Every Thursday, I share beautiful things from my past week. Here are three from this week:

1. Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings performed on Tuesday night at the Lincoln Theatre in a show destined to go down in my top ten of all time, if not the top five. The band is tight. The backing singers, who also served as the opening act, harmonized amazingly. And Jones has an amazing energy and attitude that is apparent in her recorded music, but it springs to the fore when seeing her on stage. She strutted, she pranced, she worked her way through all the popular dances of the ’60s. She kept it real by coming out in fancy gold shoes, then asking someone to bring her her flip-flops when her feet started hurting, and then kicking those off, too, when she wanted to bop around stage. And then she opened her mouth and, oh! She belted out those songs as if not only her life depended on it, but also the lives of everyone in the building. All I can say is there’s a reason they call it soul music. The woman has just finished her second round of chemo in three years for a type of cancer that she shared her doctors tell her won’t go into remission. But, she said, doctors only know what doctors know. She declared that as long as her voice worked and she had a microphone, she would go on.

2. Every November the orchids that my late uncle gave me for my birthday several years ago start to bud. I always think that they’ll bloom for his birthday, while I’m away for Thanksgiving, but each time they hold off just a few more days and bloom instead when I get back to the office.

3. We get in touch with the landlord about a handful of plumbing issues and over the past week we’ve had our toilet, hot water, bathroom faucet, kitchen faucet, and countertop repaired or upgraded. It’s nice not to have to deal with any of those niggling problems any more.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?