As I’ve mentioned upon occasion, my wife the college professor was an opera singer. In addition to singing professionally, she also has taught voice and directed the opera program at the local state university for the past thirty years.

Unfortunately, teaching young singers has gotten more difficult every year, not because she’s gotten older, but because of the increasing restrictions placed on teachers, especially in her field.

Classical music is a small world, where the slightest impropriety or poor behavior is immediately spread, but as a result of the #Me Too movement, any professor who uses those words to warn young singers, true as they are, can face disciplinary action because those words are automatically classed as a threat.

In recent years, more and more vocal competitions have been conducted in the initial stages through video or zoom, which artificially reduces a singer’s full range and overtones, while increasing the importance of appearance, dress, and physical presence.

Yet, at the same time, the university has effectively forbidden professors to even suggest ways for students to improve their attire or physical presentation, because doing so would “belittle” the students. Even though grossly excessive weight reduces vocal capabilities and limits stage performance, and even though singers are also judged on their professional demeanor and appearance, professors cannot even make a bland observation for improvement in those areas.

In addition, constructive criticism, i.e., telling students what needs improvement and why it’s necessary, is frowned on unless surrounded by lots of praise. Heaven help a voice teacher who bluntly tells a student that they’re singing out of tune and that they will not get into graduate school or have any chance at a career if they don’t get the basics down first.

Unsurprisingly enough, at my wife’s university, the popular “cheerleading” professors have far fewer graduates who go on to professional careers in music than those who “tell it like it is,” but the professors who tell it like it is get poorer faculty and student evaluations, despite producing more successful graduates.

So, in effect, by insisting that teachers “protect” the poor delicate souls, these well-meaning administrators (or perhaps those terrified by the thought of legal action) are reducing the ability of professors to improve the chances of their students to compete and succeed, and that’s especially true in the case of less prestigious state universities, which is exactly where undiscovered students with raw talent and little else often end up.

My wife, the university opera director, is always looking for chamber operas suitable for largely undergraduate performers. And while there are more than a few chamber operas out there, she seldom finds many that her students can perform. Why?

First, far too many operas written today, including chamber operas, are far too experimental and musically difficult for undergraduates, and also have limited audience appeal because melody too often takes a back seat to “experiment” and “novelty.”

Second, like most university opera directors, she’s limited in the number of talented male singers with a surplus of female singers, particularly sopranos, yet the vast majority of operas, both past and present, require more male singers.

Chamber operas that are meaningful, musically sound, melodic, and dramatically interesting, with more female roles, are rare. When she finds one, such as The Ghosts of Gatsby, which her company presented in 2023, she’s delighted.

But, as an economist, what I don’t understand is why so many composers today ignore the opportunity presented by hundreds of university opera programs, all of which have “too many sopranos” (actually a title of a good chamber opera). Presumably, given the excess of starving composers, such composers would like to have their work presented and receive a chance at royalties for their effort.

Yet in going through some twenty recently composed chamber operas available for production, my wife could find exactly one where the number of female singers exceeded the number of males.

At some point, this might change, that is, if composers actually want to have their works presented and to be paid.

On a parallel track, of sorts, when I started writing professionally, most writers were male, and most wrote science fiction, as did I. The speculative fiction field both grew and changed, and I changed with it. When I looked at the best-seller lists for the past three months, I noticed that something like 60% of the best-selling books were by women, and most of the men on the list were older. Even Brandon Sanderson is approaching fifty, and I’m certainly no spring chicken.

So… maybe, just maybe, those classical opera composers should think about why so few of them are getting produced.

Sometimes, shopping at Walmart can tell you far more about how life is changing in the United States than all the polls and surveys. Why do I use Walmart? Because the prices on staples are far lower than the other three markets in Cedar City, and since Cedar City is on I-15 – the most direct route to California – the produce is not only better, but far less expensive.

Because my wife the professor works long hours on a regular basis, and I can shop when it’s not crowded, I do almost all the grocery shopping, usually once or twice a week. On my last trip, I had two items on my list that I only need to replenish once or twice a year, if that – black boot/shoe polish and black edge-dressing or scuffcoat.

Except this time, Walmart had neither. And it wasn’t that they were out of stock. That whole small shoe section had been reduced to one shelf, with neutral polish and other items having nothing to do with polish, surrounded by insoles for all sizes of feet.

Perhaps it’s my upbringing, or possibly the years in the Navy, but I’ve always liked my boots to be polished. And I wear boots because almost any kind of shoes, even expensive designer shoes or high-end athletic shoes, get painful within hours, if not a few minutes. Except for my work boots, scuffed and dirty boots or shoes, to me at least, suggest a certain slovenliness or lack of character. It’s not that I particularly enjoy polishing boots, but that I dislike appearing unkempt or sloppy (except when engaged in manual labor, where I can quickly get unkempt).

As I was pondering the lack of shoe polish, I realized another fact – that the local cobbler had closed his shop a month previous, and there was no one repairing or resoling shoes or boots in Cedar City any longer. I’ve had some of my boots more than ten years, and I’m hard on them. So I’ve needed new soles and heels on a continuing basis, but getting them repaired is obviously coming to an end.

So, I suspect, are the days of polished leather boots and shoes, replaced by the ubiquitous sneakers or extraordinarily expensive athletic shoes that wear out quickly, none of which are designed to fit my clearly Neanderthal feet.

And it’s not just me. For years, my wife has bemoaned the fact that it’s almost impossible for her to find shoes that fit, ever since shoe manufacturers simplified their sizing. If a woman has a moderate forefoot and a narrow heel, she’ll end up slipping out of a standard shoe (although some manufacturers supply pads), and any shoe narrow enough to fit her heel will be too tight to accommodate her forefoot.

Yes, the times are definitely changing, from head to foot, especially for feet.

Almost every year in late spring, just about this time, I write about my lilacs and their never-ending battle against the vagaries of the climate here in Cedar City. My lilac bushes are deep purple, and I love their scent – provided I have the chance to enjoy it.

We’ve had a comparatively warm winter, often with rain instead of snow, and by the first of April the daily highs were in the mid-sixties, and it was no longer freezing at night. By the twentieth of April, daily the temperature was flirting with all-time highs. Last Wednesday, the temperature neared eighty, and the lilacs decided that it was time to leaf out and bloom. By Friday night I could smell just a trace of their scent.

By Saturday morning, however, the wind picked up, ranging from twenty to thirty miles per hour, blowing away any scent that the lilacs emitted. Sunday morning, the wind was even fiercer, with cold gusts well over forty miles per hour. Then, around three o’clock we got small hail that turned into sleet, which after fifteen minutes turned into heavy snow. The temperature dropped to thirty-seven degrees and by six o’clock we had some four inches of snow.

For the lilacs, it didn’t get any better, because by ten o’clock the temperature dropped to below freezing and stayed there until sunrise. By then the temperature rose above freezing, although the lilac bushes –and blossoms — were still festooned with snow. By midday, it was clear and sunny, with a temperature of 48 F, and there was no trace of snow on the lilacs, and the blossoms weren’t frost-bitten.

Unfortunately, the combination of wind, snow, and cold destroyed any chance of enjoying the rare chance smelling lilacs in bloom… again.

We all tend to hold memories in which we firmly believe… but sometimes those firm memories aren’t as accurate as we think they are.

For years, I “remembered” when the Denver Broncos opened the season by winning eight straight games, and then lost eight straight and never made the playoffs. But when I checked the actual records, I discovered that no such season ever existed. The closest season to that was in 1962, when the Broncos won six of their first seven games, then lost six of the final seven games. While that was close to what I remembered, obviously my brain wanted to emphasize the magnitude of the Broncos’ collapse, for whatever reason, possibly because of how bad the Broncos were in the early years.

Now, some people have better memories than others. A relative of my wife was a singer and a conductor. More than forty years ago, he conducted university choirs at a program where the late Grace Kelly, the former actress and then the Princess of Monaco, gave a poetry reading. He honestly didn’t remember that, and his former wife had to dig out newspaper clippings to prove he had conducted Kelly’s program there and had even been at the reception. I think it’s fair to say that a former professional musician who cannot recall being on a program with Grace Kelly has definite memory difficulties.

On the other hand, I’ve learned that, if my wife recalls something – that was the way it was, because what she recalls is always accurate, particularly with regard to people and events. She does not remember telephone numbers well, which, as I mentioned some time ago, created difficulties with a financial institution, who insisted she had to remember the telephone number of the house where she lived some forty years ago (back before the era of cell phones).

Despite my mis-recollection about the 1962 Broncos’ season, I’m generally more accurate with numbers and facts, but obviously not as accurate as I’d like to believe, and I suspect that’s true of most of us.