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Posts Tagged ‘Arts’

Every season brings us proof of a higher power, a creator more talented than ourselves.  Some of us refer to this master artist as God, some as Mother Nature and others, well I can’t really speak for those who don’t acknowledge or appreciate the fact that the beauty around us was NOT put here by us.  I, for one, marvel at the beauty God has created BUT I’m quite happy to credit Mother Nature here in my blog for the endless seasons of exquisite art.  AND OF COURSE, I have to credit Murray Head for his unbelievable artistic eye and steady lens, for if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t get a glimpse of any of these wonders of the world.   I live 5 blocks from Central Park, but I can’t tell you the last time I was there.  So thank you Murray for bringing Mother Nature’s Art Show to us all.

lotus, pink water lilly, Central Park

Pink Perfection

water lilly, Central Park

Wonderful White Water Lilly

dragon flies, water lilly

Serene Summer Scene

Reflection

turtle, Central Park pond, mallard duck

Harmony

All photos courtesy of Murray Head

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But if you can’t find it or don’t want to hunt, just stick around for a few minutes because Murray discovered some great RED last weekend.  For the past couple of years, he has been photographing an annual event in New York City known as the Dragon Races.  Since this is a Chinese festival event, you can count on seeing red and I don’t mean the angry kind of red.  No, this is the good luck, good fortune red and fortunate we are to have these wonderful photos.  Thank you Murray for sharing!

Dragon race, dragon,

“Oh my what a big mouth you have”

captain, Dragon races

I Don’t Think His Team Won!

Dragon race, New York city

You GO girl!

Dragon races, captain

Do NOT Mess With This Guy

Good luck, dragon, dragon races

And the Dragon Wins!

All photos courtesy of Murray Head

 

 

 

 

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Only You (And You Alone)

Only You (And You Alone) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Heaven on Earth was just  one of the many songs sung by the Platters.  And yesterday the last living member of that fabulous singing group, Herb Reed, died. Herb founded the Platters in the 1950’s – he was 83 years old when he passed away.

I always liked the song Heaven on Earth, however, it didn’t have a prayer (pun intended) to it’s flip-side phenomenal hit, My Prayer.  For over a decade, the Platters produced 40 chart singles including 4 Number One hits.  Among their repertoire were:  The Great Pretender, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Only You (And You Alone), Twilight Time and (You’ve Got) The Magic Touch.

Headliners of Doo Wop era, their distinctive sound was a bridge between pre-rock Tin Pan Alley and the burgeoning new genre.  Only You released in 1955 was their first Top Ten Hit and topped the R&B chart for 7 weeks.

The history of the group is checkered at best.  Arrests and charges of drug and prostitution hurt their reputation even though no convictions ever took place.  And over the years, the group splintered and several members started groups of their own, each one claiming the name The Platters, which led to lawsuits and injunctions.  Finally in 2011, Herb Reed won the exclusive rights to the trademark name and the decision made Reed sole heir to the group’s tremendous legacy.

I’m at the tail end of the Baby Boomers who grew up on Rock & Roll, Doo Wop and the British Invasion.  By the time the music of the day turned to Hard Rock, Acid Rock, and Heavy Metal, I was no longer listening to those radio stations.  Doo Wop is probably my favorite genre and for me it encompasses Motown Sound, R & B, Bee Bop – just about all the music produced between 1950 and 1966. 

KEEP THE MUSIC ALIVE!

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I‘m so excited for my friend, Murray!  His photographs are featured in a forthcoming book for children ages 2yr-6yr and those of us young at heart! The book is available as a pre-order now from Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Frisky-Brisky-Hippity-Alexina-White/dp/0823424103/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1324253499&sr=1-1  or readily available at the end of February.

I am so fortunate to have him as a dear friend, family actually and that he graciously allows me to post his photos for my pleasure and yours.  Many of you have commented over the past couple of years on how much you enjoy his artistry and talent.  ME TOO!

Madison Square park, squirrels, Frisky Brisky Hippity HOp

Frisky Brisky Hippity Hop

Photo by Murray Head

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My friend, Gail sent me this YouTube video and it cracked me up.  Many of you (my readers) who do not live in The City have written to me and told me how much you enjoy hearing about life in Manhattan through photos and prose.  Here’s a video you will find hilarious.

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This is a book you will love to give to a younger person on your gift list. It’s hard to really say what the age range is for a Shel Silverstein book – they have such wide appeal and the adults reading them to kids enjoy the life lessons contained within as much as the kids enjoy the precious drawings.

I read the Giving Tree to my kids so many times, I think we all had it memorized.  Silverstein’s newest book is Every Thing On It.  It’s a compilation of previously unpublished poems and drawings by Shel. It will capture the hearts of the young and not-so-young for years to come.

Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree,

Every Thing On It

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Welllllllll, I’ll tell ya!  People get up and leave!  That is exactly what happened last night at the Doo Wop Extravaganza, the annual Labor Day concert at The Great Auditorium.  

The first surprise of the evening was Kenny Vance and the Planotones;  Kenny with his extraordinary voice and devoted Auditorium fans has for the past several years been the closing act of the concert.  He brings the house down as his voice goes up and up and up!  Why was he the opening act?  Several people around me murmured the same thought; did he have another show to go to?  We don’t know the answer to that question.  What we do know is that he was NOT the headliner of this particular Doo Wop show.  And why not? BECAUSE this year’s star was Martha Reeves, formerly of Martha & The Vandellas.

I’ve never seen Martha perform before so I don’t have a standard by which to measure her performance.  What I saw was truly disgraceful.  She wasn’t on stage more than 15 minutes when people began to get up and leave.  She was erratic, her enunciation and projection left so much to be desired that it was impossible to understand the words to any song she was feebly attempting to sing!  I’m not going to speculate on what was wrong with her last night that caused her to forget words to songs, stop in the middle and chastise the band because they weren’t on count or worse yet, to ask the audience to clap on command by the number.   I swear there wasn’t one person in the audience who knew when to clap. Add that to the fact that she consistently referred to her venue as being in Ocean View!  It was just too much.  We left right after the clapping fiasco.  I have never left a concert in Ocean Grove before.  They haven’t all been great but never so bad that I wanted to just get out of there.

Not going to end this commentary on a sour note, NOT when I can extoll the virtues of Kenny Vance’s performance.   He was fabulous as always,  we are never disappointed with the Planotones and 3 standing ovations to prove it.  How does he hold those falsetto notes so long?  He is gifted with a clear and strong voice and over the years has perfected his falsetto voice and incorporated it into many more of their songs.

One of the great treasures of Ocean Grove and the United States is our Great Auditorium and as a venue for great performers, it stands alone.  Every singer this year has mentioned the magnificence of the Great Auditorium, its marvelous acoustics enhance every performance;  I look forward to next year’s roster of entertainers, knowing of course that Kenny Vance and The Planotones will be back to trill and thrill us.

Kenny Vance

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Six-Word Memoir book cover image

Not Quite What I Was Planning

Mondays like Fridays around here are getting short shrift:  Fotos don’t appear till sometime over the weekend, readers don’t send in Six Word Memoirs anymore except for maybe one here and there.  What’s a girl to do?

Perhaps the Mamas and the Papas had the answer all along!

Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

Monday Monday, can’t trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way
Oh Monday morning, you gave me no warning of what was to be
Oh Monday Monday, how yould cou leave and not take me.

Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin’ all of the time

Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday Monday, it was all I hoped it would be
Oh Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee
That Monday evening you would still be here with me.

Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin’ all of the time

Monday Monday, …

Could we possibly have more rain? – Susan Celtic Lady

Loving my Kindle and reading more – Heather

Seventeen days is not a lifetime – Me

Prefer cooking for two these days – Heather

Serving two masters is a bitch – Me

And from the book, edited by Smith Magazine and the one I quote from almost each week, Not Quite What I Was Planning, Six Word Memoirs by writers Famous & Obscure, which by the way was on the New York Times Bestseller list!!!

I recognize red flags faster, now – Barbara Burri

I sucked even the lobster legs – Rufus Griscom

Anything’s possible with an extension cord – billySirr

In and out of hot water – Piper Kerman

Life has gone to the dogs – Ted Rheingold

Moved to SF. Geek, not gay – Ryan King

So here’s the thing guys;  I know I have readers who are actual writers, some who say they’re writers, some who have written things and some who I KNOW can write so won’t you please send in some Six Word Memoirs!

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a chart to describe the search engine market

Seek and ye shall find

Can’t seem to get the blog posts out in the order of topics of my week, for a couple of weeks now…true I’ve been busier than usual;  very busy working on an exclusive listing of mine which is sold ( I hope) and will be more officially sold once the contract is signed AND I did have Finley Ray over the weekend BUT still….

I look at the stats every day and the number of readers is amazing to me HOWEVER, they are not readers of these daily posts, these are people coming to the blog thru a search engine.  Of course if I were just counting numbers I should be thrilled BUT what the majority of visitors are coming to read is not what I’m writing about now!

Every day and I mean EVERY DAY, several people search for, are you ready for this? – CANDYLAND, or CANDYLAND GAME BOARD, and BUNDLING BOARD, and CARCANO, CLUE GAME and ROBIN BIRD. This seems strange to me and like I said if I was just interested in numbers, it would be gratifying.  BUT these readers are just one night stands, guerilla warfare readers.

Perhaps I shouldn’t complain – after all I made a decision early on that my blog would not just be an online diary of my life and I also knew having a structure to your blogs if you weren’t a niche blogger was the only way to keep on blogging and building your readership.  So here I am today, whining about the fact that most of the readers of this blog are one-timers and what they are coming here for is information, not me.  Can I handle this?

I want to write more personally than I have lately, however,  a lot of what is going on in my life I can’t share with the world; first of all this isn’t a personal diary blog, secondly, I don’t feel right about sharing some of the problems/stress I’ve been having for the last several months because it involves a couple of other people who didn’t sign up to have their lives exposed and I’m honoring that as best I can.  AND because if I started to write about a couple of these issues, this blog would become a rant like you wouldn’t believe!  There are things going on around me that are being dealt with in ways that I totally disagree with and find that handling to be ineffective and dumb.  The people that really know me, know how much I abhor stupid behavior, enabling and living in denial.  I’m a pragmatic bottom line person and believe you just do it!  I’ve had to bite  my tongue so many times lately, I’m sure there’s a huge hole in it.

OK, well having even said that much was a bit of a vent and I feel better already.  I also keep reminding myself of one of my favorite montras; people do what they want to do.  It’s so simple and yet so true.  You can talk till you’re blue in the face, you can reason, point out the logic, attempt to persuade and maybe the end result will be okay; However only if that person has come to believe/want to do it.

So now I still have to figure out why I haven’t posted a recipe in a couple of weeks, why my FAB FOTOS are always a day late, why I haven’t had a comment in a week!!! That is the worst of it, my readers…because either you’re not reading or what I’m writing is so banal it doesn’t evoke any comments.  What to do, what to do?? You know in my business which has always been real estate sales, when you are in a slump, the boss would say go back to the basics.

I’m going to try to do that which in my case was more of a mixture of personal satirical observations of my life and the world around me and follow the post schedule to stay on track.   I guess that means I need to look around me and use my creative writing skills to bring life’s every day adventures, foibles and characters to life in print in this blog.  There was a TV station whose slogan was “Characters welcome” – I need to bring in some characters, lol.

Getting back on track, this is Wednesday so I best find a conspiracy theory  that will enlighten us all!

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OK clearly this question is limited to those of us who are of either a certain age or are collectors.

Unfortunately I fall into both categories although admittedly an avid collector, records is not one of my collection addictions.  No, I leave that one up to Peter.  Yesterday was a sweet example of making a collection work for you;  Finley came over for a visit and since we know she is fascinated by all media we thought we would expose her to kiddie records from the 40’s and 50’s. We happen to have an extensive library of kiddie records because Peter’s father was a partner in Record Guild of America, a leading manufacturer of wonderful laminated and illustrated cardboard records for kids to play on their very own phonographs.   I had a really cute red and white record player like a little suitcase.  Anyway, we finally found an old one in good condition and couldn’t wait to introduce little Finny to this particular pleasure.  We thought she would be fascinated by the fact that there was sound but no moving pictures.  And she did love it!  After showing her how it worked, Peter let her put her own records on and move the needle arm and play the records.  NOW, I know I sound just like a proud grandmother, but really, she is only 2 yr. 8mo old and she quickly grasped the concept and knew to move the arm gently.  It was quite a treat for us and we hope she enjoyed it as well.

kiddie records, phonograph, child's record player, Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, Record Guild of America

The picture goes round 'n round!


Now here’s the good part;  Mommy showed up with little Francesca for a short visit and the first thing Finley said to her was, “see my DVD‘s”  – oh well…..

So back to the first album you ever bought.  The first album I ever purchased was “Only Love Can Break A Heart” by Gene Pitney. First of all, I thought the song was great and I also liked The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence – what can I tell you – I was a strange teenager I guess.  The reason it was probably my first album purchase was because by the time it came out, I had some of my own money to spend, whether it was from babysitting or my weekend work at The Cenacle (that’s a whole other blog).  I was a rabid Elvis Presley fan but when he was really at his height I only owned his 45 rpm records, probably my father bought them for me.

So I’m throwing out this question in hopes of getting some interesting replies from everyone.  It will be fun to see just what was the first album you bought?

Only Love Can Break A Heart, the man who shot Liberty Valence

Gene Pitney

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