Jazz ensembleMany thanks to everyone who helped make the Women’s Center’s Open House late yesterday afternoon a reSOUNDing success — starting with the terrific jazz quintet of LPTS Alums-Students-Faculty-Administrators Jorge Gonzalez, Cory Germain, Loren Townsend, Kilen Gray, and Chris Baker (who had reportedly only assembled for this gig, but sounded like they’d been playing together for much longer).

The music created a marvelously festive ambience in the Women’s Center and a fluid aural backdrop for the group — one astute observer counted 50 people as folks came and went during the afternoon — that ebbed and flowed through our new space (WE LOVE IT!!).

We lost count of the number of guided tours of the Center we gave, and more people conducted their own unofficial tours. A few comments: “This is great!” “How wonderful!” “I didn’t know you had this much space!” “Nice!”

We had a taker on our small collection of children’s playthings, and a generous offer of more to come.

Someone offered us a table for the work/small conference room, which we think we will take up, but we need to measure the space first.

We received a housewarming gift of a tea kettle (which we really, really need) — our donor said “they didn’t have the one you put on your list, so I got a nicer one” — THANK YOU, and we appreciate that spirit!

The food was delicious (thanks, Ted and all contributors) — especially Laura Wells’s chocolate cookies with coconut filling! and Sherry Arconti’s hummus and tabouleh! — we had a number of comments on the punch (thank you, Amy, whoever you are, for this recipe).

We congratulated one another and said over and over “we need to do this again” — mark of a good party!

Now, we just need to get the pictures developed! Stay tuned, and once again, thanks everyone for celebrating with us!!