Welcome


Welcome to Renate's Baton. This blog is mostly for and about my choir, The York Region Community Choir.

But, While I'm holding the baton, I'm in charge. So, if I want to talk about other parts of my life, I will. :)

The choir itself is a community and I'm discovering that we have a lot in common with one another besides our love of music and singing.

When I go off on a tangent, there is always a crowd coming along. Join us!

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Renate's other Blogs: Old Pollyanna and Musical Empathy

 Have you seen my other blogs? I'm now writing again and rediscovering the two other blogs I started in 2013, Musical Empathy and Old Pollyanna. I've been writing on Renate's Baton since 2011. It's kind of cool for me to go back and see what I was thinking about and doing all those years, like a public journal. I'm glad I started that and I'm glad that I have time to do it again. 

The one I'm currently spending more time on is Old Pollyanna: Musings on Ageing and Optimism. It's much more relevant to me now and will be a good place for me to collect my thoughts on things. Thoughts about ageing take up a lot of my time these days, and I'm still a Pollyanna, not exactly playing the Glad Game, but able to maintain my optimism in most situations. I put that link to the Wikipedia page on Pollyanna, in case you forgot who she is, but I recommend you read or re-read the book by Eleanor H. Porter as I recently did. Like other children's literature, it's worth reading as an adult. I think I'll look into the other works of Ms. Porter. She was trained as a singer before she started writing. 

Old Pollyanna









The Musical Empathy blog is where I focus on music. I might look at a particular piece of music and how it makes me feel or think about music's powers to influence not just our feelings and moods but also our brains and bodies. 

My most recent post on Musical Empathy was just an alphabetical list of how music helped my to survive the pandemic. The choir was a huge factor. The YRCC has been a tremendous source of meaning and joy in my life since 1999. I'm happy to have more time to spend on our website and thinking about our future rehearsals and concerts. Our recent rehearsals at Fairy Lake made me so happy!

I have often observed that we YRCC folks have a lot in common. I will put links out there on social media and here so you can find things that might interest you too. You can add your thoughts in the comments if you like, and that might help you too. 

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