Sunday Concert – or All About Lyrics and Music

This morning I squeezed in a little time with a couple fountain pens. One, the Pineider Avatar TTT needed cleaning so I could move it from blue to red ink (Diamine Poppy Red) and the other, my Sailor Pro Gear – Stellar Black Hole needed a refill. All successful and writing well and minimal mess!

Then I put on “real” clothes after some reinforcing coffee and breakfast and picked up Mom for an afternoon concert at Troy Music Hall.

The program was “Music for Peace in a Time of War” with two pieces. The first was Franz Joseph Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli, which was written in 1796 in the period of war in Europe following the French revolution. I found it interesting to have parts of a mass in waltz time but it did make for very lyrical parts. After intermission the baritone soloist Philip Lima read a poem by Charles Anthony Silvestri, Peace is Fire! Then “Dona Nobis Pacem” by Ralph Vaughn Williams began.

Afterwards I looked up what had been mentioned, that Williams had served in World War One (in his 40’s!) and then was very affected when the signs of a second world war were apparent. This was written and first performed in 1936. It is written around three Walt Whitman poems, a mass, the bible and a political speech.

Both pieces were well received by the audience who gave a standing ovation at the end.

Afterwards Mom and I took ourselves to Dinosaur BBQ for a delicious dinner. Brought her home, came home myself to the delightful music of Paul Simon:

Peace like a river ran through the city
Long past the midnight curfew
We sat starry-eyed
Oh, we were satisfied

And I remember
Misinformation followed us like a plague
Nobody knew from time to time
If the plans were changed
Oh, if the plans were changed

You can beat us with wires
You can beat us with chains
You can run out your rules
But you know you can’t outrun the history train
I‘ve seen a glorious day

Four in the morning
I woke up from out of my dreams
Nowhere to go but back to sleep
But I’m reconciled
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
Oh, oh, oh, I’m gonna be up for a while
— Paul Simon

still a little damp and unflat, but it will get there:

But seriously folks – Paul Simon…

…One and one-half wandering JewsReturned to their natural coasts
To resume old acquaintances
And step out occasionally
And speculate who had been damaged the most
Easy time will determine if these consolations
Will be their reward
The arc of a love affair

Waiting to be restored
You take two bodies and you twirl them into one
Their hearts and their bones
And they won’t come undone
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones
Hearts and bones

Sunday Concert – or All About Lyrics and Music

Field trip

This morning there was blue sky and sunshine after weeks of grey and clouds so today was the day to bring my sewing machine in for some look-see. After millions of miles of sewing/quilting, a long period of no-use, and then some quite successful clothes sewing this past fall, I went in one day to do a quick repair and it said – NO. It pretended like maybe it would consent to sew and then no.

So after a few possible trips that were put aside for iffy weather, Mom and I set off to Gloversville Sewing Center so my trusty machine could get looked at. I am hopeful that it will be a belt or something easily fixed but I’ve had this machine since January 1994 and rode it hard. I did dutifully clean and oil it during all those years but I get it being tired and cranky now. Will wait and see what the report is.

I am not morally opposed to getting a new sewing machine but I didn’t really want the couple dozen embroidery stitches on this machine, so I don’t get the selling point of 150 embroidery stitches. I want straight stitching, basic zig-zag, maybe a couple edge-finishing options and droppable feet for easy free-handing. I don’t think that’s asking a lot. When I was doing a lot of machine quilting, I would sometimes put a strip of masking tape over the two adjustment knobs on the front, to prevent them getting bumped and getting me into zigzag mode accidentally. Now all the machines have large touch screens on the horizontal part, with lots of screens to go through to make your choices… (eyeball roll here)

And of course since we were there, we had to look at all the fabric. She found some fun stuff. I found a couple things which may get used for like a vest lining or something:

Field trip

Day 28 NaPoWriMo 2022

I went to see a talk that was supposed to happen in April 2020. Then it was rescheduled to September 2020 and then April 2021 and then… Well and here we all were at Proctors in Schenectady and out came Neil Gaiman and said – this feels so weird. Indeed when he asked how many had bought their tickets for April 2020, it seemed most of the audience put their hands up.

We were his first stop on a tour to make up all those postponed and rescheduled tour stops (except one at the NY Public Library). He read stories and poems and chatted and answered questions that had been submitted on white cards.

God speed you Neil Gaiman as you “ricochet across the country” many times. Thank you for making it to Schenectady and you’re welcome back any time.

The theater is loud
then a nervous surge passes
Waiting for speaker

Two men behind me
Pontificating on jazz
And dueling concerts

No speaker has appeared
The crowd buzz continuing
So glad to be out.

Afterwards two men
walking behind me dueling
over other talks.

PS someone somewhere in the audience tried to make some weird announcement about having created an algorithm to do something or other. At first I wondered if it was part of the performance – Neil hardly flinched. A couple people allowed loudly that we didn’t care. She started to repeat her message starting with her name and Neil said – look, I’ll be honest, if you do that, you’ll be torn limb from limb… No one laughed and silence resumed and Neil resumed as though nothing had happened.

Pretty amazing stuff right there.

PPS. I got my new fountain pen. It was indeed the one that had been sent to someone else by accident just as I’d gotten their pen by accident (just a mix up in outer sleeve on the packaging). However the other person, once having removed the pen from the plastic wrapper realized the problem and didn’t proceed. My apologies to you unknown zoom nib writer – I was too excited and didn’t know what “Z” stood for.

Day 28 NaPoWriMo 2022

Day 4 NaPoWriMo

A different kind of Monday – waited for a package – yeah! which came – yeah! and the new pen was beautiful – yeah! and the new ink was good – yeah! but the nib size was wrong and I didn’t realize it right was wrong – boo!

On the other hand, it was an interesting experience to try the BIGGEST nib this company makes when I was expecting an Extra Fine nib and the company I bought it from was fabulous when I chatted them up about it. So it’s on its way back and hopefully soon I’ll have the right size one.

Didn’t do much else today really except go to the post office to start the pen’s return trip. Why then am I so hungry and why did I think of this poem when I started to think about writing a day four poem? I don’t know but once I’d started down that road there was no turning back. (The NaPoWriMo prompt was “Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem . . . in the form of a poetry prompt.”

It’s not often I can dip my toe into a prompt so here it is:

this is just to say

your poetic prompt:
to explore a
rash of crimes
in your locality

and if any
should involve
a theft of fruits
left to chill

offer some
forgiveness
and empathy —
they were so sweet

Day 4 NaPoWriMo