A high note

A few weeks ago, we noticed our retired racing greyhound, Jason, displaying some symptoms associated with an old elbow injury he’d apparently suffered on the track before we adopted him.

In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy assures us that “whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself” … and while we can debate the relative morality of the greyhound racing industry, there’s no question that on the track, it was Jason’s duty to run as fast as he could and do his best to win the race.

In working to understand that Jason could not be harmed by carrying out his duties as a racer, I experienced a sudden healing of my own.

I’ve always enjoyed singing, and I’ve always had a high soprano range … but after spending the better end of a year living directly downwind of an oil refinery and straining to be heard above the noisy, unruly high-school English students I was trying to teach, I found that my range had lost half an octave off its top end, and singing at all — even in my lower register — left my throat sore and my eyes brimming with tears of frustration and disappointment.

Like Jason, I’d spent years suffering as a result of the incorrect belief that right action (in my case, teaching) had somehow exposed me to a set of circumstances (air pollution, vocal stress) under which I could be irreparably harmed.

As I worked to understand the falseness of that belief as it applied to Jason’s situation, I found myself in the car, singing along with a recording of Sarah Brightman doing a song from The Phantom of the Opera that contains a cadenza with a high B-flat at the end.

I hadn’t been able to hit that note in years … but suddenly, without thinking about it at all, I caught myself singing the entire cadenza — including the high note — without a trace of discomfort or difficulty.

My voice was healed.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Jason was back to normal within a day or two as well … and I must say, he’s been remarkably patient about his mistress’ sudden compulsion to sing almost constantly, too.

Good dog.

Emily

Ulee’s Gold

We watched Ulee’s Gold tonight. If you haven’t seen it, go rent it. It’s good. Peter Fonda plays a beekeeper in Florida. His performance is very understated, which is just what the role calls for, and we liked the fact that they got the details right in the scenes where he was working with his bees.

On a semi-related note, Ron is going to get me a bee suit so I can work our hive with him. I get such joy out of sharing honey with our friends — especially seeing the looks on their faces when they realize the honey was made right in our backyard, by our bees — and I’d really like to add another hive or two next year so we have more honey to share and maybe even a little to sell. I don’t think it’s fair for Ron to have to do all the work taking care of said hives, so I’m going to put on a bee suit and go out there and learn what he’s doing so I can help more next year. If it goes well, maybe we can add a couple of hives every year until we’ve got enough to justify the cost of an extractor. That’d be cool.

Emily