Category Archives: Music

2024, Family, gardening, Music

70s Sing Along

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The last two days have been gardening days chez nous.  When you have massive numbers of flowers (instead of grass), spring clean-up is a bear.  Monday we did a few hours in the front and yesterday we spent in the backyard so Guinevere could be outside with us. (Still LOTS to do… but that’s for another day). 

As we were getting going yesterday, YA brought out what I thought was a sunglasses case.  I’ve seen this around, usually when she’s getting packed up for a trip.  Turns out it’s actually a little bluetooth speaker that she got on a client trip.  I wasn’t too excited about this as our choices of music don’t usually sync up but the first song was something I recognized and then the second and the third.   I asked her if it was a specific station or if she had asked it “to play old stuff my mom would like”.  She responded that she had asked for music from the 70s. 

I graduated from high school in 1974 so I guess you could say I came of age musically in the 70s.  Abba, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Simon & Garfunkel, Moody Blues, Heart, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond.  I was fond of many folk singers in the late 60s as well but I got my first radio of my own when I was in 10th grade.  (I never did have a record player of my own until I got married!)  I suppose a lot of nostalgia is wrapped up in that music for me. 

As the gardening went on, more and more songs that I recognize played on.  I don’t know the name of many of those tunes or even the artists, but I know a lot of the lyrics.  YA did suggest at one point that I didn’t have to sing along quite so loudly.

I did eventually thank her for playing “old mom music”.

If you can stand the 70s rock stuff, do you have a particular tune you like?

2024, Gatherings, Health, Music, Uncategorized

In Poor Taste

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Last weekend our local Opera group held a gala evening of a lovely meal and selections from various operas.

We have a surprisingly active opera group here, and they host a summer youth musical camp, as well as operas and recitals during the rest of the year. Our church choir director and her husband are very active in the group.

We didn’t attend the Gala, but heard plenty of comments about it the next day. An acquaintance of ours and her husband attended the Gala. She is a former piano instructor at the college. She and her husband also attend our church. Just before the end of the evening, our acquaintance’s husband collapsed and had to be resuscitated with CPR. He was taken to the hospital. There were several medical professionals in the audience who saved his life.

The final selection to be performed at the Gala was from one of the last acts of Carmen, in which Carmen is stabbed to death by Jose’. Our church choir director was to sing the part of Carmen. They decided that Carmen being stabbed to death just after Larry, the piano teacher’s husband, was hauled out on a stretcher would be in pretty poor taste, so they quickly ended the show.

I am happy to report that Larry survived and the Carmen selection will be performed at the next recital in the fall. This is just too much drama for our small community!

What are your favorite and least favorite endings to operas and musicals

2024, Family, Gatherings, Music, Uncategorized

Groupies

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Next weekend our hand bell choir is performing at a ND State PEO convention in town. One of our ringers is a PEO member, and felt that they would appreciate our music. Instead of our usual sacred selections we are playing My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music, Ashokan Farewell, the Hawaiian version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, and Puff The Magic Dragon, just the sort of selections retired teachers would appreciate.

A couple of years ago our bell choir director volunteered us for a State Eastern Star convention in Jamestown. She is a leading light in the Eastern Star. That was a pretty weird experience. It was also a 400 mile round trip hauling all our bells and equipment. At least the PEO convention is in town.

My father belonged to the Masonic Lodge. My paternal grandfather was an Oddfellow as well as a Shriner. I have little patience with these groups and their rules and secret handshakes. I know the PEO and service organizations have good intentions. The PEO supports women’s education. I was the recipient of a PEO scholarship as an undergraduate. It just amazes me that these groups can continue.

What fraternal or service organizations have you or your relatives belonged to? Propose some new groups that you might find interesting.

2024, History, Music, Uncategorized

Metronome Police

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I read with amusement and disgust the effort by the current president of Chechnya to regulate the speed of music in that country.

The only music that is allowed for singing, instrumental performance, or dance must be between 80-116 beats per minute. The president thinks those tempos correspond to the brains and culture of Chechnyans. Anything else is contrary to Chechnyan values and culture. To give you a sense of what is allowed, Imagine by John Lennon would be too slow, and Here Comes The Sun would be too fast.

Well, good luck enforcing this. I suppose that any orchestra could regulate the speed during performances of classical music. What a loss for the populace, though!

What are your favorite slow and fast music pieces? What laws do you think have been unenforceable?

2024, holidays, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized, work

Glitter And Be Gay

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Last weekend, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, one of our employees came into our building and spread gold glitter all over-in the elevator, in all the hallways on both floors, in our offices, and on our desks along with green paper shamrocks and candy. Whoever it was had a master key to get into all the offices. Administration has been oddly silent, so I think it was one of them who did it..

All I could think was how awful for the cleaning staff to try to vacuum up all the handfuls of glitter that were strewn all over. The glitter has spread everywhere. One of my colleagues took her work laptop to a meeting at a local elementary school, and when she opened it up, glitter spilled out onto the table they were all meeting at. We are even carrying it into the community! After a couple of days for the cleaners to vacuum you can still see it in the carpet. Husband had some on his face at lunch yesterday.

For some reason Leonard Bernstein ‘s Candide came to mind when I saw all the glitter

What are some of your favorite Bernstein works? What is the biggest mess you ever made?

2024, Automotive, Music, Travel

Volare

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Yesterday morning I drove my next-door neighbors to the airport for a spring break trip to California.  When we were about half way to the airport, the youngest daughter (she’s five) wailed that she hadn’t downloaded any music to her pad.  The older daughter started to chime in as well.  Dad quickly let them know that he had downloaded good playlists to their pads. 

I wouldn’t even have known what most of the previous paragraph meant when I was the girls’ ages.  Both their Mom and Dad are music teachers, so I suppose it’s not too surprising that everybody has to have a playlist for a 4-hour flight.  When they get back, maybe I’ll ask the girls about what Dad had downloaded for them.

I like music but I can’t call myself an aficionada – I rarely know the names of songs and even if I recognize the music, I’m usually stumped about the composer.  Or the band.   So while I know that my phone could play music if I wanted, I don’t have anything set up and I don’t have any ear buds or headphones.  When I’m on the plane, it’s either sleeping or reading for me.   In fact, I almost always take too much reading material on the plane – except for the one time I had a big hard cover from the library in my carry on bag (All the Light You Cannot See) and I plowed through the entire book in between London and Minneapolis!  Luckily by the time I finished the book, we were just about to land so I wasn’t tortured by too much “non-reading” time.

How do you keep yourself entertained when you fly/drive/train/covered wagon?

2024, Gatherings, Music, Songs, Uncategorized, Words

Musical Ear

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We have a new assistant pastor at our Lutheran Church who is working out rather nicely. She is good with youth, preaches good sermons, and is fitting in well with the congregation. There is only one problem, and that is her lack of musicality.

Our pastors sing much of the of the liturgy, and to do that the they have to know to listen to the note the organist gives them to start on the chant. Our new pastor can’t carry a tune in a bucket. No matter how emphatic the organist is in giving the note, the new pastor invariably starts on a pitch three notes below where she should start, and can’t seem to read the intervals between the notes to sing the chant correctly. The liturgy is such that the pastor sings, then the congregation comes in on a pitch based on where the pastor leaves off. We now have to listen for a prompt from the organist to know what our pitch is.

It would be fine with me if our new pastor read the liturgy instead of singing it, but I guess in Lent things need to be sung. We are all suffering through these forty days together!

How are you at singing a capella? What are your favorite metaphors and idioms?

2024, Family, home, Music, Mysteries

Endorphins

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Yesterday afternoon, after doing a boatload of errands, I came home feeling… joyous.  I’m not exactly sure why – it’s not my normal go-to reaction to doing errands.  The only think I could think was that yesterday, I finally handled two issues that have been on my back-burner for months.  Neither of the issues is the biggest deal, so it’s been easy to put them off.

The main reason that I addressed both these issues is because this meme has popped up a couple of time the last two weeks:

It’s funny because it’s true of a lot of us, especially me.  But seeing it multiple times felt like an omen that needed addressing.

Anyway, when I got home in my great mood, I asked Alexa to play “Sugar, Sugar” by the Archies.  I’m not putting the song up here because if you have any liking for it at all, you remember it.  And if you don’t like it, I don’t want to torture you.  But it’s a happy tune and it’s great to dance to in the kitchen while you’re putting away groceries.  Alexa then went on to play a lot more bubblegum rock – more good boogie music.  Gave the dog and cat some extra afternoon treats.  Texted YA that I love her. 

It makes me wish I had more things I’ve been putting off; wondering if I can recreate this mood at will by playing a silly song by a made-up cartoon group?

Do you ever dance in the kitchen?  Sing in the car?  Or the shower?

2024, animals, Media, Music, Mysteries

More Baader-Meinhof

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It’s been quite a while since I experienced the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon… when something you’ve just become aware of suddenly pops up seemingly everywhere.  It’s also called “frequency illusion” – even though you think you’ve discovered something for the first time, it’s just that you’ve noticed it for the first time.  Anyway, I’ve had a bunch lately:

Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Friends visited there this fall and wrote about it in their holiday newsletter.  First time I had heard of this city.  Then a couple of days letter, Ljubljana was mentioned in the National Geographic that I was reading. 

Tasmanian Tiger.  Also in National Geographic (although a different issue), there was a mention of the tiger.  Then the next day there was a sidebar in Scientific American.  I’d never heard of this dog-like “tiger” that went extinct in Tasmanian in the 1930s.  It’s been in the news because a paper came out in 2023 that they may have survived longer in the wild before the species died out.

Straight No Chaser.  While baking cookies right after Thanksgiving, I heard a funny carol on the radio – turned out to be a men’s acapella group called Straight No Chaser.  First time I heard of them (but I adore them already).  Then a week later, a friend of mind posted on Facebook that he was going to a Straight No Chaser concert that night. 

I do understand that the universe is not trying to send me coded messages but it’s hard to believe that the information is all around you and you’re just not registering it.  I do wonder why all three of these just popped up in the last month for me!

Any coincidences in your life lately? 

2024, Music, Travel, Uncategorized

Soundtracks For Living

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Our drive from Brookings to home on Monday was pretty uneventful, although long. The weather was good, and we had MPR Classical to listen to as we traveled.

We are typically not fans of Strauss waltzes, but hearing the Vienna Philharmonic play at the Vienna New Year’s Day concert was fun. We listened to it as we drove past a large collection of windmills on the Buffalo Ridge, aka Coteau Du Prairies, near Summit, SD. The windmills’ rotations made them look like they were dancing to the waltzes. Even more fun was our arrival in western North Dakota just where the buttes and ravines start. Just as we entered the area, Copeland’s Rodeo started playing. It was so appropriate! We were back in the West with the dancing cowpokes.

Sometimes it feels like the most appropriate soundtrack for my life is Khachaturian’s Saber Dance. I hope for a calmer January, with a peaceful soundtrack, maybe cool jazz. We shall see.

What soundtrack would best accompany your life of late?