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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!gordon
From: gordon@genrad.UUCP (Gordon Partridge)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: New topic: Magic Moments
Message-ID: <3516@genrad.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Sep-83 08:38:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: genrad.3516
Posted: Fri Sep  9 08:38:53 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Sep-83 20:37:25 EDT
Organization: GenRad, Bolton, Mass.
Lines: 33

First of all, why net.singles?  Because this group often has interesting
conversational items (example: How did you parents meet?).

Every few years, my wife and I have an experience that we remember as a
magic moment.  Probably most people do.  What were some of yours?

I'll start the ball rolling with an event in our lives.

About a dozen years ago, my wife and I journeyed from New York to Venice on
the Italian ship Cristoforo Colombo.  Among the passengers were the
conductor of the Prague Symphony and his wife.  I no longer remember their
names, and must refer to him as "the Conductor."  His wife spoke Czech and
French.  Amazingly, my wife and I were the only other passengers who spoke
French: there was little opportunity for the conductor's wife to meet
others, and we became her closest companions on the trip.

It is customary on a voyage for the passengers to join in the ship's
entertainment.  The Conductor's principal instrument was the piano.  But
pianos on a ship are seldom in tune because of the pounding they take from
the sea.  For this reason, he refused to play in public lest a bad piano be
mistaken for a bad pianist.

One evening the after-dinner show in the nightclub was particularly
unappealing, and the four of us slipped out to a darkened bar in the front
of the ship: an intimate little lounge that would open about 11 PM for the
night-owl crowd.  The only light in the room was starlight and the
reflection of phosphorescence from the water.  A small
piano was behind the bar.  There for just the four of us, alone on the
Adriatic Sea, the Conductor played Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."  I
remember being in tears.  For me, this was surely one of life's magic
moments.

Gordon Partridge, GenRad, Inc., Mail Stop 98, Route 117, Bolton, MA  01740