Today's Features

The Highlands Department of music will present an afternoon ofromantic waltzes and lively gypsy songs when the Madrigal choir performs “Brahms In Love” in Ilfeld Auditorium at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2.

Directed by Andr Garca-Nuthmann with Linda King at the piano, theall-Brahms program includes vocal works, “Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes,”a portion of “Ein Deutches Requiem” and “Zigeunerlieder.”Inaddition, Linda King will solo in the “Piano Ballade in G. Minor.”

Starlings make an awful racket. They start at dusk when coming home to roost. Unfortunately the elm tree was in my front yard in Illinois was that roost. Under the elm tree on the sidewalk and grass, layers of bird droppings reminded us of the floor of a bat cave.

But it was bird squawks and cries that finally got us on the phone with our local Department of Agriculture. They hooked us up with Dave, the bird man.

Willa, age 3, runs up to her mom with a library book in hand.“Read me a story,” she begs. Maria Seefz, Willa’s mom, is delighted to read to her daughter.Seefz is an elementary education teacher and is passionate about the value of reading out loud and talking about story books with Willa.

Seefz only hopes she will find the same strong support for reading in Alamosa, Colo., that they have found at the Carnegie Public Library’s children’s program. The Carnegie program has meant a lot to them both. But they are leaving for Colorado in two weeks.

Casa de Cultura director Miguel Angel sees the Day of the Dead as a celebration of life. “It is a way to poke fun at death,” Angel said.

“Since we are all going in that direction, why not laugh at death while we are alive? The flowers and the sugar skulls, the pan dulce, all are reminders that life is sweet.”

Central features of the day of the dead, or dia de los muertos, are the “ofrendas,” which are altars or memorials to the deceased, and “calaveras,” various representations of skulls and skeletons.