Restless Have you ever heard a song and it just somehow resonates inside you somewhere? Not necessarily the lyrics or the melody, but some combination of both that just hits this chord right in your heart. For some reason that I don't understand, Restless by Alison Krauss and Union Station does that to me. I can just listen to it over and over and that feeling happens each time.

Maybe it is the idea of feeling restless and a little insecure about the life I lead. The only real thing in my life right now that I feel secure about is the strength of my marriage. All I hope is that he feels the same way, even if everything else seems so out of control. That song reminds me of all that, makes me feel good about one part of my life, then reminds me that the rest seems like chaos.  ¶ 4:10 PM 5 Comments

  Play the piano like you walk across the room. Yesterday in my piano lesson (Yes, I am taking piano lessons at the ripe young age of 27. Better late than never, right?) my instructor told me that I had trouble with my rhythm. Me? Trouble with rhythm? I always thought that I had pretty good rhythm seeing as how I grew up with music. I played cello as a young girl, flute and piccolo until I went to college, sang in various church choirs and played handbells. Well, apparently I have trouble when I try to play chords and melody and read the music all at the same time.

I figure that since I have only been taking the lessons for a little over two weeks, I am entitled to still suck a little bit. I was playing When the Saints go Marching In and having trouble switching from the C chord to the F and G7 while playing the melody with the other hand and having the whole thing flow well. Keep in mind that I had only played the piece a few times before the lesson and I hadn't worked out all the kinks yet. Also, the only reason I was playing it at all was because I had worked ahead in the book because I was bored with what I had been assigned. I made the mistake of mentioning that, and so she decided that I must be proficient since I had worked on it.

She told me that I needed to practice the song until I could play the piano like I walk across the room. I need to keep my rhythm. No more of this pausing to figure out the notes I am trying to play.

Sometimes I think life is a little bit like that for me. I keep pausing to figure out what the next thing is and the best way to get there. I miss out on the spontaneity and joy that I might find if I just would take things as they come, and keep on moving. If only I could play the piano like I walk across the room.  ¶ 10:05 PM 4 Comments

  Full Circle Here is my commentary on the different connectedness that ebbs and flows through life. There are so many people, places and experiences that happen to us over the years, and I am often amazed by the way they come back again when we aren't even looking.

In the song "Full Circle" by Storyhill (Chris Cunningham & John Hermanson) Chris talks about different events coming around full circle within themselves. Quite a good song if you ever hear the whole thing. Some of the people who might read this I know are familiar with Storyhill (Chris & Johnny as they were first known).

I first heard them play while I was a student at Wartburg College here in Waverly, Iowa. They (if I remember right) played in Players Theater and it was amazing even though I didn't know any of their songs yet. I went on to hear them many times over the years either at Wartburg or Luther, while I was still a student, until they broke up and stopped touring. Then I went to the Reunion Concert in the Twin Cities. After they got back together I have seen them in Cedar Rapids most recently, but I also have seen Chris alone in a little coffee house in Bozeman, Montana and Storyhill together at the Gallatin Gateway just outside of Bozeman. If you can't tell yet, I would say that I am a groupie and try to see them at often as I can (without, of course, spending too much money or effort at it).

I should also say that the reason I get to see them in Montana sometimes is because my parents decided that Bozeman was the place they wanted to be, and retired there. I get to go on vacation there once or twice a year if I am lucky. For those of you who don't know the background of Chris and John, they are natives of Montana and Chris is still living in Bozeman so they are playing concerts in that area fairly regularly.

All of that leads me into the story I was intending on telling here about coming full circle and connectedness. Just the fact that my parents moved into their hometown and Chris is still there is enough, but just the other day I found out that Chris and his wife moved about two blocks away from my parents house. My parents discovered this when they were at a garage sale down the street and thought that Chris looked familiar. Mom struck up a conversation by asking if his name was Chris, found out it was, and she proceeded to tell him all about how she is a big fan and they are from Iowa and her children introduced her to the music, etc...

It is like this one part of your life that was meaningful at one time, fades out of the forefront for a while, then when you aren't looking for it, there it is again.

The other full circle idea I was going to mention here is about the daughter of Martin, of the German restaurant, Martin's Brandenburg, here in Waverly, Iowa. Well, she married one of the brothers who made the video called "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." which I talked about in the first post in this blog called Time does fly.... My husband and I live about two blocks from Martin's Brandenburg. She and her husband now live in Heilbronn, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany. I am not sure exactly where Jessica is, but I know she is in Germany, and somehow that just ties it all together for me. Into this big circle of coincidences and connectedness.

There are tons of other things that could be said along the same line, but I think you get the idea I am going for. Look into your own experiences and see what you can find that come full circle in your life. You might be surprised.  ¶ 2:54 PM 3 Comments

  Politically Correct? Over the weekend I found myself in the middle of a conversation that I couldn't quite decide how to react to. The topic of the whole Michael Jackson crap o'palooza came up and part of the conversation went a little like this:

Person 1: Can you believe that they let MJ go and he can do whatever he wants now? (Except having sleep overs with little kids.)

Person 2: Yeah, it's a little surprising that he wasn't convicted of anything.

Person 1: I didn't realize he was a Negro! He looks like a white person! Did you see his sister? He looks just like her. He looks like a woman. Why would he wreck himself like that? I didn't know he was a Negro.

Person 2: He used to be a very good looking guy...

Of course, this is paraphrased a lot since I can't remember what was actually said, but that was the gist of it. I think that you can guess the part that startled me and made me cringe a bit. (If you can't guess, it was the use of the word Negro.)

I should say that Person 1 didn't really know who MJ was to begin with, so the confusion as to his race is somewhat understandable. Person 1 is also one of the very most lovable people I know, and the things said in this conversation in no way represent the way they feel about people in this world. In this case it is all a matter of word choice.

I didn't realize (or maybe I just like to forget) that there are people who haven't heard that it isn't really politically correct to say that these days. I think that sometimes people are set in their ways and don't really ever shift over to the whole PC way of the world, but it sure is surprising when you run head long into it. In no way am I an expert on what is or is not PC. I found an interesting commentary about the subject here.

I decided that there was no room for me to really react the way I wanted to, considering who we were talking to. It would have been different if we had been talking to strangers, though I am not sure what I would have said. Maybe just, "What does it matter? Who cares what race he is?" But I have to admit that MJ seems to care just a bit, and is trying awfully hard to become someone a bit different than he started out as (at least physically).

I suppose it is all a matter of perspective. I mean, we are all just people, are we not?  ¶ 5:55 PM 1 Comments

  "Speaking in Quotes"

There is something to be said about those people (who we all know... Charlie, Mark, etc....) who can hear something once and then commence endlessly quoting what they just heard and enjoying the experience again. I am not one of those people. I have the worst memory of anyone I know, I think. That is why Google and other resources like that are such wonderful things.

Therefore, I have used the "Google" and found a few quotes that I like, or that are following the theme this blog has taken, even though I didn't plan it that way. I won't put who said them right away (a game anyone?) and I am sure that some of the people who might read this will be able to guess them.

1. "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so." ~ "Ford", Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

(Joel is on the right track with HHGG. Now, who said it? and when? Greg is right, Ford said this to Arthur in the pub before the Vogons destroy the Earth. Arthur is complaining about not wanting to drink three pints before lunchtime. Welcome, Greg!)

2. "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." ~John Lennon, Beautiful Boy

(Charlie was the first to correctly answer that John Lennon said this, but he also informed me that he said it in "Beautiful Boy", which I didn't know. Mark and Jessica also answered correctly.)

3. "The only reason time is so that everything does not happen at once" ~Albert Einstein

(Mark correctly answered that this was said by the really smart guy, Albert Einstein.)

4. "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." ~John Lennon

(Yea! Charlie is right! Through process of elimination. Way to go everyone!)

Two of the quotes were said by the same person, one was written as fiction and one was said by a really smart guy.

Good luck! I will (to copy what Charlie did) post the answers as people guess. It will not be as fun as Charlie's games, but I can only be who I am, even if that means not being as cool as my friends.

I also found this last quote, which I thought was very poignant and I should take the idea to heart a bit more, but since it was an unknown person who said it, I didn't think it was fair to have in the game.

"Who plants trees although he knows he'll never sit in their shadows has at least begun to recognize the sense of life." ~ Anonymous

  ¶ 4:17 PM 6 Comments

  Those Were the Days

Here are some things that I look back on and wonder about:

• Remember back in college when staying up practically all night, most nights was normal and didn't almost kill you? I have to say that I am still a night owl, always was, and will probably always be that way to some degree, but I now have trouble staying up past 1 AM. And then if I had stayed up that late, I have to sleep until about 8 AM to have a good day the next day.

• What about those people who you once were (you thought) great friends with, and were never going to lose touch with? I can't even count the number of people that I have not kept up with over the years. Do you ever find yourself sitting there and all of a sudden something reminds you of an old friend and you just wonder where they are now and what they are doing. You know you should just try to look them up and drop them a line, that they would surely like to hear from you, but you just can't bring yourself to do anything. For me, it is the problem of thinking that I don't have much to show for the time that has past, and not wanting them to think what a loser I am.

• What ever happened to Saturday morning cartoons? I remember getting up at the crack of dawn to be down in front of the TV even before the first show started. I didn't want to miss Muppet Babies or even Garfield & Friends. These days there is nothing more than info-mercials and things like that on Saturday mornings on network TV. I know, because I check every once in a while, just hoping that I might find a little of that comforting feeling of my childhood once more. I am sure that the change has come from all the new networks like Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel where there are cartoons on most of the time. But what about all the kids who don't have cable TV? What do they get? Nothing! How fair is that?

My brain seems to have shut off for now. I think it might be from the trauma of remembering those good old days of the morning cartoons that were so much a part of my childhood and how no one will ever have that again. Those were, most definitely, the days...

  ¶ 1:19 PM 2 Comments

  Time does fly... Like the top of my blog says:

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." ~Groucho Marx

This was also the name of a student film made by the children of friends of my family. I saw the film when I was, maybe, 12 years old and I had no idea that kids who were only in high school could ever make something so cool. I saw the film a number of times over the years, but I have no idea what became of it now. I might have it in some box somewhere that was never unpacked when we moved, or I may have returned it to my parents who might have it in some box that they didn't unpack after they moved. Either way, it doesn't matter much.

The film was done for some class or other, by two brothers with a very interesting father who is endlessly exploring science fiction, strange music and anything new in the world of computers and electronics. I am sure that some of this interest in nerdy things has rubbed off on the boys over the years as evidenced in the film they produced such a long time ago.

I don't have a clue what the assignment was for this film, but it might have been just to create a film and learn editing and animation or something like that. They used technology that I didn't know existed for the average home filmmaker. I was utterly amazed by what they created. I thought that it was SO creative and I just wished with all my 12 year old heart that I could ever in my life be as cool as they were. I, of course, have never measured up but I was raised by a father who is pretty much as interesting as these boys father, if a little bit less eccentric. Ergo, I have a well developed interest in science fiction and anything electronic.

Back to the film. I am not sure that I would be able to summarize the story line anymore ( just don't have a memory for things like that), but I remember that they used a computer as a time machine and moved around history with it. They went back to the time of dinosaurs and used clay animation to depict a scene of two dinosaurs fighting to the death. This culminated in the end of the dinosaurs which, to my great surprise, was brought about by a giant foot smashing them all.

The film moved on to ancient Rome and Socrates mistakenly being killed with a glass of hemloc, I think. See, I have no memory for story lines. Anyways, the connecting idea through the film was that each of these things in history was ended in some unexpected way that history has overlooked. They finished the film with credits typed on the screen of a (very high tech at the time) computer with the Beatles song "Across the Universe" which I am listening to right now in an attempt to bring back a small measure of that youthful and hopeful outlook on life that I seem to now lack.

Looking back on this student film that was made so long ago and was really only cool back then, I realize how long ago it was for me, and how different my life is now. I didn't have a clue where I would end up, or how I would get there. It was a much more innocent time with only positive expectations in life. What ever happened to that? Where did the feeling of unlimited time go? I worry now that I will turn around some day and my life will have past, and what will I have done?

I see now that time really does fly like an arrow, and fruit must, then, fly like a banana.  ¶ 10:53 AM 7 Comments