Category Archives: singing

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Fair joy

I had Jefferson County Fair duty as part of the Port Townsend Sunrise Rotary, 2 hours yesterday morning and three at the Yellow Gate in the afternoon. I got to do the gate while it rained cats and dogs and that fairgate roof leaks like a sieve! It was a cold wet wood box with a door and two window holes wide open. I was dressed warmly enough barely.

But… back to the morning! Saturday started with a band parade!

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I have lived in Port Townsend since 2000 and I am a musician, so I know at least half the people in this parade. If the masks were off, I might know more.

This is one of those very local parades that you can be in if you want to, whether you have a costume or not. And here is the incomparable Joey Pipia, our magician and improv teacher, with a young horse….

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The fair is still going on, head on down today to enjoy!

I asked our Rotary Membership director the other day, how many of the adults in our town and county are in one or more local groups that help others: Rotary, Kiwanis, Elks, American Association of University Women, the PTA groups, church groups, the Veterans Association, the shelter, the Band Boosters…. the list goes on and on and hooray for all of those people and a big thanks to them! The people who run the fair and who run the Rhody Parade! All of the many volunteers we have and donors.

 

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community health

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt #69: community.

The photograph is from 2010, when the mad as hell doctors toured California to talk about single payer health care, medicare for all.

Small communities rolled out the welcome:

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In this community, every table was sponsored by local health groups: clinic, the health department, mental health, addiction treatment. In small communities everyone knows someone who has lost their health, their health insurance and/or their job and home.

Here we are setting up for another program:

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People asked questions:

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And they listened and responded:

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The health care industry has money. The insurance companies are for profit and make enormous profits. But in the end you and I have VOTES. When we stand up as a nation and say that we want medicare for all, Congress will listen. Stand up.

The mandate for health care already is a law: no one can be turned away from an emergency room. But as things stand, we do not take care that the person in the emergency room has care after the emergency room. The hospital may take the person’s house. We already have the government doing no profit care for over 50% of the care in the US: Medicare, Medicaid, active duty military and the Veterans Association. It is time to shut down the for profit insurance companies that refuse medicines, refuse care, refuse to answer their phones, tell me on the phone “we don’t have a fax”, the parent company tells me a medicine is covered and then the part D drug coverage still refuses: it is BEYOND TIME TO SHUT THEM DOWN.

Is the goal of health care profit? Or is it care for our citizens, support for families, works like the police and the fire station: we all support each other. Stand up, shout and VOTE.

 

 

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Mundane Monday #168: bee heaven

For today’s Mundane Monday, pick your theme: heavens or bees or both! This plant hums with bees when it is in bloom. The bees love it so much and I think that it must love being swarmed with humming bees. Think of loving and being loved so much.

Message your link and I will list all the entries next week.

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The theme for Mundane Monday #167 was water’s edge.

Contributors include:

CuriousSteph https://curioussteph.com/2018/07/02/mundane-monday-waters-ed

 

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appropriation

From the Centrum Voiceworks conference, Reverend Robert B Jones, Sr’s hands and guitar. Previous post about him here.

He was teaching blues history class in the morning and gospel in the afternoon, linked. One person asks about cultural appropriation. The Reverend says that he thinks songs and history are important. He asked if there are songs that he should not sing because they are “white” songs. He says there ARE songs that he WON’T sing because they are racist or sexist. But that if a white person does not sing a song because it’s “black”, he doesn’t think that makes any sense. And he traces history in his classes of how musicians of many races and genders influenced each other and continue to influence each other.

He and other instructors talk about musical skills and guitar and acoustic instrument skills and singing styles that are being forgotten and lost. We are blessed with recordings and he gave us a four page list of people to listen to…. I knew some, Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson, and others I’ve heard of and others I don’t know at all. Homework for the next year!

Blessings on this day for you and everyone, all the world.

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Music to heal by

Centrum Voiceworks last week. I did not get a wonderful photograph of the Reverend Robert B. Jones, Sr. He was moving and I did not want to use a flash! He did two classes a day, an am blues class and an afternoon gospel class. They wove together. He talked about how the pentatonic scale came with enslaved Africans and met the European music and produced spirituals, praise songs, the blues and gospel. He also spoke about how the early blues musicians were playing acoustic guitar in noisy places, so the guitar was rhythm, harmony and bass, all at once. He traced how the changes in circumstances is reflected in the changes in music in the United States and how musicians of all races and creeds influence each other. He talks about the history of music as healing.

I didn’t get a great photograph of him, but here is another student:

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And here is the teacher, engaged:

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Thank you, Reverend, for your amazing classes, singing, guitar playing and the final blues jam after the concert on Friday night!