Unlikelies

I'm doing another advertisement for my son Travis's new CD cuz it can now be downloaded from iTunes.

Been getting more and more feedback from people - really liking it and ordering more for gift giving.

Travis's CD!

Our son Travis with friend Katrina are coming out with a CD. Here's a link to one of the songs. It's due out November 13 - great timing for Christmas gifts! As I've sat listening to the mixes I keep thinking of more and more people I want to give it to!

Dawson went up to stay with Travis and Sarah a couple days (where were Monte and me? were we getting ready to leave town? I'm a bit befuddled having been in Wisconsin visiting Monte's aging parents-his dad having fallen-and planes have been canceled and delayed into Denver because of snow. How much snow is at home Dawson? 3 feet?). Dawson took lots of photos for the CD and here's one of the photos.

A link to the CD's fan club.

Taos Wool Festival, etc

It's early morning. The sun might not make an appearance today. I'm currently looking out on thickly frosted plants and ground - wilted leaves and flowers. I love how only one side of the evergreen trees has the thicker white coating, leaving all the north sides of the trees their dark green. It would make a nice picture to capture and keep.

I'm not seeing bunny tracks - maybe it's still sleeping. The birds are awakening and looking for seeds. Are bugs out for the bug eating birds? Are the bears hibernating yet? I hope so. Do raccoons hibernate? Monte saw two in the trash trailer (probably after some fish wrappings) and we've decided they did the latest bird feeder destruction. Elk are still in their rut and bugling.

It's getting lighter outside and I think it's trying to snow. Now it's pretty seeing an occasional golden aspen in the midst of the dark evergreens with their white one-sided dusting. I should be starting the wood stove. Made my tea though, and curled up in wool socks and thick bathrobe. And I don't want to take too much time posting cuz I'm working on a felted piece. Colorful wool in baskets and curly colored locks too, and a shiny skein of wool, are covering the kitchen table and benches awaiting me to create.

Which reminds me ... my last post was just before Monte and me were leaving for the Taos Wool Festival. It was a great vacation - a true vacation, not related to Monte's work travel or us speaking.

Our close friends, Jim and Marty, had time share places lined up for us to stay in - the first night in Red River, New Mexico. Monte worked there just before we married, coming home for us to elope. Lots of memories, including his favorite restaurant, Texas Reds, where he ate a lot. Tho the original had burned down, it's a part of the Red River Lodge now and the owner remembered Monte! We all had a salad with their famous salad dressing that Monte's raved about for 34 years - and yes, it was very good! The waitress had fun with us and Monte's memories (like hiking the hills with backpack full of rocks), tho she'd not been born yet then. With the great music in the bar (Monte and Jim bought the guy's CD) it was a great atmosphere and wonderful meal.

The nice thing about this trip was that we weren't driving long distances, so could stop and enjoy the local scenery - which included galleries and the local's food hangouts. La Veda, Colorado was one stop, for lunch. A very old hippie (yes, old hippies, including us), artsy fartsy town. We could tell lots of music happens around there. Some famous people (famous to us textile people - like Marty is a quilter) live around there, and then Monte fell in love with one style of oil painting and we ended up talking with the painter himself - and Monte's got to go back next year (his first openings) for a week long class.

Scenery? It was perfect timing for colorful Colorado's fall colors! Since we don't have maple trees, our rusts and reds come from scrub oak and other bushes and vines. The golds of aspen are our main color. But too, there's the grasses (I used to have my kids notice all the varieties of grass when we'd walk - did you ever notice how many variances there are? - could fill a large book, just on grass - interested?)- lots of fall color changes with them too.

After Monte's 34 year old memory lane fix (It was Frontier Days in Red River and we walked around the next day - finding out many of the locals work several jobs in that small community. We figured they'd all be sitting around the bar the next night talking about these strange visitors that befriended them for a day.) we drove winding back roads to Taos. Monte and me were last there 33 years ago. So the joke of that time was asking around if "Joe's Place" was still there? Joke? Because with Monte's knack for stretching the truth in his story-telling, you wonder what's really real - so this was a weekend of dispelling myths or finding them true. A local at Michael's, where we had a fabulous breakfast, really had fun with Monte.

It was beautiful weather and we enjoyed walking everywhere. The beautiful place we stayed in Taos had fruit trees about the property, so as we walked anywhere we were eating apples (looking for worms) and great plums. The Wool Festival was in Kit Carson Park (Taos is his home place - his home a museum) close to our place and we walked around amongst the many colorful booths both Saturday and Sunday (as well as all the many artsy shops and galleries that make up Taos). I found a site that posted pictures from this year's festival in a slide show. By Sunday most of the beautiful felted hats, and woven pieces made into fabulous clothing were sold out (and expensive they were too!!!)

I googled the festival and can't believe there's not great pictures posted. Looking tho reminded me that the same weekend was the balloon festival in Alburquerque and little over an hour south. I've seen pictures of it and Marty and Jim went years ago. Hundreds of colorful balloons fill the sky! I did see from my own photo library that Monte took quite a few pictures from his iPhone (Dawson put them on my computer and I hadn't even looked at them yet). So I'm going to post some of them on my photoblog.

Monte and me went from this trip to Travis and Sarah's and spent the night and Monday with them. Travis has been working on a CD of original songs and creative arrangements him and friend Katrina have done. Monte was excited to hear it and help with any tweaking his producing ears heard, before it's done being mixed. We had a very relaxing day, ending it with purchased vanity and sinks for their main bathroom, and a good bar-b-q sandwich supper.

It's snowing now. I'm resigned to the fact that summer is over. Time to start the woodstove and cook a stew on it or soup.

Susan Boyle - Singer

Monte showed me this (click) , since the above won't work. Amazing! Beautiful! Great message!

It's now Friday, almost noon, snowing hard (2ft?) and when I saw the above youTube link was disabled I did the above click link that does work. So now I've probably watched this 5 times and I tear up with joy. I had heard about it on the radio and so glad Monte found it so we could actually see and hear.

I'm remembering my friend Ellen saying, "We don't dream big enough!" It'll be fun hearing about where this ladies dreams will now fly!

Art's Eternal Value

Beth, an Artist friend of mine, who had to move to Wyoming, sent me this speech. I read it yesterday morning and it's message has so touched me ... I was thinking I'd quote parts of it, but it's so good in it's entirety. I read it to Monte yesterday as we ate lunch (he ate, while my leftover spaghetti got cold :) and he so liked it he asked me to email it to him, and he's passed it on, like to our son Travis.

There's so many favorite thoughts, like ... art having a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us ... in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities ... Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning”... And then the day after 9/11 - The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on ... art is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds...If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists ... who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.
______________________________
Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the “Quartet for the End of Time” written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art. It wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am alive, and my life has meaning.”

On September 12, 2001, I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome.” Lots of people sang “America, the Beautiful.” The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart wrenchingly beautiful piece “Adagio for Strings.” If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie “Platoon,” a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings —people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching “Indiana Jones” or “Superman” or “Star Wars” with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in “ET” so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important: music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago. I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland Sonata was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterward, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
__________________________
When we watched movies as a family, I used to always make comments about the music's importance in making the scene. "And think of the persons who KNOW music so, to pick the fitting pieces!

And the nursing home story almost undid me, I've seen similar scenes. Heather worked in nursing homes and did some in-home eldercare before she nannied and married. And I'd gone to nursing homes with Monte's mom, watching the people as she played the piano and hymns were sung.

The "why write and enjoy music in a prison camp" reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption. The music scene, where one man dares to share the hope in his soul with all the inmates, is the heart of the movie - a great movie.
_________________________
The art piece is "1st Cello" by my friend Melinda Morrison. I'd post art from my friend Beth too if I had access to a picture. I love her work as well.

"Beauty will save the world"
Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On A Night Like This

After last night's Christmas Eve service, I wanted to post the words to a song written by our Minister of Worship, Kerry Conner. I was only going to post some phrases, but love it in its entirety - 

On A Night Like This

A Baby shivered

When first he felt the evening's cool caress

The creator of the cosmos clothed in flesh

But he must have warmed at the tender touch of a mother's kiss

As the young girl held the Savior in her arms

On a night like this.

The shepherds shuddered

When they heard the host proclaim that peace had come

They left their flocks to seek the virgin's son

They heard the angels sing

In the sparkling midnight mist

And their hearts leaped as they gazed upon the child

On a night like this.

Chorus:

On a night like this

Everything was changed

The Father sent his son to pay our debt

On a night like this

Our ransom was arranged

Because the hand of God became a baby's fist

On a night like this.

The darkness shattered

As the brilliance of a new star split the night

To announce the bold invasion of the light

And there must have been a groan

From the heart of the abyss

Because the chilly hand of death would lose it's grip

On a night like this

The Spirit quickens

And a spark of faith can fan into a fire

A lonely soul can find its true desire

Because Immanuel has come

And he offers us the gift

A restless heart need never stay the same 

On a night like this.

Chorus:

On a night like this 

Everything can change

There's no wound too deep and dark for race to heal

On a night like this

Love can break the cruellest chains

Because the hand of God became a baby's fist

On a night like this

Everything can change

On a night like this

Our ransom was arranged

On a night like this

Everything can change

On a night like this

Love can break the cruellest chains 

On a night like this.

Though written and produced in 1992 by Kerry, it's recorded by his friend Debbie Milligan on her album "Teach Me to Dance in the Rain". Her website is www.healingwings.com

Art The Nativity by Salvador Dali

Adoration of the Shepherds, unknown, and then El Greco

John of the Cross

December 14 is John of the Cross's calendar day. If you want to read what I wrote a year ago click here.

And if you want to listen to my favorite artist who's put John of the Cross's "Dark Night of the Soul" to music, click here.

Advent Sunday 2

This second week's candle in the Advent wreath is the Bethlehem candle. The bedraggled Joseph and Mary searched for a place to sleep.

"Love" was born in Bethlehem and Love asks us to be open.

I love the song "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" written around 1868 by Phillip Brooks. During a sabbatical he traveled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem by horseback on Dec 24, imagining Mary and Joseph on their journey and a field of the shepherds. He was overcome by the beauty and felt the peace. Then he attended a five hour service at the Church of the Nativity. This experience never left Brooks and he wrote the song for his church's children's choir to sing.

"How proper it is that Christmas should follow Advent. For him who looks toward the future, the manger is situated on Golgotha, and the cross has already been raised in Bethlehem."
- Dag Hammarskjold


This reminds me of a drawing a friend's son drew while doodling in church.

Advent - 1st Sunday

Christianity begins with the birth of a baby. This Feast of the Nativity originally called, "Christ's Mass" includes days of preparation, referred to as Advent. Advent means "to come". It encompasses the past, present and the future. Christ was waited for and came in the past. Christ comes and is present with us day to day. And Christ promises a future.

As I type this I'm listening to the sound track of the movie "The Nativity Story" that I bought having seen the movie. The artwork is called The Living Cross by Vincent Barzoni.

Today's Advent candle? the Prophecy Candle. "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus", "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". People waited, hoped, and trusted, having heard and read the words of the Prophets. I today still wait, hope, and trust.

Advent each year can be a journey of awakening - "Keep awake" says Matthew. Aware, alive, attentive, alert, awake - full consciousness - to God's doings in the world. Advent is a preparation time - making room in my heart for Christ's birth in a new and fuller way. My waiting, hoping, and trusting - content in God's timing, God's heart's desires and resolution. My desire is to not miss a bit of life's greatest gift from God to me.

The fairytale of the Gospel...[is] it not only happened once upon a time, but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.
Frederick Buechner

Ben Franklin's Glass Armonica

Watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D9BBMDWoNM

Francis of Assisi

Ah, today is the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi - what to post? Everyone's heard of him. There's pages and pages on Google of things named after him, including animal rescue centers. There's always garden statues of Francis with birds. And I am tempted to get one. Most people have seen the art piece of him preaching to the birds. I read a novel on Francis, I think by Richard Rohr, that I liked.

San Francisco is named for Francis of Assisi. And as I think of this, we've had some angel remembrance days lately, and California's Los Angeles means 'the angels'. The Franciscans were very instrumental in the beginnings of the United State's southwest.

Therese of Lisieux ("The Little Flower") Day was October 1, and I read her little book, The Story of a Soul. I don't care for her story, she just seems too silly to me, and nothing there for me to hold onto that would help me live better. Many saint stories bug me in their 'literal living'.

I could say that about Francis too, but he does have more depth, and he is the founder (though he wasn't wanting to found anything) of the Franciscan Order of monks. He lived scripture so literally that I get frustrated with him, yet he lived so closely like Jesus, I can't really say anything against him.

I spent some time skimming web sites for a specific story I had read about him and Claire somewhere long ago, but didn't find it. Claire was of Assisi too and inspired by Francis' change in life to follow Christ, she too followed, and lived out the rest of her life cloistered away. But supposedly the two met for a meal and talked on and on and there was such a glow over the building the townspeople came running, thinking there was a fire. There are books and a movie about them called "Brother Sun, Sister Moon".

If you don't know about Francis of Assisi you should read about him. There's lots of web sites. I found a unique one that the guy wrote in a history class using 200 year old books for reference. It really is a good place to read a 'realistic' view, I really like it.

Then too, there's a good site describing the famous painting of Francis and the birds by Giotto. I have this painting. I have an easel that I change the pictures on regularly. I like to become 'friends' with works of art. This site finally explained why so much spiritual art has people with a hand raised, with the last two fingers curled under.

One piece of his story is his love for all creatures, so he's the patron saint of animals, and ecologists like to claim him. The live nativity is attributed to Francis of Assisi - the involvement of all the senses with live animals, and him using the manger as the altar for mass. He did preach to the birds the Matthew 6 text about God caring for flowers and birds - Do not be anxious, because God will take care of us to!

Most people too know Francis's Prayer/Poem that's even been put to music:
Lord,
Make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness, joy.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is error, truth.
Where there is wrong, the spirit of forgiveness.
O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console.
To be understood as to understand.
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

As one who loves the Trinitarian God, shouldn't I desire to live closely like Jesus too? What would it look like in our culture?

The Beatles

I knew it was Paul McCartney's birthday yesterday. Something I read got me reminiscing...

I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I loved the Beatles and still love their songs. They were at our local Red Rocks amphitheater that same year too I think. I was looking at all the memorabilia/history of Red Rocks and the ticket prices were ridiculously cheap - like maybe $4. Today you pay more than $30-50+ depending on who's performing. We lived in Denver in those early years and could hear the music from Red Rocks when at our friends house.

I sang the song "Yesterday" alone (McCartneys most recorded song ever), in front of the whole grade school when I was in 6th grade (and Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are made for walking" with my white go-go boots and long sweatshirt, along with other gals in our classes' music production for the school). I still have the 45 LP of the song "Yesterday" (besides their albums).

The first song I played when learning to play the guitar was "Puff the Magic Dragon"...

Happenings

I've been gone all day and about to leave again. Monte, Dawson and me, along with his girlfriend "Splara" and her parents are about to eat sushi, and then going to a Small Potatoes concert, at Denver's Swallow Hill.

Jacquie and Rich are great writers and musicians of true Folk music. They are always fun. I had to download this picture from their website since it's a great visual of their song, "Time Flies".

I've listened to this song over the years, but until now, seeing the picture, it really hit me! ... Monte has written a song about wishing we could slow down time and capture 'right now' ...

My favorite song of theirs is "Waltz of the Wallflowers" which Jacquie won an award for. And too, I love Rich's powerful song: "1000 Candles, 1000 Cranes".

"Spuds Rule!" 

Women In Art

A friend of Monte's and mine sent us this link thinking we'd appreciate it. It's beauty. It's art. Watch the eyes.

Loosing Myself

I so love John 12. I love the image of Mary anointing Jesus' feet with costly perfume just before the week of passion. A couple gave Monte and me a picture of this scene and I have it hanging in my office and can see it as I sit in my favorite chair reading.

For this Holy Week I'm reading a little book by NT Wright called Christians at the Cross - subtitled Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. Wright leads you with the theme of music through this week's story. When Christians say "Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures", Wright says according to the scriptures could be considered the bass part, the foundation of the tune. Karaoke recordings have everything but the melody - the song itself, because you're supposed to know the song and sing it. The Gospel Story is the melody. All the other parts create the totality of the harmony and whether it's major or minor, happy or sad.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he knew all the Old Testament prophecies and what was ahead of him that week. John 12 mentions that Jesus' followers didn't put the pieces together until later. Isaiah said that God will send his servant, with his eyes fixed on his strange work of setting the world right through his own death.

"Unless a grain of wheat is buried, dead to the world, then it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over...If you let your life go, reckless in your love, you'll have life forever..." And this is what Mary did in anointing Jesus' feet. Judas thought it a reckless extravagance. Jesus said, "She has done a beautiful thing to me - preparing me for burial." The fragrance filled the house. The fragrance probably stayed with him through his trial and beating and death.

Who are you in the story: Martha, Mary, or Judas? Because of this scene I ponder: It is very easy for me to 'lose' myself in God, but can I 'loose' myself, as did Mary?

Calendar

So, what day is today? Everyone knows it's St Patrick's Day. What do we wake up thinking? or maybe even plan ahead for? Wearing something green ("so I won't be pinched!"). Oh, that's really important! I'll say something about him later.

The 15th of March is The Feast of Saint Longinus. Do you know him? I wonder who even remembered his name, or did they just give him a name. I took a picture of a picture from one of my Saint books - and who do you see? John Wayne! not his typical western look. What movie is this?

Tradition merges the soldier whose spear pierced the side of the crucified Jesus with the centurion who later acknowledged him to be the Son of God. According to legend, Longinus was baptized by the Apostles and eventually died, a martyred bishop, in Cappadocia.

Why not take a day each year to think about the crucifixion scene and all those witnesses. How might it have touched so many people's lives. We don't know all the stories ... but just imagine!

Another person remembered from that whole story is the man who offered his tomb for Jesus to be buried. March 17 is the Feast of Saint Joseph of Arimathea. According to a legend, Joseph was Jesus' wealthy uncle, and after his nephew's (did you ever think of Jesus as a nephew?) Resurrection and Ascension, Joseph accompanied Mary Magdalene to France. Then, alone, he made his way to Britain, bringing with him the chalice drunk from at the Last Supper, which became an ornament of the church he established at Glastonbury, Somerset. And that is how the Holy Grail ended up in England and why King Arthur was so concerned with it!

So from this legend we have so much literature - from the tales of King Arthur (and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" movie - I'm grinning) and on to the more current The Da Vinci Code (I read that Novel and the book that followed. Good writer of a good story, but remind yourself - it's a novel). I think Dan Brown knew of this legend and extrapolated! All I'll say is, "He's an angry-at-the-church man, and doesn't know his history."

Everyone knows bits of the St Patrick story so I don't want to say much. Of all that's written, my favorites are How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Celtic Way of Evangelism. I came away from having read those books realizing my faith is more Celtic than Roman based. Celtic writings are much like the Hebrew Psalms and very inclusive of the Trinity. (My favorite book for exposure to this is The Celtic Way of Prayer.) What must have overflowed from Patrick (born Succat) was the Celtic based monasteries that were very inclusive of the surrounding community, focusing on relationship and embracing the common people. They loved people into The Kingdom. The Europe they evangelized to life, kinda died again, returning to the Roman cold, exclusive (exclusion) monasteries and nitty-gritty detail focus and rules.

A Palladius or Pallagious was actually the first missionary to Ireland. His name was mentioned in the newest King Arthur movie, and because I know something of him, I made the connection in the movie. He preached that people can take the 1st step to salvation without the grace of God. Augustine took steps against his followers.

St Patrick, with a satchel full of books, including Augustine's writings, like City of God and his Confessions, returned to Ireland with its un-invaded tranquility by the barbarians who were ransacking Rome and all of Europe. Thus literature was preserved until Europe was ready to take them back.

Hasn't Patrick's Breastplate prayer been put to music?
Make Irish Soda Bread!

Bach

On this day in 1829, Felix Mendelssohn conducted Bach's St Matthew Passion. Bach was still relatively unknown, even though he had died almost a century before. More than one thousand people were unable to get tickets, so two additional concerts had to be scheduled.

It was only then that scholars began to analyze and appreciate the artistic majesty of Bach - one century from his first, long-forgotten performance of this piece! 

So great was the sensation that composer Hector Berlioz marveled, "There is but one God--and Bach and Medelssohn are His prophets."

Loreena McKennitt - The Lady of Shalott (LIVE)

The dark night of the soul

I love this artist and her rendition of the poem by St John of the Cross.