Unexpected serendipity

Serendipity is the gift for finding valuable or agreeable things you weren’t looking for.

Example: You pull a tee shirt out of your dresser drawer that you haven’t worn for awhile and when you unfold it to put it on, out drops a sock that is the mate to the one that has been languishing in your sock drawer since God knows when.

But I have a better example I will share with you so you will realize it was serendipitous that you read this column this day.

Like many of you, I expect, I deplore the day the Seattle Times decided to quit running the weeklong television schedule as did my local newspaper, the Kitsap Sun. Both offered it if you paid extra for it. The Sun does print the daily schedule from 11 to 11 although the Times does not.

Even that schedule, of course, does not list what’s on every single channel so I decided one day to start with Channel 1 and go as far up as I could find on my television and mark what was available to me.

I have Comcast which I believe is widely represented in this state.

I was marching through the channels when I reached Channel 75 which isn’t listed in the paper or anywhere else that I know of. The show there was called Classic Arts Showcase. It is a non-profit 24/7 presentation of short video clips of singers, instrumentalists, orchestras, ballet dancers, interviews with classic artists, scenes from noted movies, stage plays, operas, provided by and paid for through generosity of the Lloyd C. Rigler and Lawrence F. Deutsch Foundation.

It is provided at no cost to your “local public broadcasting service, cable and/or broadcast station” and is to be free to the viewers. “We accept no advertising,” is their motto shown frequently, and all we want, their message says, is to encourage viewers and listeners to tour a museum, see some theater, enjoy a classic film.

I decided to find out what this was all about and I couldn’t believe what a glorious find I had made.

I saw and heard George Gershwin play his compositions on the piano.

I saw Baryshnikoff and Nureyev dance.

I heard Juan Diego Florez, the handsome Peruvian tenor who has become the delight of the Metropolitan Opera, sing in “Daughters of the Regiment” where he hits nine high C’s not only once but twice in the clip.

I listened and watched Van Clibum in his piano concert in Russia where he won the worldwide Tschaikovsky competition. Just like the audience for Florez’s high C’s, the audience in Russia went wild after his performance, showering him with flowers and refusing to let him leave the stage.

I have listened to Caruso, Domingo, Pavarotti, and to that American truck driver who became an opera star, Richard Tucker.

Frank Sinatra was on in his heyday as were conductors Zubin Mehta, Leonard Bernstein, Toscanini, Stokowski. Maria Callas had audiences out of their seats in elation over her singing as did Beverly Sills and others. I saw scenes from the English version of “The Lady Vanishes,” from the play “Our Town,” from many operas, “Turandot,” “Carmen.” And on and on.

None of this is advertised by Comcast or Classic Arts Showcase. I just chanced upon it.

Serendipity. If you have some other television provider try searching for it the way I did.

If you don’t find it, call them and ask why not.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA, 98340.)