Photohunters: Music and Song

 MUSIC

 SONG

I can't believe that Gattina's photohunt word is music and Sandy's is song this week. It's amazing if they didn't plan it that way. First I'm including a recent shot because I love the music made by waves crashing on the beach as well as the songs birds sing.

 

I decided to include a little video I put together in 2007 with me singing a song and playing music with friends. It's a recording I made in 1998 but the slide show includes photographs from 1985 when my daughter was a baby through 2007 when I turned 50. Except for the musician ones with me which I explain in the visuals, the people are my daughter and I at various ages while she grew up. I was much younger when I wrote and performed music. I haven't even picked up a guitar or sang a song in years. I posted this when I turned 50 in 2007. It was a quick and dirty job in terms of the slide show.

 

 Click here for Gattina's music photohunt and/or click here for Sandy's song photohunt.

Photohunters: Birds with a musical bonus

Last week I got confused and did a bird post and then realized, after posting, that the theme was music. I hurriedly added a photo of my guitars for the music theme, but kept the birds up because I have so many bird photographs.

I decided that this week I would only use birds shots that I took this week and would add some music at the end. If I hadn't been in a hurry to add music last week I would have used some recent shots from a folk museum.

The first shot of the male cardinal in my pecan tree seems to me like an example of how well coordinated the feathers are to the leaves. The second shot of the female cardinal bathing was harder to get because the males hog the bird baths. I have many more shots of the males bathing than the females.

The robin above was singing to me which was how I spotted it. The little sparrow below blends so well in with the leaves and deck that they are easy to miss.

The birds often swarm to the wires and I have managed to get a lot of shots lately when I'm at stop lights of this phenomenon.

Now for the musical bonus. The Amy Aldrich Rockerfeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, VA has an exhibit called Cross Rhythyms: Folk Musical Instruments.

Unless the drawer is removed from the chest of drawers above it looks like a normal drawer. However, it has a built in piano. Because the piano is hiddlen unless the drawer is removed one guess is that the family's religion may have prohibited music so the piano was hidden. No one knows for sure if that was the case but it seems like a reasonable guess.

I enjoyed the exhibit with various instruments. The banjo below caught my eye.

I also like the mixed display below although I don't remember any information about the instruments.

For other participants, please visit the home of Photohunters where entries are posted starting on Saturday.

Photohunters: Birds oops I mean music

Well I jumped the gun. Next week is birds and this week is music. Thanks to Elaine for also being an early bird (I mean up to sing music), I found out my mistake. Since I have so many bird shots I've taken, I'll keep this post and add music at the top and show different birds next week. Below are my guitars.

I love birds and I love to photograph birds so this week's theme is hard for me (actually next week's theme). I have thousands of shots of birds. I thought I'd start with the tufted titmouse from late winter of 2009 which I photographed in my trees.
The bird shots can be clicked for enlargements. The one of the titmouse in the snow laden limbs below is hard to see without enlarging.
The next two shots are of the carolina chickadees in my garden, again in the winter of 2009.

I guess the one below is late winter/early spring although I'm never sure when one season ends and the next begins.

The male cardinal below cracked me up last spring because he's my state's (NC) bird and he was eating my state's flower (dogwood).

I can almost hear the brown thrasher below screaming because they have such an easily identifiable sound. That shot was early spring 2009.
I don't know what the mass of birds in the tree below are. The are fairly small and were up so high I wasn't sure which birds they were.
The mockingbird below is another type of bird which is abundant in my garden and which I enjoy.
I thought I should include a shot of birds flying around since that's what I envy the most in birds (their ability to fly).
I guess I'll end with robin redbreast although I've barely scratched the surface of the birds which make their home with me in my garden.
For more participants, please visit the home of the hunt where entries are posted beginning Saturday morning.

Dona Nobis Pacem - Blog Blast for Peace 2009

Dona Nobis Pacem! I was at a loss this year about what I wanted to do with my peace globe to personalize it and what I wanted to write about for Mimi's 2009 Blog Blast for Peace. Then it struck me that this would be a good time to highlight a foundation which brings me hope. There is so much to be depressed and discouraged about that sometimes I need to remind myself of the ways people around the world do connect for peaceful purposes. One such organization is Playing for Change - Peace through Music. From their site - "Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world."I first found out about them from a wonderful video Stand By Me with musicians filmed singing and playing the song in different parts of the world. Since I've posted that video before and have seen it on other sites, I was going to embed a couple of other videos, although you can find them all at the playing for change site.

Unfortunately blogger isn't letting me embed the videos but I hope you will go to the links if you have time. They are both fairly short. First you can see a video about the music school the foundation built in South Africa for children. Next is a performance of Don't Worry Playing for Change . Also if you haven't seen the Stand by Me video before I strongly recommend it.

If anyone wonders about the photographs I scattered through this post, I had thought I'd be able to embed videos which would be my visuals. When that didn't work I just inserted some of my fairly recent photos. The one with mileage markers was taken at a park in Durham, NC, U.S. and it struck me how there were markers for places around the world.

Please visit Mimi Writes the home of Blog Blast for Peace on November 5. Dona nobis pacem.

Mean Mad Mama - the song

If anyone is here for my weekend snapshot, that post is below this one or click here.
While I'm still 49 (yes I am being silly about the age thing), I thought that I'd post one more song video. The song in the windows movie at the end of this post is the first song I ever wrote, but the lyrics changed depending on what was on my mind. Before I move on to my mean mad mama song, I have a photograph of my guitar strings. The photo hunt prompt for Saturday, November 10, is flexible. I won't be around for photohunters this weekend, as I'll be in Manhattan turning 50. Actually, I'll turn 50 on Sunday, November the 11th, but I won't be here for the hunt on the 10th. I liked the flexible prompt so I'm slipping it into this post. The guitar strings are so flexible that I squeezed 6 stings together to the point that it almost looks like 4 or 5. In the second photograph I didn't squeeze quite as hard so you can see all the strings clearly. Although physically I'm not very flexible at this point in my life, I am mentally far more flexible than I was when I was younger. Sometimes it works the opposite way. I have come to accept that everyone has a story and that story affects how we act and react in a personal and political sense. I find myself becoming more flexible when confronted with an opposing viewpoint to mine, the older I get. I'm fairly inflexible when it comes to the need to provide a sustainable environment for the future and to provide a safe environment (emotionally and physically) for children to grow and learn. I think universal health care is important. However, I have come to understand that how we achieve the desired ends is a subject of debate and I'm flexible enough to accept that no two people see it exactly the same way. I also accept that people I like and love can be good people and not see anything even close to how I see it. I explain some parts of the song and photographs within the windows movie. I thought I'd mention that the picture of my daughter on the swing as a child was taken on the trip when I wrote the original version of mean mad mama (1990). The photographs of people, except the group one with me and the other performers, are of me and my daughter through the years. The group photograph was taken in the mid 1990s when I was part of a project called Social Graces. All of the performers on my mean mad mama recording were part of Social Graces but the fellow to my right in the group photo wasn't part of my mean mad mama CD, which I recorded in 1998. The first photograph of me and my daughter was taken some time after 1985 which is when she was born. The last one of me and my daughter was taken February, 2007 when she was home in between finishing her undergraduate degree and leaving for law school .

Halloween, Embarrassment song, and garden update

Happy Halloween tomorrow. I hope all will be safe and get treats without tricks. I already posted my pumpkins for weekend snapshot and I decided not to carve. The photograph above is one I took in color of a blue sky with wild looking clouds but I decided I liked the half tone version, particularly for the time when the witches ride. Halloween also seems like a good time to post a windows movie I made with one of my original songs. The song title is Embarrassment and I recorded this in 1998. Since Halloween is the night of the bizarre, I give you my bizarre, and yes embarrassing song about embarrassment. But first an embarrassing picture of me taken sometime around 2002. Even I'm not quite loose enough to find embarrassing pictures of myself to accompany the music, except for the one above. I can't use embarrassing pictures of family and friends as I know some of them follow my blog. Besides, I'm not that mean. So the song is sung and written by me and the photographs are from Funpics. There are reasons I think the photos I picked go along with the song but it may not always be obvious why I thought that. So without further ado, Embarrassment song made into a windows movie below:



Update on my autumn garden, photo below of my babies all tucked in for the first night of freeze warnings which was last night:

Don't they look snug as a bug in a rug. I bet there are a few bugs joining the plants for a warm cozy bed.

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween Wednesday!

I sing - My first attempt at a windows movie

A while back I posted a short clip from I Sing, a song that I wrote sometime in the mid 1990s and recorded in 1998 on my Mean Mad Mama, Layers, CD. I decided to try my hand at posting the full length song with photographs from my life thus far, 1957-2007. Animoto , the service I used for the prior clip, requires a ton of photos to mix them up for an auto produced video for a full length song. I didn't want to try and come up with enough photographs it would require for that. Therefore, I have made my first windows song video which is easy and doesn't require as many photographs. This is just straight one photo per frame without any cool effects. It's rough and rugged and thrown together, but so am I. At least it gives me a way to post a full length song. I'm singing and playing guitar. Violin is by Hollis B. and bass by Thomas W.

Photo walk various places and one of my songs

I am enjoying Animoto. This is an online program where you upload your photographs and music (or use online ones that don't have copyright issues), and a video is mixed. If you don't like the first mix, you get to mix it again. I found out about this on Fleur de lisa's site and this is my second one in 24 hours, woah baby, get some "real" work done. In point of fact this is easy as pie to do and fast. I thought it might be fun for this one to use a recording of one of my original songs sung by me in 1998 combined with some of my 2006 and 2007 photographs. Click inside video to start and to stop.

My flower garden video

I am trying out a video program click on video to play and click on video to stop. If you want to try out this nifty program which mixes your photographs into a video, you can go to Animoto.