When Did Snowflakes Fall So Sweet?

At last winter is melting away.

The piles of snow between our sidewalk and the street are getting smaller.

Tiny green fingers are pushing out of the earth…

And today the first crocus bloomed in our front yard!

I planted a bunch of bulbs in November, right before the ground began to freeze.

And it appears that the squirrels did not dig all of them up — because crocus leaves are popping up everywhere.

Hurrah!

Several years ago I wrote a very simple song about spring and colored blossoms falling down to the ground.

 

This was before I started playing the ukulele — so I just sang into my lap top computer using the wonderful Apple program GarageBand.

Then I fooled around with a lot of the sounds and loops that are included with Garageband.

And then I took my laptop to my friend Doug Hammer’s studio, where he added a few more layers of sound — including spring peepers! — and I recorded (I think) a few more vocal tracks.

After Doug mixed it, I spent time at the Apple store on Boylston Street in Boston, getting help in terrific “one to one” training sessions (which Apple used to offer) about how to make a video to accompany my song.

The final product is pasted above.

Here are more crocus photos to savor…

There is a yard at the top of a hill between Harvard Square and Central Square in Cambridge.

I go there every spring because their front yard is PACKED with crocus, snowdrops, and miniature iris.

It is very similar to this photo except much smaller in total square footage.

I wonder how many years of planting bulbs it takes to create a field like this!

I am waiting to see my first pollinator of the season.

It is amazing that bees can survive our New England winters — and then they appear as soon as the first blossoms open their petals to the sun.

There are so many important causes to which one can devote time and care and love and money these days.

I am a fan of environmental advocacy — because without functioning ecosystems, the human species will collapse.

Just like our populations of pollinators (bats, butterflies, bees, etc.) have been collapsing in recent years…

All sorts of factors may be causing this collapse — including our human use of pesticides and herbicides.

So I no longer use any products like RoundUp or wasp spray.

And I pay extra money to buy organic produce and meat — mostly because it is healthier for the people who plant the food, who cultivate the food, who harvest the food, who clean the food, who package the food, who ship the food, and who handle it in our stores.

I also support organic farming because the hedgerows and bacteria and trees and streams and animals who co-exist with — and in the case of pollinators are partially responsible for — our food crops are not being poisoned either!

May all beings bloom and grow and flourish in an ever-changing balance…

Thank you to Mother Nature for inspiration.

Thank you to Apple engineers for creating laptop computers and Garageband.

Thank you to the former “one to one” teaching team at the Apple store in Boston.

Thank you to Doug Hammer for his musical and engineering expertise.

Thank you to Pixabay for beautiful images of crocii.

And thank YOU for reading and watching and listening to another blog post.

I welcome your comments and/or feedback.

Walking In A Winter Wonderland

It’s the end of another year.

And the beginning of another winter.

Although the days are getting longer, many months of cold and icy weather lie ahead…

Today I am visiting my sisters and nephews in upstate NY, where a flow of air from the Arctic has lowered the temperature to the single digits.

At least once a day we bundle up and tromp with the dogs through fields and woods, observing nature in a somewhat frozen, dormant state.

Ponds are covered with ice and snow.

Creeks are mostly a cascade of ice, with an occasional hint of water still flowing underneath.

Crows fly overhead.

We see many animal tracks in the snow — rabbits and deer and something very large (a bear?) which is stepped on by one of the dogs before we can correctly identify it.

Woodpeckers and blue jays and cardinals and chickadees and sparrows and finches visit the bird feeder.

How any animal manages to stay alive during the long winter months amazes me.

The nights are SO COLD with a breeze to make it feel even colder.

I made this recording of “Winter Wonderland” with Doug Hammer at his studio in Lynn, MA, many summers ago.

It is another great winter holiday song written or co-written by a Jewish lyricist or composer.

In this case the composer, Felix Bernard, was Jewish.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1897, his father was a violinist from Germany while his mother was Russian. His family spoke Yiddish at home.

Felix worked as a pianist on the American vaudeville circuits, and also performed in Europe. Like many other composers (including Jerome Kern and George Gershwin) he worked at one point for a music publishing company, and eventually formed his own dance band.

According to historian Nate Bloom, he also “wrote special musical programs for leading singers of his day, including Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, and Nora Bayes (all of whom were Jewish).”

Unfortunately he died when he was only 47 years old.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Wikipedia tells us that Richard Smith — an Episcopalian — was inspired to write the lyrics for “Winter Wonderland” after seeing the Central Park in Honesdale, PA (his hometown) covered in snow.

He contracted tuberculosis in 1931 and died at Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC in 1935 — just a year after “Winter Wonderland” was published and recorded.

He was only 34 years old.

Another deep breath in.

And out.

I love the melody of “Winter Wonderland” and agree with the lyrics — winter IS a great time for hoping and dreaming about the future.

What will 2018 hold for the astounding and intricate web of life on our planet — of which we humans are only one thread?

Sometimes it seems like we human beings are an enormously successful invasive species — ignorant of our place in the web of life and daily ignoring the balances which must remain in effect between plants, animals, decomposers, microbes, etc. for all to flourish.

Why do we human beings devote hours and hours and hours of our lives to watching (or listening to) seemingly endless amounts of news, commentary and speculation — as well as entertainment in the form of sports contests, TV shows, movies, web-videos, etc?

Why do so many of us choose to live so many hours of our precious lives transfixed by an electricity-powered, screen-delivered deluge of images and words and ideas and stories and opinions and advertisements?

There are so many more important things we could be doing — or NOT doing — which would actually be helping re-balance some part of life on planet earth which is currently out of balance.

We could be sitting still and breathing.

We could be helping someone else learn a new language or a new skill.

We could be singing or dancing or maybe even making music with friends and family.

We could be walking outside in a winter wonderland, gazing at trees and sky and earth.

Perhaps in 2018 more of us can choose to put down our phones, ignore our Facebook feeds, turn off our devices, and simply be with ourselves — and with the natural world — on a regular basis.

As 2017 fades away…

Here’s to a sense of flow!

Here’s to singing!

Here’s to consuming fewer natural resources!

Here’s to health!

Here’s to friends!

Here’s to family — human, animal, plant, fungal, microbial!

Here’s to hope and faith and patience and perseverance!

Here’s to life!

Here’s to love!

And here’s to you for reading and listening to another blog post!

Thank you for your participation with my blog in 2017.

Thank you, too, to my sister Christianne for letting me use a few of her lovely photographs — taken during current and past winter walks.

A healthy, happy, well-balanced, low-impact, music-filled, surprisingly-satisfied New Year to you!

Who Could Ask For Anything More?

 

Today I sit on our back porch, savoring a gentle breeze and warm, spring-like weather.

Ahhh….

A careful reader might notice that I haven’t posted anything since December.

We had a long, snowy winter here in the Boston area — and at the end of February I managed to fracture the bottom surface of my left humerus (upper arm bone) by tripping over a very enthusiastic 18-month-old student who got behind me (without my realizing it) during one of my Music Together classes.

Six titanium screws later, my left elbow is mostly functional — and a few more months of painful therapy may, in frustratingly small increments, restore full functionality.

We shall see…

One of the blessings of my recent encounter with the world of Western medicine is that I found a great surgeon — the head of orthopedic medicine at Tufts Medical Center! — who was willing to screw the various chunks of my humerus back together again. He is also a terrific listener who makes unwavering eye contact during conversation.

And the anesthesiologists who took care of me during my surgery were also willing to listen to my request that they NOT intubate me. Instead they used an alternative device which didn’t poke through my larynx, bless them.

So I experienced no inadvertent bumps or scratches on my vocal cords while I was under anesthesia.

Now a very patient and sweet-tempered occupational therapist is helping me persist in my quest for a fully functional left elbow.

Through this entire process I have been blessed with music — healing tracks by Libana, Bobby McFerrin, Annie Bethancourt, and Bill Glassco (to name a few) — as well as a very soothing guided meditation by Peggy Huddleston to help prepare for and recover from surgery.

Although my left arm aches 24/7 — especially after I have done my stretching exercises — listening to music, practicing music, learning new songs, performing music, jotting down new musical ideas, and leading my Music Together classes all, thankfully, distract me from the sensations in my arm.

I have included a fun version of the Gershwin Brothers’ song “I Got Rhythm” (originally debuted by a very young Ethel Merman in her star-making performance as part of the Gershwin Brothers’ musical Girl Crazy) at the beginning of this blog post.

I recorded it with Doug Hammer on piano at his studio on the North Shore. You can hear him laughing at the end of the take because he didn’t know I was going to hold a particular note as long as I did in a spontaneous homage to Ms. Merman…

It sums up my outlook during this recovery period, and it certainly fits the mood of today, as birds swoop through our back yard and bees of all sizes diligently gather pollen from the flowers blooming around town.

Thank you, as always, for reading my blog entries!

Very gratefully yours,

will