The 3 Teenors

3 young men, ages 14 and 15, tear it up on “O Solo Mio” on an Italian Idol-type program. Can you even sing like that without hurting yourself before your third decade? However, they’re miked, so not having to get the sound out the old-fashioned way over the studio orchestra (who aren’t that well rehearsed, frankly). One of them may technically be a baritone, all of them may be destined for either the opera, or some kind of romantic pop-idol musical limbo now inhabited by Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli.

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A tip of the flamboyantly feathered cap to: Move Over Susan Boyle (& Josh Groban, too)

St Nick’s on the Move

Flickr

Wow! They broke ground at church while I was on vacation for the
addition!

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr
Title: St Nick’s on the Move
By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 7 Jun ’09, 10.31am CDT PST

UPDATE: And it’s about frickin’ time. This morning was my first day back after vacation – we returned late last Sunday. I knew that ground had been broken but wasn’t prepared to see the big mound of dirt, two earth moving machines, and the Honey Bucket tactfully screened by the sign provided by the Diocese of Chicago. Ahem, I see there’s a rather “The Episcopal Church in Northern Illinois” tag added, too. Good for them. My only regret thus far: the big pine tree that was to the right of the entry is gone. What a shame.

The service today was a typical summer one: the 9am “traditional liturgy” holdouts (Yay! that’s me and most of the choir) and the 11am “contemporary liturgy” people (everybody else that never had music in school… ) combine in the summer for a 10am service, which means one whole extra hour at home before choir practice. Also in summer: no Wednesday choir practice.

Of note today: one of our associated priests was presiding and giving the sermon, because there was a couple of people in attendance as a search committee from a parish in another state. I hope and pray that if it’s a good fit, they call her. She wasn’t feeling well and our main priest tends to throw things in at the last second to confuse people out of enthusiasm, but she coped all right. I did like her sermon, and I hope her interview with them after church went well. Fr. Steve had decided to throw a parish barbecue at VERY little notice (it wasn’t even in the email that went out on Wednesday or Thursday) and he called for volunteers to start the coals in the grills (they cooked under the overhang in front, and all the smoke came rolling inside at the end of the service). Oh, dear. But it seemed like it was all pulling together at the last second, just like usual. I think in the end our supernumerary priest and her search committee cancelled their lunch reservation and just threw in with the parish barbecue. When I left, they were all smiling at all the hubbub and activity, so I hope that it all helped with forming a favorable impression.

It was good to see my church frenz again and I maked the musics la la la. Actually, we all had to laugh at some of the plans for the summer; apparently several Sundays, we will be singing show tunes instead of hymns. Well, we heard the first few choices and thought “Okay, that could work, and people really relate to stuff like that…” but then we got to the “Sound of Music” selections for one particular Sunday, and all was hilarity. Sure, you could imagine “The Hills are Alive” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” and the nuns’ “Alleluia,” but the kicker was that the suggested number for the recessional was… waaaait for it! “So Long, Farewell.”

All pretense of musicality, oppenness to new ideas, and pro-am churchy decorum dissolved. We all broke into bits of the chorus – different bits, in different keys – and then the men hit on the same verse and did the hand motions and the “Adieu, adieu, to yieu und yieu und yieuOOOH!” and we fell about laughing. Choir dominatrix Mary lost it big time when I asked if we couldn’t convince the Liturgy Committee to let us do “The Lonely Goatherd,” since… “we could do a puppet show from behind the piano!!!” And frankly, we really could do a puppet show the way Mary’s arranged the instruments. She could even play the melody with one hand, since they’re giving her plenty to do anyway finding arrangements. Oy.

There were more suggestions for other Sundays – a lot more of highly improper songs and improvised pastiches – and aside from how funny it was, it’s a serious matter to convince somebody whose enthusiasms have run away with them that it really wouldn’t be appropriate at the Gospel reading for the choir to break into “So You’re Jesus Christ, The Great Jesus Christ?”

Some of the other suggestions are intriguing and we don’t want to completely balk at the idea; there would be something from “Big River” that would be pretty nice, but there are problems with pulling off “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ The Boat” or any other songs from “Guys ‘n Dolls” in a liturgically appropriate way. For one thing, where would we get all the gamblers, streetwalkers, and mobsters to pretend to be a revivalist congregation? See? Problems.

All this happens this month and next month, so there will probably be more later after the dust settles, both from the construction site and from the impending discussion betwixt Mistress Mary and the committee member. She’s gonna be rockin’ their boat for sure.

Herd O’ Flipflops

Flickr

Their grandad wrangled the flipflops while their owners played in the
shade, waiting to enter the hula show venue.

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr
Title: Herd O’ Flipflops
By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 24 May ’09, 4.40pm CDT PST

UPDATE: We were in line for a hula showcase (being fans of Hawaiian music and culture) and I noticed the guy behind us instructing a bunch of pre-teen girls to stay in sight, and he’d watch their shoes so they could run on the grass lawn in front of Bagley Wright Theatre. This meant that he had to kick a flap of flip-flops along (I just made that collective noun up) as the line began to move. The little girls chased each other around in the sun, running in circles burning off an excess of energy that I envied. Eventually, the middle-aged granddad called them over to retrieve their footgear and they trooped in to watch the show.

I have a fondness for shots of flip-flops, because they’re often encountered on the beach in Hawaii, or left on front porches or doorsteps. The curved shape of well-worn “slippahs” is like a ghostly imprint of their owners, who might have just stepped out of them to wade in the surf, or jump in the pool.

Gradec Croatian Tamburitza Orchestra

Flickr

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr
Title: Gradec Croatian Tamburitza Orchestra
By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 24 May ’09, 3.14pm CDT PST

UPDATE: We were waiting for the next act, after a long day wandering around mostly in the corner of the Seattle Center site near the Northwest Court Stage. This room seemed to have become the default “indoor folk venue where we stick acts that don’t have enough draw for a big outdoor stage” place. In years past, there was a coffeehouse vibe and this kind of act was in the Alki Room, a multi-level place with good sight lines, room for a few chairs, and the ability to set up a small food/beverage/snack counter. Alas, not this year, as they had moved all the artist music CD sales into Alki. So we were somewhat crowded and there weren’t enough chairs. These guys were interesting, but not what I had hoped for, and we were waiting for the next act anyway.

Electric Mbira

Flickr 

UPDATE: 

And then I saw these guys – two conga players, a maracas player, and two guys playing ELECTRIC mbiras (they were wearing battery powered amps. An empty sound gourd can just be seen in front, decorated with cowrie shells, being used as a tip bowl. The musicians were wearing animal skins and singing – I’m not sure the crowd realized how radical their electrified sound was compared to the trad sound of the other group that was in the Alki courtyard performing area behind me.

 

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr
Title: Electric Mbira
By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 23 May ’09, 2.07pm CDT PST

 

Mbira

Flickr 

 UPDATE: I own a kalimba, a small African musical instrument played on metal keys braced on a soundboard or soundbox. These musicians are playing mbira, larger versions of the same instrument that are attached to calabash gourd sounding bowls. This makes it difficult to see how the artists’ thumbs play the repetitive patterns and melodies. I took more pictures with the big camera trying to lock in an image of how the woman on the right was playing, but the singer’s butt kept getting in the way. These folks were very good, very traditional.

Ginny
I can has iPhone?

Via: Flickr
Title: Mbira
By: GinnyRED57
Originally uploaded: 23 May ’09, 1.47pm CDT PST

 

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | A session with Seeger

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | A session with Seeger

Dropping yet more sugar into his cafe mocha, Pete Seeger laments the withering of his singing voice: “At my age the banjo-playing is shot too”.

In fact musician Seeger often seems 20 years younger than he is – although these days what excites him is less his music and more the well-being of the US environment.

But this weekend he will quit the Hudson Valley for his native Manhattan and a big concert to celebrate his 90th birthday.

On the bill are Bruce Springsteen, Baez and more than 30 other names.

Affection for Pete was not always so widespread.

In the 1950s he was blacklisted for his former membership of the Communist Party, and his performing career seemed all but over.

Typically, he refused to go away. In 1955 he declined to co-operate with the Un-American Activities Committee which was investigating radical activities of public figures.

Vincent Dowd presents Archive on 4: Pete Seeger at 90 on Saturday 2 May at 2000 BST on Radio Four (the programme will be repeated at 1500 on Monday 4 May).

I heard an interview with Seeger on the Beeb this morning (my local public radio station WBEZ has it on between 7am and 8am Sunday mornings) and wanted to find some links for my friend Father Paul, who is a major Seeger fan.

The BBC Radio 4 show is available to listen online for 6 days or so:

Pete Seeger at 90 (requires Real Player)

Vincent Dowd celebrates the life and work of American folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, as he turns 90. Drawing on BBC archives and new interviews, Vincent explores Seeger’s continuing efforts to improve the world through the power of song.

He hears Seeger’s views on a range of issues and his hopes for the future under the leadership of Barack Obama, at whose inauguration he performed.

Featuring some of the musicians who have interpreted Seeger’s songs, including Marlene Dietrich, Joan Baez and Bruce Springsteen, and an unplugged version of This Land is Your Land by Seeger himself.

Thank God It’s Saturday

I’m not sure how much I should say, or how much I can safely say, about yesterday. So I’ll ease into it by catching up on the entire week.

Last week this time, I was dropping David off at O’Hare, because he was getting ready to go to a technical conference, at which he was making a couple of presentations. He’d worked hard on his slides, and I’d helped him edit them and streamline them generally. At last year’s conference, he was nervous about being up for an award, and he called me in a panic demanding to know if I’d packed his dress pants, which devolved into a conversation we like to call “WHERE ARE MY PANTS???!!1!?”

He found the pants, he wore the suit, he was photographed wearing pants, all was well. So this year, he knew he’d be nervous before his first presentation, so we rehearsed his lines a little when he called after he arrived.

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So the first part of the week went along pretty smoothly – I watched the Chuck finale and got all Twittery about it and looked at a lot of “Save CHUCK”-themed websites, and then I ordered an official Jeffster T-shirt, apparently. As in, I didn’t know for sure if the NBC.com website had actually registered the sale, because it froze up, but I received an email shipping notice. I watched a lot of clips online, I went to Hulu and watched an episode I’d missed, I was pretty much “all Chuck, all the time” on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. There are a lot of people putting together clever campaigns to get the word out, and there have been some fun (even awesome) fan videos. Here’s a really good one from the www.nbcsavechuck.com website:

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I really hope it gets renewed – there’s some hope that it might, but do we really need yet another copdrama??

Here’s a better quality video that shows series star Zachary Levi making sandwiches at a Birmingham UK Subway shop, after leading the hungry nerd-horde over from an SF convention. Yes, he washed up and donned the funky plastic-bag gloves. You can see he’s actually working his ass off trying not to slow down the production line, while cracking jokes and keeping the mood going. Fun guy.

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So that got me to Wednesday, which was choir practice. We had a new person with us, and now we have 2 Cindys. We pulled out some music we played around with last year that never got used for a service, a very “la-la-la-la” arrangement of “How Can I Keep From Singing” that consists of very minimalist, monotone runs that shift around the same few notes, in harmony, at a very fast pace. It was maddening trying to learn it last year, and gratifying to pick it up and not have completely lost the memory of it. When done right, it sounds like closely tuned windchimes, especially at the end.

Thursday, I had a fun day at work, very productive. And also, I got poked on Facebook by an old friend, who had realized that we both knew each other slightly on Second Life. And in fact, we’ve attended at least a few of the same events as part of the General‘s Cafe Wellstone/Donkey Club group. I mean, this is someone who came to my wedding in Boulder, who I’ve known as long as I’ve known David, and who I used to hang out with in the ancient-of-days AOL chat rooms. So of course Thursday night we got together online to tour each other’s “homes” (mine’s a rented room, hers is an entire, frickin’ beautiful sim). As she noted, it’s a small virtual world.

baconflu

I’ll pass on commentary for the week’s news – there was so much going on that I pretty much covered piecemeal via Twitter already. I’ve been following the baconflu story, of course. As it develops, it seems odd that so many people died in Mexico from what seems to be a fairly mild late-season flu, but it may be that the authorities were over-reporting pneumonia cases. Which begs the question, why were the people in that area so vulnerable to respiratory disease?

So that brings us to yesterday, Friday. David was scheduled to return that afternoon, and the original plan was to try to get out early so I could pick him up. For a while there, I thought I was going to get out REAL early, as in, permanently.

About an hour after log-in time, the team leaders started sitting down in the midst of the teams to pass along most unpleasant news: there was to be a “force reduction” that day, and the way it was going to work was they would go to each person, take them to a conference room, and advise them what was happening.

!!!

So all day, everyone was watching everyone else, between calls. Of course, the call volume was massive, because many companies were curtailing travel due to the baconflu, and there were a lot of changes and cancellations. Every time a team leader left his or her desk, all eyes would watch to see if they went to tap someone on the shoulder. It was nerve-wracking in the extreme, as it wasn’t seniority-based. You weren’t necessarily “safe” if you were on any kind of counseling for phone stats or attendance or customer service issues. Now and then, someone would be walked back to the conference room, but I never actually witnessed anyone getting tapped, only the aftermath when people came out to say good-bye to friends.

Every now and then, our team leader would walk into the row to talk to people about stuff totally unrelated to the reduction. At one point, she came to my desk to drop off an amended call-stat form and about gave me a heart attack. “I’m not touching you! Not touching! Don’t worry!” There was a lot of nervous laughter.

In the end, my TL only had to give bad news to one person on the other half of my team, as our half is staffed at a level our client sets. We’d already had a kind of reduction earlier by not replacing a member who transferred to another team. But several people I know were tapped, and came over to say good-bye.

In one case, I was not all that shocked or surprised, although I did feel sad for a former teammate who was always cheerful and kind-hearted, if not all that detail-oriented. I was shocked that someone I didn’t know as well as I should was let go, who had almost 2 decades of service with the company. I mean, that second one really made my mouth dry up, because I realized that nobody was really all that “safe.” I started going over stuff, like a tardy that I got marked up on recently, and a debit memo I’d picked up on an exchange, and a rash of accuracy errors (really minor ones, that I’d reduced significantly). I was also worried that I’d been racking up too much overtime, owing to being a “closer,” and wondered if they’d wait until the end of the shift only to be handed “the packet.”

Everyone was feeling the stress – some of my current teammates mentioned repeatedly that they couldn’t focus on what they were doing, and had repeatedly made the same entries and re-checked the same things multiple times. My stomach hurt (muscle tension) all day, and still hurts a little today.

Finally, the phone lines became so busy that we could forget to worry – we were much too busy to stop and be told we didn’t have a job anymore. At some point, the tension lightened and a rumor went around that the last person in the reduction had been informed, and the nightmare was over for the rest of us (although in this economy, it was just beginning for “the reduced”).

At the end of the day, there were a series of conferences with our local VP for a wrap-up, so that people could ask questions, get answers that were a little more definitive than the rumors that had been sweeping through the cube-rows, and decompress a little. The sense of survivor’s guilt/relief was palpable; everyone laughed a little too loudly or smiled a little too brightly at the friendly small-talk made by our exec and another company person who was there for the day’s unhappy event. When I logged off for the day, I’d taken 25 calls… another teammate took 27… and an agent who used to be my TL on a previous team took a whopping 58 calls. She must have caught all the short, quick, “I have to cancel my trip” calls that we got, as a lot of meetings next week had been pushed back. I got stuck with a fair number of fix-it calls, changes, and unprofiled people making arrangements for training or interviews. All of which take more time on the phone, because they’re not cut-and-dried reservations along the lines of “I need to go from [city] to [city] on [date] at [time] via [airline], with specific car and hotel, then return on [date] at [time].”

I had several hairy things to change on Southwest, for example, that took half an hour start to finish because of the peculiarities of their interface with our reservation system. As in, a phone call is required, and it’s necessary to sit through their jokey and annoying “in-call hold entertainment.” It was a ten-minute hold: I wasn’t ready to dig my eyeballs out with a spork by the end, but I was eyeing the available cutlery. Once that was done, I had a number of “smooth” calls, with no “I’m a VIP stuck at the airline counter, what the hell are you going to do about it right now?” calls.

David had let me know he’d grabbed a cab with our favorite guy and would await me at home. It was such a relief to have him back, after all the baconflu crap earlier in the week and after Friday’s horror show.

After catching up with each other, we went out for sushi (yay! sushi!) and had a quiet evening “in” after that – I was online, celebrating May Day with great tunes, and David was discussing the conference and his presentations with his listie contacts.

Although today was gorgeous, we had to drop David’s car off for scheduled maintainance, so after lunch and book-buying we’re hanging out, just being “at home.” About when I might like to take a refreshing nap, it’ll be time to go back and ferry David to his car, and get groceries. At least I got all the crap and garbage and junk cleaned out of my own car – I even vacuumed it! And part of the garage! Woo-hoo! Saturday chores are neato!

I just thank God it’s Saturday, because it’s not Friday anymore.