Big Gap
Here’s a lovely tune, Opus 23, a piano solo by Dustin O’Halloran. The video for this was uploaded to Utube by O’Halloran himself (that is so cool). The animation is by Marco Morandi. You may recognize this song, it was in Marie Antoinette. The video part was not.
Although music is a big part of what I enjoy in life, I do not know how to play any instruments.
In the house next door to where I grew up, there lived a mean old lady. She was not in any way a joy to visit, always frowning and scolding. But hell, she had a piano in that house. So I’d go visit her often, even though I was only about six years old because she would let me play on her piano. She never played for me or tried to teach me anything. I never asked, either.
One birthday my grandmother got me an organ. She’d noticed I was always on hers while visiting. It only had about 15 keys. Nothing like the keyboards of today. It was a play by number type thing and I played it until it finally broke. By the time this happened, my old bitter neighbor had died.
This is probably my biggest regret in life, not learning to play an instrument. A friend of mine says anyone can learn an instrument at any age, in fact, I worked with an ER doc who was taking piano lessons for the first time at the age of 35.
When I tell my children there is a gap in my life where the know how to play something should be, they try to fill it, to teach me how to play their instruments. I’m just happy they are in the position to do that.
Raggedy Hands
One of my first memories is of the time I was all dressed up as Raggedy Ann for a costume contest. My little brother was Andy, of course, and my mom had made the costumes. I must have been about three.
We were about to go in front of the judges when I had a panic attack. My mom had sewn the mittens of the costume to the sleeves. I couldn’t move my fingers freely. I wanted them out. Immediately. There was screaming.
Mom gave in and ripped the seams open with her teeth and hands. It was an emergency. She lost her costume contest and I won my freedom that day.
My hands are always ragged from some project. I can’t keep polish on my nails. From painting to refinishing furniture to mosaic tiles. To writing. I need these hands as much as I need the brain.
This week something ripped and my fingers are flying all over the keyboard with story ideas. I love it when it’s like this.
This is a fountain in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris, fed by a natural spring. Those hands belong to Sweetpea and Spanky.
Another Can You Hear It Thing
Every once in a while I’ll hear a song I’ve heard hundreds of times and notice a sound in there that I’ve never noticed before.
Here’s an example of a song you had to have heard (if you haven’t, you better, this is classic stuff). One of the tracks has Jim Morrison whispering the lyrics to the entire song. Not everyone can hear it, though, my husband swears he doesn’t. It’s there, and once you know it, you hear it as clearly as the singing.
You have to listen really well to hear it the first time. Then this song will never sound the same to you again.
For Sophia
This is for Sophia, my friend who is having a special day tomorrow and loves coffee machines and kitchen things.
I have my fingers crossed, Soph.
Edgehead
My twin from another mother, Michele told me it was true, that The Police have announced they are doing a reunion tour in the US.
How do you get the best tickets to a concert? Join an official fan club. The thing about that is fan clubs are not always free. Sting’s club costs $65 to join. His club won’t get you tickets to the Police concerts, though, you have to join The Police Tour club for a whopping $100.
It’s seems unfair to have to pay to join a fan club. Aren’t The Police and Sting rich enough? I’m not paying to join a club. There’s got to be a way around this. Find out who’s touring with them, join their club if it’s free and get pre-sale tickets that way.
I realize this might be a way to keep scalpers from buying up the pre-sale tickets. I’ve already seen some tickets that are selling for $2500. Each. I don’t know where those people got their tickets, because pre-sales for the Dallas show haven’t even started. Someone call the police.
I’m more of a Sting fan anyway. I was too young to enjoy The Police when they were a band. I started buying their CDs after falling in love with Sting. My husband and son still feign jealousy when I drool over him.
These days though, I’m more into new rock. There’s an amazing show sponsored by a local radio station which announced their Edgefest lineup yesterday. I already knew My Chemical Romance would be there, I’m in their free club. For pre-sale tickets, I just joined the radio station’s club, also free.
So now I am an Edgehead. You can bet this Edgehead will have good tickets to Edgefest.
Blonde to the Bone
I have this friend in Australia, and she is 14 or 16 hours ahead of my time zone. Since I am such a deep into the night person, we keep the same waking hours. We don’t talk time too much, but when it is the middle of the night here and she says she’s going outside to lie in the summer sun with her dog? It still sounds strange. I know it’s true, just like a million dollars exists even though I haven’t seen it.
Here’s where the blonde moment comes. She sends me an email that says something like, “Hey if you’ve sent me any emails since lunchtime, my email has been down since then, could you send them again, yeah?” (That’s my Aussie blogging accent)
My brain short circuited on that one. Whose lunchtime? They’ve already had lunch and we haven’t even had the dinner from the night before or breakfast and, and, and….
So I claw my way out of my dumb moment by emailing her back, “How many hours ago are we talking here?”
I am going to pretend to no longer be confused by this.
The New Sound of Silence
A while back I read something about shops using a high frequency noise to discourage teen loitering. It’s a noise people over twenty years of age can’t usually hear. It’s called the Mosquito.
If you’re a teen, you probably already know about this. Kids have turned this technology against us adults and are using this sound as a ringtone for their mobile phones during school hours. Spanky said a classmate’s phone rang in class and all the students could hear it, but the teacher just continued her lecture, didn’t hear a thing.
I had to do a little investigating, see what this sound is all about. I am so not a teen and since everyone in my family is just certain that I am going deaf, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to hear it.
I can hear it alright. Only within a couple of yards from the source. It’s an excruciating sound. It makes my face contort as if I’ve just bit into a lemon.
So of course I had to test it on the kids in this house.
Their reaction was much stronger than mine. I didn’t even say anything about it, just played the thing. They can hear it from much farther away than I.
Hmmm. Wonder what I can use this for?
Click here to check if you can hear it.
Edited note: Comments are now closed.
Obama! Obama! Obama!
In the fall of 2005 we went to a “Countdown to Victory Rally” near our hometown. There were some Democratic US Senators there, most notably Barack Obama. I’d heard of him, but hadn’t heard him speak before.
it was a small rally.
Obama energized the crowd with his charisma. I’d never seen anything like it before and doubt I will ever see it again in my lifetime. Before long the crowd was chanting “Obama! Obama! Obama!
My first thought was, this guy will be president one day. He’s the man to fix everything. His message was one of hope. He didn’t bang on the Republicans or Bush or complain about the past, he talked about making lives better for the poor, universal health care, balancing the budget. It was the first time I ever felt a vibe of integrity coming from a politician.
After the rally we went to where they were getting into their cars and got to shake Obama’s hand. Got an autograph.
A lot of people laughed when I came back from that rally saying he’s going to be president one day. Yesterday, he made the announcement, he’s running in ‘08.
I hope I’m right about my first impression. And I hope it happens for him, for all of us. In ‘08.
wtf that’s all about
A couple of years ago I won a trip for two to England. A builder had this contest for the top sellers of their homes and I was one of about 15 Realtors to win this trip. I’d never been away from my children.
Blane stayed home with the kids and I took Angela on my free trip. The first night was pretty rough. I missed the family and was pretty miserable. So I did what any self respecting woman would do.
I overdosed on chocolate.
What we found out right away was this bus load of Realtors was a bunch of Bush supporters. Angela and I were not. Never were. Never would be. Our tour guide for the week, Pricilla, a British woman was not, she did a lot of Bush bashing. She didn’t believe such a thing as a Bush supporter existed, but she was indeed on a bus full of them. We pulled her to the side and told her.
Then we just started ditching events. We couldn’t stand being on a bus, preferred to see the sights on our own, so one day we skipped it and hitched it to town.
Went to a tower and just loved this poster.
Note the write ins for “others.”
Took some photos of some punks:
And some punk dog:
In Europe the biggest problem is always where are the damn toilets? “If we could just find a McDonald’s,” we kept saying. And then, there it was:
Damn that’s a fancy McDonald’s.
Oh. Fuck. That’s a furniture store.
So we had to walk back to the hotel (did you really believe we hitched into town?).
When the trip was over, everyone flew out of Manchester to go home. Everyone but me. I flew to London all by myself to meet my daughters who were flying in later that day.
I don’t usually take photos from a plane but had to this time. I was trying to capture the strangeness I felt.
I was all alone, for the very first time in my life. On the other side of the world. All by myself.
Oops
I’d always wanted to move my dad to another cemetary because the one he is in is in a bad part of town and is frequently vandalized. When Shane died, there was no room near his grave to put Shane, and this is a bad place anyway. So we put Shane in a new cemetary and bought a plot next to it for Dad to be moved there.
One of my brother’s (Punkin) had a fit when he found out we were moving Dad. We told him about the vandalism. Then we tried to tell him we didn’t want Shane all alone in his new place and since he was not married when he died, it was likely he’d always be buried alone.
Still, Punkin wouldn’t have it. He threw a fit. Made threats. All this time it kept raining, so the ground was too wet to move the grave. In the meantime, Candace dies and there is no longer the problem of Shane being buried alone. We cancel the move for my dad. Problem solved.
Well, someone called yesterday and said they finally moved Dad’s grave.
Oops.
So I kept trying to call my Mom all day to make sure she didn’t go out to dad’s old cemetary and find him missing. I finally reached her and told her Dad took a ride today.
So now the three of them are together and this is on a piece of land my dad always loved, out in the country. I like it that they are all buried together. And I like it that my dad took a ride today. Wish I could have been there.
Sorry Punkin.
wtf?
This is a photo taken through glass and maybe I had some coffee on board too. Still, I love this sculpture, I don’t know who did it or what it is called, but it captures an unmistakeable reaction. It’s in the Louvre.
If you know this work and the artist’s name, let me know.
Shakespeare For Children
Spanky and I have been looking through everything for an old book I used to read to them. It’s a collection of Shakespeare plays broken down into simple stories for kids.
Now this isn’t a stuffy house, we don’t run around here quoting the Bard. My mom used to do that and we did not have a stuffy house then, either, but the woman had entire Shakespeare plays memorized. Anyway, I admire his work greatly because of the profound insight his plays offer.
Studying Hamlet ages ago, the big question in class was whether Hamlet was mad or just pretending to be crazy. It seemed pointless to dwell on a question with no answer. It drove some of my classmates mad, this question. Oh, the irony. Indecision, too, that was big with this play (to be or not to be).
I didn’t dwell on those two biggies. The thing that struck me the most about the play was something at the beginning, something about two countries at war over a piece of land that was not even big enough to bury the soldiers who died fighting over it. It remains to this day one of the most provocative things I’ve ever read.
My thoughts today are not focused on the war in Iraq, it’s not about that.
It’s about any battle. Any war. Any fight. The people who fight them. What they are fighting over.
I have no respect for people who fight just for the sake of fighting. They have no regard whatsoever for what they are fighting over. It is about pulverizing their opponent. They live their lives looking for fights to win. Any fight. But mostly easy fights. These people are bullies.
Bullies don’t catch on that they are rotting from the inside out. In the end, when the last tic sounds on their clock, they are ultimately losers and their only legacy is a path of destruction.
Unless of course they run across someone who can clean their clocks. It happens. Everyone loves that kind of ending where the hero comes in and saves the day. No one cheers for the bully.
It Sifts From Leaden Sieves
It snowed last night. I didn’t grow up with snow, so when I see it, it doesn’t seem like real snow. I see powdered sugar all over everything. Just trying to look like snow.
Here is one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson:
It sifts from Leaden Sieves –
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road –It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain –
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again –It reaches to the Fence –
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces –
It deals Celestial VailTo Stump, and Stack — and Stem –
A Summer’s empty Room –
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them–It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen –
Then stills its Artisans — like Ghosts –
Denying they have been –
