Thanksgiving, "Creation," and "The Butter Battle Book"

So, today is Thanksgiving. We had a full turkey dinner made by my grandmother. Those partaking in the dinner were myself, Hope, Heather, my grandparents, and my father. As of a few months ago, my dad and Heather are officially back on, and are in fact, engaged. The wedding is due to be in May of next year, and it will be held at a beautiful mountain house, of which I have seen pictures. A few days ago, on Tuesday, my dad, Aaron Sebright, his father, and I went to the Symphony performance of Haydn's "Creation." The music was absolutely gorgeous. The first thing that I remember thinking, in the opening notes of the oratorio, was that it is very easy to see how Haydn influenced Beethoven when he was the latter's teacher. The music was like an ocean. Each day of Creation was begun with a somber, quiet vocal recital accompanied by minimal strings and the harpsichord. The bass man was the first and most often to sing during these recital parts. Then, after each aspect of whatever day was described in great detail, one would sense the approaching climax. This usually came in the form of, "And then the holy choir said. . ." And then, BOOM! The chorale singers sitting in the back of the stage would explode in exhorting song and the man playing the timpani would pound at it like an agitated heart. It was absolutely fantastic and heart-wrenching simultaneously. One of my favorite parts of the performance was getting a chance to see them professionally perform "The Heavens are Telling," which was the first piece that I performed with the choir, incidentally. After seeing it performed professionally, I can make the conclusion that we did a pretty good job! I wore the black sparkly dress that I usually only wear to dances. After the concert, we all went across the street to Wolfies' for gelato. They did not have my favorite kind, lemon-flavored gelato, and so I experimented with the cotton candy flavor. At the table outside, we discussed, among other things, Dr. Seuss and his phenomenal allegory for the Cold War, that is, The Butter Battle Book. I don't know if I've mentioned this book in an earlier post, but it is most obviously about the Cold War, even if he does not explicitly say so. On either side of a wall are two civilizations, one which spreads butter on the top side of the toast and the other which spreads the butter on the bottom side of the toast. These civilizations are constantly at war with each other, and the main character of the book is always going to the military scientists to retrieve the new weapon that they have created. Each time he goes to visit them, he receives the assurance that the weapon that the scientists cooked up could not possibly be matched on the other side. However, as soon as the main character meets the enemy's representative at the wall with his weapon, it is only to find that the other civilization's military equipment is just as sophisticated. Then, each character has to go back to retrieve new, stronger weaponry. Finally, at the end of the book, there is no resolution - the protagonist and antagonist are each standing on the wall, holding a bomb over the side and threatening to drop it into the territory of his enemy. The grandson of the main character, who is witnessing all of this, cries, "Oh grandfather, who will drop the bomb first, you or him?"
And the grandfather says, "We'll see, won't we? We'll see." or something to that effect. That is the end of the story; Dr. Seuss decided not to gift-wrap this story in pleasantness for his young audience.
In any case, our fathers laughed at us for discussing Dr. Seuss so seriously. It was a fun night, all in all.