Local happenings

Many small things have been happening in our world right now. We have had no big interesting trips, but perhaps we could explain a bit about some of our activities and situations.

About a month ago we had an interesting fireside where an LDS opera singer came to speak and perform some musical numbers for us. Sue Hamilton, who was formerly Sue Pachel, grew up on a farm in Montana. As a young girl she would always be singing and she sang at a number of places locally. Sue comes from an active LDS family and counts her religion as a very important part of her life. She graduated from BYU and eventually got a chance to be professionally trained. She sang in many professional productions. At 59 years of age she debuted in the Metropolitan Opera Company remaining there with a 5 year contract.

Being a lyric soprano and a very tall, dark-haired beauty who looks much younger than her age, she performed the arias and solos of many young female characters. She ended her contract with an aria singing the part of Iselda, a 17 year old girl. Sue was 64 years old when she sang and performed in that opera. Sue Hamilton said that she is very grateful for her talent and that every time she sings she wants to have the spirit of the Lord help her bring the message across, and we can feel this as she sings. She has performed in most of the great opera houses all over the world and now lives in Germany with her husband.

Sue married Brett Hamilton late in life. They enjoyed knowing each other and working together professionally. Sue said that when she found out he was also born and raised in Montana just a few miles away from her home, they decided they ought to get married. He came into their marriage with two children and one grandchild from a previous marriage. Brett is a Baritone opera singer who has performed many times on Broadway but he specializes in songs from American composers. His rendition of “Old Man River” that night was the best performance we have ever heard of that song. Sue performed several songs, including “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess and she did equally as well. They sang as a final duet “Love is Spoken Here” which was very spiritual. Even though Brett is not a member of our church he respects her feelings and her belief in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The fireside was held in the Frankfurt Ward chapel and we couldn’t clap for their performances in the chapel because it is a sacred place. But after the fireside we had refreshments and when they walked into the cultural hall all the senior missionaries gave a long standing ovation to them for their marvelous performance. We mingled with them and Grant was able to have a nice conversation with Brett Hamilton on what causes vibrato.

When I was a graduate student at UCSD studying linguistics I learned quite a bit about the physiology of speech – the physical anatomy of mankind that makes speech possible. I had access to quite a range of electronic and mechanical devices that I could use to analyze sounds, and as a project I went over to the medical school and dissected the throat of a cadaver. All interesting stuff! Years later a question occurred to me which I would have liked to have researched there: How does a singer create vibrato? I’ve thought about it many times, and I’ve concluded that there is more than one kind of vibrato. Whenever I tried to talk about the subject with musicians, however, I was bombarded with a bunch of answers that were the result of “perception” – “It seems to me that I do xxx”. After discussions with several people it was clear that perceptions weren’t reliable – several of the perceptions were in exact opposition to others. The really “educated” musicians – those with voice training in college or the like, would say things that just didn’t fit with the human anatomy.

Well, when an opera singer showed up in our fireside, and we were told that he was also a professional trainer of opera singers, I thought this would be my chance, so when I saw him standing alone for a couple of minutes during the refreshments, I went to him and dropped the question. “It is interesting that you would ask” he started, “because that is one of my problems right now.” He explained that he has had a large number of former “boys choir” members brought to him by their parents, who want their boy to continue in music and be an opera singer. Of course, as boys choir members, they have had to sing on pitch without any vibrato, but in opera singing they must be able to sing with very strong but controlled vibrato. He lamented that boys choir boys often can never master the vibrato. As a result of this need in his teaching he has done a lot of study to find out what is really going on, and his experience was just about the same as mine – The experts “perceptions” differ and often oppose one another. I told him of some of the experiments we had done in the Linguistics world, and he was very interested in them. He could only offer me one “definite conclusion”: he said “it is not in the voice box. “ When making vibrato there is no movement in the voice box that accounts for it. So there you have it. The answer to the age-old question about vibrato is that no one knows – yet. Don’t be surprised, though, if you hear in the future of an opera singer who has performed a bunch of experiments using various electronic sensors, and discovered how vibrato works. Until then we will just plunge ahead with the age-old training: “listen to this, and then imitate it.”

Grant has been busy with many different jobs. One of them was repairing microfilm readers.
Many of the readers which were not functioning correctly have been brought back to our office from different areas of Europe. Grant worked with another man repairing and combining parts to make several readers work. Those readers are now being taken to England, Wales, Hungary, and other places. This coming week our assistant director will take several readers to Poland in the pool car we have been using. So we will have to take the bus or use a different pool car.

Grant has also been working on a display unit for FamilySearch presentations. There were three large plastic cartons that were picked up in Paris by another missionary couple (the Lunds) and brought back to our office. Grant was to set up the display, find a way to break it into two different parts, and make it possible for others to use it. He did a great job of taking pictures of the display, diagramming it then typing up the explanations of how to set it up and take it down, then store it back into the plastic cartons.
It is good he got it done by the end of last week because a senior missionary couple (the Merritts) had come down from Sweden for training and had to take half of the display back with them by Sunday, 12 July.

Grant has also been asked to start up the German class for the senior missionaries again. He is the director of the class and is supposed to assign others to help teach. However, most of the others who were teachers have gone home so he needs a new group of teachers. So far only sisters have agreed to help teach. He has redesigned the course, however, to meet the needs of senior missionaries, so hopefully there will be others willing to help out when they come to understand it.

Pat has been asked to start answering e-mail cases of English–speaking patrons anywhere in the world who send in e-mails asking for help with new FamilySearch, PAF, or FamilySearch Indexing. She is finally utilizing the training we had when we first came to Germany. Thankfully they are all e-mail cases. The calls on the phone were so intimidating to quickly find the answers.

As FamilySearch Support missionaries taking e-mail cases we have been asked to use Knowledge Documents (KDs) to back up our answers to the patrons, sending the patrons a copy of the KDs that we suggest will help answer their questions. There are thousands of KDs in an on-line site and we have to know how to put in the correct words to bring up the right KD. Sometimes it takes a lot of time trying to find the right Knowledge Document. That is why Pat prefers only answering e-mails from patrons and not calls. Perhaps as time goes by in her experience, she will get better at finding the right KDs and may even take some phone calls. We shall see.