The Chimacum High School auditorium was packed a week ago Sunday with fans of Mozart and the RainShadow Chorale. The chorale also presented works by Morten Lauridsen, Ola Gjeilo and Andrea Ramsey.

Those pieces set the stage for the big attraction, the chorale’s performance of Mozart’s Requiem, under the direction of Rebecca Rottsolk. She had close to 50 singers, a small orchestra and pianist Lisa Lanza delivering a wonderful afternoon of music. We enjoyed sitting next to Port Ludlow locals Doug and Sidonia Hubbard and sharing a musically inspiring afternoon. We look forward to enjoying RainShadow’s next performance, the spring concert in April.

BJ and I both got Thanksgiving haircuts from the ever-effervescent Sonja down at the Bayside Barber Shop and enjoyed more stories, many of which she has to have made up. No matter, she again joined the throngs of folks buying up those famous Pot o’ Gold Raffle tickets. I am optimistic she will not join the throngs of my friends disappointed by failure to win the $10,000 first prize. The odds of winning are attractive to a loser like me, since there is a maximum of 400 tickets being sold. The potential for winning is far better than the Powerball ticket you and I buy every week. Hey, the proceeds from the Pot o’ Gold at least go to the best of causes – local scholarships, local community projects and international relief.

OK, this sexual harassment blowup in the news about 25 hours a day prompts some actual thinking on my part. I think back on all the relationships I have had with women since I grew up in the 1950s. I worked with women, worked for women and had women work for me. I love women, well, one in particular for the past 50 years, and enjoy their company. Women edit this column every week, thankfully. In the early 1980s, I had a sales team at IBM that was composed of three women and three men.

BJ can confirm that even back then, I bragged about how talented and fun they all were, but particularly the women. It may have been the best business years of my career. Even though I think back on all of those relationships and find nothing I could characterize as sexual harassment, certainly not to the level we hear about on the news every day, I do wonder.

I wonder if there were any instances where some woman thought my personality or actions rose to the level of sexual harassment in her mind. In the everyday interplay of people and their personalities, I suppose most of us are probably guilty of some level of nonsexual harassing. However, I do think that sexual harassment does play in a different league.

All that thinking reminded me of a group of folks from Port Ludlow traveling by tour bus through Switzerland. As they stopped at a cheese shop, a young guide led them through the process of cheese making, explaining that goat’s milk was used. She showed the group a lovely hillside where many goats were grazing.

“These,” she explained, “are the older goats put to pasture when they no longer produce.” She then asked, “What do you do in America with your old goats?” A spry old gentleman promptly answered, “They send us on bus tours.”

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week.

Port Ludlow’s Ned Luce writes this column weekly. Connect with Ned at

nedluce@sbcglobal.net.