Music

Dance

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What do you wish you could do more every day?
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A wonderful gentleman from my UU church, Ron, leads a monthly Sacred Circle Dance for the community, which I recently started participating in again. (I’d done it a few times when I was working, but I didn’t make it a point to go. Now I do.)

Dancing is fun, people! I had forgotten. I wish I did it more, but at least I do it some.

Ron is a retired gay man who absolutely loves leading dance circles. He has studied it extensively and traveled to many places (including Mexico) to learn new dances and attend workshops.

Our dance circle lasts two hours and Ron incorporates both folk dances as well as more modern dances. Ron teaches us the steps before each dance. He uses recorded music and always provides context for the cultures from which the folk dances come. Last time, our dances included a Coptic Greek dance and a dance in celebration of Women’s History Month to Peter Gabriel’s Shaking the Tree.

The steps are never too hard. Mistakes are fine. It’s not about performance at all. It’s about mind-body-spirit awareness, connection, and fun.

Happy Women’s History Month

Shaking the Tree (lyrics)

Songwriters: Peter Gabriel / Youssou N’Dour

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree

Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life
Waiting your time, you’re more than just a wife
You don’t have to do what your mother has done
She has done, this is your life, this new life has begun

It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree

Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody’s slave
Find your sisters or brothers who can hear all the truth in what you say
They can support you when you’re on your way

It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day

Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon
We are shakin’ the tree

Changing your ways, changing those surrounding you
Changing your ways, more than any man can do
Open your heart, show him the anger and pain, so you heal
Maybe he’s looking for his womanly side, let him feel

You had to be so strong
And you do nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all
We’re gonna break it down
We’re gonna shake it down, shake it all around

No no no no no no
No no no no no no
No no no no no no

It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day
It’s your day, a woman’s day

You had to be so strong
You do nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all
We’re gonna break it down
We’re gonna shake it down, shake it all around

Leaving on a jet plane

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
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If we’re talking about my country (the U.S), I’m going on an airplane. The days when I may have fantasized about doing a Jack Kerouac/Hunter S. Thompson/Bob Dylan/Route 66 Great American Road Trip are over. It always sounded cool and like something you should do at least once in your life, but I never did it. I once drove from Massachusetts to Florida with a boyfriend. We had no particular plan. It was spring break and we just wanted to get warm, so we headed south. I think we made it to Daytona Beach before heading back.

Driving all the way to California from Massachusetts would’ve been a great adventure in my twenties, but I won’t be adding it to my bucket list now. I’m too old for that shit. And a bus would be even worse.

Actually, my mother took a bus from Massachusetts to California with two of her friends (one from high school and one from college) in 1960, between her junior and senior year of college. This was before women could get birth control or hold a credit card in their own name. They got jobs in Los Angeles and stayed for the whole summer, then took the bus back. They just wanted to see the country and have an adventure. I’ve always been impressed that my grandmother allowed her to plan that trip and that she had the guts to go.

Los Angeles in 1959 (photo by Railroad Jack on Flickr)
My mother in the 1950s

I suppose you could take a train across the United States, but nobody I know has done that, so perhaps it’s not that great of an experience.

Six years after my mother’s adventure, I was born. Two years after that, Peter, Paul and Mary wrote Leaving on a Jet Plane. I always loved that song.

Star Wars & the musicals

~ MaryG ~ 7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
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As an adult, I’ve not been a big re-watcher of movies, or re-reader of books for that matter. Once is usually enough. Sometimes, if I really like a movie, I’ll see it twice in a movie theater. As an adult, I saw both Good Will Hunting and Barbie twice on the big screen.

As a kid, I watched a few movies five or more times. Other than Star Wars, they were all musicals:

Sound of Music (1965)

Leisl and Rolf in the gazebo

Stars Wars (the original 1977 film)

Grease (1978)

Hair (1979)

For the musicals, I also bought the soundtrack albums, so I could listen to them over and over, and act them out with my neighborhood friends. I remember fights over whose turn it was to be Liesl (from Sound of Music) and whose brother could be roped into playing her Nazi boyfriend Rolf. Unfortunately, nobody in the neighborhood had a gazebo, so we had to act that one out by jumping on and off living room sofas. (I am 16… going on 17…thud)

For Star Wars, I bought the sheet music for the main theme by the great John Williams and learned to play it on the piano. I still have it.

I had to pencil in the base notes, because they fell so far from below the staff lines.

Has a more perfect movie theme ever been composed? Are you really even GenX if this piece of music doesn’t give you at least a couple of goosebumps?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Related post:

Favorite films seen on the big screen

Keep on Moving Forward

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
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Sometimes failure is just failure. The plays I didn’t get cast in, the rejection from my first-choice college, the math class I dropped because it was too hard, and the fellowship and jobs I didn’t get, are all examples of times I objectively failed.

People talk a lot about “grit and resilience,” usually in the context of blaming today’s parents for being too protective and helicopter-y. Well, failure forces you to build those qualities, even if your parents somehow messed-up.

What other choice do you have in the face of failure? You gotta keep going.

“Keep on Moving Forward” by Emma’s Revolution is my all-time favorite protest song. I think it inspires personal fortitude, as well as strength to keep fighting for a better world.

KEEP ON MOVING FORWARD
© 1984 Pat Humphries
Moving Forward Music, BMI
www.emmasrevolution.com

Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back

Gonna keep on moving proudly
Gonna keep on singing loudly
Gonna keep on loving boldly
Gonna reach across our borders
Gonna end the occupations
Gonna stop these wars together
Gonna keep on moving forward

Pat Humphries and Sandy O (Emma’s Revolution)

IT’S SUPER TUESDAY in the USA. Don’t waste your right to vote.

Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Maine
Massachusetts
Minnesota
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia

The College Experience

~ MaryG ~ 17 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
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For me, there was no greater growth experience than college. The college experience is like no other. The sheer number of new people and new ideas you’re exposed to in a short timeframe is bound to change even the most “set in their ways” 18-year old.

I was lucky my parents paid the bills and my college had no core requirements whatsoever, so I could take whatever classes I wanted—from poetry to Russian history. (Amazingly, I didn’t take a single science class.) Throw in my semester abroad, internships, guest speakers, drug experimentation, and a winter trip to the Soviet Union, and it really was a mind-expanding time for me.

Hanging out in college: my roommates Ann and Carla and other friends in our on-campus apartment in 1984 or 85. The three of us shared one bedroom, but we had a nice living room and a kitchen.

It’s sad that the liveaway college experience has become so expensive and debt-producing. It’s not fair. I think the four-year model needs to go. Three years of college is plenty, and would be significantly cheaper. “Uni” – as they call it in the UK – is only three years. I mean, maybe a few select majors (like Engineering) need four years, but everyone else (Liberal Arts, Fine Arts, Business, etc.) could be done in three.

Speaking of the college experience, we went to see One Love, the Bob Marley biopic, based on DanLovesFilm’s recommendation (American critics be damned) and I had fun. There are definitely some weaknesses in the script and I had a hard time understanding the Jamaican/Rastafarian accent, but the music is the music and it’s great. Marley is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir and he’s 🔥

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Bob Marley

So, GenX: I recommend you have yourself a cocktail or a weed gummy (or both) and go see One Love. You’ll have a good time jamming in your theater seat to one of our key college soundtracks.

Related posts:

Legend

College: 80s edition

Semester Abroad

Back in the USSR

Ralph Nader

From Sea to Shining Sea

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
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One thing that makes me feel patriotic is beautiful, sweeping American vistas. I have been known to break out singing “America, the Beautiful” in public. I think it should be our national anthem. The words are better than the “Star Spangled Banner.” And most people can sing it. It’s not as hard.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I’m also a big fan of “This Land is your Land.” I can – and will – join in singing harmony whenever I hear it.

This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

Here’s the Woody Guthrie original version from 1940.

Other countries have spectacular scenery too, but ours is so vast and varied—from sea to shining sea.

🎵 🇺🇸 🎶

Maui, Hawaii, 1993
San Francisco Bay, California, 2012
Palm Springs, California, 2010
The incredibly blue Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Moonrise, Lake Tahoe, California, 2012
Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado, 2009
Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, 2009
The hallowed ground of Gettysburg National Park, Pennsylvania, 2017
Taughannock Falls State Park, Trumansburg, New York, 2022
Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, New York, 2021
Saratoga Springs, New York, 2019
The Green Mountains, Stowe, Vermont, 2014
The White Mountains, Bartlett, New Hampshire, 2013
The rocky coast of Maine, Kennebunkport, 2022
Nantucket, Massachusetts, 2007
Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, 2023
The beach border of Westport, Massachusetts and Little Compton, Rhode Island, 2006
Newport Harbor, Rhode Island, 2023. This is the 1970 America’s Cup contender Heritage.
Watch Hill, Westerly, Rhode Island, 2021
The Outer Banks, North Carolina, 2003
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 2009
Delray Beach Florida, 2021
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 2014
The aquamarine Gulf of Mexico in Longboat Key, Florida, 2022

LAST ONE: the iconic Grand Canyon, Arizona, 2023. Pictures don’t really do it justice. There’s a quiet awe to the place that perhaps this video captures just a tiny bit.

If you made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU for looking at all my pics. I loved taking them.

🇺🇸

Related posts:

Family Road Trip: Colorado edition

TO READ list

The Grammys

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments

Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

I don’t know about my ideal day, but last night was pretty much my ideal Grammys. GenX, am I right?

I mean, Tracy Chapman performing “Fast Car” with Luke Combs (her voice still sounds great and she looks fantastic), Annie Lenox singing “Nothing Compares To You” in memory of Sinéad, Fantasia Barrino as Tina Turner, Billy Joel with his first new song in 30 years, and JONI MITCHELL absolutely wrecking us with that rendition of “Both Sides Now” – at age 80, after a brain aneurysm.

Well done, Grammys.

I also give two thumbs up to the new Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop.” It’s about the night they recorded We Are the World in 1985, which won Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson a Grammy for best song.

A seated Joni Mitchell performing Both Sides Now, with Brandi Carlile and other musicians at the Grammys last night 😭
GenX icon Tracy Chapman, age 59, singing “Fast Car” at the 2024 Grammy Awards

Wrong question

~ MaryG ~ 3 Comments

What books do you want to read?

Bloganuary is asking the wrong question today. The Oscar nominations are out, so this is the time of year when you try to see some (or all) of the nominated films.

I’m in the “outraged” camp that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig did not get nominated for Best Actress and Best Director. WTF!

Here’s where I stand on the Best Picture nominees. (I’d like to see all of them eventually.)

American Fiction – seeing it tonight in a movie theater

Anatomy of a Fall – haven’t seen it yet

Barbie – saw it twice in movie theaters; LOVED it; it should win

The Holdovers – saw it in a movie theater, but probably would’ve been the same on a small screen; enjoyed the New England connection and scenes; more melancholy than I thought it was going to be

Killers of the Flower Moon – watched it last night on Apple TV; important story; beautifully made film, but I fell asleep a couple times (I knew it was 3.5 hours going in, but I had a drink and a weed gummy anyway, which was probably a mistake); DiCaprio is still hot – even when he’s playing pure evil with bad teeth

And yes, it’s a TRUE story. All Americans should watch it. I suggest coffee.

Maestro – watched it on Netflix a couple weeks ago; I’m a huge fan of Leonard Bernstein’s Broadway and classical music and have sung it many times (I even had a friend sing “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story at my wedding), so I was disappointed that there wasn’t more focus on his musical greatness; the big conducting scene gave me goosebumps, but the film is more about his marriage; didn’t need to see Bernstein snorting coke; the montage of Bernstein’s music which plays over the closing credits is one of the best parts of the film (listen until the very end)

Oppenheimer – saw it in a theater; other than the big blast scene, I found it pretty boring; I couldn’t keep all the white guys straight; the film is mostly about politics and would’ve been better as a miniseries; overrated!

Past Lives – haven’t seen it yet

Poor Things – saw it on New Year’s in a movie theater; it’s a weird, niche art film with a lot of explicit sex; I appreciate that it was making some interesting points about women and shame, but it’s too bizarre to be nominated for best picture

The Zone of Interest – haven’t seen it yet

Here’s the Leonard Bernstein display in the Musical Instrument Museum. The museum is well worth a visit if you find yourself in Phoenix.