Musician Malcolm Kogut has been tickling the ivories since he was 14 and won the NPM DMMD Musician of the Year award in 99. He has CDs along with many published books. Malcolm played in the pit for many Broadway touring shows. When away from the keyboard, he loves exploring the nooks, crannies and arresting beauty of the Adirondack Mountains, battling gravity on the ski slopes and roller coasters.
I have absolutely no problem falling asleep. When I go to bed, I
am usually out within a minute. I then sleep solidly through the night
but I usually find myself waking up around 5:30 regardless of how much
sleep I have had or yet still need. As if by an alarm clock, I'm
awake. In the summer when morning breaks around five, I usually wake up
with the sun. Getting only about six hours of sleep each night is not
really an issue for me because I have the luxury of being able to take a
nap in the afternoon, which may be another problem.
Someone
suggested to me to try taking melatonin supplements for increased sleep
so I went to my local Kmart and purchased a generic brand (I won't name
it so I don't to endorse any particular brand (but I gave it away by
saying I got it at Kmart)) and started taking them. Upon the initial
observation, the supplements didn't seem to do anything for my sleep
pattern but, since I wear a Garmin Vivofit wrist band which also
monitors any movement while I sleep, by looking at my sleep reports I
noticed a difference in my patterns.
I have uploaded six graphs
of my Vivofit sleep patterns. The first three are pre-melatonin and
the second three are from nights where I took melatonin.
In
figure A, you can see I went to bed at 11:00 and per my usual routine, I
watched TMZ from 11:00 to 11:30. At around 11:30 when I turned the TV
off, you can see I was out. A little before 5:00 you can see I woke up
and tossed around a bit and finally got up around 5:45.
In figure
B, I was in bed watching TV and watched some of the 11:30 news before
falling asleep a little before midnight. I woke up around 5:00 a.m.
with significant movement. I usually turn on the TV in the morning and
watch the news in bed for about half an hour before getting up.
In
figure C, I watched TV at 11:00 and at 11:30, turned the TV off and
promptly fell asleep. I had an unusual morning and slept to a little
before 6:00.
Here is where I experimented with taking a single
dose of Melatonin before bed. In figure D, you can see at 11:30 I fell
immediately asleep but notice the periods where the flat lines are.
Those are times where I was completely motionless.
On the second night, In figure E, there are periods of motionlessness and also notice that I slept a bit past 6:00.
Likewise
in figure F, the slightly longer sleep period and significantly longer
periods of restfulness. That 12:30 spike is where I got up to take
care of some business because I took water with the supplement. I won't
do that again. Notice that I slept right up to 6:00.
In the
final analysis, I can't say that by taking melatonin supplements I have
noticed anything different about my sleep habits or how I feel but, my
Garmin Vivofit has been able to discern pattern deviations which can't
be ignored.
I will continue to take the melatonin supplements
until they run out and will closely monitor my Vivofit graphs for a few
weeks thereafter to see if anything changes.
If anyone has been
having sleep issues, maybe melatonin will prove useful for you. If
you'll excuse me, the sun is shining and I am going to go take a nap in
all its gloriousness.
These are ads from the July 30, 1944 AMERICAN WEEKLY Magazine. Before I placed the issue up on Ebay, I photographed a few ads from this edition. My favorite is Crisco where they say "9 out of 10 doctors say 'It's Digestible.'"
Before I placed the issue up on Ebay, I scanned a few pictures and stories from the edition. Of the pictures, here are the captions:
"Her Road Of Shame," It's settling up time these days in liberated French towns. Here is a woman accused of Nazi sympathies. Armed French civilians march her past a W.S. tank on road to Pre en Pail, where she will be shorn of her hair, feminine penalty for consorting with the enemy.
Victory 'V' Salutes by French civilians welcome Yank tanks, passing through a liberated town in Southern France on their way toward Toulon. Note flags.
The Moment of Explosion is caught in this photo at five-alarm fire in Philadelphia. Magnesium tank of the Quaker City Iron Works is lowing up with a burst of brilliance showering sparks for blocks around.
'Oh, say, can you see . . . " American troops who crashed into St. Malo after a concentrated assault, proudly unfurl the Stars and Stripes atop the town's citadel, Nazis' "Mad Colonel" had delayed his men's surrender.
Free French Partisans, among the first to tie up with American troops appear to have no language difficulties with their liberators in a town in southern France. The Partisans are bristling with knives and guns.
Americans think that terrorism
started in this country on September 11th, it didn't. It has existed
for certain classes and groups of people since we first came to this
hemisphere.
The first act of terrorism began with Christopher
Columbus who sought to find a faster route from Spain to China. Instead
he landed on the shore of Hispaniola. Today we call that island the
Dominican Republic and Haiti. Do they still teach in school that he
landed on Plymouth Rock? Your tax dollars at work.
The
indigenous people of Hispaniola were the Arawaks whom Columbus and his
men raped, murdered and took as slaves. In his ship's log he thanked
and praised God for the gift of human chattel. He filled his ship's
hulls with several hundred Arawak men and took them back to Spain as
slaves. Most did not survive. Who knew you had to feed them? He then
lied to the Queen, telling her that there was so much gold there (there
was none) that he needed dozens more ships.
When he returned,
the Arawaks poisoned their children and committed mass suicide so as not
to be raped, murdered and taken as slaves by Columbus and his Christian
men. Hundreds of thousands of native Arawaks died at the hands of
Christopher. Happy Columbus Day.
When more Europeans began to
colonize the entire east coast of the country, they encountered other
Native American Nations such as the Iroquois, Mohawk, Algonquin, Seneca
and many more. After the white man launched political campaigns to take
Native American land, displace the natives and murder them (because
they fought back), we pushed westward because it was our God ordained
destiny. Today, the remnants of those aborigine nations live on
reservations and we're trying to take those lands, too. We are starting
by creating insidious laws which they must abide by.
When the
Puritans came to North America to escape religious persecution, what did
they do? They persecuted other people because of their religion. They
also created witch hunts. These were successful campaigns because the
general population was told that witches abducted, raped, murdered and
ate small children. This was the same tactic Adolph Hitler used to turn
his followers against the Jews. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, "The state
must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people.
As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the
children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of
liberty and almost any deprivation." Most of our fairy tales and
nursery rhymes were created around the myth of children being abducted
such as Little Red Riding-hood, Hansel and Gretel, the Pied Piper, Snow
White, etcetera.
Then there was the enslavement of the Africans.
After their emancipation, Lincoln's second phase was to repatriate all
the blacks back to Africa or to off shore islands. He first needed to
set them free because he couldn't repatriate them if they were
property. He freed them but before he could sign the repatriation act
to remove the newly freed from the country, he was assasinated and the
African-Americans stayed. African-Americans should celebrate Lincoln
not because he set them free, but that he was assasinated before he
could eradicate them. If outright hate and prejudice wasn't bad enough,
our entertainment, music and movie industry further perpetuated
stereotypes and inequality.
After prohibition failed, many poor
people turned to marijuana since they couldn't afford the illegal
hooch. Marijuana was found to be an excellent source of pain relief and
even a cure for alcoholism. Harry Anslinger made it his mission to
eradicate marijuana by spreading lies about its efficacy. Although the
lies were disproved by the La Guardia Report, Anslinger used racism to
convince society that marijuana was the devil's drug. He said that when
white girls smoke muggles, it results in them seeking sexual relations
with black men and the result would be pregnancy and syphilis.
Marijuana causes sane people to go mad and commit murder. All the lies
must be true because Anslinger had the financial support of
pharmaceutical companies, the lumber and paper industry, the tobacco
industry, the brewery's and the Hearst empire which published Anslingers
tales of rabid, foaming at the mouth hysteria in all their papers.
Despite
none of the lies about this miracle herb being true, the fear and
confusion about it continues to exist today. Many prescription drugs
come with horrible side effects including difficulty breathing, heart
problems, lung problems, liver problems, blood disorders, thoughts of
suicide and even death. Many prescription drugs are also addictive and
it is easy to overdose on them. In case you overdose on Tylenol, Advil,
Sudafed, Motrin, Codein or Aspirin, contact Poison Control
immediately. In case you overdose on marijuana, contact Domino's
Pizza. Unlike alcoholics, I've never seen a person who was high on
marijuana beat his wife and children. The only benefit from the
marijuana scare Anslinger created is that it filled our jails and
prisons which also employ hundreds of thousands of people in every
state.
The hatred for homosexuality fueled by religion has been
devastating to our country. Homosexuality and masturbation were
considered sinful because those acts did not produce offspring at a time
when the Christian population needed to outnumber the Muslim population
(Crusades). Also, people died in their forties so it was imperative
that we marry off our 13 year old children as soon as they hit puberty
so they could pump out as many children as possible. Population is no
longer an issue so these "sins" are no longer threats to society, but we
forgot why we made them sins. We are still in conflict today with
the Muslim religion though. Thanks Pope Urban II and the Holy Roman
Catholic Church. You made genocide holy and gave us wars to last for
centuries.
I used to volunteer answering both a suicide hotline
and the 211 line. Far too many gay teenagers would call the suicide
hotline not because of their sexuality but because of society's response
to them. I mean, even God hates them. Now when our new Pope tried to
get the message out that even homosexuals are welcome in the church,
the Synod said no, they are not welcome. How ironic, the Catholic
church is a magnet to gay artists, musicians, sculptors, writers and
clergy. I guess the Vatican should purge its churches and museums of
the works of Da Vinci and Michelangelo because they were gay.
While
answering the 211 line, I would get calls from women and kids who were
being physically abused, homeless people without a place to go, hungry
families without enough food, people without insurance and who couldn't
afford medical care, people with insurance but were now addicted to
prescription drugs and they often feel that suicide is their only
escape.
I then went on to volunteer at a homeless shelter where I
discovered that many of the men there have arrest records. The reason
they can't get jobs is that little box ubiquitous to all applications.
Once they check yes on that box, HR disqualifies them as a candidate.
Now, that is illegal in this country and if you were to ask an HR person
if they acted out of prejudice they would say - prove it. Many will
go so far as to drag an undesirable candidate through the process just
to give the outward appearance that they don't discriminate.
Ultimately, that applicant won't be qualified or may fail the
Meyers-Briggs test or some such excuse.
Now, I love the church
but, before you go to church on Sunday, consider the words of St.
Vincent de Paul. He wrote: "If a needy person requires medicine or
other help during your prayer time, do whatever has to be done with
peace of mind. Offer that deed to God as your prayer. Do not become
upset or feel guilty because you use your prayer time to serve the poor.
God is not neglected if you leave him for real service. You should
prefer the service of the poor to making your prayer. For, it is not
enough to love God, if, your neighbor does not also love God."
Fold
your hands in a praying position. These are the hands you use to touch
the ones you love, hold the things you treasure, perform the constant
countless motions of your living. For now, these hands do nothing, they
are not useful held this way, kept by each other from all movement of
living and serving. Pressed to each other, there is no space for holding
anything or anyone. For the moment these hands are empty and still.
Jon Stewart once said, "Prayer is the least thing you can do for someone
while still getting to grandstand like you are actually doing
something."
So, vote this November. Not to vote is to vote.
Then call the politicians and tell them why you did or did not vote for
them. GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND DO IT. Then get out into your community
and help people. After you do that, go to church and pray over it. If
your social convictions don't align with your church institution's
teachings or acts of terrorism, find another church and let them know
why you are leaving. Not to act is to act. Keep in mind, no agnostic
ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an
unbeliever. Has your church? Government? Have they made amends?
It's all over the news today; The Vatican recently released a draft of
their new document, RELATIO POST DISCEPTATIONEM and it has stirred up
quite a firestorm among those on the conservative side of the church
and, I think it is rather amusing.
One paragraph within the
document states that homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer to
the Christian community. Are we capable of welcoming these people,
guaranteeing to them a fraternal space in our communities? Often they
wish to encounter a church that offers them a welcoming home. Are our
communities capable of providing that, accepting and valuing their
sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine on the family
and matrimony?
What is amusing about the backlash against that
statement is that homosexuals have been at the forefront of the church
since its beginning. Many of our great artists, painters, composers,
musicians, architects, sculptors, writers and clergy were - and even
today - are gay. Start by taking a look at Leonardo da Vinci and his
legacy to the Roman Catholic Church. The church has had no problem
accepting and embracing the work of gay people for centuries, including
today's current crop of gay liturgical participants, as long as they
deny their identity and don't come out.
There is a national
music group of over 10,000 members whose past president is gay, everyone
knew, nobody cared. However, when he married his lover of over thirty
years, her was terminated from his position.
The church teaches
that everyone deserves respect, dignity and love and that is not
inherent upon anything. Not on their occupation, race, sexuality,
economic situation, looks, education or past. Everyone is a child of
God and made in God's image. Every sinner has a future and every saint
has a past. However, the church still has a difficult time being
forgiving and accepting while protesting too much.
The church is
quick to state that homosexuality is not a sin, homosexual acts are,
and I'd like to point out that heterosexuality is not a sin, although
heterosexual acts outside a marriage are. Most heterosexual people have
committed the same sin as homosexuals. While both acts may be wrong in
the eyes of the church institution, we should always love and respect
the person and treat the person with dignity. Gay or straight. Sinner
or saint.
What is surprising is that most churches have no
problem with the homosexuals within their worshiping community and are
already welcoming to them. The people simply don't care or are
accepting. Among the silent majority, they are more surprised by the
hateful vocal minority than the fact that homosexuals have been the
driving force behind the church for centuries.
This document is
calling the church to be more dynamic, merciful and welcoming but, the
church already is and has been for the past two thousand years. The
haters are constantly telling God's people what is wrong instead of
affirming everything genuine, beautiful and good in God's human project.
Clergy, organists, choir directors, choirs, soloists,
liturgists, painters, sculptors, architects, composers, theologians,
writers, poets and the people in the pews; gay people are already out
there where the church is a magnet for those who wish to express their
faith through their art, skill and passion. For the haters who wish to
eradicate the homosexual from the church, they would deny the church the
source of its most richest heritage and treasure. The church, its
music, its art, its architecture, its teachings and the beautiful
tapestry it is today is because of the many people in the past who self
identified publicly or privately as homosexual.
The church
needs to remember why it hates homosexuality. Fear, rabid foaming at
the mouth and hysteria about homosexuality started in the days when
people died at the old age of thirty or forty. In order to build the
population for protection, to ensure a work force to feed and shelter
its population, and to promote the lineage, girls got married at the age
of 13 or so. Men who engaged in masturbation (the sin of Onan) or
homosexual tendencies did not produce offspring so the church declared
that those activities which spilled the seed was a sin. I beleive that
the Church Of Latter Day Saints promote families of at least seven
children to this day for the same reason - to build a population. And
of course, this was also the foundation for the practice of bigamy.
More wives meant more children and a larger denomination.
When
there was a war between Christians and Muslims (the Crusades - which we
still feel the aftershocks today), in order to beat the Muslims,
Christians needed to outnumber them so the more Christians there were,
the bigger army they could build. More Christians meant bigger armies,
bigger churches, more workers and the need for larger territories which
meant that in order to seize more territory - war. Over the centuries
we forgot why we hated the idea of not producing children and out of
ignorance, the hatred for homosexuality still exists today.
Looking
back, we can see how arrogant, wrong and misguided our hate used to be
for groups such as blacks, women, Asians, Irish, Jews and for many
Christians, the gays. While looking back, one has to wonder what was
wrong with us. I suspect in a hundred years or so, people will look
back on this issue and wonder the same. The Roman Catholic church
should pay heed lest people look back and wonder, "Catholicism, what was
wrong with us?"
I know a lot of people who don't go to church.
Not because they don't beleive in God, but because they don't beleive in
the church. Many of those same people won't shop at Walmart because of
its human rights violations. Those same people won't go to church
because of its human rights violations. You have to wonder which is the
more enlightened sect.
“I have observed that the world has
suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It
is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace
decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or
tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever." - Daniel J. Boorstin .
A clergy person once told me (actually several have) that they never
plan their homilies around the Lectionary prescribed Psalm. One even
stated to me that the Psalms were irrelevant. The Psalms were the songs
of David, Jesus prayed the psalms, they are the prayerbook of the bible
and can be a great source of inspiration, healing, care and calm. They
also help us to understand our biblical roots, history, culture, poetry,
stories, prayers, concerns and ultimately, ourselves. The psalms offer
opportunities for adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and
supplication. They cover a wide range of human desire and emotion while
they are also a treasure of philosophy, spirituality and life lessons.
For
anyone who doesn't know how to pray, can't find the time to pray,
meditate or contemplate, the Psalms are a great tool for you. You don't
have to study the whole Psalm but only use a portion of it. For
example, take a single line which you can use as a mantra and repeat to
yourself several times during the day. Pick one, any one. Here are a
few examples how you can pray with the psalms.
Let's say you
are 18 years old and are leaving home to go off to college. This is the
first time you are going to be on your own or away from home and you
are nervous about this new adventure. You can turn to Psalm 27, for
instance, and repeat the phrase; "The Lord is my Light and my salvation,
of whom shall I be afraid."
Maybe you have to go to the hospital
for a test or a procedure in the morning. When you wake up, you can
repeat this line from Psalm 63; "As morning breaks, I look to You, I
look to You Lord to be my strength this day."
What if you are a
walker and are enjoying a long stroll on a beach, you might repeat a
phrase from Psalm 69, "Let the heavens and the earth praise God's name,
the sea and all it's living creatures."
For the person who is
struggling with addiction, guilt, hate, anger or wants to change
something in their life, maybe repeating Psalm 51 can help them get
through their challenge, "Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a
right spirit within me."
I know of a congregation who lost their
church building to a fire and a Psalm which offered some of them great
comfort in the rebuilding process was Psalm 42: "Why should I mourn and
toil within when it is mine to hope in God."
If a friend is
struggling with a difficult decision, you can quote them a line from
Psalm 34, "Call upon the Lord, you'll want for nothing if you ask."
Try it. Physicist Erwin Schroedinger
once said "When you change the way you look at things, the things you
look at change." You don't need any special books or instructions to do
it. Just open to the book of Psalms and start reading until you find a
sentence which resonates with you. Write it down on a piece of paper
or text it to yourself and refer to it several times during the day. I
guarantee after a few weeks of doing this, one of these mantras or
incantations will come back to you in a time when you need it and it
will be good.
When I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God. -Psalm 73.
I am not a fan of "warm ups." Any athlete or pianist will tell you
that isolating a single part of the body to "warm it up" is not
effective. The whole body must be warmed. A pianist who plays in a
warm room will play much better than one who attempts to "warm up" his
hands by blowing on them in a cold room or playing an hour of scales.
Warming up is a whole body experience.
Vocal exercises are
excellent tools if used for educational or instructional purposes but
"warming up" comes from a different place. A choir director who runs
meaningless scales is just wasting everyone's time, especially if there
is no educational purpose behind them.
Warming up the voice and
the vocal apparatus is much the same as warming up the whole body but
with a few additional parameters. First, many choir rehearsals are held
in the evening and the singers have already been walking, talking,
breathing, eating and drinking during day. Most likely, their voice is
ready to sing. However, there are usually a few components missing.
Imagine
that a child is about to run out into the street and a car is racing
toward him. In an effort to save his life you would yell "STOP!" or
"NOOOO!" or "Billy!" Did you need to warm up to do that? The force,
confidence and conviction for that vocalization came from your brain
because you knew little Billy was about to get smooshed. It also came
from your heart (the emotional one) because you knew little Billy was
about to get smooshed. Your diaphragm naturally rose to the occasion
and your soft palate also raised in sympathetic response to the brain
and heart in order to convey the message as fully, open and forcibly as
possible.
What if your dog were to pee on your new $1,000
carpet? If you are an owner who believes in negative reinforcement, you
might yell "NO!" or "BAD DOG." Did you need to warm up first? No,
because it came from your brain that the dog was about to soil your new
carpet, it came from your angry heart because your dog was about to soil
your new carpet and as a result, your diaphragm and soft palate
unequivocally made your angry intention known to your pooch.
A
friend has a new born baby and it is sleeping in her arms. With your
best stage whisper you comment on how it is the most beautiful baby
you've every seen and you ask to hold him. You can whisper loudly
because your brain knows the baby is sleeping and your heart doesn't
want to wake him so your diaphragm and soft palate do what it takes to
convey your message with delicacy in hushed, dulcet tones.
You go
to a birthday party and everyone sings "Happy Birthday." The whole
gathering of well wishers erupt into a rousing and full throated
rendition - including two or three part harmony. Did anyone need to
warm up first? No, because the brain and heart automatically engaged
the diaphragm and soft palate with earthy bon ami.
Whether you
cough intentionally to get someone's attention, sigh on "arrrgh," in
frustration, groan at a bad joke, say "awww" at a cute kitten, jump out
at someone and yell "BOO," "Ho-ho-ho" like Santa, or bark like a dog;
your diaphragm and soft palate will naturally and fully engaged without
warm up because the vocalization comes first from the brain and
emotional heart.
All these body parts and mechanisms are already
in place and will work on command if we beleive what we are doing,
singing or saying. The first job of any choir director is not to engage
the choir in meaningless warmups but to give our text meaning and
purpose which should be the primary task of any director.
I'm
not saying that our church choirs don't beleive but, if they need to
warm up, something else is missing. Why can't we automatically sing
songs of adoration to God the way we would vocalize the first time we
see a loved one who we haven't seen in ten years as they get off an
airplane? Why can't we sing in contrition they way we would if we broke
our mother's prized antique vase and bellowed "I'm am SO sorry. I WILL
replace it." Why can't we sing songs of thanksgiving to God the way we
would profusely thank someone who just returned our lost wallet with
all the attendant money intact? Why can't we sing songs of
supplication to God they way someone would beg for a significant other
not to leave them? If the answer is that we need to warm up first,
something else is missing.
Why do so many choir directors have
to trick their choirs into engaging their soft palates and diaphragms
through the use of warm ups? The answers can be many and varied. Maybe
we don't beleive in God. Maybe we don't know how to beleive in God.
Maybe we are afraid to express our belief in public. Maybe we don't
have the conviction to beleive in God. Maybe we have directors who
don't beleive in God. Maybe we have directors who beleive in music.
Maybe we have directors who are only regurgitating what they've been
taught. Maybe we have directors who just haven't figured it out yet.
Maybe we have directors more concerned with the notes rather than the
words. Maybe we don't know or believe that our music has purpose,
meaning and power. Comprehension does not imply belief and without
belief we can't fully activate our bodies.
The solution then,
isn't to do warm ups. It is to network our emotions with our bodies and
that takes effort not related to music but - is wholly related to
music. At a job interview once, a member of the search committee, who
made sure I knew she was a Juilliard graduate and a
soloist in the church, asked me if I did warmups and I spouted to her
an abbreviated version of this blog and then I told her that I do lead
sung prayer before every rehearsal and she asked, "What does any of this
have to do with directing a choir?" My reply was more advanced than a
mere Juilliard grad could understand; I'm not a choir director. I am a
pastoral musician who trains the choir to be music ministers and, that
music should not be their ministry but a vehicle to ministry. Directing
a choir has a great deal to do with reversing foreground and
background.
First and foremost though is to support what the text
and music itself is saying, not to necessarily inflict our own views
and emotions on it. The last thing we need to do is sing and play as if
our feelings were being injected into the music. That happens a lot in
church choirs.
Ultimately, the universe has given us everything
we need to vocally do what we need to do. The only thing that stands
in our way is ourselves. I know many music directors will disagree with
me and that is okay. Just remember that no agnostic ever burned anyone
at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever. If you
disagree that fervently, chalk it up to differences of opinion.
If
you'll excuse me, I need to go warm up gravity because I am going
jogging and I want to make sure every time I take a step, my foot will
return to the ground.
This autumnal grand-daddy of all hikes led us to the serene and beckoning summits of Macomb, South Dix, East Dix, back to South Dix, then to Hough and Pough, over the Beckhorn, to Dix, back to the Beckhorn, then straight down the SW ridge of Dix and Beckhorn. We camped at Slide Brook then ascended via the land slide of Macomb Mountain with its beautiful view of Elk Lake. Each mountain has its own beckoning gleam of silver track slides. Bear Grylls would be proud.
I recently went camping up in the Adirondacks and encountered two friendly women with more tatoos than Justin Bieber. They were going to attempt almost the same hike I had done a few days earlier and were of very muscular estate. Here are some of the pics.
Autumn Gold
Jim at the Beckhorn
East Dix from Hough
Elk Lake From the Macomb Slide
Gothics from East Dix
Heart Lake
Our Lean-to
Macomb Slide
Macomb Slide
Me and Jim on an Eratic
Me shirtless taking a sponge bath in Slide Brook
To watch the video of my hike, check out this link:
Should
anyone be in the Albany, NY area this Sunday, I am playing an
irreverent cantata called "Buxtehude's Daughter." Here is a sample of
our first rehearsal:
http://youtu.be/rGlUKxUhPIM
Byron
Nilsson and Amy Prothro bring their cabaret show, “Song to Amuse,” to
the very brink of the classical-music world with a special concert at 2
PM Sunday, October 5, at the First Unitarian Universalist Society, 405
Washington Ave, Albany.
They’re
performing an irreverent cantata Byron wrote (with music by Tom Savoy)
titled “Buxtehude’s Daughter,” that gives a fanciful and funny version
of what might have taken place when the young J.S. Bach traveled to
Lübeck to interview for an organist’s job, succeeding the great Dietrich
Buxtehude. The kicker: he would have had to marry Buxtehude’s daughter
to get the gig, and she didn’t appeal to him. Not a word of the piece is
true. It’s doubtful the daughter sang a blues number. The spirit of it
turned out to be more P.D.Q. Bach than J.S.
This
will be performed in collaboration with members of the Musicians of
Ma’alwyck, giving the cantata far more legitimacy than it deserves, but
Byron and Amy also will sing some of their favorite cabaret-show
selections, including songs by Bernstein, Sondheim, Gershwin, Flanders
& Swann, and even Roger Miller, all with Malcolm Kogut at the piano
And
there will be a post-performance champagne dessert buffet to help erase
the memory of what you’ll have just endured. It’s an afternoon not to
be missed and a great way to support Musicians of Ma'alwyck. Tickets are
$35 per person and available at 518/377-3623 or
www.musiciansofmaalwyck.org (under Songs to Amuse).
