When I was 8 years old, my babysitter (Arnie) took me to go see the "Sgt. Pepper" movie - the one with Peter Frampton and the Bee-Gee's. I was, of course, fascinated by the colors and the story, but I still had no idea who or what the Beatles were.
A week or so after seeing the movie, my mom & I were shopping at K-Mart and I was browsing through the LP bins when I came across an album: "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Thinking it was the movie soundtrack, I asked mom if I could get it. She said, "It's not what you think." I said, "Yes, it is!" Knowing how stubborn I can be (about as stubborn as her!), and not wanting to cause a public incident, she relented & bought the LP for me. When we got home, I immediately ran to my room & put it on my little plastic record player.
That's when I discovered that Mom was right; it wasn't what I thought it was. IT WAS BETTER!! OMG, *so much* better!
That day opened my eyes to the Beatles: who they were and what they had accomplished in the world of pop music. Over the next few years, I collected all their US albums, and even had a few imports (including a Japanese version of the White Album - it's yellow, for some reason). I had posters and toys and everything Beatles I could lay my hands on.
Remember that this was the late-70s and early-80s, so my musical tastes were by no means mainstream. My peers thought it was decidedly odd that I would listen to such "old" music. That didn't dissuade me, though.
Today a Facebook friend of mine posted this: The Story of the Beatles in Two Minutes. It is simply beautiful. Gorgeous animation.
And it reminds me once again why I love the Beatles so much. They were the best.
Hands down.
.
Friday, July 10, 2009
I love the Beatles
Thursday, July 9, 2009
End of Day 14: BP Tour
This morning, Kevin & I had breakfast at Lynn & Vic's house - they really were wonderfully gracious hosts (*especially* at such short notice!) & I'm so glad we were able to get to know them a little bit.
We were ahead of schedule, so we drove up the mountain & back down the other side to Incline Village, NV, where we spent an hour toodling around Sand Harbor beach, wading in the (brisk!) water, watching the birds, climbing on the rocks, & walking an interpretive trail. It was beautiful & amazingly relaxing. Ahhhh. :-)
After our time at the beach, we drove the 2 hours to Grass Valley to have lunch with Kevin's aunt & uncle & their daughter. They had our "Sampler" CD playing when we got there, and put on "Chimera" after that (my gift to them in appreciation for lunch). They chatted about family things while I ate my yummy lunch & then they asked me about musical things until it was time for Kevin's cousin to get back to work & time for us to hit the road again.
UPDATE, July 9, 10:20pm: This is another "what the...?" moment. I typed up this post on my phone clicked "send". The phone complained that it could not send the email, yet the text you see above did get sent & posted to the blog. The rest of it - and the picture above - did you go & won't go. I will have to delete & re-create the email account on the phone yet again to get it to work again. Brian suggests that I look for a firmware update for my phone to see if that helps with the weird problems I'm having, so I will do that tomorrow. In the meantime, I have uploaded the picture for this post as well as the rest of the text, as follows:
We stopped a few more times at a couple of scenic overlooks, but for the most part just headed home, listening to our audiobook the whole way. In fact, when we got to my place, we still had 30 mins to listen to before the end of the book, so after we unloaded all of my stuff from the van, Kevin came in & we finished listening to it. Poor Brian! He missed the first 10 hours of the book & only got to hear the ending!
Anyway, Kevin went home, then Brian & I had some dinner, and now it's time for me to go to bed. I still have this cough - now accompanied by a runny nose, ugh - so I have taken Sudafed & Nyquil & am pretty sleepy.
It was a great tour & a part of me is sad to see it end - though of course I am happy to be home! I met so many warm & welcoming people & got to see so many people smile as we played our music for them. It was totally worth all the time and effort to do this tour. It will always be one of my favorite memories. :-)
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
End of Day 13: BP Tour
We left Burley at about 8:30 this morning, stopped at Twin Falls to look at the canyon (including Evel Knievel's launch ramp), then just kept going south. As I said in a previous post, we have been listening to an audiobook while driving & it really does make the time go faster!
About 3:00 this afternoon, be were at the Humboldt River rest area just a mile or two north of Winnemucca. It was obvious we were gonna get a lot farther than I expected us to get today, so I thought, "who do we know in Reno well enough we could ask to sleep at their place tonight?" I immediately thought of Barb Walsh, director of the Bel Canto handbell ensemble. Trouble was, I didn't have her phone number.
So, I called Tess Houston, a fellow Sonosia who used to live in the Reno area & who knows Barb really well & got Barb's number. Barb couldn't put us up, but gave me the number of Lynn, who was happy to help us. In fact, she & her husband Vic insisted on making dinner for us, too!
We arrived at about 6:30 or so, chatted for a bit while Vic grilled the steaks, then after dinner, Kevin got his harp out & played some songs for them (That's the pic on the previous post.)
Now it's time for bed. I'm still coughing - took a lot of Dayquil today & just took some Nyquil now for bed - & am exhausted.
I know I keep saying that, but it's true! I am *wiped out*! Think it's because my responsibilities for this tour are over and school's over, so I can finally collapse.
Tomorrow, we plan to leave at about 8:30 and do some sightseeing in the Tahoe area. We are scheduled to have lunch with Kevin's cousins in Grass Valley, then head home.
For now, good night!
UPDATE, July 9, 2009: The guitars in the picture above belong to Vic!
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
Singing for our Supper
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
@ Beowawe
We stopped back in Elko & bought some more blank CDs, and now Kevin is burning some more here @ the southbound Beowawe Rest Area.
We're already in the middle of CD # 3 (of 9) and are afraid we'll run out soon, so burn more we must.
BTW, you may remember Beowawe Rest Area from back on Day 2. The northbound rest area is where we found the E Clampus Vitus plaque. Well, there's one here, too, but with a different story & a different date. I'll post that pic to Flickr when I do my big upload of trip pics.
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
End of Day 12: BP Tour
Kevin & his parents got up early to take Carol to the Twin Falls airport - she had to be there by 8:30am. Thankfully, they et me sleep in. I got out of bed at 9:30 & had showered & eaten breakfast by the time they got back at 10:15.
Then it was odd to the mountain!
They took me up to Mount Harrison, which is over 9000 ft high! I think that's the highest I've ever been without being in an airplane! LOL! The view from up there was just spectacular, like I was standing on top of the world.
You can read more about Mount Harrison here (sorry, can't do html via the phone, mutter):
http://www.summitpost.org/mountain/rock/153871/mount-harrison.html
- or -
On the way down the mountain we stopped at Lake Cleveland, a beautiful clear alpine lake.
Of course I have pics of all this & will post a link to Flickr as I get them uploaded. Kevin's gonna give me all of his pics, too. He doesn't do Flickr, so I'll post them to my account.
After that, we stopped for lunch at the Sage Mountain Grill in Albion, then came back to the house for a few minutes before heading out again.
This time, we went out to see the wagon tracks from when the covered wagons followed the Oregon Trail. While there, we also saw a flock of beautiful white pelicans and a lovely meadowlark. It's really amazing how pronounced the wagon ruts still are, after more than 100 years of vegetation growth & human development. We got some good pics of the ruts, too.
After the ruts, we came back to the house & Kevin & I both crashed, napping for about 1.5 hours.
Dinner tonight was at The Upper Crust Bakery & Grill restaurant.
Now we're back at the house & I'm going to bed. I'm sunburnt & have developed a bit of a cough, so I hope I'm not getting sick!
Tomorrow's plan is to hit the road at about 8:30 & see how far we get. I'm thinking Winnemucca, but Kevin is thinking Lovelock or even Fernley. We're planning to have lunch with his cousins in Grass Valley on Thursday.
Oh yeah, about my phone: today my phone stopped sending emails twice & I had to delete & re-create my setup to make it work again. It's definitely the phone & not my mail host since I can send from my laptop or via my browser at mail2web.com with no problem. Annoying!! I need to visit the AT&T store when I get home anyway for some other (unrelated, I think!) issues, so I'll ask them about it then. I *think* I've noticed a pattern: if I create an outgoing message and try to send it, but lose the connection before it goes, then something gets fubar'd & it refuses to send that message or any others ever again, the only solution being to delete & re-create the account. It makes no sense, but that's the behavior I've noticed. Before going to the store, I'll look up the issue online to see if there's a simple fix I can do myself.
Anyway, that's it; time for bed. Good night!
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
Out to dinner
-Michèle (sent via mobile phone)
Monday, July 6, 2009
End of Day 11: BP Tour
Anyway, my TomTom navigation device (with the voice of John Cleese - really!) recommended a route back to Burley that was different from either of the 2 that Kevin & Carol have ever taken before. We took Hwy 20 over the mountains and enjoyed the beautiful mountain flowers, trees, and rockslides. ;-)
We stopped for square ice cream - that's where we met the motorcycle guy - and then also stopped at a few more rest areas along the way, including one which promised Oregon Trail wagon tracks if we walked down a "marked trail". Well, it wasn't very *well* marked because we took a wrong turn and ended up in the Massacre Rock State Park, a back entrance, I guess. We finally figured out that the tracks were way on the other side of the highway, but it was really hot & a long way to walk (especially after walking so far out of the way already!), that we gave up & went back to the car. Kevin's dad later told us that we didn't miss much; there are better tracks here in Burley that we'll see tomorrow.
We made it to Burley at about 2:30, unloaded the luggage & the harps, then napped for about an hour before heading over to the Methodist church to set up for our concert. Karen, the pastor there, was so kind & welcoming & gracious to us; she really made it a pleasant experience for us.
We had about 51 people in the audience, which is not bad for a small town on a Monday night. Apparently, the Prebyterians had been spreading the word about our concert all week! Many of them came tonight & brought friends, too.
Kevin's best friend from high school happened to be in town visiting his folks & so he & his family came to the concert, then back to the house for ice cream afterwards.
I'm completely exhausted now. Everybody else has to get up early tomorrow to take Carol to the airport in Twin Falls. She's flying to LA to visit her parents for a day before flying with her mom to Cleveland to her sister's house, from which they will all drive down to Louisville, Kentucky, for a Presbyterian Women's conference.
(Side note from the Small World Department: Carol's sister works at Lakeland Community College, from which I graduated in 1996 with an AAB in Computer Programming.)
I'll be sleeping in tomorrow morning, but will be up & about by the time they all get back (about 9:30 or so).
I'm utterly exhausted and need to sleep, so I will just say good night now.
Good night! ;-)
-Michèle (sent via my mobile phone)
Concert in Burley, ID
They have this beautiful stained glass window in their Sanctuary. Isn't it nice?
If you're in the area, please stop by!
-Michèle (sent via my mobile phone)
From Prudhoe Bay to New York
His wife flew to Salt Lake City, rented a Mustang convertible, & is now following him for a month. She'll fly home from Denver, then he'll proceed to New York.
He's got a helmet cam, so I really wish I had gotten his name so I could google him & follow his adventures.
What a great experience he's going to have!!
-Michèle (sent via my mobile phone)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
End of Day 10: BP Tour
I don't know WHAT is wrong with my phone's email. It was working fine until I tried to post my nightly blog entry last night & suddenly it couldn't send any email. It receives just fine, but can't send. This same thing happened when we crossed over from the Pacific to the Mountain time zones; I had to delete my mail account from my phone & start over from scratch. If I have to do the same thing again, I can, but it's frustrating because it just stopped working suddenly, after several days of working the way it was supposed to. Grrr! [/rant]
Anyway, I'm typing in this post via my laptop.
This morning, we all got up & loaded the car, then headed downstairs for breakfast. We ate & said our goodbyes to people we'd met during the Festival. Then, we headed south toward Yellowstone. We went in via the town of West Yellowstone and stopped at just about every geyser or other thermal thing we could.
This is because the last time I was in the park was 2006. Brian & I decided at the last minute to drive through the park on our way home from Saskatchewan, so we didn't have much time & didn't stop to see anything except Old Faithful.
Because I had already seen OF, we didn't stop to see it today. But I got lots of cool pics from the paint pots & other geysers & thermal things we saw today!
Here's a 10-second video of a fumerole we saw at the Paint Pots in Yellowstone. It sure was noisy!!
We also saw elk, bison, bald eagles, and numerous other small critters.
We exited Yellowstone and entered Grand Teton park. OMG, those mountains are so gorgeous! I have lots of pics of them, too, which I will upload to Flickr when I have more than 2 minutes of free time (which realistically means: some time next week, *maybe*).
We exited Grand Teton at Jackson Hole & found our hotel room, then had dinner at Sidewinders, a sports bar with 38 television sets and 28 draft beers. Now, we're back in our hotel room & getting ready for bed.
Tomorrow, we have to leave early so that we can get to Burley, ID, at a reasonable time. We have a 6:30 concert tomorrow night! :-)
.
End of Day 9: BP Tour
I tried to post this last night via my phone - as I've been doing every night since we left California - but for some unknown reason, my phone refuses to send any email (although it receives just fine). So, this morning, I connected the phone to my laptop then copied & pasted it here. Sorry for the delay!
Wow, what a day!
First, the weather: not only did it rain buckets & buckets today, but it also hailed & even *snowed* a little!! Mix that in with some thunder & lightning & it was all very exciting.
Kevin taught a 9:30 workshop, "Recoeding perspectives from both sides of the microphone" & I was his lovely assistant. ;-) The class was pretty well-attended with about 8 people there.
After lunch, I had a massage at the resort's spa. Mmmm, it was heavenly! My therapist, Lindsay, was a small person, but very strong! She's the kind of MT who gets up on the table with you so she could really dig her elbows in. I scheduled a 1.5 hour session so she could spend adequate time on my shoulder & arm & then still have time to deal with the rest of my back. Because my left side has had to compensate for my right for the past 3 months, it was pretty sore. Lindsay was great, though, & I feel 1000% better!!
After my massage, I had a 30 minute reflexology session on both hands & feet, which was also awesome. Neil has such a pleasant chair-side manner & I came away feeling great!
After dinner was Deborah's concert. Wow, wow, WOW! She is so incredible! Because the show was for a harp audience, it ended up being really interactive, with sing-alongs & lots of laughter. At the end, she invited all the week's performerd up for photos & then we all marched around the room singing a song (the name of which I can't remember right now). She said to us after, "Thanks for being in my parade!"
After her concert was the ceilidh, in which I played in the "Prelude for Peace" ensemble, plus I played solo. I began by putting on my Thespian Voice - it was a big dining hall with the A/C going. I told the story of the young Japanese man who proposed to me in Tokyo, as well as the Dunblane clotted cream story before I played Christine's 6iH solo "Noel Nouvelet". Fun!
Kevin & I stayed to the end of the ceilidh, which was after midnight, which means it's time for me to hit the hay.
Good night!
.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Oops - here's the pic!
-Michèle (sent from my mobile phone)
End of Day 8: BP Tour
Kevin & I taught our "Try Your Hand at Bells" workshop at the 9:30 session this morning. We usually have 20 or more people, so I made up booklets of chime-along music (10 songs, each progressively harder) & brought two 2-octave sets of chimes along with us. (There are actually 2 more cases of chimes back @ Kevin's parents' house in Burley!)
This year, however, conference attendance is pretty low - there are less than 100 people here & there's usually closer to 300. So, we started out with 2 people in the class (plus me), then another person joined partway along.
UPDATE, Saturday, July 4, 2009: What the..?? Is there a character limit as to how much I can post via email? I didn't think there was. My phone shows that my entire long post got sent, so why didn't it post here?? *sigh*
Anyway, as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story:
This actually turned out to be a good thing because we got a lot farther along than we could have if we'd had a room full of people!
We started out with each of us having one bell, which we played according to my "V=Play, X=Damp" indications on the chime-along lead sheets. Because there were only 3 of us, we had just a single G major chord, which was the tonic chord. As Kevin played the song ("She Moved Through the Fair") we only played ocassionally & I actually found that to be remarkably soothing!
We did another piece the same way, then for the 3rd, we got a little fancy. Since these guys know their chords, we each took 2 bells & stopped reading the "V/X" markings & read the chord symbols to play at thr right times. We also started singing along as we played. We did 2 pieces like that, then got even fancier!
We started playing the melody lines while we sang (& Kevin supported us on harp). Again we did 2 pieceslike this, the 2nd of which was "Greensleeves" which has some accidentals, so we had to switch out bells as we went along. They did really well!!
At that point, Kevin mentioned that we play an arrangement of "Greensleeves", so they asked to see us play it. Well, Kevin didn't bring his cross-strung harp, so he couldn't play along, but I could do it alone. I put two foam pads on the floor, kneeled down & played it. They were fascinated!
Then, I decided to teach them how to weave with 4 bells. I kneeled on one side of the foam with 4 bells & (one @ a time) they kneeled facing me with 4 bells of their own & mirrored my actions. They caught on really quickly! It was really fun to get that far with people who had never ever played bells before!
Who knows? Maybe if we'd had a little more time, we could havedone 4iH!!
After lunch, there was a special session called "Deborah Henson-Conant Tells You Everything She Knows!" in which Deborah answered questions from the audience. She had some really great things to say & once I get the notes we took from Carol, I'll share them here. She's such an amazing performer & an amazing person & has been an inspiration to me since I first saw here DVD back in 2005. The pic with this post is me with Deborah after the session. I'm such a fangirl! :-)
After lunch Deborah's session, Kevin & I taught another class about harp & handbells, where to find music, and/or how to create it yourself. Again a very small class, but that made it very personalized. At the end, instead of them helping us make a new arrangement, we played our new version of "Slane (Be Thou My Vision)" for them. Before playing it, we talked about how we created it & how at one point, I had music that said "harp stuff" where Kevin was supposed to play & he had music that said "bell stuff" where I was supposed to play! LOL!
After dinner, there was a concert. John Metras started out, playing old standards on cross-strung harp, sometimes adding a melodica, which sounds like an accordian & is a small (one or two octave) keyboard with a hose that you blow into to activate the reeds. It was pretty cool.
After John, the show was stolen by Joy Yu Hoffman, who played a double-strung Chinese pedal harp. I think we all expected her to play traditional Chinese music, but she blew us away by opening with Gershwin's "Summertime" from "Porgy & Bess", then following that up with "Take Five" and closing with a few Irish tunes!
What was really cool was that the harp always sounded Chinese, even when playing this Western music. The 2 rows of stings are actually connected to each other - that is, a sting starts as the top of the right side, goes down into the resonating chamber, then back up the left side. Both sides are the same pitch. This means that she could bend the notes by pressing on the string on the other side from where she was playing, like an Asian zither player would. This worked remarkably well for the jazz pieces!
This string set up also results in the 2 sides not being exactly "in tune" with each other - at least not to Western ears - which gave everything a distinctively Asian sound. It was simply amazing & blew me away. If I didn't already have my hands full with handbells, I would love to learn to play this instrument myself!!
After Joy was Sunita Staneslow, from Israel. She played some very relaxing Jewish & Celtic music - sometimes combined!
Last on the program was Kim Robertson, one of my favorites. I've seen her @ both the Somerset West (2005 in CA) and regular Somerset (2007 in NJ) festivals. She was great, as usual.
After the concert, I went to a rehearsal of a new piece for SAB choir, violin, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, harp, -- and handbells! We'll be playing this for tomorrow night's after-hours event, the ceilidh - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Céilidh
I also signed up to play a 6iH solo - "Noel Nouvelet" from Christine Anderson's "Carols for All Seasons". I think I might be joined by a harpist for it, just for fun, but I'm not sure. Whatever happens, it should be fun!
OK, time for bed! More tomorrow. :-)
-Michèle (sent from my mobile phone)
Still a Small World
I say,"introduced", but what really happened was that the sister turned to look @ my nametag & exclaimed, "Michele! I'm M.A. Bellingham!"
Turns out we've known each other for *years* via the Handbell-L mailing list! This was the first time we've met in person.
LOL!
-Michèle (sent from my mobile phone)
Handbell-Cam
