Category Archives: singing

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Does the world have a soul? Are we connected to it? If we don’t believe the world has a soul, are we disconnected?Β 

Michael Meade’s latest book is Awakening the Soul: A Deep Response to a Troubled World. He is a mythologist, author and runs Mosaic, a program for veterans. He is a storyteller, usually with a drum. He did the sermon… story… at church Sunday. I wrote this thinking about the soul of the world.

why I’m difficult

deep connection
the soul deep
ocean deep
rift and trench

Beloved
forgive my greed
that is the connection
I want

deep soul connection
to the soul of the world

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https://www.mosaicvoices.org/
https://www.quuf.org/
The story itself: https://www.quuf.org/services/awakening-the-light/

music by Purcell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67q18Z4QZlU

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sing

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sing.

Sing! This photo if from my birthday, some years ago. My father is the seated guitar player. He is gone and so is Andy Makie, standing.

Andy brought music to everyone he could in his last decade. Here is an article: Why music? He talks about it here and another version here. My daughter was in a classroom that received a box of his strumsticks and lessons in second grade and for a while he lived in a trailer on my father’s land and built the strumsticks in my father’s barn.

My father, Malcolm Ottaway, loved both classical and folk music. He was one of the people who started Rainshadow Chorale and I got to sing with him in it for 13 years.

This party was like my parents’ parties: a music party. Bring an instrument. Our age range was under 2 to 70s and everyone made joyful noise at some point. My son led the high school Chamber Orchestra to play too.

  • Port Townsend High School Chamber Orchestra


Townsends
players
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winter morning

I love the orange sky and peach and lemon and tangerine, just as the sun rises! This has been a difficult week with the time change and with a concert or concert rehearsal four out of the last 5 evenings after a full day of clinic. Concert today and tomorrow, and I love the pieces we are doing. Here: Rainshadow Chorale.

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Chime in!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: chime!

Chime in! Raise your voice! Vote! If you are not a US citizen, ask a friend who is a US citizen: have you voted? Do you need a ride? Do you need encouragement? Please chime in! Vote!

Raise your voice!

One person, one vote.

Let there be peace.

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sing

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: dead.

I took this in church two weeks ago. What does this have to do with death? I am thinking of one of the rounds we learned to sing when I was small:

all things shall perish from under the sky
music alone shall live
music alone shall live
music alone shall live
never to die

We sing for birth and death and loss and joy and work and to comfort each other and for harmony. May all the world dissolve in music.

 

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all sounds become music

I am in RainShadow Chorale. My father was one of the people who started it in 1997.Β  I moved to Port Townsend in 2000, because my mother had cancer. She died in May of 2000. My father died in 2013. I had the joy of singing with him in this group for 13 years.

Our concert is weekend after next and I really love this one. We are doing a wild mix of pieces and moods with the theme from a Walt Whitman poem. In this time of so many people being afraid and angry and stirred up, going to chorus is healing. All of these people, unpaid, coming together to create these two concerts of beauty and unity and joy. A gift to each other and a gift to the community.

Ticket information on the website.

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Ms Boa signifies

Ms. Boa looks the way I have felt this week. And hearing that Aretha Franklin died, I think this expresses my mood.

This is for the Ragtag Daily Prompt: respect. Respect for loss, grief, and cat knowledge too.

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Princess Mittens, the cat on the left, is gone. One day she was in the living room, sitting under the vent and staring up at it. I finally paid attention and realized why.

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There was a bat in the vent. I could see claws. Ms. Boa became very interested too.

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We did get the bat out, by opening the windows upstairs and the vent. Keeping the cats downstairs.

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Ms. Boa was sad when our other cat was killed by a car.

Thank you so much for the music, Aretha Franklin.