Something Wonderful: The Lord’s Prayer

**Updated, below**

We received a package this week from DH’s elderly Aunt. We figured at first it was just a little something for the baby, which in a sense it was, but it contained something far more precious than we had expected: A CD, with the name “Frances Cork” carefully handwritten on its face.

Frances was my mother-in-law, though I never had the honor of meeting her. She died when DH was fourteen. Her wedding ring is on my finger, and a portrait of her when she was young has a prominent place in my home. She was a real beauty; at one point, in fact, she was runner-up for the title of Miss Kansas, coming in second to a famous actress. By all accounts, she was also hilarious and pretty awesome. If her children and husband are any testament, it must all be true.

To the point, it has been a very long time, indeed, since my husband has heard his mother’s voice, and in life none of her kids heard her sing. But sing she did, in her younger days, and at some point or other, her voice was recorded.

It would be a shame not to share it:

01 Lord’s Prayer

The only downside is all the background static. Anybody know how to clean it up? Because that would be awesome.

-o.o-

UPDATE

A kind and generous soul has already stepped forward and done all the hard work. Details and cleaned-up file follow:

“Hello,

I saw your question in the One Cosmos comments, downloaded the file from your website, cleaned it and it should be attached to this email.
I am an Engineer and Music Producer in England so this only took a few minutes.  It is slightly improved but still not great.  The original conversion to mp3 was done at a slightly too high amplitude and a low bit rate.  The sometimes strange noises you hear in the backround, now that the crackle is removed, are artifacts caused by converting to mp3 at too low a bit rate.

Regards,

Frank O.”

01-lords-prayer noise removed

I’ve seen a lot of ugliness on the webs the last couple of days; today especially, it seems the worst was brought out in a lot of people over the events in Tucson. Something like this, though – a stranger taking time out of his day to help someone out – well, it just adds to the “something wonderful.”

Thanks, Frank.

-o.o-