We love mothers for all the Hallmark reasons: for their compassion and patience, not to mention giving birth. But some moms aren't exactly greeting card friendly — and none less so than those who live in the opera house.

This is opera, after all, so we expect the outrageous. But operatic moms seem to be disproportionately portrayed as murderers, harpies or generally women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your Normas, Medeas, Butterflies, Queens of the Night and Clytemnestras.

Mary Ruth McGinn's class at Stedwick Elementary School in suburban Maryland has an intriguing second name and unique purpose. McGinn's nineteen third graders have formed an in-house troupe called the Fire Starters Kids Opera Company, and they've spent the past eight months writing, composing, producing, and rehearsing an original opera that opens next week.

Yet while their new production, A Storm Inside, will display the children's music and lyrics, singing and acting, and costumes and sets, the performance is not the company's main purpose. For these students, creating an opera is a vehicle for learning everything that all third graders must learn, though the process requires a deeper level of introspection and self-expression than is typically found in U.S. classrooms where standardized testing has become the chief measure of success.

Based in New York, Opera America is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to promote and raise general awareness of opera as an art form. The group said it awarded a total of $300,000 in grants -- ranging from $7,500 to $30,000 -- under the new program, which is titled "Building Opera Audiences."

Many of us look forward to spending retirement expanding our world — traveling, trying what we never had time to do, taking classes that give us new knowledge and skills. These activities are not only desirable in themselves, they help us to live longer and healthier lives.