Sunsets, Stars, West, Wind
Another place holder for my seventeenth day of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ … I know, a day late, but I have a really, really good excuse. I had outpatient surgery yesterday that wiped me out for the entire day. The first time I’ve spent fifteen straight hours in bed in ages.
Anyway, sometime in the next couple of days I’ll circle back to this posting and explain why I’m thankful for art and all the artists in my life, both in the family and among friends.
I am grateful for food to eat and water to drink on this sixteenth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness.’ I will expound on this theme in a couple of days as I am not feeling well right now.
I apologize for the delay.
I am thankful for my sense to hearing, and specifically music, which will be the focus of the fifteenth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness.’
At age five, I started taking piano lessons from a close neighbor (close being a relative term out in the wilds of northwestern Leavenworth County). Reading music came to me just about as easily as reading words. Oddly (because I love mathematics), my only long-standing issue is my (un)willingness to count out a song in my head so that I get the rhythm and tempo correct. I didn’t spend much time in a band environment (only played flute for two years before middle school), so I rely heavily upon a percussionist if I play and/or sing in a praise band. And my audio memory of how a song should sound. Yes, I’m lazy. Probably why I’m not a professional musician.
As I’ve mentioned before, my husband is a hundred times, or more likely, a thousand times better musician than I will ever be. He has impeccable timing and near perfect pitch. He has the patience and technical skills to practice a piece to perfection.
My daughter inherited most if not all of her musical ability and talent from him (I can still play piano better than her, but she knows more music theory than I’ll ever understand).
Rachelle started singing about the same time she learned to talk. She surpassed my measly vocal abilities way back in early high school. Along the way, she learned how to play violin, guitar, saxophone and piano. However, her voice is her most finely honed instrument. As she approaches her final semester as an under graduate at UNT’s College of Music, I look forward to attending her senior recital, which will include all of the following songs Rachelle recently recorded for her graduate school auditions (click on the song title link, then click on the play button):
The Nurse’s Song by Benjamin Britten
Rachelle Moss, Mezzo Soprano
Violetta Zharkova, Piano
Smanie implacabili from Cosi fan tutte by Mozart
Rachelle Moss, Mezzo Soprano
Violetta Zharkova, piano
Ah scostati!
Paventa il tristo effeto
d’un disperato affeto!
Chiudi quelle finestre
Odio la luce, odio l’aria, che spiro
Odio me stessa!
Chi schernisce il mio duol,
Chi mi consola?
Deh fuggi, per pietà, fuggi,
Lasciami sola.
Smanie implacabili, che m’agitate
Dentro quest’anima più non cessate,
Finchè l’angoscia mi fa morir.
Esempio misero d’amor funesto,
Darò all’Eumenidi se viva resto
Col suno orrible de’ miei sospir.
English Translation:
Ah, move away!
Fear the sad effect
of a desperate affection!
Shut those windows,
I hate the light, I hate the air that I breathe
I hate myself!
Who mocks my pain,
Who will console me?
Oh, leave, for pity’s sake, leave,
Leave me alone.
Implacable restlessness, that disturbs me
Inside this soul, doesn’t cease,
Until it makes me die.
A miserable example of fateful love
I will give to the Furies, if I live,
With the horrible sound of my sighs.
Auf dem Kirchhofe by Johannes Brahms
Rachelle Moss, Mezzo Soprano
Violetta Zharkova, Piano
Auf dem Kirchhofe
Der Tag ging regenschwer und sturmbewegt,
Ich war an manch vergessenem Grab gewesen,
Verwittert Stein und Kreuz, die Kränze alt,
Die Namen überwachsen, kaum zu lesen.
Der Tag ging sturmbewegt und regenschwer,
Auf allen Gräbern fror das Wort: Gewesen.
Wie sturmestot die Särge schlummerten,
Auf allen Gräbern taute still: Genesen.
English Translation:
In the churchyard
The day was heavy with rain and disturbed by storms;
I was walking among many forgotten graves,
with weathered stones and crosses, the wreaths old,
the names washed away, hardly to be read.
The day was disturbed by storms and heavy with rain;
on every grave froze the words “we were.”
The coffins slumbered calmly like the eye of a storm,
and on every grave melted quietly the words: “we were healed.”
Les Berceaux by Gabriel Faure
Rachelle Moss, Mezzo Soprano
Violetta Zharkova, Piano
Les berceaux
Le long du Quai, les grands vaisseaux,
Que la houle incline en silence,
Ne prennent pas garde aux berceaux,
Que la main des femmes balance.
Mais viendra le jour des adieux,
Car il faut que les femmes pleurent,
Et que les hommes curieux
Tentent les horizons qui leurrent!
Et ce jour-là les grands vaisseaux,
Fuyant le port qui diminue,
Sentent leur masse retenue
Par l’âme des lointains berceaux.
English Translation:
Cradles
Along the quay, the great ships,
that ride the swell in silence,
take no notice of the cradles.
that the hands of the women rock.
But the day of farewells will come,
when the women must weep,
and curious men are tempted
towards the horizons that lure them!
And that day the great ships,
sailing away from the diminishing port,
feel their bulk held back
by the spirits of the distant cradles.
Today I am grateful for my husband, Terry. Today just also happens to be his birthday. So, for my fourteenth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ series, I will take you on a walk down memory lane.
I met Terry in the fall of 1983, just a few weeks after leaving home in Leavenworth County to attend college at Wichita State University. My first room mate in my dorm was a valley girl; seriously, she was from that infamous valley in Southern California. We couldn’t have been more different, but we made the best of it. She invited me out one weekend and we tried one of the local clubs called Backstage. Remember all that horrible pop music from the 80s … everytime I hear Lover Boy or Duran Duran or Def Leppard, I flashback to that night.
I wandered around while Jill fit right in. I ended up in the balcony, watching the lighted dance floor. A guy approached me and asked my name. I told him it was Jon. His immediate reply was ‘Don’t give me that shit.’ I was a bit taken aback by his aggresive response, but I was also used to people’s unbelief in my name. I whipped out my driver’s license, which I had placed in my back pocket, having left my purse locked in Jill’s Volkswagon bug. After a somewhat rocky start, we spent the evening dancing and talking.
Over the next few months, I got to know Terry very well. He took me out on his dirt bike to the motocross courses carved out of the Big Ditch by him and his buddies. I listened to him play his Ibanez Artist (the same one he still owns and plays) and his trumpet. I’m still amazed at his musical abilities, which he seems to have passed on to our daughter, Rachelle.
Three years after meeting Terry, we had our first child, Derek. By that time, we had moved in with his father, whose health was beginning to decline after years of smoking. We purchased a house in Benton (about twelve or fifteen miles east of Wichita) and soon after Rachelle was born. We spent several good years in Benton, until we discovered Terry’s health took a nose dive. After months of test and inconclusive diagnoses, a hematologist determined Terry had sarcoidosis, but not of the ‘normal’ variety which attacks most people’s lungs; rather, his variant attacked his kidneys.
Faced with the prospect of a chronically ill spouse who would probably need my help to cope, I felt I needed a support network or safety net to help with raising Derek and Rachelle. With the passing of Terry’s father in 1991, that left only his sister living within an hour of us. I had no family living in or near Wichita. I also knew I could make quite a bit more income moving to a larger metropolitan area like Kansas City.
I found a new job without too much stress or effort, but selling our house became a problem. Terry and Derek stayed behind in Benton. Terry single-handedly remodeled our one hundred year old farm house as best he could, while still suffering from the effects of his disease. Rachelle moved in with my parents and I worked a ton of hours, sleeping in my brother’s attic and visit my parents (and Rachelle) on the weekends. Finally, in the fall of 1997, we were reunited, renting a house in Lansing so the kids could attend school in that school district. We also ended up renting the Benton, House, since we could not find a buyer before Terry and Derek migrated north.
Terry soon found a job working for H&R Block’s call center in Lenexa. He steadily moved up the chain of command, but suffered the axe during a reorganization and lay offs in the early 00s. We did manage to find a beautiful home to purchase in Lansing and some nice automobiles (including a luxurious Buick Park Avenue Ultra and a nearly new Firebird Formula). Terry joined the local SCCA and won F stock in Solo II and Rookie of the Year.
Terry found local judo and jujitsu instructors for both Derek and Rachelle on post. He fully supported Derek as he competed locally, regionally and nationally as a judoka and in wrestling at Lansing High School.
We also joined a local church and eventually became the inaugural members of the praise band for the expanded contemporary service of that church. That endeavor forged a lasting friendship between Terry and the bass player, Sean. Even though neither of them play for that particular praise band, they still play together in their band WolfGuard.
We’ve come full circle now, with the children grown, off on their own, either married or still pursuing a college education. We’re left with the Rotts and a nearly empty house. Thanks to Terry’s previous experience in construction and at least two other remodels (his father’s house and our other house in Benton), he is once again putting his expertise to good use as we update our home in Lansing.
For a guy the doctor’s almost gave up on over fifteen years ago, he’s still kicking and still looking good. I thank God every day he’s still with me.
Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish!
Ephesians 2:8 (The Message)
I am eternally grateful for God’s gift of grace, today and every day. So I will pause and reflect on my thirteenth day of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ upon faith and grace.
As I imparted a week ago in my post on John and Charles Wesley, I am a Methodist, born baptized and raised one. Yet until I studied to be a local Lay Speaker for my local church that I fully understood what it meant to be a Methodist and showed me the path of discipleship.
Grace can be defined as the love and mercy given to us by God because God wants us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it.
Our Wesleyan Theological Heritage, UMC.org
Grace centers nearly all Christian sects and denominations. To me, it boils down to love and compassion. Keep it simple, please. Less chance for me to mess up.
But Wesley, ever the scholar, took it one or two steps farther, defining grace in triplicate:
Excerpts from Our Wesleyan Theological Heritage via UMC.org
The journey, not the destination, and Wesley provided the map, charting a course that even I can follow, called the Means of Grace. He broke his method down into two broad categories: Works of Piety and Works of Mercy. The former flows naturally out of my upbringing, Sunday school classes and worship service attendance. The personal practices of prayer, Bible study, healthy living and fasting together with the communal ones of Holy Communion, Baptism and participation in the Christian community, flow and grow naturally with regular usage. The latter stresses the outpouring of service to the sick, the poor, the imprisoned and seeking justice for the oppressed.
Yes, there was and is a method to Wesley’s ‘madness’ or rather his enthusiasm to follow God’s will and His vision for all of us, as His disciples, to bring His kingdom of mercy, peace and love to fruition here on Earth.
On the twelfth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ I am very grateful for our brand new refrigerator.
We finally received our exchange from Sears for the Samsung we purchased back in May as a 25th anniversary shared gift. Six months of dealing with overseas customer service representatives, five damaged and defective Samsungs (including the first one and the last one which was an upgrade to the next better model), abuse from the automated telephone system at Sears for weeks on end and a lost or closed case file.
We had finally reached an agreement with Sears to switch brands (from Samsung to Whirlpool) when all communication ceased for several weeks. Out of the blue, in late October, Terry received a call from his case manager. We were in the queue to receive the exchange and should receive a call in the next few days to schedule the delivery. This past Monday we finally got the call and this morning the new Whirlpool refrigerator was delivered and installed on time and without blemishes or defects.
With all the trouble we went through during the summer and early fall, we had decided to never ever buy anything from Sears again. In fact, Terry threatened the customer service representatives more than once with selling all of his Craftsmen tools (several thousand dollars worth) and replacing them with Snap-On tools. We had resigned ourselves to living with the defective and disappointing Samsung and leaving said refrigerator with the house when we sell it. However, we have rescinded our previous plans and will take the Whirlpool with us whenever we move.
I wish to honor and humbly thank all our veterans, past, present and future, for their sacrifice, courage and service in the United States Armed Forces, securing freedom and justice for all.
I find it fitting to publish my eleventh post in my Thirty Days of Thankfulness series at exactly the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twenty-first century also known as Veterans Day. As noted in an excellent post by a fellow blogger (ProSe), in less than three years we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, misnamed ‘the War to End All Wars.’ If you ever get a chance to visit the Liberty Memorial, a memorial to the fallen soldiers of WWI, in Kansas City, Missouri, I highly recommend you make a visit to the National World War I museum housed beneath the memorial. Our modern day Veterans Day grew out of Armistice Day which commemorated the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany, ending World War I, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.
I am especially thankful for my uncle and his service in the United States Air Force. Thanks to his various deployments around the United States (and the world), I got to see most of the lower forty-eight states before I turned sixteen. Nearly all our family vacations ventured to various Air Force bases in Montana, Arizona, Florida, Virginia and Colorado. I remember when he was deployed to Thailand during the Vietnam War. I caught pneumonia when we visited Ron in Panama City, Florida, because it actually snowed in Florida that year and was warmer back in Kansas and my mom didn’t think we would need any heavy winter clothes. I also remember corresponding electronically with him while at college in 1984 via the university’s Digital Equipment Corporation VAX while he was deployed to Aviano, Italy, years before most of the world even dreamed about the Internet or e-mail or instant messaging or text messaging. I received Christmas cards from all over the world, including Saudi Arabia before the first Gulf War. I worried about him then and during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I attended his retirement celebration held at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though Ron wasn’t a pilot, I grew up wanting to be a jet fighter pilot or an astronaut. I didn’t find out until my teens that women weren’t allowed to do the former (because it involved combat) and the latter involved way more science than I wanted to tackle then, although the math would have appealed.
For the last dozen years, Ron has enjoyed his retirement as a watercolor artist, a writer and a grandfather to five grand children with a sixth on the way (two girls and twin boys recently born to his son Wendell and his wife Kristin; as well as a girl from his son Eric and his wife Cayla, who is expecting their second child early next year). When he’s not painting or writing or bouncing grandchildren on his knee, he reads much more than I do. We discuss and debate shared reads and flip books each other’s way either by media mail postal rate or electronically via our Nook Colors. When we actually get together for a family visit, I love to hear his stories about his father Ralph’s service during WWII and after as well as his own adventures around the world.
Yesterday, in his daily e-mail to family and friends, he remembered how much tougher military personnel have it today than when he was on active duty. Ron did two years of nastiness (amid eleven years of overseas duty) out of his thirty year military career. Soldiers today will spend half of their enlistment or career getting shot at.
Thank God I have a roof over my head!
On the tenth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ I wish to express my gratitude for my home, my abode, my sanctuary, my castle. Since February of 1999, my family has lived in the house pictured at the left. For the last two years, only my husband and me and two Rottweilers rattle around inside.
For the past several months, we’ve been repairing and remodeling, mostly on the exterior, but we’re starting on the interior now. We initially had the roof replaced to fix a few leaks, but the major leak near the fireplace remained unresolved, even though every roofing contractor claimed they could tell right were the leak was and swore it was the roof that was leaking. We finally called a chimney expert who determined our cap was leaking as well as needing some cracked fire brick replaced and some of the brick tuck-pointed. After waiting nearly two months for a torrential downpour (which we received two days ago), we are very happy to report we are completely waterproof around the fireplace. The hole we’ve had in the great room ceiling for the last ten years can now be repaired in confidence.
I am blessed. My entire life, I have always had someplace to call home, shelter from the storms of nature and life. From a small farm house in rural Leavenworth County, to a dorm room at Wichita State University, to a duplex in south Wichita, to my husband’s family home in north Wichita, to another farm house in Benton, back to Leavenworth County, splitting my weekdays in my brother’s attic and my weekends either at my parents, where my daughter lived for a year, or back in Benton to visit Terry and Derek, to a rental house in Lansing and finally to our current home. I never left Kansas, except to travel. Depending on what the real estate market does in the next few years, that may change. I hope to follow my daughter to wherever she is accepted for graduate school so I can finally attend her vocal performances in person.
The world’s population reached seven billion people recently. Seven billion people, many of whom do not have the assurance of a roof over their head or food to sustain them. In America, it is so easy to become complacent and blinded to the plight of the poor, the homeless, the huddled masses right under our noses. You don’t have to look farther than the street corner you just drive by to see the writing on the cardboard. And it’s only gotten worse during the ‘Great Recession’ despite all the political posturing in Washington that does little to provide relief for their suffering. But I’m not one to wait on the government to do what I should be doing in the first place.
What’s the biggest problem and solution facing the world today? I am. If I made more of an effort to support charities and volunteer my time, then surely I would make a difference, however small, in someone’s life. I encourage you to embrace that concept.
Here are a few of the charities I actively support as I am able (from local to international):
On the ninth day of my ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ I am grateful for the discovery of radio waves by James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz way back in the mid 19th century, which I benefit from abundantly via multiple wireless communications arrays and devices. I personally use on a daily basis a cell phone, a Nook Color and a laptop, all of which connect me to the Internet and ultimately my family and friends all without wires. I subscribe to satellite television and I listen to local radio stations via my car stereo system. I setup my own wireless router with appropriate security and even added a guest wireless network for visiting family and friends. I am a licensed amateur radio operator who can communicate with other operators with the right radio equipment, antennas and atmospheric conditions (for some frequencies). Who you gonna call to get the word out during the next zombie apocalypse? Me and my amateur radio buddies, that’s who!
I followed my dad around as much as I could when I was little. Truth be told, there wasn’t much else to do way out in the country with no neighbors close enough to have any kids to play with. Poor Dad! Stuck with a daughter in tow while he visited friends, or did electrical wiring, or help raise an antenna tower, or change the light bulbs for the local baseball field, or … you get the picture. I earned the nickname ‘go-fer’ fairly early on. It came naturally that I would end up studying to take the test to become a licensed amateur radio operator. If I remember correctly, I earned that license before I got my permanent driver’s license. Back then, you still had to learn Morse code.
In the U.S., during an emergency, amateur radio operators can provide essential communication to help preserve the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available and may use any frequency including those of other radio services such as police and fire communications. Similarly, amateurs in the United States may apply to be registered with the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS). Once approved and trained, these amateurs also operate on US government military frequencies to provide contingency communications and morale message traffic support to the military services.
Which brings me to the top news story for today. For the first time ever in the United States the Emergency Alert System will conduct a nation-wide test. The test will occur at two o’clock Eastern time (that’s one o’clock for me and all my neighbors here in the Heart of America). EAS provides a national warning system, as well as local weather emergencies, and allows the President of the United States to speak to citizens within ten minutes in the event of a national emergency.
And in case you’re wondering what the title of this article means, CQD was one of the first adopted distress calls. CQ is familiar to most ham radio operators because it means ‘calling all hams’ but CQD expands on that and means ‘calling all distress.’
No, I’m not sending out a general SOS or mayday.
This was only a test.
The first thing I do when I exit a building is look up. The only time I don’t do this is during inclement weather (usually defined as rain or snow or just overcast, but even clouds can be interesting). I try to locate the moon, if it’s supposed to be visible. If I can hear a flying vehicle (helicopter or prop plane or jet), I search the skies for them as well. I’ve given myself a crick in my neck and no few twisted ankles gazing skywards instead of watching where I was going. And my family just thought I was klutzy growing up. I decided to feature astronomy and telescopes for my eighth day of ‘Thirty Days of Thankfulness‘ series. The graphic to the left displays the skies above my house as they should appear the moment this post is published. If you’re reading this soon after it’s published, you’re either an insomniac or living down under. I will be sound asleep.
The big news for today is an asteroid visitor flying close to the Earth, inside the perimeter of the Moon’s orbit. The Sky & Telescope web page article includes a chart and instructions for observing the asteroid (best seen from North America and the instructions even mention Kansas and Kansas City by name!). Look for it late in the day (near sunset).
I am still blessed with good eyesight, at least of the far-seeing variety. My ability to read without assistance ended about five years ago thanks to my aging lenses in my aging eyeballs. Growing up with the space race in the 60s and 70s gave me not so much the astronaut bug but the astronomy one. I remember the first moon landing in 1969 and the first space shuttle launch in 1981. I still have the National Geographic magazines that featured the stunning photographs of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Neptune and Uranus from the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM). My grandfather, Daniel, worked for NASA‘s Ames Research Center as a glass blower and some of his work now rests on Mars from either the Mariner or the Viking missions.
I received my first telescope in the mid 70s as a Christmas gift from my dad. It was a three inch refractor that allowed me to view the moon, the planets and even a solar eclipse (by use of a clip-on white metal plate to project the image of the sun onto and avoid any eye damage). My parents stored the telescope while I was at college and while I started my family. Eventually, they brought it down to our home in Benton, where it sat neglected for the most part thanks to raising kids and working full-time. Sometime during the 90s, or during the move back to Leavenworth County, the telescope was either damaged or lost or both.
Last year, as a birthday present, my father purchased a very nice Meade ETX-90 with several accessories and eyepieces, including an SLR digital camera (Pentax K100D – sans lenses). After a few months of fiddling and fine-tuning, I decided I could benefit from the wisdom of others and became a member of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City in the spring of this year. I tend to participate virtually and silently (for the most part) by following the group discussions and reading the monthly Cosmic Messenger newsletter I made it to two meetings this year and have not visited the Powell Observatory or tried the dark sky site, mostly because the cost of gasoline remained high and the weather for most of the summer did not cooperate by providing clear skies for optimal viewing opportunities.
Provided the world does not end next year, I plan to take a vacation involving astronomical observing and camping. We might attend something like the Texas Star Party or just spend a week near Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. I even thought of finding a camp site in the Flint Hills, because when we drove back north through them in early October, the skies were crystal clear and very dark,, with few trees to obstruct the horizon.
Astronomy Magazine – http://www.astronomy.com/
Sky and Telescope Magazine – http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
The Astronomical League – http://www.astroleague.org/
The International Dark Sky Association – http://www.darksky.org/
Hubble Space Telescope – http://hubblesite.org/
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day – http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html