Early Jul Notice

A couple of my Norwegian cronies, Mari-Silje and Hakon Samuelsen, present a Christmas concert every year in a place called Hamar, which is a medium-sized town about an hour from Lillehammer.  The production started out as a fairly modest affair, but has grown in scale every year, and has now reached the point where it'll be broadcast to an international television audience, including PBS viewers in the States.  The concerts tend to be a 'classical music's greatest hits' type thing, but good luck finding a Christmas recital that isn't.  At any rate, you can read more on the website.  MC duties will be carried out by my old pal Princess Märtha Louise, upon whom I made one of my finer first impressions one frigid December morning, covered in sweat and sporting a wind-kissed nose after a long run around the lake.   Hardly the stuff of Henry James, whose novels rarely feature jogging scenes and are, in the opinion of this commentator, the worse for it.