Saturday afternoons in September brought back memories of a day, more years ago than she liked to admit, when a flutist for the University of California Band was on a weekend in Big Sur with her boyfriend, and Mira had agreed to substitute. Soon she was playing in the Cal Band at a game about which she knew very little.
Not far from her on that day, among the men who played for Cal was an Offensive Lineman, whose Mother was the daughter of a migrant worker from Zacatecas, and whose Father was a Black engineer at Bell Labs. Whether he noticed her first or she noticed him first was a long running argument between Mira and her husband, Durango Palacio-Earle.
However, it was true that Mira would never have had the bravado to step out of the band seats above the Cal sidelines and walk down to where sat a row of big men in blue and gold uniforms. Durango, however, had taken advantage of disputed penalty turmoil to walk directly up to where she sat and ask her to dinner.
In Seattle, on the afternoon of the Huygens Humboldt game, Mira was practicing the flute at the home of a violinist she had known since University. Comfortable places where visiting musicians could practice were not always easy to find, and she did not like practicing in the confined insulated spaces of official practicing rooms. Mozart's Flute Concerto no. 1 in G-Major was a familiar work, but she had never before been asked to play this work for a major orchestra.