Music

Petty suburban drama

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments

This story on Instagram about a tax-payer funded Army helicopter hovering at very low altitude outside Kid Rock’s home in Tennessee (presumably to entertain him) reminded me of something my across-the-street neighbor did about ten years ago.

My neighbor Eric, a large and pompous French-speaking Canadian, somehow convinced a helicopter pilot to “drop in” to our neighborhood so Eric could wave to his kids from the sky. We had absolutely no warning that this was going to happen. I was just sitting in my family room one day when the sound of a helicopter became alarmingly loud. I looked out my kitchen window and there was a freaking helicopter hovering just above a tree in our side yard. It scared the shit out of me. I ran to the basement because I guess it seemed safer there. My husband and son ran to the front window and saw Eric’s long-suffering Parisian wife and their two little kids waving to “Papa” from their driveway.

I was so mad. That helicopter scared me half to death. I could not imagine what was happening. You really don’t understand how loud those things are until one is hovering just above your head. What if it had clipped a tree and crashed? How stupid!

I called the police non-emergency line and told them what had happened. They said they had no jurisdiction over the skies, but that it sounded “not right.” They sent over a squad car and some cop had a chat with know-it-all Eric. I don’t know if the pilot ever got into any kind of trouble. (He should have.)

Eric never apologized for scaring me so badly and that was effectively the end of our relationship with The Frenchies across the street. I never spoke to either of them again and only wave if absolutely necessary. We watch from afar as they continue to make questionable “improvements” to their home, including bricking over the entire back half of their property, which we now refer to as Versailles.

That sure is some petty, suburban drama, right?

Oh, and a few years later, when Eric emailed us about putting a basketball hoop in the turnaround (which is public property abutting our yard), my husband was inclined to not object but I told Eric to put his hoop in his own driveway like everyone else. The nerve of that guy!

MAGA “musician” Kid Rock getting a special visit at his home from a US Army helicopter. Our tax dollars at work. 😡

NO KINGS 3: Proof of Attendance

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

Even though I was very cold and took no pictures, evidence of my attendance at NoKings3 has emerged. The best part is that my poster received very prominent placement when I accidentally left it right in front of the speakers’ podium.

My state representative, a moderate Democrat, finally decided to show up at an anti-Trump protest. My district has a good amount of Republicans, so Jim’s been searching for his balls for quite awhile, but he gave a good and rousing speech in front of my very ANTI-Trump poster on Saturday. I consider this a win.

My poster was there during all the speeches, so it’s in a lot of pictures on Facebook.

“Sing as loud as you can” was the instruction from the music organizer.
This is my minister sitting in the chair with a brace on her leg. She is GenX and she is awesome. The world would be a better place if everyone had a minister like her.
It actually is a pretty good poster—one of my best. I just wish I didn’t have to keep making them.

Watercolors—baby farm animal #5

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

OK, last farm animal from my 5-week paint-along class and it’s not a baby! It’s a full-grown cock 😜

The teacher asked me point blank if I plan to return for the next session, which was awkward. I mean…I had some fun and learned a few things, but this paint-along-with-the-teacher style class is not really for me. I asked her to “please keep me on the mailing list.” Maybe I’ll return if she chooses a subject I really want help with, like sunsets.

Thank you to my very awesome WordPress blog friends who have patiently looked at all of my BFAs.

🙏🏼

By the way, “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” is one of my granddaughter’s favorite songs and I absolutely love singing it with her. It’s fun to take a long pause before you sing the next animal’s name. It adds drama and excitement!

NO KINGS 3, this Saturday

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

My husband has had a bit of a setback with his recovery, but I’m still planning to get out there to protest Trump on Saturday.

The second round of “No Kings” protests (“No Kings 2”) in October 2025 drew roughly 5–7 million Americans nationwide, making it one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history at about 2% of the population.  Social scientists and historians often point to the so-called “3.5% rule,” which finds that sustained, nonviolent movements become very hard for governments to ignore when about 3.5% of the population participates—in the U.S., that’s roughly 11–12 million people. 

So, all hands on deck! No Kings 2 was actually a lot of fun. You don’t want to sit on the sidelines for this nationwide protest. Even if you don’t have time to make a sign, getting your body out there makes a difference.

I’m planning to lead singing with a small group from a bandstand as I have done in the past. I can sing loudly and clearly into a microphone, which is the main qualification for this role. I’m not out there protesting on overpasses or at ICE facilities, but I try to contribute my singing voice, when asked. We all need to try to do something to save the Republic. 🇺🇸

Not sure I’ll have time to make a sign, but if I do, I think it’s going to say:

NO MAD KINGS

We The People…don’t want any of this: 

*Abortion bans

*War

*Immigrant hate 

*Measles outbreaks, FFS!

Find a protest near you.

Watercolors—baby farm animal #3

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments
Cow or calf? Not sure.

Week 3 of my paint-a-long class and I’m definitely getting flashbacks to high school—probably because the teacher is a retired high school art teacher. She talks to us like we’re 16, rather than 60+, sometimes. You can tell that she was one of those slightly grouchy teachers that was easily annoyed. It’s actually funny some of things she says to people: “Your perspective is totally OFF” or “I see you’re doing it your way—again”

Nobody seems to care. They’ve all known her a long time and they like her. They sign-up for her class semester after semester.

So far, she’s been pretty nice to me. No major criticisms and some nice compliments on my work. Just like in high school, art teachers like me.

Oh, and she plays the radio in the background while we paint. The station is perfect for us…it’s all soft rock from the 70 and 80s (our high school years). Some people sing along quietly.

I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name…

Next week: 🐷

Related

Watercolors—baby farm animal #1

Watercolors—baby farm animal #2

Watercolors—baby farm animal #4

Watercolors—baby farm animal #5

Missing white lady!!!!

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

I’m sorry that Savannah Guthrie’s mother has gone missing, but GOOD GOD. The media coverage is ridiculous. They actually broke into primetime Olympics coverage of the men’s figure skating—with “Quad God” Ilia Malinin on deck—to tell us that absolutely nothing had changed.

How many Native American women go missing every single year and we never hear a peep from the media about them?

While Nancy Guthrie has been receiving 24/7 coverage, it sounds like things are still really bad in Minneapolis.

Copied and pasted from “The Other 98%” Facebook page:

Minnesota is still very much under assault by Trump’s private ICE army, even after the headline friendly withdrawal of 700 agents. You would not know it scrolling through your feed, where posts from Minneapolis residents about raids, beatings and shootings keep getting flagged or buried while the national press treats the state like a backdrop instead of a crime scene. And now there are early reports that ICE agents may have killed yet another person, adding to the sense that this crackdown is only getting deadlier, not winding down…On the ground this does not feel like “enforcement,” it feels like an occupation that has simply swapped helmets. The numbers have not really drawn down, they have just changed tactics, leaning harder on pre-dawn home raids, unmarked vans, so called “collateral” arrests of bystanders and courthouse stakeouts meant to snatch people when they show up to comply with the law.

———————————————————

On the bright side:

Randy Rainbow’s latest is a real gem—a perfect Ode to the Sycophants. 😂

Last weekend my church raised over $2,500 for a local non-profit social service organization that supports refugees and immigrants with a fantastic concert by Emma’s Revolution. We also raised $4,500 to buy a used car for a hardworking immigrant family from Afghanistan that several church members know.

Thoughts on Super Bowl LX

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Coincidentally, I’m LX too—same as the Super Bowl.

Last night was a bummer for Pats fans, but hey…nobody ever expected them to make it to the Super Bowl this year. It’s just too bad they were never really in the game. Husband disappointed, but not crushed.

On the bright side, Bad Bunny was awesome. I closed the activity ring on my Apple Watch dancing along. No, I didn’t understand most of the Spanish, but I liked the vibe. My favorite part was the ending where they came dancing straight towards the camera flying all the flags of the Americas.

“The only thing more powerful than hate is love” was the message on the screen above the flags.

It definitely felt like a big F U to Trump and ICE and all that they represent—white nationalism, hate, fear.

And apparently Trump took it like that.

It’s rich that a man who has been credibly accused of raping a 13-year old is complaining that salsa dancing is too “disgusting” for children to watch.

I took my family to Puerto Rico in 2016, because I really wanted to see it. We liked it a lot. Ahead of that trip, I tried to learn some Spanish with an online language learning program through my library. I gained a lot of words, but no real fluency. I did the same thing before a trip to Mexico.

Bad Bunny made me want to give it another shot at some point.

My kids and me on a street in San Juan in 2016
A very hot kitty resting in a tree trunk in Old San Juan in the summer of 2016
A stop on the way to El Yunque National Rainforest in Puerto Rico

Final thought: Brandi Carlile did a beautiful version of America the Beautiful—it would make a much better national anthem.

Watercolors—botanicals 7

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments
This headless design is called Lady Sweet Pea in my workbook.
Poppies
Blueberry branch. I think this is my favorite page in the workbook so far. I really like how the blueberries came out.

Designs from Watercolor Workbook by Sarah Simon (IG: @themintgardener)

Today is my husband’s 64th birthday, which is significant to GenX and older because he’s officially reached the Beatles definition of old age:

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I’m sixty four?”

Also, I hear there’s football a game going on during a Bad Bunny concert tonight. 😉

Go Pats!

The Grammys and the Super Bowl

~ MaryG ~ 16 Comments

I watched almost all of the Grammys on Sunday night and I really enjoyed them, even though I didn’t know most of the music.

I always like Trevor Noah—the host. (Everyone should read his memoir “Born a Crime” about growing up as a biracial kid in South Africa.) I thought Trevor’s jokes were funny and not too mean. Our whiny-ass, thin-skinned President is suing Trevor over one mention of him in connection with Jeffrey Epstein, even though Trump’s name is reportedly in the newly released Epstein files over 1,000 times!

I liked the fact that the diverse array of artists who took the stage didn’t shy away from talking about what’s going on in the country. Many wore black & white “ICE OUT” pins, including the legend herself—Carole King.

Carole King, one of the all time greatest songwriters

The highlights for me were Olivia Dean and Bad Bunny’s acceptance speeches. Here’s what they said:

Best New Artist Olivia Dean:

“I guess I want to say I’m up here as a granddaughter of an immigrant. I wouldn’t be here — I’m a product of bravery, and I think those people deserve to be celebrated. We’re nothing without each other. Thank you so much.”

I did a little research and learned that Olivia Dean’s maternal grandmother was born in Guyana and emigrated to the United Kingdom as part of the “Windrush” generation — a post-World War II movement of Caribbean migrants invited to Britain to help rebuild the country.  They arrived in Britain between 1948 and the early 1970s on ships like the Empire Windrush.

Bad Bunny, who is Puerto Rican, spoke movingly from the heart. He opened his first acceptance speech by saying “ICE OUT,” which got a standing ovation. He then said, “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans. Hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please. We need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We don’t hate them. We love our people, we love our family, and that’s the way to do it, with love.”

I didn’t stay up to see him win Album of the Year (the first time ever that a Spanish language album got this award), but when I watched later I saw that he dedicated the award “to all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams.” 

I mean, come ON, if you didn’t love Benito before, you gotta love him now! I really can’t wait to see what he does for the Super Bowl halftime show. Check out the teaser he dropped yesterday.

We already know that Trump and all the American traitors who support him are not in favor of a Latino performer at the Super Bowl, but I think it’s going to be great and just what the country needs.

I will be rooting for the New England Patriots because that’s our team, but I’m not happy that owner Robert Kraft was seen with Trump at the opening screening of the ridiculous “Melania” documentary vanity project. Bad Kraft!! Very Bad!

My own immigrant grandparents, circa 1925

In 1905, my grandfather bravely left Southern Italy alone at age 15 with $12.00 in his pocket to start a new life in the United States of America. Just like Olivia Dean said, “I am a product of bravery.”

Say it ain’t so

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Of all the unexpected bad news out of left field, Catherine O’Hara suddenly passing at age 71 made me cry OH NO at top volume.

Like literally everyone else, I LOVED Catherine O’Hara.

There are currently about one million tributes to Catherine online, so I’m just going to pick one favorite memory to share and that is: I honestly don’t know how we would’ve made it through the pandemic lockdown without Schitt’s Creek and Moira Rose. She was such a bright spot during that awful time. I absolutely loved all of the scenes involving the Women’s Choir (probably because I’m a lifelong Choir Lady myself), but remember her audition? The bizarre scat singing and the shaker egg in one hand. 🤣 How on earth did she come up with that? I often wondered how the other actors made it through even one take with Moira Rose without cracking up.

When Moira Rose auditions for the Schitt’s Creek Women’s Choir:

Thanks for the laughs Catherine, but you left us way too soon! There are so many other Baby Boomers that should’ve gone before you (especially the one in The White House). NOT FAIR. I was so looking forward to seeing you in Season Two of The Studio and whatever else you ever decided to do.

😢