Aesop's Fables

The School of Creative and Performing Arts is a new creation at the University of Calgary -- a collaboration of drama, art and music. Pouria and I slipped over to their opening night of Aesop’s Fables – 18 of them told through music, dance or the spoken word. No fable was read. All were illustrated with movement, music and poetry.

Afterwards there was a reception on the Roza Centre. We signed a big banner. One little ten year old turned her name into a picture of wolf. How cute was that, since many of the fables involved a wolf somehow: "The Wolf and the Crane", "The Wolf and the Lamb", "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".  I am sure I read many of these as bedtime stories. Aesop was a Greek slave and story teller, around 620 to 560 BCE.  His fables have been read go children for many generations.

Pouria and I wll not need to eat breakfast. At the reception there was an abundance of vegetables, cheese, fruit mini-tarts, cookies and champagne – glasses topped up by a roving waiter. Even gingerale tastes good in those long stemmed glasses. Plus we enjoyed the antics of the dean who cut the cake – in large, large pieces – that man knows how to wow the crowd.

A lovely evening. As Pouria said – free ticket, fabulous reception – the undergrads who miss this will only appreciate it long after they have graduated and wonder, why didn’ I go to those events.  The two of us didn't know how we lucked out, but we enjoyed the abundance.

I also really enjoyed my walk home in the fall evening air, listening to Pouria talk about Iran. I don't know very much about him, yet. He got a full scholarship for his undergraduate degree in Malaysia and another for his masters in Halifax which he will be defending at the end of the month.

Still, his parents had to pay $18,000 for him to be able to leave the country. That is a lot of money. I often view education as a right but on the walk home I remembered again that it is a great privilege as well.

Arta