Star Trek: TOS

I was in high school when Star Trek originally aired in prime time. But despite my deep love of science fiction I did not see a single episode during its original airing. We did not have a television in our home until the fall of 1968, and when we did get one, my parents strictly limited evening television viewing. My father was absolute dictator of what was watched when he was at home, and he did not like science fiction.

In the summer of 1970 between my freshman and sophomore years of college one of my brothers - I cannot remember whether it was Frank or Charlie - spent their own money on a tiny black and white TV. We would hole up in my brothers' room while my parents watched Walter Cronkite to view the Star Trek stripped five nights a week. We were enthralled.  We discussed each episode in depth. By the beginning of my college junior year I had seen every episode, many multiple times.

During my junior year, I was a "floor counselor" or what most colleges today call an RA or resident adviser. One of my tasks was to lock the dorm at mid-night two to three nights a week. Part of my routine was to come down to the dormitory small TV lounge and watch Star Trek with a small cadre of devoted fans. We would discuss and debate the merits of each episode. 

Wherever I was for the next decade and a half I watched Star Trek  whenever I could find it. But after that ST: The Next Generation, then Deep Space Nine, then Voyager, and Enterprise took over my attention, most of which I shared with my husband John. A couple of months ago, my husband and I discovered that Netflix streaming provided access to all the Star Trek series.  We began watching TOS together, a few episode a week (and during the holidays sometimes a couple a day).  Not surprisingly, Star Trek still has the ability to enchant and entertain and even to make one pause and think. We may have far surpassed the technical effects of those years, but good story telling is still good story telling. 

One interesting note: back then, in 1967-1969 a television season required 30 shows. Thirty hour long scripted, directed, acted hour long shows. Today a "season" may have as few as 10 to 15 shows. That is important to remember when you hear someone say that Star Trek TOS had "only" three seasons on the air. Those three seasons had nearly 90 shows! Compare that to a series like LOST (which my husband and I also loved) which stretched out  fewer episodes over five years. 

getting older

I am ridiculously pleased with myself about turning sixty this weekend, which is really absurd.

It's not as if the sheer fact of surviving 60 years is any kind of accomplishment in America today. Millions of us 1951 Baby Boomers are marking the big six-oh milestone. Literally hundreds of my personal acquaintances and friends from high school, college and graduate school are marking the same birthday this year. I have one friend here in Whitesburg, our former campus director Eugene, who had his sixtieth birthday last week.

So I can't quite figure out why I feel so smug and accomplished about this particular birthday.

Course, it was nice this morning, when I mentioned that I was turning 60 this weekend -- one of my traditional age students said "no way, I pegged your for not a day over 40." Now that's an ego boost to an old broad like me.

brief praise of television

We disconnected our television to move it to the new house on New Years Eve. In the intervening days we have watched three movies on DVD, rewatched the final season of LOST, and I've watched the first and the last seasons of Dawson's Creek (boycotted by my sensible husband). So it's not been as if we were totally without televised entertainment.

But we have severely missed the ability to just flip a switch and see news(or at least what passes as news on 24 hour cable channels), to get our evening Jeopardy! fix, to see the latest installments of favorite sitcoms like "How I met your mother" and "Big Bang Theory."

We found that we really, really missed television. And while we recognize that there is such a thing as too much. We are glad that we once again -- thanks to the cable guy arriving to hook us back up today -- have the option to connect back into the world of television.

life lessons from computer solitaire

This morning, as I often do while waiting for all my programs to load first thing in the morning, I play some games of solitaire, rather than just sit there and stare at the screen. Suddenly I was struck by the idea that there were important life lessons to be learned from computer solitaire.

• Some days you lose more than you win, but you can always start over and the next game may be a winner.
• When you reach a dead end, its best to stop fruitlessly trying the same thing over and over, and start afresh.
• Sometimes the end isn't the end -- you just have to be willing to give up some of what you've already gained, take a few steps backward and head in a different direction.  You'll lose points that way, but you will accomplish your goal. 

It occurs to me that the last one applies to the current political scene.  Principles are important, and we shouldn't give up on them. As much as it goes against principle, maybe it is the right thing to make concessions in one area (temporary extension of tax cuts for the rich) and lose some points, in order to advance a larger agenda - tax cuts for the middle and working classes.

Of course one more important lesson from solitaire is:

• Sometimes, when you've taken some steps backward, and tried a new direction, you still end up losing. Then its time to dust oneself off and start anew.

desk denizens

Kittens Tippy, Tyler, Sammie and Eli have discovered my desk and that pens make great play things.


Oops! Sammie and Tippy have lost their pen! Where'd it go?

cafe Tabitha

At five and a half weeks, everyone is eating solid food, but still wants to have an afternoon "mom" snack. The line up is Ty, Eli, Sammi, and Tippy looking at the camera. Tippy is the best "bowl" eater so is least interested in chowing down on mom, but still likes to cuddle up for company.

tiny drunken sailors

The kittens at four weeks old remind me of nothing less than a mob of tiny drunken sailors running and flopping around. They move amazingly fast despite their wobbliness.

Although we still don't know genders, I've gone ahead and given names that could apply regardless of gender.

Photo to the right is Tippecanoe (Tippy), Elie (with the tongue out), and Sammie walking away.




Photo on the left is Tyler Two (Ty) -- the shyest one of the bunch, but well fed!

Below and right are Ty, Sammie and Elie curled up for sleep.

"once in a very blue moon"

A few of my blogger/Facebook friends Deborah Godin and Beth Patterson, alerted me to the fact that there will be a "blue moon" tomorrow December 31, 2010. These days a "blue moon" is defined as the second full moon that occurs in a calendar month. These are pretty rare.

NASA has a great piece on the origin of the phrase "once in a blue moon" and the more recent association of it with the astronomical phenomenon of two full-moons in a single calendar month.

My favorite piece of music about a blue moon, is performed by Nanci Griffith and is called "Once in a very blue moon" a song which she co-wrote with folk singer Patrick Alger.

home, home on the range (or oven)

Just a little more than a year ago, I was diagnosed as "pre-diabetic" -- blood sugar levels above normal, but not yet in the range of full-fledged diabetes. This shocked me to my core, and I stopped eating (and baking) sweets. With the help of a clinical dietitian I rethought my diet entirely, and over the past year lost more than 50 pounds. By last summer my blood work showed my sugar levels back in the normal range, but I have continued to very carefully watch my intake of sweets (as well as carbohydrates and fats).



I finally felt confident enough in my ability to regulate what I eat, that I was willing to try some baking again. I love baking. Not all that much interested in cooking, but oh, baking! My mother got me a learning to cook book Mary Alden's Cook Book for Children, when I was about eight. It was designed to teach good kitchen habits as well as culinary skills. There were certificates to be awarded by parents when one mastered things such as "The Clean Kitchen Cook."

After mastering all the baking in my learning to cook book, I started tackling baking projects from my mother's 1949 Joy of Cooking. Plus there were great recipes for brownies, fudge and other chocolate goodies on the Hershey's Coca containers. [Remember when those were actually metal tins?]

So in the past few days I've been on a pumpkin rampage. I love pumpkin baked goods, and they have the virtue of using a vegetable, and using less sugar than many other sweets. I substituted a Splenda/brown sugar blend to further reduce the sugar used, and got fat free sweetened condensed milk, and low fat Philly cream cheese for my pumpkin cheese cake, pumpkin pie, and my hybrid pumpkin cheese cake pie. Haven't tasted the last one yet -- its still cooling in the fridge.

I enjoyed the process of baking, got to practice sensible eating of sweets (small slices in conjunction with meals), and delighted my husband the runner who has to load up on 3600 calories a day when he is running five to ten miles a day.

The photo's of the Front and Back covers of Mary Alden's Cook Book for Children, including the Clean Kitchen Cook certificate come from a wonderful cooking blog Sue's Kitchen. Which seems very appropriate.

reflections on fashion

This morning I was standing waiting for the elevator and noticed my reflection in the lobby doors. I was wearing a new dress, a nice snuggly cotton knit "corduroy" in a dark, rich garnet, just the right warmth and weight for November. The hem of the dress, swung just at my ankles revealing just an inch or two of black cotton stocking. For a moment I marveled at the vagaries of fashion that have allowed me to wear, in middle age, the long dresses that I longed for in childhood.

In the 1950's, I pined for the fashions of an earlier century. I fancied myself in the graceful sweep of long skirts and rustle of petticoats--the sprigged cotton florals, delicate cotton lawns and bright calicoes of the previous century. When I was ten, I learned to sew and the first thing I made was a dress in blue flowered cotton with fitted bodice, long puff sleeves, and full gathered skirt that reached the floor. It was my "Pioneer girl" Halloween costume inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. The next year, I modified the same dress' sleeves with lace and gathered the full skirt into poofy panniers over a long pink underskirt, and became "Colonial girl" -- inspired by a series of books about "little maids" of various revolutionary battles. The year after that, I made another dress in rich, dark red plaid and sewed a hula hoop into a full petticoat to be "Civil War girl." You get the picture -- inspired by Louisa May Alcott. You get the picture.

When the maxi-skirt hit the fashion runways in the early 70's I grabbed on tight to that fashion trend, and never looked back.

Remember, Betti?

Columbus Day

Fog mingles with rain, and snags
in the tops of the redwoods,
not reaching the road where
the trees close in densely.

Morning paper amuses, informs
while the wind shakes the metal shell
around us and blurs the boundaries
between grey waves and grey rain.

We race the shifting sun and clouds
and chase the rainbow
up the coast highway
past orange pumpkin fields and green hills
before turning city-ward again.

S. Greer
October 26, 1973

Photo is this past Saturday in Kentucky, but it reminded me of our day-off adventure, all those years ago.

bright spot in the rain

It's been very humid for days. Not particularly hot, but muggy. Everything feels damp and sticky: the salt refuses to pour, I never really feel dry after a shower, and my t-shirt sticks wetly to me after just one lap around the neighborhood with Rosie, even though it's only 9 AM. Now I expect that kind of humidity in July and August, but at the end of September it's a bit unusual.

When the humidity became rain -- lots of rain -- it wasn't a great surprise. However, folks in Letcher County do wish that the timing had been a little different. This week and especially this weekend are our annual Mountain Heritage Festival, with booths, crafts, food, carnival rides, and a parade. It all still happened, even the parade, rain notwithstanding.

The college always gets a booth in the center of the festival, and faculty volunteer time to sit in it, to give out information on the college, greet old students returning for a visit home, and welcome potential new students. My stint was from 11 AM to 2 PM today. I always volunteer to work during the parade; unlike many of my colleagues I have no children or grandchildren, nieces or nephews to watch for in the parade.

The rain never really let up the whole time. A small river of water was streaming from the bank above the booths, and ran right through ours, emptying into a huge mud puddle right in front of our table. But people gamely ploughed right on through.

My friend Madeline shared the shift with me. When we weren't conversing with the folks passing by, we had plenty of time to chat. There's not much time for conversation at school. We're either preparing for class, rushing to class, in class, or working with students from our classes. So even though my office is right next to Madeline's, we rarely have the opportunity to just talk about ourselves and life. Today, we discovered that we were in graduate school, at the University of Kentucky, in education, with offices and classes in the same building at in the same years (1975-1976). Comparing notes, we learned that there were a half dozen people that we knew in common, so surely we must have encountered each other. Yet we don't remember each other. I'm glad our paths recrossed to give us another chance.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--32 Time for Ducks

"Redirecting" is what the tab on Internet Explorer said when I clicked on "new post" and it occurred to me that is what I did today. I redirected my attention to a different part of the mural: the middle ground between the buildings and the people.

Moreover, it was time for ducks. The powers that be want ducks. I like ducks. Turns out I'm not as good at painting ducks as I am at painting people, but that's okay.

I'm also not as good a lettering (especially, tiny free hand lettering)! But the signs okay. It's readable, and its the right color and size. By the way, the stone work holding the sign was built well before I came to southeast by Jerry Hensley (featured in a previous post) and others.

By the way that's me hiding behind that tree, feeding that duck. I actually have taken a total of fourteen credit hours at Southeast (college algebra, trig, calculus, creative writing, web page design and several short business courses), so I sort of count as a student.

Southeast Whitesburg Mural--23 A skeleton

The students in our Radiography program provided me with some great photographs to use as inspiration and models in the mural. One that tickled my fancy was a grouping of students and their buddy Mr. Skeleton. [Their professor, my friend Astor Halcomb was also in the photo, but I left him out -- sorry Astor!]. As you can see above, the faces are only partially complete. Missing are the fine details, especially of eyes and mouths. Most of Mr. Skeleton is also missing -- since titanium white is one of the most opaque pigments an acrylic painter has to work with, it works best to paint the details of the skeleton on top, after most of the work on the students is complete.

While the various stages of face painting dried in between steps, I worked on the clothing, arms and tools of the students I painted yesterday. Hands are NOT my forte. I have painted great hands -- I did an entire "portrait" one time in college that was just of the hands of my friend Doug DuPriest (he had really aristocratic looking hands). But it took me some twelve hours of work just to paint those hands. Since I have only a few minutes to do hands, I'm not doing as well with them as I would like. Perhaps by the time I finish the mural, I will improve a bit.

Here is an overview of the whole wall (I haven't given one in a couple of days). As you can see, I've completed about one-third of the bottom portion of the mural.

peaceful and (mostly) quiet Fourth

Most of our neighbors have headed out of town. Our nearest neighbors and closest friends, Pam and Mike headed out Friday morning with both their (grown) sons and their sons families for a family reunion in Virginia. So we are taking care of their two doggies and three kitties for a few days.

About five years ago, while on vacation they left their dog Dip (aka Dipstick and "the Dipster") at a Kennel, and when they returned the kennel owners convinced them to also bring home with them a homely little mutt that had been abandoned. The scruffy terrier was so ugly he was cute (see photo right), so they named him Fuggly. However, way back then, I misunderstood what they were calling him, so I've been calling him "Tuggles" for five years -- Mr. Tuggles when I'm being formal. I think I like my name better. Fuggly/Tuggles the terrier is constantly finding new places to dig himself out of their yard. They manage to keep him confined for three or four weeks, before he finds a digs a new hole. He likes to come over to visit with me when I get home from work.

Dip on the other hand has always been leery of anyone other than his family, but suddenly this week, he's decided that I might be an okay person. This isn't just about food, because I've fed him before. I guess old age is mellowing him (he's about 10 or 11 years old now).

Even though Dip and Tuggles spend most of their time (from spring through autumn) outdoors, they are used to lots of human company, because Mike and Pam have the most wonderfully relaxing backyard, with fabulous deck, pool, and hot tub, and spend the majority of their non-working hours outdoors with the animals. So in addition to doing the morning and evening feeding, I'm trying to spend an hour or two with the dogs so that they don't get too lonely while their humans are away.

Today I lounged on the deck and got caught up on some reading, while having plenty of opportunity to pet the dogs, and cuddle the cats.

music for the folk

A great place to hear music for the folk (i.e., true folk music) is at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Appalshop which turns 40 this year, got its start through a program called "Community Film Workshops" from the Office of Economic Opportunity in the 1960's. The local youth involved with the program, turned what was suppose to be a job training program into an indigenous expression of mountain culture, which continues to thrive through music, art, film, and theatre. One of the highlights of the year at Appalshop (for 23 years) has been the Seedtime on the Cumberland festival with live music, films, and crafts.

I've probably missed more years than I've attended since I moved to this region 20 years ago. Some years its just been too darned hot; other years I've been ill, or had too much work to do; some years I just forgot until it was over. But I made a concerted effort to go this year, because one of the featured performers was John McCutcheon; McCutcheon is one of the performers who helped ignite my love of bluegrass and traditional folk music of the Appalachian mountains.

My father is from Appalachia, from the tiny hamlet of Troutdale, over in Grayson County, Virginia. Yet despite this fact, and despite having spent a half dozen summers in Troutdale while growing up, I don't remember ever hearing even one bar of traditional mountain music until I wound up at the University of Kentucky in January 1975.

I don't remember the first time I heard traditional music or bluegrass; as both were ubiquitous in Lexington in the mid-1970's. But, I was already familiar with traditional music by July 7, 1977, when I attended a long standing "Old Time Fiddle" convention in Galax, Virginia while I was working on my master thesis research (an historical/ethnographic study of Troutdale). As part of my thesis research I met and interviewed luthier and musician Albert Hash of Whitetop, Virginia, and I had the rare (for a non-musician) pleasure of listening to Albert jamming with a variety of musicians young and old, behind the scenes at the Fiddle contest in Galax.

So I was already well on the hook by the time the winter of 1977-78 rolled around. The winter of 1977-78 was a long cold one, especially in the coal fields of Kentucky and Virginia where one of the longest strikes in UMWA history was unfolding. A concert was held at the University of Kentucky that winter (if memory serves me right in January 78, but it could have been earlier or later) to raise money for striking miners and their families -- and raise awareness.

My reasons for attending were more political than musical -- at least at first. Two performances of the evening stand out in my memory. I have long since forgotten the names of any of the other acts, but I remember in shining detail both John McCutcheon and the all female Reel World String Band (which also still records and performs--sometimes at the Seedtime festival).

McCutcheon, an instrumentalist par excellence, played several different instruments that winter night, but what I remember, what has stayed with me all these years was his performance on the hammer dulcimer. Despite its ancient and venerable history, I had never encountered the hammer dulcimer before that night. The notes of the hammer dulcimer fall sweetly like spring rain, tripping brightly on the ears. The next week I purchased his album "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" (which was produced by June Apple records of Appalshop!). [I just put it on the turntable to provide the right ambiance].

Although it was his performance on the hammer dulcimer that made me a fan in 1977-78, I have since come to appreciate McCutcheon's own formidable song writing skills. This afternoon, he played both traditional pieces and his own compositions, including the "world premier" of a song against strip-mining and mountain top removal that he wrote last night on his way to Whitesburg.

Photo by sgreerpitt, John McCutcheon today, June 13, 2009, at Seedtime on the Cumberland, at the Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

a new tool for those who love numbers

A new, free resource on the Internet is Wolfram:Alpha, an astounding computational tool. While there will certainly be debate among mathematics instructors at all levels about whether or not students should be allowed to use this tool, there is no question that this is an amazing computational machine.

Not having any particular mathematics problems that needed solving this morning, I tried a few of the suggested demonstrations -- such as inputting my birth date. I learned that I am 21,311 days old, and that as I had long suspected I was born on Chinese lunar day zhenghue 1, 4648 (Chinese New Year). I was also born before sunrise, on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras).

I also input the town where I work: Whitesburg, Kentucky and found that the exact coordinates of the town are 37.12 deg N, 82.82 deg W, and the current temperature is 59 degrees F, 15 degrees C. I was able to see a five week history of hourly temperatures -- including the unusually low temperature for last Friday night/Saturday morning.

You can put in a phrase like: "Poverty rate Kentucky" and get back not only the most recent, available poverty rate (16.3% in 2007), but also the median household income and the percapita income for the state (with years give for each piece of data).

Great stuff!

starting a garden

Planted my tiny container garden this afternoon. So far, two tomato plants -- a heirloom gold and red tomato, and a smaller hybrid -- and six sweet yellow bell peppers. John helped me by digging down to the bottom of his compost heap for some nice gooey black compost to add to my potting soil.


We locate the containers just outside the fenced in part of the yard -- because Rosie dog likes to chew on the containers, and she will eat the tomatoes! I am re-purposing some non-recyclable kitty litter containers. (We usually buy recyclable containers, but had a few stacked in our junk room that we couldn't recycle). We punched some holes for drainage in the bottoms. I hope this experiment works.

25 random things

In the last two days I've seen the 25 random things lists of two very different people (a fellow baby boomer poet and a 19 year old college student) which got me inspired to try. I'll bet I'd come up with 25 very different things a week from now.

25 random things about me:

1. The best portrait I ever drew was of my best college friend’s dad, George Porter – it was a tiny sketch that looked so perfectly like him it was almost as if some outside force had worked through my hands.
   
2. I hate asparagus – if I even attempt to eat them I start gagging.
   
3. The most thrilling experience I ever had was riding as a passenger on pilot check rides, where the pilots did touch and go landings at Half Moon Bay airport. Once at sunset, a pilot made the sun “set” and then “rise” by swooping down and then up above the fog bank.
   
4. My favorite city to visit is Boston – I love the MBTA and I always had the right change to get back off. The best hot fudge sundae I ever had was at Bailey’s in Boston (long since gone out of business).
   
5. I never spent a night alone in the house I grew up in until I was 19 years old, and found I was unable to sleep listening for every little noise.
   
6. My favorite book in childhood was Little Women, and my favorite character in the book was “Beth” – the one who dies before adulthood. My favorite book in adulthood is Beauty by Sherri Tepper in which she blends fantasy and science fiction in a moral tale about the destruction of beauty in the world, and really made me think about the choices we make.
   
7. As long as I have a nice warm house and no place I have to drive, the best weather is what I can see out my window right now – deep fluffy snow. The world simplifies down to the stark basics of white and black.
   
8. The person I enjoy talking to most in the whole world is my husband, John.
   
9. I love Cinderella stories. My favorites are Eleanor Farjeon’s book The Glass Slipper and the movie Ever After with Drew Barrymore, but I’m also found of the movie The Glass Slipper with Leslie Caron, the Rogers and Hammerstein television version from the 1960’s with Leslie Ann Warren (and her crooked smile), and movie musical The Slipper and the Rose from 1976 with Richard Chamberlain as the Prince. But I will read and watch any version of the story at least once.
   
10. I cannot go to sleep unless I read first. My preferred bedtime reading is mysteries, especially police procedurals, detective fiction, and legal thrillers.
    
11. I’m not sure I was really “in love” with my first husband, although I certainly loved him.
    
12. Until I was in high school and was earning my own money, I had only three “store bought” dresses. All my clothes were hand me downs from older cousins, from rummage sales, and thrift shops or hand made by one of my aunts. I learned to sew at age 10 in self-defense and made most of the dresses I wore from fifth grade on. By the time I was in my twenties I was an excellent tailor, and made the wool suits that I did my job interviewing.
    
13. I haven’t sewn a dress or skirt or blouse since 1988 when I discovered credit cards and catalogs.
    
14. I never went on a date in high school. My best friend wanted me to come to the junior prom with her and her boyfriend, so she set me up with an old friend from junior high school (who went to a different school). I was so anxious about the date, that I worked myself into illness (supposedly strep throat but I don’t think that was diagnosed by a doctor) and cancelled out on the whole event. I never finished sewing the evening gown for the event.
    
15. My first kiss was at 16 from a college boy who was a counselor at a day camp where I volunteered. I was so terrified by the sexual feelings that were evoked that I actually blanked out the experience completely for more than twenty years. If you’d asked me at age 20, I would have said my first kiss came in college at age 18.
    
16. I hate grading essays. It’s the one thing that I really dislike about being a college professor. But nonetheless I think that students learn more from having to synthesize ideas from various sources into an essay, so I persist on assigning multiple essays in every class, every semester.
    
17. The only thing that makes being “pre-diabetic” tolerable is Russell Stover sugar free mint patties in dark chocolate. The thought that I might never be able to eat another box of See’s Candies dark Bordeaux chocolates is almost unbearable.
    
18. I have not made any new close friends in fifteen years – a fact that I very much regret, but don’t quite know how to over come, as everyone I know locally these days has their life sewn up with children, grandchildren and other family ties.
    
19. Most of my interaction with people (other than my husband), including students is over the Internet or by long distance telephone, which I value but still miss the face-to-face connections.
    
20. In the winter, I’m obsessed with looking for sycamore trees, with their white limbs standing out against the brown of the forest. In the spring, my obsession is daffodils. In college, we could buy huge bunches of daffodils for 50 cents at the local grocery store. In graduate school, unable to find any to buy I would go out at night during spring break and steal daffodils from Fraternity row.
    
21. Currently my favorite color for clothing, flowers, and household stuff is yellow. But giving me a bright fire engine red car any day.
    
22. I don’t know which I regret more, the things I did do that I should not have, or the things I did not do that I should have. What I do know is that I try not to spend too much time regretting either thing – it detracts from living.
    
23. People’s faces I can draw with ease, but I can’t draw a cat worth a darn. Their bodies always seemed distorted and too long and narrow. I’ve never tried drawing my dog.
    
24. During my senior year in high school, while working in the city library, I saw a girl I’d never seen before on the far side of the library’s main floor – more than 100 feet away, and knew instantly without a doubt that her name was the same as mine. I walked across the room, and asked her “are you Sue Greer?” and she said “yes.” So I said “hi, my name is Sue Greer, too.” She went to a different high school at the other end of the city, and was two years behind me. We were not related in any way. The only way I could have know who she was, was some form of extrasensory perception.
25. I love television. I love sitcoms, dramas, movies, soap operas, 24 hour news channels, home improvement shows, the Weather Channel, even commercials, although I don’t watch as much as I once did. Nonetheless, my evening doesn’t seem quite complete if I don’t watch some TV.

birthday delights

So my birthday isn't actually until tomorrow, but the package came to day, and I'm stuck at home snowbound another day, so....

My best friend of 46 years, Betti, sent me a 40th anniversary gift set of the Sound of Music with DVD of the movie, CD of the soundtrack and coffee table book. I spent the morning listening to the sound track while reading through the book.

Betti and I spent a lot of our adolescence singing. Our favorites included many things from AM radio (Beatles, Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits) but also musicals like Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. So memories abound as I listen to the music.

Drawing from 1968, copied from movie posters.