things together is always quite an undertaking at the first joint rehearsal, but their director did an excellent job. This obviously was not his first rodeo, as they say, nor that of the singers.

On Thursday I mostly chilled out, read, and watched TV. Torrey headed back that evening for another rehearsal. Friday we meant to do some more touring of The City, but by the time we got around to arriving, we had time for a meal from the food trucks near the Civic Center before preparations for the performance. The concert went very well, so it was an enjoyable birthday. It was also a fairly quiet one except for the Walton.