Simon Green and David Shrubsole made their New York debut at 59E59 Theaters in 2008 with the Noel Coward show A Changing World. I attended-twice. Here, I thought, were performers who “got” Coward, both his tender sentimentality and acerbic wit. Green’s British accent, actor’s phrasing, perception, and intelligence buoyed an unforced theatrical tenor. Shrubsole’s role as creative Sancho Panza was a perfect fit.
Eight years later, with one appearance here between, the respectively accomplished duo come together again to give us a more personal glimpse of Sir Noel. Copious research is evident in selections of Coward’s letters (to and from), poems, diaries, and songs. The latter also mines material from Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, George Gershwin, and Irving Berlin which the program conjectures were inspired by Coward. Jeremy Nicholas’s “Place Settings” could actually be mistaken for Coward, influencing Porter and Novello is highly plausible. I wonder at the inclusion of Gershwin and Berlin on this list, however.
Additionally, with mixed results, the show includes Shrubsole’s setting of verse by Coward, Porter and Maya Angelou. A sophisticated The Little Old Bar at the Ritz (Porter’s verse) arrives smart and melodic, but Angelou’s Human Family seems to be in the wrong show, and Coward’s Honeymoon 1905 drones on almost monotone. Too many settings sound alike.
Readings and monologues are often quite wonderful. I Knew You Without Enchantment is a virtuoso turn. Green can toss off phrases like “My darlings” as if they were second nature. Correspondence between Podge and Stodge (Coward and his mother, Violet) rings wry and warmly true.
The show features eclectic songs such as : “Something Very Strange is Happening to Me,” “Don’t Turn Away From Love” (with an effective soupcon more emphasis on don’t) and “I Saw No Shadow” (Shrubsole paints melodic pictures) as well as the iconic “I Travel Alone”, “London Pride”, and “Sail Away.” These last three are melancholy, dignified, wistful, resigned, while a rendition of “I Went To a Marvelous Party” is unexpectedly rushed, chopped by interjected text, and unfunny. This is not the Green I remember.
At home both on a big stage and in an intimate cabaret environment, Green looks slowly around the room drawing us in. The artist, like Coward, is elegant. There are genuinely touching and lighthearted moments. Shrubsole’s accompaniment and background music (to spoken verse) is respectively sensitive and spot on. In this show, however, he’s is more successful with other composer’s melodies.
I admire these artists, but am disappointed with their latest effort.
Photos by Heidi Bohenkamp
Simon Green
Life is for Living-Conversations with Noel Coward
Musical Director/Pianist/composing contributor-David Shrubsole
Research- Jason Morell
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street
Through January 1, 2016
Louis Rosen, composer/songwriter/librettist/musician/author/educator is a Jewish white man for whom black experience profoundly resonates. He’s also a musician with an affinity for serious poetry. My first impression of the artist reflected neither of these attributes. Comfortably ensconced on a stool at New York’s Birdland, he sang his own songs, playing acoustic guitar. They were, as I said in my review, literate, sincere, folksy… a graceful advocate of understatement. It felt like the 1970s.
The second part of the program consisted of selections from Dream Suite, music by Rosen, words by Langston Hughes. I wrote, Songs arrive full blooded and black, hybrid American opera-without libretto… roots lay in gospel, R & B, boogie woogie, blues… Like George Gershwin, here was an artist who effectively burrowed under the skin of black culture. Rosen, however, had no need for theatrical thru-line. Each lyric could be married to music specific unto its sentiments.
A little research unearthed the prolific composer’s Twelve Songs on poems by Maya Angelou, One Ounce of Truth-The Nikki Giovanni Songs (with Dream Suite, these comprise The Black Loom Trilogy) and The Ache of Possibility utilizing more Giovanni. What, I wondered was the source of such fellow feeling? What was his journey?
Roots
Rosen was raised on Chicago’s far South Side in a mile square enclave of middle class, Jewish white folks who built the community just after World War II. It was “A good place to buy a home, raise children, build a synagogue, and enjoy the fruits of family life.”
Starting when he was 10, and escalating to “white flight panic mode” after the Martin Luther King assassination, something uncomfortable happened to his secure, picturesque neighborhood. Despite avowed lack of prejudice, as black people traded up and moved in, Rosen’s white buddies and their families moved out. The Jewish Community Center and then the Temple shut down. “People succumbed to the fear their homes wouldn’t be worth anything after awhile.” There’s regret in his response and a tinge of former confusion. “It was happening all over the country.”
The boy and his contemporaries were in the eye of the storm. There had always been blacks and Latinos in school “you assumed the price for entering the Men’s Room (in high school) was a quarter,” but never like the incoming wave. Still Rosen was physically assaulted only once and then by two Chicago policeman because he had long hair. They threw him against the patrol car, “did a mildly rough search, no doubt looking for drugs, and found none. It wasn’t serious, but it taught me what it is to be targeted based on appearance.”
His family stayed another five years, then moved a few miles away. Mrs. Rosen, like many others, suffered the loss of her dream house and hopes of growing old within the community that had nurtured her marriage. It wasn’t until age 40, when he interviewed past residents in an effort to fully understand the phenomenon, the artist found empathy for what occurred.
Shakespeare to Sondheim
Though his family played an American Songbook version of “Name That Tune” around the dinner table, young Louie Rosen was into R & B. He joined a garage band performing – before closure – at The Jewish Community Center and bar mitzvahs. By 16, he’d dispensed with drums teaching himself piano and guitar. He also began to write, albeit without knowledge of notation. Singer/songwriters made him want to be a musician. When neighborhood street sounds changed, the teenager heard so much soul music, it annoyed, rather than intrigued him. “If I have any regret, it’s that I never went down to the blues clubs in Chicago.” I glance at the porkpie hat.
After an ambivalent Gap Year, Rosen buckled down to college and then The Chicago Conservatory. He might, he conjectures with implicit shrug, have been a basketball coach or history teacher were it not for this chapter. Extremely broad programs included jazz orchestration and a class on Stravinsky.
Rosen kind of fell into theater. The last year at school, he shared a house with his playwright brother; thespians converged. At 22 and wet behind the ears, he was hired to compose a score for Romeo and Juliet and six songs for an Aristophanes play. It was the first time he coupled music with verse. Supporting himself by teaching, he went on to score Macbeth and Winter’s Tale inadvertently becoming the city’s go-to Shakespeare guy.
“I had no experience with black culture; classical music doesn’t expose you to African American musicians.” A self proclaimed serious artist, the only theater composers he liked were Gershwin, Weil, Bernstein, and Sondheim. Exceptions might be made for those musicals attacking important subjects like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.
In 1981, NYU inaugurated a pilot graduate program for theater writing. As a prologue, eight musicians were invited to spend three weeks in workshop with Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince. Rosen came to New York. “At this point, Sondheim had just written Sweeney Todd. The 1970s made us think you could do serious, experimental theater.” His voice takes on energy in recollection.
The group met in a loft on Crosby Street. Rosen describes it as looking like “a heroin den.” He loved that uptown guys would come down for this. “The first thing I had to do as a young man was get over the fact that I was in the room with Sondheim and he was treating me like I had a right to be there. Once I did that, I had to listen very closely. He was unpretentious, but terse, with laser like precision zeroing in on problems…” The student especially learned form, lyric writing for character, and the significance of musical gestures that make take one from dialogue into song. They still occasionally communicate.
“I really liked Hal too. He criticized one of my songs in a way that to this day is the best put down I’ve ever had: `I feel the music is gratuitous’ and he was right, it was generic.” Up go the eyebrows.
That December, Rosen returned to New York (and stayed) entering NYU’s MFA program. A two week intensive with Leonard Bernstein was held on 47th Street, upstairs, next to The Gaiety Deli in a space donated by The Shuberts. “He was a showman. When he walked in, he stopped in the doorway and looked around until all eyes turned.” The Maestro wore a cape.
The first session was scheduled for three hours. When time was up, a loquacious Bernstein suggested if someone would get him dinner, he’d stay until he had to be at the theater. “They bring this greasy chicken. He’s eating and speaking with tremendous insight about Mark Blitzstein. There are these movie posters up on the wall. In the middle of a sentence, he takes a drumstick bone and says, `Let me see if I can hit Lana Turner in the tits,’ throws it, and goes on without missing a beat.” Rosen grins.
When a couple of students brought in a song with what they thought was a Greek feel, Bernstein sat at the piano and offered 20 folk music motifs on which they might’ve built. “He said, steal from the real and make it your own, don’t give me faux Greek…He enjoyed astonishing us.”
Avoiding what he felt was the language of popular music, Rosen wrote instead for Brecht’s Galileo and Shakespeare’s The Tempest at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. “It’s like an actor getting a classical role. No one can do the definitive version.” He authored a successfully produced musical with Tom Bishop called Book of the Night and a song cycle entitled “A Child’s Garden of Verses” that blossomed into a second musical illuminating the life of Robert Louis Stephenson.
“I was really writing about my own childhood, the facts of his life in tandem with my emotional and musical crisis.” The piece is set on the last day of summer. An older Stephenson looks back working through a writer’s block. “It was interesting the degree to which I could communicate personally with someone else’s words.” The song cycle, what we called “concept albums” in the 1960s and 1970s, is an ideal form for Rosen. “Stories can be told, an emotional journey created, characters portrayed, but unlike musical theater, all the dots don’t need to be connected.”
The South Side
Rosen was now in therapy. It was time to face the past. Awarded the first NEA Grant given to an individual, he intended to create a musical theater piece based on growing up on the South Side. Six of the evocative songs he included with his grant application ended up on the CD South Side Stories. For perhaps the first time, an underbelly of jazz and blues, what he calls “the blue note” can be discerned in his music. “It metaphorically means the integration of everything I’d grown up with.”
…It was bungalows all in a row/Where a family dream could grow/And only Democrats knew where the bodies were buried/On the South Side…(“The South Side”)
I asked myself Why?/I asked myself, Who?/I answered some just don’t like barbecue on the/ South Side…Are we leavin’, are we stayin’?…Was the question, What to do?/Or was the question, What excuse do we use?… (“The South Side Blues”)
In the process, he realized not only that he didn’t understand what happened any better at 40 than he did at 13, but that his experience was not uncommon. “So I put aside music and started writing the book.” The South Side – The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood 1998
Tracking down and interviewing former black and white neighbors, Rosen created fifteen composite characters who “speak” rather like those in Our Town (Thornton Wilder) or Under Milkwood (Dylan Thomas). “I went in thinking racism was the only issue and came out understanding that fears were based on past history and the tribal nature of humankind.” A reference, in part, to the persecution of the Jewish people? Its author thinks of the edifying (nonfiction) volume as a spoken cantata. It was also something of an exorcism.
Miscommunication came up again and again:
“…knowing that blacks and Jews shared some similar experiences – you know, slavery, discrimination; we’d been partners in the civil rights struggle -I thought we had an awful lot in common. I was really surprised when certain things happened…that showed a gap between the two groups…” from a white woman
“So we felt. “Enough is enough. Fifty-fifty we don’t mind-living in an integrated community. But after that, forget it…It’s just like Tevye-you can’t look back.” …from a white man (Tevye is the protagonist in Fiddler on the Roof)
“I think I subconsciously felt we weren’t a wanted race, that it didn’t matter what you looked like, how you sounded, whether you were intelligent or educated – you just weren’t wanted, collectively….So when the Jewish people were leaving the neighborhood, I wasn’t surprised…” from a black woman
By the time Rosen started his next effort – Dream Suite, Songs in Jazz and Blues on poems by Langston Hughes – he’d read more books than he could count about the Antebellum South and a serious amount of African American poetry, from Harlem’s Renaissance to the 20th Century. “Hughes was the best… his work breaks through racial boundaries to touch the soul of humanity – racial, political, and personal….it says something worth saying.” Immersing himself in the author, Rosen devoured both autobiographies and a book of short stories. He identified with Hughes’ introspective nature.
“Most important for a composer, his poetry sings with natural ease and grace…the language is rich in imagery…yet always rooted in the American vernacular and soulfully direct in emotional expression…” The idea was to eschew art songs for settings within the broad reach of popular material.
“So called art songs by Schubert, Barber, Rorem live side by side with those of Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Antonio Carlos Jobim…It’s all one to me. If my musical voice is distinctive, its originality comes in the manner of synthesis…`Harlem Night Song’ (for example), starts with shades of Aaron Copeland and moves into shades of Jimmy Webb, though you don’t hear them explicitly.”
Rosen has been surprisingly successful with this approach. Much of what was written arrives so like songs it’s as if he collaborated with the lyricist. The CD of Dream Suite was inspired and recorded by Alton Fitzgerald White “we have a deep musical connection” who had been in the workshop of Book of Night and, upon recommendation, Capathia Jenkins, who became Rosen’s Muse, recording and performing with him ever since. “She and I come from completely different worlds, but the worlds become one with the work.”
“When Louie said I think I’d like to write for you, I didn’t take him seriously, but true to who he is, he called about a month after recording to tell me he started to sketch some of Maya Angelou’s poems. (one of her favorite poets)… It’s a tightrope to walk if you’re a white person trying to reflect the black experience. He gets it,” Jenkins says. Rosen’s settings are a challenge the vocalist relishes. If she doesn’t feel he’s written in her voice, that a song doesn’t speak to her, she tells him straight out. If the composer wants something “juiced” or “finessed” he speaks up. They describe Nikki Giovanni with the exact same phrases. It’s a symbiotic relationship, “an honor,” she adds.
Dream Suite was the first of the three song cycles that evolved into The Black Loom Trilogy. “If you take African American elements out of American music, you don’t have American music…That collision of cultures had a huge impact on my generation… it’s probably the most fundamental driving force in my life.”
Maya Angelou depicted the down and out with an edge Rosen found “sassy, political, and slightly angry.” He was attracted to the pride and dignity of her women. The composer also chose Angelou because the writing was a fit for Jenkins, “both her voice and being…these days I’m either writing for myself or Capathia.” Already familiar with Nikki Giovanni, he discovered over time her voice had mellowed becoming more positive. With gravity, there was new playfulness in the author’s poetry and prose. Giovanni has performed with Rosen and Jenkins. Jenkins calls her “salt of the earth.”
Louis Rosen and Nikki Giovanni
“At this point, the music was flowing at a pace that went beyond what I, as a lyricist, could keep up with. So every work for which I’d write music and lyrics would be matched by one or two where I set poetry to music… The journey of the three pieces is one towards light. I could personally express what I wanted to say through the content. It sang to me.” Rosen feels he’s currently finished with the black experience.
I ask how it is that religion hasn’t found its way into Rosen’s oeuvre. He’s addressed culture and history, but fixed on no Jewish writers for inspiration or raw material despite similarities in the black and Jewish experience and the environment in which he grew up. There’s a long silence. He responds by pointing to a song in South Side Stories about the relationship of a light skinned girl and dark skinned boy to which the girl’s parents object. “The original lyric was about a Jewish boy and a Gentile girl. I just wanted Capathia to sing the song, so I changed it slightly.” Except for a couple of isolated lines in two others, there are no additional references.
“I’ve struggled for years with the role of Judaism in my life. We went to synagogue, I had a bar mitzvah. By the time I was 15, Judaism had disappeared from the hood…I’ve never really felt a part of it. There are lots of things I’ve never felt a part of-like my generation…” Rosen thinks of himself as spiritual, not religious.
“My Third Act”
When James Lapine asked the composer (in 2014) to write music for his Lincoln Center production of Act One based on Moss Hart’s autobiography of the same title, Rosen hadn’t written for theater since the 2004 production of Moliere’s School for Husbands at the Westport Country Playhouse. Nor had he missed it. This is not to say Rosen hadn’t been busy. The artist almost always has several projects besides teaching Music Appreciation and Theory – everything from Bach to The Beatles – at 92Y School of Music over 30 years. He loves it. “It keeps me learning. When I learn something new I want to share it. The wow factor of discovery hasn’t gotten old for me.”
Lately, the multifaceted Rosen writes both music and lyrics in a chapter he calls more confessional than professional. “I think I was awakened to that distinction from an interview I read 30 years ago with Bob Dylan”; songs to get old by dealing with this moment in life. There are ballads, wry comments, and storysongs.
My son’s 529 Plan’s going M.I.A./My pulse rate is the opposite of A.O.K./I see rows and rows of red ink/Where there once was black/Stare into the abyss too long-/It’s gonna stare back… “The Middle Class (Used-To-Be) Blues”
“I still work a lot and I still want my work to be heard, but the desire now is driven less by large dreams than by the passion and joy of creating, then offering the work through performance and recording…The importance of being present with my wife and son, or spending a day wandering or reading in Prospect Park can’t be overstated. Social Security is visible on the horizon and as I said in `My Third Act’, eventually… I’ll be workin’ on my memoir while I’m workin’ on my tan.”
Louis Rosen’s body of work is far more extensive than that which I selected to call out.
It can be found on her website.
CDs can be purchased from the store on his website and on CD Baby.
Click to read about Rosen’s Fascinating Classes at the 92nd St. Y
In December Rosen will perform his own music at The Duplex in collaboration with the formidable Karen Mason, whom he’s known since Chicago. A new CD, Dust to Dust Blues, will be released in 2017, the artist hopes to record both a 15 song cycle provisionally called “I Don’t Know Anything,” and, with Darius de Haas, A Child’s Garden Song Suite, inspired by the musical theater piece. Whew.
All Photos Courtesy of Louis Rosen
Programs Courtesy of The Goodman Theatre
Photos of Louis Rosen and Capathia Jenkins at Birdland by Kevin Alvey
Yadira Stamp worked in the culinary industry for more than 30 years, taking on virtual every job that came her way, all the time honing her skills for her dream – owning her own restaurant. On July 20, 2015, her dream came true when she opened Esencias Panameñas Restaurant & Catering at 3322 Georgia Avenue, NW, showcasing the diverse provinces of Panama, and the Caribbean.
A native of Panama City, Panama, Yadira Stamp realized her passion for the culinary arts at an early age, assisting her mother in the kitchen to prepare meals for clients. Uncertain of a restaurant career, Stamp worked as an executive consultant and senior business analyst for 32 years before realizing that her culinary interests hadn’t waned.
Stamp decided to pursue her passion for the kitchen and earned a culinary arts degree at The Art Institute of Washington (AIW) in Arlington, Virginia. Upon graduation in 2010, she immediately accepted a position at Pinzimini, an Italian-inspired eatery located within The Westin Arlington Gateway. From 2010 to 2011, Stamp performed virtually every job available to her, as part of an internship program required for AIW’s graduate students. She worked as a dishwasher, a busboy, a waitress, a line cook, a bartender and a front-of-the-house assistant manager. She also shadowed both the executive chef and front-of-the-house manager in the hopes of acquiring additional skill sets that were covered in school.
Over the past 30 years, Yadira has served her culinary creations to churches, weddings, graduations, birthday parties, as well as at private homes in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She has performed cooking demonstrations at the Farm-to-Street Party as part of the Eat Local First Week, as well as during Growing Healthy Schools Month, which celebrates the D.C. Healthy Schools Art in public schools throughout the District. She also volunteered for three consecutive years, from 2009 to 2011, at The Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show, which is an annual two-day culinary extravaganza, which provides one-of-a-kind experience for all food and entertaining enthusiasts.
Yadira believes in giving back. In 2012, she became a volunteer at N Street Village, a community center that provides services for homeless women in Washington, D.C. For the past four years she has cooked and served meals for 40 to 50 women, twice per month. In 2014, she participated in The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance’s annual Turn Up the Heat Gala, where she prepared and served her native Panamanian dishes to 400 attendees. Then in 2015 and 2016, as a member of the Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (GWHCC), she participated in their annual Business Expo at the Washington Convention Center, where she prepared and served her native dishes to 250 attendees.
Stamp answers our questions about her remarkable career.
Can you point to one event that triggered your interest in your career?
This is a very interesting question. I remember watching my mom in the kitchen always cooking or baking something for a party or event. I even remember my dad not eating from anyone else other than my mom because according to him “no one could cook/bake like her.” I even remember her forcing me to be her assistant in the kitchen and not having any interest in it because at the time I wanted to be an astronaut. But then she passed, and then came Christmas and I wanted to eat a piece of fruitcake and I didn’t know how to make it. I also received pressure of my mom’s old customers calling to ask me when their fruitcake would be ready for pick-up. I called my mom’s best friend for help and was able to bake the fruitcakes just in time for the holidays. When my mother’s old clients said that my cake was tastier than hers that ultimately inspired my second passion – food!
Esencias Panameñas Restaurant
What about this career choice did you find most appealing?
I love the joy that my food brings to others, particularly to kids. Kids can be brutally honest and to get a hug or a smile from a kid or to even hear the parent say that the kid never ate that before yet, they are eating my food, just makes my day. I feel free and liberated when I am in the kitchen; it is the only place where I get inspired and I am able to create magic at my discretion.
What steps did you take to begin your education or training?
It began at my mom’s side at a very young age. I continued on a “part time” basis by doing some catering. However, at 45, I set a goal to return to school and get a culinary degree and become a restauranteur by 50. I worked hard and kept my eyes on the prize to achieve that goal. The fact that no matter how exhausted I was from the day before, I would get up each morning and look forward to going to school and put in six hours after working 10 hours with my day job was my confirmation that this is what I wanted to do. I graduated at 48 and became a restauranteur at 52.
Along the way, were people encouraging or discouraging?
Both of my parents are deceased and therefore, I was not fortunate to have family support. To be honest, I am not sure if my mom was alive if she would have been supportive of this career change. Earlier on when I began contemplating the idea, I began to share my vision with others thinking that I was “speaking it into existence” only to have people try to discourage me or flat out tell me that it would never work, that I was crazy to want to quit my “good and secure” job to get into the restaurant business. They would go on to remind me that three out of five restaurants close in the first two years and my response would be that “my restaurant will be one of the two that will remain open.” I never allow anyone to get in my way or in my head. There are two women – Pamela Spong and Susan Kidd – two complete strangers, my ex-bosses that saw potential in me that no one else saw. These are two successful women who encouraged me and who I look up to and who aspire to be, unbeknownst to them.
Did you ever doubt your decision and attempt a career change?
Not a career change, but there have been times that I have questioned myself and wondered if the people that told me that I was crazy for leaving my job, whether or not they were right. But it will be short lived since I would quickly remember reading Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and how successful she became in spite of her adversaries, and that is my motivation to continue to keep my eye on the prize.
Carimanolas
When did your career reach a tipping point?
My career has not reached a tipping point. I work very hard to get as far as I have; failure is not an option.
Can you describe a challenge you had to overcome?
This is a hard one, but I have to keep it real. October 1982 I became homeless. My brother-in-law told my sister that she had to choose between us (family) and him and she chose him. I was just a teenager and a foreigner from Panama. I am an introvert so I did not have many friends, and I only knew a few people. Unfortunately I did not have anywhere to go. I convinced a guy to agree to leave his truck unlocked at nights where I would sleep. My break finally came when I met an older couple that took me in against their children’s will. I remember “Daddy” saying to one of his daughters that was his house and that I would stay with them and that it was final, followed by “she is not going to cause us any harm, there is something about her that let me know that she had a good upbringing.” I stayed with them for a little over a year and continued to go to the University. I came from Panama with a full scholarship and I was determined not to lose it. Although I graduated two years later (1984), I continued to go through many challenges and it took 10 years to finally get my career break (1994). That is when I met Pam Spong, the first person to see my potential and to give me the opportunity to work and demonstrate my skills and capability and thanks to her my career began to take flight. I remain in the lives of the couple that took me in, but just like my parents, they have both died.
What single skill has proven to be most useful?
Another hard question . . . single skill for me would be “determination.” I am a very determined person. I accomplish anything I set my mind to – as long as it does not require me to compromise my morals and/or values
What accomplishment are you most proud of?
I know that I am going to get a lot of feedback for my answer, but again, I must keep it real. . . I am not there yet. I don’t feel like I have done anything yet, in my opinion, that is worthy of being my “most” proud accomplishment. Yes, I am thankful for the blessings that God bestowed upon me and the many doors that he has opened and continues to open. However, personally I feel that that I have come a little short. For example, in the past, had I become the astronaut that I aspired, then that would have been my most proud accomplishment, but I didn’t. In the future, when my restaurant becomes famous and I open my second location, then that will be my most proud accomplishment.
Any advice for others entering your profession?
Yes, it is hard work, and many will try to discourage you, including you. But stay focused, follow your heart and do not allow anyone to get in your way or rain on your parade. Keep negative people at arm’s length – even if family. Stay strong and stay focused and remember that God does not give us more than we can bear.
For more information, go to the website for Esencias Panameñas Restaurant & Catering.
