We needed one didn’t we? We needed that old man who was lost for days in the cold to find himself into an abandoned million dollar home and fix himself some food and go to sleep in a comfy bed after he’d changed into warm, dry clothes. After so many cancer deaths and tragic accidents have taken people who were way too young to die, we just needed one friggin’ miracle.
I cut my fingernails last night. Every once in a while I rebel against the fact that as a pianist and a writer I have had to keep my nails short since I started playing the piano when I was three. Mostly I like it, but sometimes I just wish I could have those really clicky kind of nails that have beautiful manicures in vibrant colors that women can use as an extension of their power and confidence. The best I can do is, if I get some gift money, get a French manicure where they paint on fake fingernail edges . I really love that.
I rose from my chair and said to the group at the table, "I’m really sorry. I have to leave this conference right now or I’m going to wreck it." and embarrass myself horribly at the same time I thought to myself.
I had white knuckled my way through the opening night. At first I thought maybe it was just because it was a Seattle event. Close to twenty years on the Island has given me the softness that comes with not having to bang the drum very loudly to be heard. For us transplants it’s a process.
Wow… one more holiday to go: Eastern Orthodox Christmas. For us multiple faith families it a long season of gratitude and joy… and partying. With close friends and fmaily who are Jewish and then the Western/Eastern Christmas seasons which only coordinate once in w awhile, it’s just about from Thanksgiving through the first week in January that is a festival of one kind and another. I welcome it every year.
Without TV streaming into my home via Cable, Dish or Direct, I was a little worried about missing out on the holiday specials. Guess what I discovered as I was digging for the VHS copy of "White Christmas" that warbles through most of the last third of the movie? I own a practically new copy of "Charlie Brown’s Christmas" !! And guess what else I discovered while I watched it by serendipitous viewing at friends who have commercial TV? I like everything better without commercials!!
It’s the four in hand in Bell Choir playing that really astounds me. As I watched the Bells of the Sound handbell choir play piece after piece with that four in hand technique I sat mesmerized.
The first time I picked up a handbell I had a real orientation challenge. As a pianist I’m used to commanding all the notes. With handbells, you are in charge of one or two or three depending on the song. Each player is assigned a note or notes and they play only those notes.
Herman Cain and the circus at Penn State have just plain ticked me off. Outside of the obvious, you know why? Because men and the women who want their approval have been saying ‘Ain’t no big thing’ for entirely too long.
I can write it now because nobody cares about this story anymore.
Nothing moves when I call his name but his eyebrows and a happily wagging tail. Ah… the tail….
Well… the tale began as a disappointment. I was about to receive a chocolate lab like the one I had given away years ago when we had to move the first time and they called from the Burton turn and said , ‘Our friends are going to take her.’. After so many years without a dog, my heart was ready. Knowing that, and also knowing it would take some time to find an adoptive match through Pet Protectors I called Barbara Drinkwater and put in my order: friendly, good with kids, not a barker, pleasant low key breed.
He’s had a bad day at work. ( but it could be any negative trigger) He comes home and finds you are doing laundry. The noise bugs him. Suddenly the peace and joy you were feeling oozes out of your body as fear of the unknown floods in every vein and artery.
I don’t get writer’s block. It’s an incredible blessing. I have so many projects I’m working on I always have a rotation that keeps things fresh and flowing.
This column I have been stuck on for two weeks or more. Why? … It’s my learning curve. ( By the way I’ve been reading articles about how my use of ‘three dots’ and parenthesis is becoming passé. I’m going to keep using them. They approximate my speech delivery the best).
As I entered the high school library and saw the tables set up for the board meeting, a ton of good memories came flooding back. The playground at Chautauqua that first year when it was filled with Carnival rides and teachers staffing booths while children watched their house of learning turned into a party just for them. The helicopter Liz always managed to get ( or was it Fran) for the egg drop experiment.
One would think with everything I have on my to do list (lose 115 pounds – yea team for the first thirteen--, earning enough to buy a house, providing special things for my children, volunteering for activities I believe will help create world peace and doing my chores) I’ve got zip, zero time to deal with getting rid of somebody else’s dead car.
The time has come to write this. It is the end and I must acknowledge it even though it will bring tears that won’t stop to my eyes.
He began the week with these words. “Why isn’t Rehab funny anymore?” He who is three and three fourths (as he will tell you) had replaced all of ‘Moon River’ and ‘Fifty Ninth Street Bridge Song’ with “Rehab’ as the one that was sure to get audience response. He could nail the rhythm and inflection impeccably growling as only a little one with a smirk on his girk ( pardon me Mercer Mayer) could do.
Picture this… Mayfield Mall in Mountain View California. The JC Penney Auto Center….1973-74. It’s the oil embargo. Lines form around the block for gas when it’s available. We were paying, I think my records said, 29cents a gallon. But we would wait for maybe an hour to get to a pump.
My interest in the class came from two motivations. First, I have roughed out chapter two of my spiritual autobiography ‘Because the White Rose Grew; Parenthetical Confessions of a Mystic Boomer White Woman". That chapter is entitled ‘Potter 3: Pot 0: God and Evil" . I wanted to compare what I had written with what others thought.
Well here it is…my birthday month. I breathed air for the first time at dawn on 28 July 1951. You do the math. I’m hopin’ I’m halfway through and not two thirds done. Against all odds I have made it to sixty. Sole Deo Gloria. That means ‘all glory to God’. Bach put it at the end of all his compositions.
Caity’s adventure in singing finished with the two of us deciding it didn’t make sense on many levels for me to fly down to Texas for two days for graduation. She was going to be exceptionally busy with performances, honors convocation had happened two weeks earlier when even she couldn’t go because of a scheduling conflict
By 6:35 AM the sun has risen through my office situated in the front of the house and begun to rotate through to the long, high up window in my bedroom that allows it to shine on my face . It’s a work day, but I am not due at work for two and a half more hours .
OK, OK, OK. So maybe you poured your heart and soul into in and it was just thrown in your face. Maybe it was a dying business. It was a great idea, a good location but not the right time and it just wouldn’t fly.
There is a universal truth in the first world working community. If you have had a fitful night’s sleep, fifteen minutes before the alarm is scheduled to go off you will find the most comfortable position you have ever discovered in your life and fall into a deep sleep.
A new teacher in an urban setting, he stands in the hall with the principal. A group of kids dash by. He makes a derogatory remark based on a stereotype. The principal says, “If you’re going to work here, you’re going to have to have soft eyes….You’re going to have to see the whole picture.”
“Mom”, my son said. “I think we’re in the same room we were for Caity”. Sure enough. I opened the door and there sat my son in the same room he sat in when he was nine and holding his sister for the first time.
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