It seems a good time, as Poland enters this holiday week, to say over here what I’ve already said on Facebook:

(1) the Fulbright Commission granted me a renewal, which means a second year of funding to stay in Poland, live in Łódź, and keep working with Teatr Chorea from fall 2012-summer 2013, and;

(2) fellow 2011-2012 Poland Fulbrighter Douglas Pew and I have been selected for one of the three inaugural 20-minute opera commissions in the first year of the Washington National Opera / Kennedy Center’s American Opera Initiative.

The short opera we’re going to write will premiere, along with the other two, on November 19, 2012 at the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in DC. I will post more details up here when I have them.

These people have opera glasses, because they are at the opera.

I am very grateful for both these things. I’ve been very fortunate, and I couldn’t have done any of this without a great deal of support from other people. I want to say thank you, here and always, to everyone who’s helped me to get to this point. The only appropriate response seems to be this Belle and Sebastian song, “Dirty Dream Number Two,” with these opening lyrics:

I’m lucky I can open the door and I can walk down the street;
I’m lucky I’ve got no place to go, and so I follow my feet…

It’s always reminded me more than a little of “Tangled Up In Blue.” You never know when good things are going to happen, or bad things, or things, at all. You just have to go for the ride, and there’s no knowing how long it’s going to last. Thanks for coming along with me–for today, tomorrow, we’ll be back in trouble again.