Saturday 9: Heat of the Moment

Saturday 9: The Heat of the Moment (1982)

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) What's something you did or said "in the heat of the moment?"

A. Quit a job. Actually, I stood up for myself and that led to my loss of a job. I was working for a two-lawyer firm, with another woman as a second (and senior) secretary. When I first went to work there, the drinks in the fridge were free. Then I was told I had to pay $0.50 for drinks (which were Sam's Club brand). So I started bringing in my own Diet Cokes. They kept disappearing. I knew one of the lawyers was drinking them because I saw the cans in his trash. Finally I marked one of the cans and when he came into my office with it in his hand, I pointed it out and asked for my $0.50 for the drink. He got very angry (though he handed me two quarters) and about two weeks later he "let me go" but gave no reason. He fought me on my unemployment but the state said he owed it to me since he had no real reasons for asking me to leave, so I collected it. Later, I found out that he and the other woman were having an affair; I am fairly sure that is the *real* reason I was asked to leave, because I was on the verge of figuring that out.

I'm not sure that's "heat of the moment" although I remember being angry when I saw for sure that he had my soda and was the one stealing from me. Jerk.

2) Asia's founder and bass player, John Wetton, passed away in January. One of his bandmates remembered him as a reliable performer who made everyone around him look better. Do you enjoy being the center of attention? Or would you, like Mr. Wetton, prefer to play a supporting role?

A. I would prefer the supporting role. The great thing about being a news reporter was I was there but invisible, participating but not. Seems like that would be a supporting role kind of thing.

3) Asia is a British band who played their first US concert at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. The nearest major city -- Ottawa, Canada -- is a 90-minute drive from Pottsdam. When you were last in the car for an hour or more? Where were you going?

A. We went to Rocky Mount, VA to hear Tommy Emmanuel play guitar at the Harvester Performance Center.

4) The song refers to disco hot spots, which apparently, by 1982, no one wanted to go to anymore. Let's make that negative into a positive. Describe your perfect night out with friends. Where would you go?

A. To see a fantasy movie and to the book store.

5) In 1982, the year this song was popular, someone laced bottles of Tylenol with cyanide. That's why we now have tamper-proof caps on many products. Have you used anything in a tamper-proof bottle yet today?

A. No. I have asked the pharmacist to remove the child-proof caps from my drug prescriptions. We have no children around here.

6) In 1982, Time Magazine's Person of the Year wasn't a person at all, it was "the computer." What do you use your computer for most often?

A. Writing, video games, reading (including Facebook, blogs, etc.), looking stuff up, and watching a live stream of a giraffe that refuses to have her baby, apparently.

7) 1982 also saw the premiere of The Weather Channel. Where do you learn the day's weather forecast? (Watching the local news on TV, checking your phone, looking out the window . . .)

A. I look out the window and check the local news station on the Internet.

8) In 1982, Arnold Schwarzenegger's movie, Conan the Barbarian, was a hit in theaters. When you settle down to watch a movie, is it usually a fantasy, like Conan? Or do you prefer another genre (action, comedy, adventure, romance, drama, classic . . .)

A. I like fantasies but will watch most anything except for those comedies that are full of poop jokes, farts, and young men objectifying women.

9) Random question: What is something you try to avoid?

A. Being uncomfortable.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Sunrise This Morning

Thursday Thirteen

Here are 13 of my daily visitors:

They stand in the little hidden glen in front of my house all the time. As you can see, they frequently lie down. Sometimes all of them lie down at once, especially on dreary, foggy days.

They are curious animals and will come all the way to the house. I have pictures of them looking in the window; last spring one gave birth right outside my bedroom, beneath the spruce tree. They stand and watch as we drive by the car. They won't eat out of my hand but they do not run far when I go outside. As you can see, when I stepped out to take a picture many of them looked at me, but a few simply ignored me.

1. These are whitetail deer (Odocoileus virginianus).

2. When a whitetail deer is startled, it will raise its tail to expose the white underside. This signal serves as a warning for other deer, and this instinct gives the whitetail deer its name.

3. Whitetail deer are the smallest members of the North American deer family.

4. Male whitetails, or "bucks," range from 100 to 300 pounds, while females, or "does," range from 75 to 200 pounds.

5. Whitetail deer tend to be most active during dawn and at dusk. (Mine appear to be the exception to this rule - I see them at all hours of the day.)

6. They have relatively small home ranges, usually only a square mile or less.

7. Whitetails gather into same-sex groups, or herds, to graze throughout the summer.

8. The rut, when these animals mate, begins in early September. During this time bucks will fight each other to claim the right to mate with does in the area.

9. Whitetail deer can run at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, and swim at speeds of up to 13 miles per hour.

10. Whitetail deer have a very long stride when running, up to 25 feet.

11. Whitetail deer have a diverse diet, and have been known to eat over 600 different plants. They love to eat acorns, grasses, leaves, crops like soybeans and corn, berries, twigs, fungi, fruit, and nuts. They also eat roses, including the part with the thorns, as I have seen for myself.

12. Whitetail deer have a four chambered stomach, which allows them to digest extremely tough vegetation. They will eat quickly without chewing while feeding, and later they will cough their food up and chew it. (That is kind of gross.)

13. The whitetail's coat will change with the seasons, from reddish brown in the spring and summer when vegetation is growing to grayish brown in the winter. This helps the deer to stay camouflaged all year round. The change in color happens quickly, usually in 1 or 2 weeks.

Facts from this website.
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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 492nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

A Philosophical Budget

Last week when the current Republican administration unveiled the presidential wish list for a budget, many of my friends gasped and panicked.

Knowing that the thing has to go through Congress first, I held my tongue. I think, though, that an examination of this budget proposal shows a vision of America that is currently being led by a bunch of black-hearted buzzards who are cruel, at best, and evil and inhumane at worst.

If you like wars, blowing up people, and enriching those who are part of the military industrial complex, it's a great budget. I suppose millions of people think that is good stuff.

However, if you dislike stepping over the body of someone's grandmother while you're walking down Main Street USA, it's not such a good budget. If you like art, learning, museums, libraries and Amtrak, it's not a good budget.

If you're a human being who has a heart, it's not a good budget.

Why Should I Pay for Thus and Such Is Not the Right Question

Recently the Republican administration wanted to know why coal miners should pay for PBS (public television) or why a single mother with two kids should pay for something or another.

For the same reason that I have to pay for a F-15 fighter jet when I am a pacifist who staunchly disbelieves in wars and fighting.

You pay your taxes and your representatives put the money where they want it to go, that's why.

I mean, why should either I or the coal miner have to pay for the president to go to his "south White House" and play golf? Why should the coal miner lose his black lung benefits? Why should I have to worry about my health care so that the CEO of any Wall Street corporation can receive a tax break? Why is the entire country paying for the president's wife and son to live in New York when she should be in the White House?

Questions like these are stupid, and I could ask them all day. Phrasing something like that is just a way to throw off the real question, which is: do these people have any sense of morality and/or a conscience? Do they know what "empathy" is? Do they not care about other people at all? Did they not read that "do unto others" thing (Luke 6:31) in their guidebook, the Bible?

Did somebody take their teddy bear when they were in kindergarten and not give it back, and now they're having some kind of subliminal payback frenzy?

Do they not know what common decency is?

To Hell With Everything Else

So this is the budget proposal that says "government pays only for military and security" (and a wall) and to hell with everything else.

This is the budget that would let grandmas starve, and poor people rot in prisons because they can't afford a lawyer and the government would stop providing them with one.

This is the budget that would allow industries to pollute and people with lung-related illnesses to die because of dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency. I have asthma; watch me wheeze. 

This is the budget that would make all of our water look like it came from Flint, Michigan, because of the same reason.

This is the budget that would force rural people to drive 200 miles out of their way to reach an airport (it would no longer subsidize rural airports).

This is the budget that stops Amtrak in its tracks.

This is the budget that takes PBS and NPR out of the very rural areas that voted Republican in the last election. (I suspect those entities will survive in larger cities, like New York and San Francisco, but we will see. I think the rural stations will close.)

This is the budget that would offer you a miniscule voucher to send your kid to a private school, like that is going to actually cover even six weeks of education. You get to pay for the rest.

This is the budget that would allow housing discrimination to creep back into our communities, because funding to keep that at bay would be gone.

This is the budget that would let the wife beaters go on to be murderers, because the money to help domestic violence victims obtain protective orders would be wiped out.

This is a budget that says if you're a senior citizen and you've lost your job and need retraining, too damn bad, because the $434 million for that program would be gone.

This is the budget that would take the nation's national parks and turn them into oil drilling and fracking industrial zones. Say bye-bye to that little fuzzy blooming plant over there that might have been the cure for breast cancer, 'cause we will never know. Science has no place in this Republican administration.

This is the budget that would let people who can't afford heat freeze to death; you know, the one that would give us the headlines that say "Ten people in trailer park in up state New York found frozen." Or maybe it would say, "Two dozen elderly die from heat stroke in Birmingham, Alabama high-rise hotel" because the funding for helping low income folks with their energy bills will be gone. Apparently paying for heating and/or air conditioning assistance for poor people is not in the Bible.

This is the budget that would cut funding for Meals on Wheels (which will survive because thankfully much of its funding is from state and local monies, not federal, but again, the rural areas that voted for this Republican Administration will suffer the most from these cuts), because we can't have a 77-year-old man who lives alone (because his wife died and his Army-loving son was killed in Afghanistan) being visited by a young guy who will give him something healthy to eat and ensure he's not sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor.

That would be humane, to continue to pay for that kind of thing out of federal dollars. And the federal government is no longer in the business of humane (or humanity). It's just in the business of business.

And business, by definition, is heartless.

Eliminating the ARC

This is the budget that would eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission, which serves the heart of the president's base of support. This Commission, which I have written about innumerable times over the last 30 years, has helped decrease the number of high poverty counties (295 in 1960) to 107 today. Its programs increased graduation rates, reduced infant mortality, made potable water available to untold numbers of families, and helped create more then 2,000 miles of new highways. In my state alone, the ARC has helped folks increase household income, reduced poverty, and added indoor plumbing to places that otherwise would still be shitting into the creeks and sending their waste into the major waterways of the state. The ARC region, in case you don't know, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia (including my county). Forty-two percent of the Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population.

Here's a map of the region (I circled my county in yellow, for those who may not believe we're part of this loss of funding):

Community Block Grants

This is the budget that would eliminate Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which I have also written about multiple times over the last 30 years. I know New Castle in Craig County received one of these grants, because I was writing over there at the time. I think Fincastle's sidewalks were put in place in part with a CDBG, and I suspect but can't remember for sure that much of Buchanan's recovery from the 1985 flood came about because of a CDBG.  These grants are used for a multitude of things, from reinventing "blighted" areas to installing plumbing to revitalizing business districts. If people think this money is handed out willie-nillie, they are wrong. Communities go through extensive processes to receive these funds, and their projects have to be well composed and thought out before requests for funding are considered. It takes communities years to obtain these funds. They're not gifts, and regardless of the FAKE NEWS coming out of the Republican Administration, these grants do have measurable results. I've seen them myself.

Yes, I'm a Liberal

This budget proposal does not reflect what I want to see the United States be or become. I hope it is not who we are, because it is a callous document.

I want museums, libraries, parks, and streets. I don't ride on Amtrak but I want to see it continue. I want poor people to receive the help they need, those who need to work receive the education they require in this new world of technology, and all of the other stuff that apparently the black-hearted buzzards in Washington, D.C. have no respect or regard for.

The other day during a phone conversation I was informed with every other sentence that I am a Democrat. I'm really more of a social liberal, but whatever. The word "democrat" was hurled at me as if it were some kind of taunt or insult. This same person (who is a Republican) was unhappy because someone could go into his establishment and sue him if they touched a hot water heater and there was a sign up that said "don't touch."

Hey, that's the free market, Mr. Republican. If there's a lawyer out there who will take the case to take your money, that's the way it is. If you want regulations to stop that kind of thing, then move on over to my side. Otherwise, pay your insurance premiums, which will go unchecked and keep rising. That's the free market capitalism that you love so much.

He also noted that he didn't have to worry about health care because he was on Medicare. Republicans opposed Medicare (and Medicaid) in the 1960s when it began and are doing their best to defund Medicaid now and Medicare is in their sights. So welcome to my side, Mr. Republican. You're enjoying the fruits of my bleeding heart and that of those who came before me. How sad that you would deny that same security to your own children and grandchildren.

People who deride me for being liberal say that word like it's some kind of curse. It isn't. If I must be labeled, it's a label I embrace.

Jesus was a liberal, and that should say something about how one should act. Don't believe me? Of course you don't. But here you go:

·       In  Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus proclaims that how you treat the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and other "least of these," is how you treat Jesus himself.  And if you fail to help the "least of these," Jesus promises, he will send you to Hell.

 ·       The Old Testament is permeated with an overwhelming concern for the poor and for economic justice.

 ·       In the Old Testament Jubilee Year, slaves were released and land was returned to its original owners. That's called redistribution of wealth.

·       And last but not least, there are the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:25: It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

None of that says throw grandma under the bus and give taxpayer money to the rich guys who own Halliburton while we build nuclear weapons so we can blow up the world.

I favor that part of the U.S. Constitution that says "promote the general welfare." I take that to mean we as a society have been instructed to make sure that everyone has clean water, the roads don't have potholes, people who are sick receive the care they need, and that folks who find themselves in trouble have a safety net underneath them so they don't end up living in the streets. We're a wealthy and rich nation and there is absolutely no reason for the abject poverty that I have seen in my lifetime.

Promoting the general welfare doesn't ignore the other parts of the Preamble - establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense. But it is the part that I think is currently being ignored and the part certain people do not recognize or want to recognize. Justice is first, defense is last; domestic tranquility and general welfare are in the middle. But defense -  the one listed last and therefore perhaps the least important to the framers of this revered document  -  is the one that seems to be uppermost in the minds of the current Republican administration.

Most of us want the same things in life, I think. Freedom to move about, live where we want, work at the job we like. We want prosperity, however one defines that. For a select few, apparently, it is vast amounts of money; for others, like me, that means the ability to go the art museum and learn something. It's rather like success - you can define it a million ways and none of them are wrong. You may think I am not successful but I would tell you that as far as I am concerned, you are wrong. And you may think you are successful, and I might disagree. What does it matter if we both are happy?

I would hope that most of us would prefer that our fellow human beings do not suffer; that we want them and their children (as well as our own, of course), to be healthy; we want to live without fear of crime and other boogie men.

The argument is how to achieve these goals. We did the no-regulations-and-work-people-until-they-drop thing already, 100 years ago. We did that back during the beginnings of the Industrial Age and into the early 1900s, before the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York took the lives of 146 garment workers and showed us the error of allowing industry to go unchecked by regulations and government oversight.

Must we watch hundreds of people die again before we wake up and realize that industries do not police themselves? That churches cannot, or will not, serve and help all who are poor and needy? That $7 an hour doesn't feed, house and clothe a single individual, much less a family? 

It looks like it. I feel like we're moving backwards in time, heading into an era of the plague.

I hope the people of this land find their heart again, or there will be nothing here left to save.

Turning 97

Today my paternal grandmother turns 97 years old. She lives in California and I have not seen her since about 1987.

This is the last photo I have of her. She was 93 then.



My father a few months ago showed me photos of her now. She is gaunt and skeletal and I mentally cringed at the pictures. Her mind has left her, though she still eats, apparently, and the nursing home staff helps her get up and move about a bit. I am unsure if she can walk as she broke a hip several years ago; we thought for sure then that she would not live but she is certainly a fighter.

My grandmother, born in 1920, is 44 years older than I am. She was  21 (I think) when she had my father - the third of her four children. She and my father are the only ones left in his immediate family.

She was born the year women received the right to vote, so she has always been able to cast a ballot. I know she voted in the 2008 election - against Barrack Obama - but I don't know if she voted beyond that. I was surprised at her vote and comments about it because my grandfather was a staunch union man and quite liberal and I had thought she was, too. But you never know, I guess.

Grandma saw things happen that probably seemed like science fiction in her youth. Television, men in space, satellites, cellphones - the things we take for granted now (and many of which have become commonplace even in my half-century of life). Yet her love was reading, not TV or things like that. She enjoyed books and read hundreds of them every year for the longest time. I remember calling her before she couldn't hear me anymore and she'd almost always say, "Oh, I'm just reading a book," when I'd ask her what she was doing.

She was born in West Virginia. I suspect she had a hard life as a young woman, though I know little about it. She moved to this area with my grandfather after World War II. She and my grandfather, along with his two older sons and their daughter, moved to California in 1963, not long after I was born.

I knew her as a voice on the phone, someone who sent gifts at Christmas, and the woman my father called "Ma." I remember a visit with her when I was 7 or 8, another at 12 when we drove to California for a visit, and another when I was 17, when they drove across the country to stay with us for a few weeks. I saw my grandparents once more after I married. That was the extent of my contact with my grandmother, aside from phone conversations. I tried to call her frequently as I aged but our conversations were stilted and short. We did not know one another well enough to be friends. I have regrets about that, but there is nothing I can do about it now.

So happy birthday, Grandma. I know you have no idea it is your birthday, but today is your special day.

Sunday Stealing: TV Show Questions

From Sunday Stealing

The TV Show Questions

I don't watch a lot of current TV, so many of my answers will be, um, historical.

1. Name a TV show series in which you have seen every episode at least twice: Xena: Warrior Princess

2. Name a show you can't miss: Games of Thrones

3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to watch a show: I am not familiar with the young actors today. I will have to go old school and say Lindsay Wagner, Kate Jackson, or Sarah Michelle Gellar.

4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to watch a show: Again, old school - Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood.

5. Name a show you can, and do, quote from: Xena: Warrior Princess (not that anyone gets the references anymore, but that's ok.)

6. Name a show you like that no one else enjoys: Star Trek: Voyager seems to fit that bill. Most Trekkies dismissed it but I liked it. Babylon 5 might also work for this answer.

7. Name a TV show which you've been known to sing the theme song: Gilligan's Island

8. Name a show you would recommend everyone to watch: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Because, you know, science.

9. Name a TV series you own: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium, but has surprised you with his/her acting chops in television: I have no idea.

11. What is your favorite episode of your favorite series? "The Greater Good" (Season 1, ep. 21), in Xena: Warrior Princess. Xena is shot with a poisoned arrow and her pal Gabrielle pretends to be her. Xena encourages her friend to defend the village because society is more than just one person and greater than a single individual.

12. Name a show you keep meaning to watch, but you just haven't gotten around to yet: Grimm.

13. Ever quit watching a show because it was so bad? Yes.

14. Name a show that's made you cry multiple times: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

15. What do you eat when you watch TV? Generally nothing; I usually watch TV after 7 p.m. and I refuse to eat after 6:30 p.m. I drink water, though.

16. How often do you watch TV? Not as often as a lot of people. I watch Jeopardy! and very often nothing else, except maybe the local news.

17. What's the last TV show you watched? Bill Maher on HBO.

18. What's your favorite/preferred genre of TV? Fantasy.

19. What was the first TV show you were obsessed with? Charlie's Angels, way back in the day.

20. What TV show do you wish you never watched? Survivor

21. What's the weirdest show you enjoyed? I can't think of anything.

22. What TV show scared you the most? Dark Shadows, when I was young.

23. What is the funniest TV show you have ever watched? Carol Burnett

Saturday 9: Alone Again, Naturally

Saturday 9: Alone Again, Naturally (1971)

Not familiar with this week's song? Hear it here.

1. Friday was St. Patrick's Day, March 17th! Did you celebrate with green beer or a green milkshake?

A. No.

2. Did you remember to wear green?

A. I remembered but didn't worry about it. I never left the house.

3.  What color do you look best in?

A. Blue. It makes my hazel eyes look blue.

4. This week's featured artist, Gilbert O'Sullivan, was born in Waterford, Ireland. Waterford is famous for Waterford Crystal. Do you have glassware that you save for special occasions?

A. I seldom have special occasions, but I do have china that belonged to my husband's aunt that I never use. If it was dishwasher safe I might use it for day-to-day: you shouldn't wait 'cause you never know, but it is not dishwasher safe, and I hate to wash dishes.

5. This week's featured song includes the line, "To think that only yesterday I was cheerful, bright and gay." How were you feeling yesterday?

A. Lonely. Alone again, naturally.

6. It begins with reference to a wedding that didn't quite come off because the bride left the groom at the altar. When were you most recently at church? Was it for a holiday service, a regularly scheduled service, a special event (a wedding or baptism)?

A. I went to my father's baptism about a month ago.

7. In 1971, when this song was popular, Malibu Barbie was a big seller for Mattel. This doll had a perpetual tan. For a human to achieve this, a tanning bed or self tanner is usually required. Have you used either method to give yourself a tan?

A. I once tried a tanning bed for less than a 1 minute; I couldn't stand the closed-in feeling and removed myself from that thing as fast as I could. That was about 30 years ago when they looked like spaceship tubes. (I don't know what they look like now.) I have never used a self-tanner.

8. In March, 1971, James Taylor appeared on the cover of TIME magazine. What's your favorite James Taylor song?

A. Fire and Rain.

9. Random Question: What word or phrase do you hear yourself saying too often?

A. "I'm sorry." I apologize for everything. The sunshine, the rain, the mountains, the flatlands, the government, the state of people everywhere, standing up, sitting down, clearing my throat, sneezing, and breathing, ad nauseam. I've been trying to break myself of this in 2017; it was my only "resolution" - to stop apologizing when it wasn't/isn't my fault.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.

Thursday Thirteen

Last Friday I went to hear a famous guitar player. He was telling jokes, and I immediately thought, "There's my Thursday 13 topic!"

So here are 13 jokes for musicians.

1. Q: How do you get a guitar player to play softer?
   A: Give him a sheet of music.

2. Q: What does a guitarist say when he gets to his gig?
   A: Would you like fries with that?

3. Q: What is the difference between a guitarist and a Savings Bond?
   A: Eventually a Savings Bond will mature and earn money!

4. Q: What is the difference between a guitar and a tuna fish?
   A: You can tune a guitar but you can't tuna fish.

5. Q: What do you get when you drop a piano down a mine shaft?
   A: A flat minor.

6. Q: What do you get if you run over an army officer with a steam roller?
   A: A flat major.

7. A note left for a pianist from his wife: Gone Chopin, (have Liszt), Bach in a Minuet.

8. Q: What is the difference between a banjo and an anchor?
   A: You tie a rope to an anchor before you throw it overboard.

9. Q: Why do so many fishermen own banjos?
   A: They make great anchors!

10. Q: What is the difference between a banjo and a South American Macaw?
     A: One is loud, obnoxious and noisy; the other is a bird.

11. Q: What do you say to the banjo player in the three piece suit?
     A: Will the defendant please rise.

12. Q. What's the difference between a bagpipe and an onion?
     A. No one cries when you chop up an bagpipe.

13. Q. What's the difference between a bagpipe and a trampoline?
     A. You take off your shoes when you jump on a trampoline.
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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 491st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

A Little Winter Weather

Yesterday we had a bit of ice/snow/sleet mix, which covered the ground and left ice on the trees. The winds picked up yesterday afternoon and sang to me all night long, sounding a bit like a mountain lion with its tail caught in a trap as the gusts rounded the corners of the house.

This morning when I rose around 7:30 a.m. it was 12 degrees outside with a wind chill of about -5 or thereabouts, depending on how one measures such things.

Coming after a February that was delightfully too warm, this has been an adjustment. I hope the fruit trees/grape vines and other food sources survive.

I shot these photos early yesterday morning with that little Nikon Coolpix 3200S, which I paid $60 for during a Black Friday deal a few years ago. It has been the best $60 I think I ever spent. To be such a throw-away camera I have taken some very decent photos with it.

Snow/ice/sleet on the ground.

A little ice on the trees.



Will the blooms on my forsythia return, I wonder?

Tommy Emannuel at The Harvester

Friday night my husband and I went to see Tommy Emmanuel perform at The Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount. He is a guitar player.

The Harvester

The Harvester Performed Center is about an hour and 15 minute drive for us if the traffic is light. This was the first time we had been to a show there. The Harvester seats 460 people - Tommy Emmanuel had a sold-out show. Some performances offer "gold seats," which basically means you get to sit anywhere you want in the first 10 rows. We had those and it was worth the extra money.

The chairs are very comfortable; however, the sides are not slanted toward the stage and the best seats therefore are in the middle of the venue. There are only a few poles to block views and the aisles were comfortably wide.

You can buy beer and wine inside ("adult beverages"), along with bottled water and a few things to eat. There was some kind of food truck parked outside for the early arrivals.

Parking, however, is not readily available and I saw no handicapped parking spots whatsoever. We found something close because we arrived at 6:20 and the doors opened at 7:00 p.m.; even then, there was already a line at the door. Most of the parking is on-street or perhaps a bank parking lot; there is a note on the venue's website that notes a few places will have your car towed if you park there.

The sound was great; the acoustics were good even though we were sitting to one side of the stage.

The Harvester stage prior to the show.

Tommy Emmanuel

I have been watching youtube videos of this guy for a while now. He is a fingerstyle guitarist who bills himself as a one-man band. He beats on his guitar for the drums, place the base notes on the upper two strings with his thumb, and managed to do the rhythm and melody lines all at the same time.

I have never seen anyone play guitar like he does. Here is a video of his version of Classical Gas, which seems to be his signature song. The crowd broke into applause and cheers as soon as he started it.




Emmanuel has been a soloist for a long time, but in the 1970s and 80s, he was a "sessions" guitarist (played on records of multiple bands/singers) and he toured at one time with Tina Turner.

Because I am still on the media/release lists, I had earlier received a press release request from Mr. Emmanuel's publicist. She sent me these stats:

•         He is arguably the greatest living acoustic guitarist. Known for his unique fingerstyle playing, he frequently threads three different parts simultaneously into his material, operating as a one-man band who handles the  melody, the supporting chords and the bass all at once.

•         Has been nominated for two GRAMMY Awards, and two ARIA Awards from the Australian Recording Industry Association

•         One of only 5 guitarists in the world who was named a Certified Guitar Player by guitar legend Chet Atkins

•         Has averaged over 300 shows per year all over the world, including sold out shows in North America, Australia, Europe, South America, and Asia, including recent tours in Russia and China 

•         Voted “Favorite Acoustic Guitarist” in both Guitar Player Magazine and Acoustic Guitar Magazine reader polls

•         YouTube channel has over 31,000,000 views and 192,000+ subscribers      

We were not supposed to take photos but I had my Nikon Coolpix 3200S with me. (I have never been very good at following the rules, I'm afraid.) I hid the lighting from the back viewer on the camera with a piece of paper so I am lucky I managed to get any pictures at all, since I was basically guessing at the shot since I couldn't see what I was aiming at, but I did take a few that turned out OK.

Getting ready to head into Classical Gas (I think).

Doing a little singing. He also told jokes.

The only quibble I had with the show was near the end, when he took out a drum brush and was showing how he used the microphone and guitar as percussion instruments. During this time, the lighting switched off and on to each beat, and I knew as soon as he began to speed up that this was not something I could watch. Lighting like that sets off migraines (and epileptic seizures in some people) so I shut my eyes and eventually had to take off my glasses and cover them completely with my hands because I could still see the lights going off and on through my closed eyelids. It is frustrating to run into things like this because people either are not aware of sensitivities like that or don't care. I was glad I realized what was happening before I ended up with a major headache.

He played for about two hours, doing a wide range of songs, including the first time I'd ever heard The Entertainer by Scott Joplin played on guitar instead of piano. Many of the tunes were his own arrangements.


Joe Robinson

Joe Robinson is a young man that Tommy Emmanuel is mentoring. He opened the show. 

Here's a video of him playing and singing:



He was an excellent guitar player, too, though I had a hard time understanding the words to his songs. I don't know if that was because of where I was sitting or because I have slow southern ears.

He liked to do tricks, like play two guitars at a time:

Joe Robinson playing acoustic and electric guitars
simultaneously.
 

He could lose the hat, I think.

All in all, an enjoyable evening. Will I ever play like that? I doubt it. I'm 53 years old and have let too much time slip through my fingers, literally. But maybe I can get a little better . . . if I practice.