Many of our members are on vacation at the moment, so we had a small but feisty crew at this week’s rehearsal. We celebrated Christmas in July with several rounds of Mele Kalikimaka, refreshed our memory of other standards in our repertoire, and had fun singing tags in spontaneous quartets.

We also took some time to get to know each other better by going around the group and having each one of us share a bit of background about our parents. Some people brought photos and precious newspaper clippings. With members of wide-ranging ages, what an astonishing array of stories we encompass as a chorus! War, emigration, immigration, internment, refugee escape, starstruck romance, arranged marriage, self-made men, tenacious women — our parents’ stories and our own personal histories represent an extraordinary cross section of twentieth and twenty-first century history. Singing together is wonderful, but so too is learning more about each other’s origins and the experiences that made us who we are — all in the service, of course, of building harmony and making our chords ring!