What Have I Done for You Lately?

Well, I’m back at the government work, editing construction project management plans. But I have found time amidst all that excitement to write a few things that I hope you’ll enjoy or find useful.

Here’s what I’ve written lately:

I reviewed some performances. It’s too late for you to see Finding Neverland (at least here in Seattle) but you can see what I thought about it. I also watched Cendrillon at Pacific Northwest Ballet. You’ll definitely want to get tickets they next time they perform that one (or anything by Maillot, really). I wrote a preview of the 2017 Childrens Film Festival Seattle, which focused on diversity and inclusion this year, proving once again that children’s stories can be more profound than adult fare.

Speaking of the profound for children, I got a little political in January, helping parents plan for How to Take Your Kid to a March and sharing the stories of activists who are Too Young to Vote. I’m pretty proud of those two, so I hope you’ll click through. I did a little legal research to find out Is Marriage Equality Safe in the Trump Era?, How Families Can Navigate Immigration, and why adulting requires renter’s insurance. I also discovered some ugly truth about employer dress codes.

On a lighter note, I spent hours researching the area’s Cat Cafes. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. In further service to the community, I spent most of Christmas break researching summer camps – specifically the kind that teach kids how to be grownups, for the round-up of Summer Camps That Teach Kids Life Skills. 

Here on the blog, posting continues to be slow, but in January the most popular post was about La Traviata at Seattle Opera; in February that old favorite Stalking Asgeir Trausti rose to the top again (probably because he finally has a new album coming out).

In January, mysteriously, I had more readers from Romania than any other country outside the U.S. The most popular searches leading to my page were “painting of the hearing trumpet” and “halldor laxness.” Glad to know I’m probably attracting surrealists. I’ve always like them.

In February, the most popular searches were “La Traviata” and “still miss my dog.” I do hope that people making the second search were not looking for grief support services when they stumbled on a picture of my own gone dog.

And in a final bit of interesting-only-to-me news, I found something unusual in my list of referring sites. Usually it’s social media and the occasional click from my author bio on paid publications. But this time I had a referral from what looks like an Icelandic university mail server – and another blog! They grabbed a press photo from the opera Nabucco for use in a pretty interesting post on a topic of interest to me – opera’s portrayal of women.