Introducing Asher Morris Layton

By now you've heard that Asher Morris Layton was born on January 15th, 2012 at 7:19am. Catharine endured a long and hard labor and delivery lasting around 27 hours. It was hard, but the reward was truly great.

He's amazing. He's tiny. He's our son. Catharine and Asher (or as Dad calls him, 'lil mo') pulled through a tremendously difficult set of circumstances, and is still in the recovery stage. But her blood pressure is coming down and she is healing. The swelling in her feet is slowly coming down as well. She was truly incredible.

Thanks to everyone for your support and love. Thanks to those who came to the hospital for visits as well (you know who you are). Once we get settled in our new home in Mission Viejo (We closed yesterday!) we will start reaching out and encouraging visits!

The name Asher means happy and blessed. We truly feel both.

The Start of Something New.

Wow, I haven't been on here in quite some time. Hi family! Well for the most part life has been moving along with out any major surprises or changes. Except for this past week.Mom and Dad officially moved out of the house most of us spent most of our younger years in. A momentous event, and one to be celebrated as Mom and Dad are able to declare their freedom from debt. Congratulations, and Happy Anniversary!
While major events were taking place on the west coast, a major event was taking place on the East coast. On Saturday, Catharine received her Bachelor's degree in Vocal Performance from Westminster Choir College, summa cum laude. Most of you are aware of the challenges Catharine has been faced with in her life, especially the past four years. From day one WCC presented her with academic, performance, and vocal challenges she had never experienced before. Singing in multiple choirs, being a founding member of a musical sorority chapter, carrying up to 18 units a semester, working at Central and Westfield Presbyterian Church's, mandatory performances at all times of day while making the dean's list every semester and maintaining a marriage was an accomplishment that required a lot of missed sleep, tears, dedication, and serious determination. She overcame relentless pressures put on her and her fellow students by a staff and administration which made demands bordering on complete absurdity. And she came out of it at the top of her class. I have seldom felt such pride as I do in her, for this incredible achievement.Wednesday night Cat's Dad, Grandparents, and an Aunt from South Carolina flew in to attend her Senior Recital held on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary, just down the street from WCC. Again, she overcame a busy schedule, a lack of sleep, and unexpected stresses to give what turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable recital, and a complete success. There were moments I could have been listening to any of the handful of mezzos out there worth listening to today. It was a great way to finish out the year, and her career at Westminster.
After we took pictures with family (the Roofs) and friends, and finished the night of with dinner at Houlihan's.
The next day she was up early to record with Westminster Choir, have rehearsals for Graduation, and finish the night with her final Concert at Westminster Choir College. Her dad, Bill and I, attended to our great delight. The concert was wonderful, light at times, celebratory, and they truly made music from start to finish.
Afterwards Cat and I went, with some of her good friends, to get a drink before heading home to get sleep for the final big day of the week.

Saturday morning started at 6 am. Cat had to be up to get ready for her last day as an under-grad. Time seemed to move by fast in the morning, as we left in a hurry to meet up with the rest of the family near Princeton. The night before, her Aunt Karen and husband Matt, and her cousin Richard had flown in to see her walk. With everyone together and mounted up we headed for Princeton.Westminster Choir College Graduation is truly a great event. There is a 45 minute concert to start the ceremony, complete arguably the best bell choir in the world, some of the best young organsists in the world, a brass section, and 600 singing artists (the entire student body is required to attend and participate in the ceremony). Listening to pieces like, Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man, and other great works for Organ, Choir, bells, and brass made this event seem more like a word class concert, until the graduation march started and the students entered. This graduation ceremony is a tradition dating back to the college's first year, and it is a cherished moment for a graduate of WCC to experience. Eventually the graduates were called up one at a time, to receive their diplomas. When it came time for Catharine to be called no amount of swallowing would relieve the lump in my throat. Nothing would prevent the tears from falling as the Dean announced:

"Catharine Layton
Bachelor of Music
in Vocal Performance
Summa cum Laude."

I wasn't the only one who had forgotten to bring a tissue. In fact, no one did. Not that it mattered. It was a great moment.
We all met up after the ceremony just in front of Princeton Chapel, and headed to lunch to celebrate. What a great day. We wish we could have shared it with you all. But here are some more pics from her Graduation.

home

Once again, I find myself in the beautiful town of Hudson. It's Saturday. I've been placed in a cottage house owned by two wonderfully delightful people, art gallery owners. I'm here performing a brand new opera about Hudson's colorful past. Until this opera I had been unaware that Hudson, in it's river port days, was known for it's Red Light district. Hudson was a place to come for a good time all the way up until about 1950. Just off the main drag, and parallel to it is a street called Columbia. Columbia used to be known as Diamond Street. Diamond street was quite popular with sailors, industrial workers, and corrupt politicians and policemen. Today all of that is gone. Many of the brothels which stood on Diamond street still exist today. Some are run down and abandoned. Still many have been restored and are homes to families. As I stare out the window I see a wood shingle Victorian house. Restored, but one is very aware of it's age. In the basement of this house is a tunnel. This tunnel will lead you straight to the basement of what was once City Hall, now the Hudson Opera House. Politicians and Police couldn't be seen entering these Brothels, so they had tunnels built to conceal their misdeeds. A very colorful past indeed.
Tonight is our last show. I'll be the first to admit we did not have enough proper rehearsal time to have this show ready for opening. We opened Thursday, and it was rough. Contemporary opera is challenging, especially a brand new opera. Many cues were missed, the energy and flow of the piece were disrupted, and the result was a confusing show filled with some missteps, akward moments, a few shining moments, and a laugh or two. Friday night was much better. With a different conductor, the pace was energetic. While some cues were missed, we held firmly to the intent of our characters, and delivered a solid show for an audience who was with us from start to finish. Tonight we hope for the best of the three. Opera News may be there to review the production, and do a spot on Diamond Opera Theatre. That would be big for all involved.

I really enjoy these times. I love performing. I like everything that goes with it, from rehearsals, to cocktail parties with patrons, to wandering around a place I don't know while I'm here. But I have quickly discovered my favorite part of it all is going home. With all of the rewards of traveling for a production also comes the burden of being away from home. I enjoy the time I spend here in Hudson, Palm Beach, Italy, or anywhere. They hardly ever fail to be great experiences. Tonight is our final show. We have a cast party and patron's function directly after. Then, I get to go home.

www.prideofkings.blogspot.com

Given the current state of our government and the direction I fear it is taking our nation, I thought it prudent to look back. I am in the process of studying materials and documents from a few years before the Declaration of Independence, to the forming of the Constitution, the French Revolution, and other events which are tied into and pertinent to questions like, "Was this the intent of our Framers?", or "Is this a government the constitution authorizes?"
No one will ever accuse me of being a scholar. I tolerated school. I did not like it and as such I did not participate to my full capacity from about 7th grade on. So I am not going to claim what I share is the proper interpretation. However, I am a voting, contributing, citizen of this country. I feel I am representative of the average american as much as the next person is. I care greatly for this country, I value my God, my family, my freedom, my safety, my property, and the opportunity to create for myself. All of these I value greatly, these are freedoms given to me by god, the creator, that gave me life (with a little help from Mom and Dad!). That I question governments infringement upon those rights is a fundamental responsibility of the people that government was created to represent. Something has gone wrong.
As this is a family website was created to update you on our lives, not to hear me rant, I will be setting up a blog for those interested to read my thoughts, and respond to my ideas of what is right and wrong, and determine what the proper course of action is. With that I give you www.prideofkings.blogspot.com. Feel free to subscribe family, and tell people about it. Love you.


www.prideofkings.blogspot.com

Points on the Constitution

To comment on a point Katie has made regarding Fire arms, I give you the 2nd Ammendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Infringe, by definition, 'to transgress or exceed the limits of'. I certainly think our Congress has infringed upon that right of the people with gun control laws, and continues to test their limits with examples like what Katie has pointed out. As the Constitution states it is "necessary to the security of a free state". The modern Liberal does not want the governed to have these freedoms. As our government continues to infringe upon our liberties and blur the lines which are clearly drawn by our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, they continue their power-grab without regard for the people they hold office to represent or the country they represent.

So what are the responsibilities of the President of the United States? According to the Constitution, the President "Shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States". Also, he "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States". He also makes treaties (with 2/3 vote), has the power of Veto, appoints ambassadors, certain officials, and most importantly, Judges of the Supreme Court. He can also fill vacancies during recess of Senate on an interim basis.
NOWHERE in the constitution does it say he can use tax-payers' money to take over a private corporation, Fire the CEO, and order executive decisions regarding business practices of said PRIVATE business! Furthermore, the 1oth Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". What does this mean to me? It means the Federal Government had absolutely no right to intervene with these companies. If it is not in the State's constitution, then it is the responsibility of the private citizen-employees of the Corporation to act accordingly. What Obama is doing is unconstitutional. GM, Chrysler, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and all of the companies that are now partially owned by the Govt are examples of infringement upon the Liberty and Freedom of this Civil Society.
The system is further corrupted by our defunct Judicial Branch, a collection of Justices who serve to re-interpret and bend the Law of the Constitution at their whim, to the eventual goal of absolute power over WE THE PEOPLE. The name of the game for the Liberal is Power. It's that simple. They hide behind words like "change", and "reform" and play on the ideoligies of their party members. They attempt to Villify the Christian and God, in an attempt to remove faith from our society, as faith is a major obstacle in their agenda, for Despotism is their religion and Government is their idol.
Liberals are not totally to blame. Republicans have strayed from strong conservative roots. Just how Hoover set the table for FDR's unprecented spending, Bush set the table for Obama. Of course, evidence suggests FDR's "New Deal" proved to prolong the Great Depression for up to SEVEN years. Obama has taken it well beyond the size and scope FDR's power grab, and has done the same in prolonging this recession which experts have said could be over right now, were it not for government's involvement, and our Massive accruing of Debt.
Obama despises capitolism. He despises that which made this country great. He apologizes for this country in the international community, turns his back on our allies, and cows tow to our relentless enemies. He has already proven he does not have the best interest of this country at heart, putting "world poverty", and other "global problems" first. He has no sense of how American Foreign policy is defined by his predicessors, and it is going to cost lives and allies, as Carter cost us an ally in Iran. But this does not matter to him. What is in the interest of the everyday american doesn't matter. We are a statistic, we are a vote. We are a means to an end for him. A Soft Tyranny is being established in America. But there is a precedent for this, government been fought before. Our Government was founded on the premise that citizens are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The Declaration of Independence also states "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it". I fear it will be the task of mine or my children's generation to act upon this right in order to regain the rights endowed by our Creator.
Maybe Barack should have read these documents, and taken to heart the Declaration where it states "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes" and he should be wary that, "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their[The People's] right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security...".

President Ronald Reagan said this:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Pray for the people of America to win over the tyrannical agenda of Obama and the Liberal. Love you family.

conservative ramblings

Random Thoughts from a conservative in a Liberal America;


This about sums up the robbery of generations
The graph (courtesy of the Washington Post) indicates Bush's fiscal irresponsibililty up to 2008, versus Obama's unfathomable financial atrocity. Notice how all of the White House's guesstimations are lower than the Congressional Budget Office's. The piece I pulled this from can be found here, http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/. Remember, this is a budget deficit each year, so by 2019 we're looking at a total deficit of around 10 TRILLION dollars.

Do we really want to be a socialist state? Do we want our Federal Government telling us how much we are going to earn, or where we are going to live? Do we want a Federal government which interprets the Constitution any way it sees fit in order to gain more power and impose it's will on the people they are supposed to be working for? Do we want a system with no limitations? It's what we've got with this Administration. What happened to the Constitution of the United States of America? There is not a lot of wiggle room in that document. Federal Government is supposed to be limited, allowing local govt to tend to it's citizens, while maintaining a FREE Market.

The Market has a system for companies which are mismanaged. It's called Bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is a system which allows for these companies to restructure, and move forward. Now we have a man in the form of our President, who has never worked a Private sector job in his professional life, trying to make decisions for GM. ....what is he trying to do? It is not his job.

Congress wrote a bill taxing just the executives of AIG and the bonuses that were a part of their contracts, and protected by Senator Dodd. That is against the LAW.

Does anyone still really buy into the Global warming power ploy? We know Gore doesn't, he didn't even turn off his lights on "Give Earth a day off" day, which had been widely publicized, even by those biased "right-wingers" at Fox News.

Do people know that emissions produced by regulated autos and light trucks only make up between 1.5 to 2 percent of ALL man-made greenhouse gases? Do people also realize that Carbon Dioxide, a necessary and non-lethal gas in our atmosphere, is only about 4% of the make-up of the gases in our atmosphere? Consequently, aren't greenhouses places where plant life and vegetation thrive? Yet Republicans and Democrats alike have accepted this ridiculous "fact". Oh, except for the over 31,000 scientists all over the world who have signed a petition saying it's a farce.

So much to say, but what is the point? What does it all mean? A conservative (not necessarily a republican) wants Freedom, those unalienable, and God-given rights established for all people in our country's Constitution. Democrats want power, and they will create countless govt agencies, conjure up a "crisis" (global cooling in the 70's and global warming now) whenever one is needed to advance their agenda of establishing what is quickly becoming a tyranny in the US. How else could you describe a Federal Govt which has been overstepping it's constitutional limitations since FDR.

I think I'm going to one of those Tea Party Protests on Tax day. Anybody wanna come? Love you all!

Um, spring?

Hello Family,

I'm sorry it's been so very long since we've blogged. Life travels by very fast these days. But we are always thinking of you, and with a few things planned for the near future, we hope to be seeing most of you.

I think since the last time we've blogged, Cat and I have done two recitals together. The first was in Hudson, NY, for Diamond Opera Theatre. It was on Valentine's day in a recital room at the Hudson Opera House. It was a charming concert, about 35 minutes long, offering a french, english, and italian favorites, and included a few duets where love was the key ingredient. It was reviewed by a person who could have been nicer, but had some very complementary things to say along with his ribs. The review can be read here, http://www.ccscoop.com/arts/09feb/16-amore/amore.html.
Our second recital was just a couple of Friday's ago. We sang german art songs, english, and Italian Neapolitans. It was at the church were we work in Summit. It was recorded, and we'll be getting a cd to Mom and Dad soon. It was suprisingly well-attended, and very well recieved. We had a good time performing for people in the church we've gotten to know so well.
Just this past Saturday, I was scheduled to sing a few Scottish songs at the Scots Guards and Rampant Lions BagPipe Band Benefit. Catharine and I were invited to stay and enjoy the night, which we did, and WE DID. It was a fantastic night. We ate and drank (as the Scots most certainly know how to do!), but enjoyed a piping corps which consisted, mainly, of teenagers age 13, to 18. These kids were not only very good with Bag Pipes, they also could play other instruments if called upon. One young gentlemen admitted he played oboe, drums, and the french horn as well as the pipes. He hopes to be the Drum Major for the band as early as next year. We were amongst a group of people who are heavily Patriotic, and proud. The first thing we all did was stand and say the Pledge of alliegence, followed by the national anthem. The night continued with five toasts. The first was a toast to the flag of the United States of America, and to it's people, it's liberties, and the Constitution. Then to the UK, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland. The toasts finished with a toast to Armed Forces of US, UK, and other countries which fight for those unalienable rights of humankind. The music was great, the people were open, welcoming, and generous, and the night was a success for this, already, very tight Scottish Pipe band.
Okay as for other news. We are moving out of our condo and have not yet decided on where we will be. We have several options, from houses to apartments, and we're just sort of deciding what our priorities are in chosing our location (Price, space, privacy, location...). We'll send out our new info when we come to a decision. Cat is prepping for Solos with Westminster Choir, in April, as well as two roles in Operas with the Opera Dept, as well as Spoleto Opera Festival in North Carolina this summer. I'm preparing for a Concert with San Diego Chamber Orchestra in May (I hope you guys can make it those of you that can!), an opera the next week in Washington D.C., And future stuff in NY, and in Rome. Overall we're doing well. We miss our families, and as look forward to seeing everybody soon. Cat wont be with me in San Diego, but she will be heading to CA for Easter, and is hoping to see everyone she can.
Love you!