Face to face

Was a time, folks, when your blogging companion was actually pretty deeply versed in Czech culture, and in the Czech language. That time was 1994-5, and I can still remember being given the native rate, rather than the foreign tourist rate, at a hotel after rolling through the check-in conversation with a rough fluency that was enough convince the clerk that I was more probably from Olomouc than Ohio. I remember pitching against a Cuban factory worker in the small industrial city of Koprivnice; I recall sharing glasses of burcak in a Znojmo garden; I remember learning swear words at the Brno hockey arena. And I remember, too, hearing through a friend in Prague of a release party for a band that I enjoyed - and then taking a few Americans to the party, and swaying to an small, informal acoustic jam in a tenement basement, after which the guitarist gave me his pick.

But, you know, I can't remember, for the life of me, the guitarist's name. Or, in fact, the name of the band. And I can't even offer any proof that I was really at such a party, as that was long before the era in which we all carry, as a matter of course, tiny digital cameras with us at all times. It's a vague memory, specific in some directions and entirely corroded in others, and nothing more.

Cleo, however, recently came face to face with her musical idol, and can prove it. That's Lisa Singer, above, at a Milkshake show in Solomons Island. And that proud smile on Cleo's face? Well, I remember that: that's the sign of a happy, fulfilling time spent dancing, swaying, and simply feeling surrounded by a culture that one is finally really beginning to get.