This year, Thanksgiving falls on my birthday. I am certainly thankful to still be here. It is truly painful to realize how many people we have lost to this pandemic, here in the US and worldwide. Here I gratefully celebrate my continuing existence by singing an aria from an early work by one of my heroes, George Frideric Handel. The song urges us to, in effect, gather rosebuds while we may.
When I was little, May Day was the day I gathered various wild flowers or dandelions into a little basket and left them on my grandmother’s porch early in the morning. She always acted dutifully surprised and wondered who could possibly have left them. Much later I learned about Morris Dancers and maypoles and International Workers’ Day. But for me, May Day is still about flowers. So here, for your virtual enjoyment, are some flowers and a song I wrote some years ago about leaving (or not leaving) flowers on someone’s doorstep.