The Singing Kettles Christmas concert is a wonderful highlight of the season each year. It’s become a tradition for many in the community and St. Mary’s Church in Kettle Valley is always filled for the event.
A personal Christmas ritual of my own is that I will always arrive as they are singing the first song. I held true to tradition this time too. So I stood behind the crowd and got out my camera to snap a few pictures.
After they had finished the first couple of songs I made my way down to the only place there was left to sit—the front pews. It pays to be late at some events and in this case choir director Peri Best gave me a big welcoming hug and a hearty Merry Christmas as I passed by. That was the first Christmas concert that I have been part of a since I was about eight or nine years old.
I chose to sit in the pew on the left where I could get pictures of the piano player. But for the third or fourth piece on the program Vivien Browne had to stand beside the piano playing the violin. Before she started she warned me to watch I didn’t get hit by her bow hand during the fast bits. So I jumped right up and moved to the right side pew for the next tune or two.
I was, to say the least, really moved by the music that evening.
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The Boundary Creek Times is getting into the social networking thing with an active Facebook page. This is long overdue. Often we don’t have space to print many of the photos I take or there may be a developing story that we can keep updated online rather than waiting for the next week’s issue to go to press.
We are also online at boundarycreektimes.com. This is where you can find archived copies of the paper going back as far as late September 2012. Just click the e-Edition link at the top of the page.
A lot of this social networking stuff is new to me but our new office administrator Janet Matsalla is a regular whiz-bang at it and is teaching me as fast as I can learn.
Up until now Facebook was where I would go to click that I would accept someone as my friend and then I would mostly ignore them; just like the rest of my Facebook amigos.
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I think I need to get out more. Ron and Madeleine Henschel invited me in for a cup of coffee the other day. We had a great little chat that I found very refreshing. The two of them have been married a long time and it was neat watching and listening to them relate to each other. There was a sense of ease and comfort; with a generous portion of love in their interactions.
I had worked with Ron for many years at P&T in Midway. But I had to admit I wasn’t sure of Madeleine’s name. So I asked and she told me—mentioning that it is spelled ‘the French way.’
Ron confessed that it took a long time after they started seeing each other before he ever started a letter or note to her with full name—he said he usually just wrote Dear M. I guess he knew a good thing when he saw it and didn’t want to risk losing her.