One of the funny things about my move from a large metro area to a much smaller city is that I actually have a much more urban experience here. I live a ten-minute walk from a thriving downtown area full of shops and restaurants, plus a movie theater and one of the nation’s leading Shakespearean theaters. This town also hosts a number of other arts events.

This week has been a big classical music festival. It’s about a week and a half of classical concerts in venues all over town (mostly in historic churches), with a variety of music in each concert, ranging from Renaissance to Baroque, romantic to modern, and everything in between. A lot of the concerts are free, but there are also big evening concerts that are ticketed. Apparently, it almost sells out every year with season passes, and there are people who take their vacation every year to come here and go to all the concerts.

I got recruited by a friend who’s involved with running the festival to be an usher, so I’ve spent part of this week doing the free noon concerts. I’m also ushering for one of the ticketed concerts this weekend, so I’ll get to see one of the paid concerts for free. One of the people I worked with this week is really involved with the Shakespeare theater (her husband is a retired Shakespeare professor, so the theater is the reason they retired here), and they have extra tickets for events, so they’ve invited me to the dress rehearsal and reception for the production of Romeo and Juliet next week. Between them and my neighbor who’s the costume designer, I’ll be set for theater tickets, it seems.

This is the second big classical music event of the summer. There’s also a summer institute for string players that brings in young musicians from around the world to study with top musicians, and there’s a full schedule of performances with both the students and the guest instructors.

I have a much busier calendar in this small city than I had in the big metro area, but it helps that I can walk ten minutes (or drive in less than five minutes if it’s going to be late at night) to do things instead of having to drive 45 minutes on a freeway across a major city. I also seem to have met all the people who are involved in these things, which means I keep getting drafted to get involved.

But after two days of walking downtown and then being on my feet a long time, and then a meeting with a creative group downtown this morning, my legs are currently mad at me, so I’d better rest before having to be on my feet again Saturday night.

Meanwhile, this weekend is the Narratess Indie Fantasy Sale. August 23-25 you can get a huge variety of fantasy e-books (including my Tea and Empathy) at discounted prices. When the sale opens, you can find all the books here.