JUST BACK FROM LONDON

Kent and I are recently back from spending two weeks in London. We didn't plan to be, but we were there during Queen Elizabeth's funeral. It was a most impressive, beautiful ceremony that we watched from the comfort of our AirBnB on the telly. I was surprised to find myself weeping several times, especially when the pallbearers silently emerged from Westminster Hall to bear the casket to Westminster Abbey. I'm not invested in the monarchy, but my dad was a WWII vet who had a lot of respect for Winston Churchill, so I was aware of America' relationship with England. Elizabeth II has—for my entire life—been the Queen of England. We didn't want to stand hours on the Mall to watch the funeral procession, nor walk in a 4-mile queue to see the casket, but we did visit Green Park, adjacent to Buckingham Palace, to see some of the floral tributes. I never saw so many flower bouquets before. My photo doesn't even come close to showing the volume of them. Every tree in the park had quantities like this and people were practically wading through them. It was an unparalleled sight.

You'll remember in my last email, I mentioned Joe Hedges, the web designer for our winery business, and that it's amazing you can have a remote relationship beginning in 2001 without ever meeting face-to-face? Well, we finally did it! We met in Oxford for a lovely day-trip with a walk around Oxford colleges, the Covered Market, and a memorable riverside lunch. The conversation with Joe and his wife Frances was expansive and lively and it was hard to leave it behind to return to London by train. To the right is photographic proof we pulled it off! From left to right, Kent, Joe, Frances, et moi!

LIBBY & CELIA'S HARMONY SINGING WORKSHOPS will return to the East Bay early in 2023. I'll include details as soon as plans are firm, but we'll be offering a sequence of three workshops on Saturday mornings, either three weekends in a row, or the three workshops every-other weekend. For the first of these, we'll offer a beginning level workshop for folks with no previous experience who are harmony-curious. The second one will be an intermediate level for those who've dabbled with harmony a bit but want more confidence. The third will be an advanced workshop for people feel comfortable singing established harmony parts, but who want to create their own harmonies to fit their vocal range. The wonderful part is we'll be offering these under the wing of Joe Christiano of HOOT! And by the way, several instrumentalists have told us they are using our approach in the third workshop (which corresponds to our YouTube Lesson #5—see below) for their instrument playing, which makes sense—harmony is harmony whether your instrument is your voice, or some other instrument!

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT LESSON #5!

It's free—Harmony Lesson #5 is newly available on Celia & Libby's Excellent Harmony Lessons YouTube channel. This lesson offers tips on creating "custom" harmony parts by explaining how to "hunt for harmonies", how to use intervals, chords, common tones and some very useful apps. Oh, and did I mention that it's free? It is!

LARK CAMPOUT

I'm just back from a quick trip to Mendocino's Jughandle Farm. Part of our Lark Camp team organized a weekend campout, partly as a trial run to see if we might do it as an annual event. It was wonderful to see familiar faces—folks I haven't been able to see for the past three years. We even had a little impromptu song circle in the farmhouse kitchen, as you can see above. Jughandle Farm was a beautiful place on the east side of Highway 1 with tent camping space, cabins, and RV spaces. If you're looking for a place on the Mendocino coast, check out Jughandle Farm in Caspar, 3 miles north of Mendocino Village.