inside the President's house, only Mira herself heard the sound of Vivaldi’s Concerto for Flute in D, the Goldfinch, played on a wooden Boehm flute that Durango had given her as a present for what was indeed a special birthday. Durango was down on the football field, working with the Offensive Line.

The Boehm flute was not the flute for which Vivaldi had composed his flute concertos. It had not been invented until over 100 years later in Munich in 1847. But because it was such a beautifully made instrument, and because she did not own a more difficult to finger baroque traverse flute of Vivaldi's era, it was the instrumentshe chose for Vivaldi concertos.

Every time she grumbled to herself that she had married a theoretical physicist, but somehow he had managed to re-insert football in their lives, she played the Boehm flute. It was a princely gift.

The goldfinch was the often-imaged State Bird of New Jersey, where Durango grew up when his Dad worked for Bell Labs; the sound of the flute playing the goldfinch's song reminded him of walking in the early Spring New Jersey woods with his Father. This morning, he said that if he went to San Francisco to hear her play Vivaldi's flute concertos, he was hoping that she would attend a football game.

Did this mean that she should go to Sacramento Valley on Saturday? From The Goldfish she moved to the splendid opening bars of Vivaldi's Flute Concerto No. 4 in G major.