In the Quiet Moments

…some of the most earth-shattering things can happen.

That’s not to say that things have been quiet here, or very loud even.  Life has simply been good.    See –>  How can one argue with a rainbow (grabbed out the car window as we drove down the highway yesterday evening)  😀

But in the quiet moments, we find the clarity to absorb all the things that happened in more chaotic times.   We find time for reflection, for processing, for rejuvenation…

… and time for wonder.

Last night, the three of us went to the Albany Symphony to see their performance with Cirque de la Symphonie a small troupe of acrobats, gymnasts, and clowns that perform in music theatres around the world.  If you’d like to see some of what we saw last night, please watch the Cirque’s promotional video from their website.  It’s a good representation, though our local venue, the Albany Palace Theater, does not have the height of ceiling nor the depth of stage for them to have performed all the stunts.  However, the piece from Swan Lake was spot on (in the video, contortionist Elena Tsarkova, in the white leotard on the doubled stool), the juggling…  I think the only thing we missed out on was the airborne ring-work, but performer Vitalii Buza gave us some astounding Cyr wheel work to make up for that lack.  As my husband noted, to just be able to spin that long and still walk steadily afterwards is impressive, not to mention doing tricks at the same time.

And of course…  The Albany Symphony Orchestra was at its usual awesome standard.  The selection of pieces where the orchestra performed sans circus acts came off as perfect interludes to allow us to savor the prior act and contemplate what new delight awaited us.  Frankly, the evening ended way to soon, and I was so glad that Dan didn’t oppose my suggestion that we go to Applebee’s for a nibble and some discussion of the show.

Picture from Mr. Cockrell’s concert last year

The only disappointing part of the evening?  How many empty seats there were in the theatre.   I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me.  I tried this year to encourage families at my son’s school to come to the Family Sunday symphonies that the ASO puts on by posting a flyer on the school bulletin board and having a copy of the flyer sent home to parents….  no one, not a single parent spoke to me about our experience or asked how to get tickets or…

Thankfully, the school’s director and I share a similar view regarding the value of field trips and exploring local artistic offerings whenever possible.Well, on May 13th , Findlay Cockrell’s  will be performing again at the Troy Saving’s Bank Music Hall to close out the Tuesdays at Noon season.  And he’s doing the original piano score of one of my favorite pieces, Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  YES!  The Boodle and I already looking forward to that field trip.
So, let me leave you with a “quiet moment” (before theROW80 check-in) from another favorite artist of mine, Roger Hodgson ofSupertramp:

ROW80 Check-in

Progress, yes, but I’m still not reaching that consistency goal I set for myself at the beginning of the Round One.  I’m sabotaging myself somewhere along the way here… have to think more about it.

• write every day; at the minimum, do 5 sentences mostly journaling and some fanfiction
  
• finish a complete (rough) draft of Courting the Swan Song   ignored
  
• make twice weekly blog posts (WIPpet Wednesdays and Some Thing 4 Sundays) check
  
• maintain active sponsor participation  check
• energize myself with more physical activity  feeling definitely more active…  must be Spring
  
• reclaim my writing space dreamed about shelving…
  
• go through some piece of my electronic home (desktop, laptop, server space, Dropbox, etc.) some progress in photo directories and writing backups
  
• laugh more, hug my family more, share myself with friends more…  yes, Yes, YES!  😀
  
• attend chats and sprints on Twitter (at least one of each) oh, yes!
  

Symphonic Sunday

Today’s Some Thing 4 Sunday comes to you courtesy of the Albany Symphony Orchestra led by David A. Miller, the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest led by Edward Gardner, and … the Letter R.  Well, not exactly…  R is for Maurice Ravel, one of my favorite composers.

Some rave about the Impressionists (such as Claude Monet, whose works are featured to the left) after a trip to a museum, completely forgetting (or worse being totally unaware) that Impressionism encompassed more than painting.  The French movement inspired musical compositions and even literary works through the Dutch Tachtigers.

Last night, my husband and I were treated to a double dose of Ravel’s works as the Albany Symphony performed both the famous Boléro and the sublime “Mother Goose Suite”.  As recording is forbidden in the theatre (and even were it not, the meager 4 minutes my camera can record could do no justice to the piece), let me offer this link to the Radio Philharmonic performing the work.  It’s a wonderful orchestration…  it just can’t compete with being there.

I hope you enjoy the piece as much as I did.  If you are interested, two of our local radio stations (both with have internet broadcasting setup) will be playing the concert for listeners later in the month:

• WAMC (90.3 FM) at 8pm on February 26 (http://wamc.org/)
• WMHT (89.1 FM) at 6pm on March 16 (http://www.wmht.org/radio/)

And if you’d like to read some interesting pre-concert notes by a musician that performs with the Symphony on occasion, please check out this post by Dana Huyge.  Yes, the piece by Crouse was as intense as it looks.

ROW80 Check-In

Some progress.  Some inspiration.  Just some….  joy:

• write every day; at the minimum, do 5 sentences everyday, although not always fiction
• finish a complete (rough) draft of Courting the Swan Song  no progress since Wednesday
• make twice weekly blog posts (WIPpet Wednesdays and Some Thing 4 Sundays) on a consistent schedule check
• maintain active sponsor participation some progress on the sponsor post; the rest on track
• energize myself with more physical activity a full workout on Thursday and Friday, some exercise with husband and Boodle while the Boodle practiced his fencing and karate
• reclaim my writing space I’ve forgotten where my desk is…  
• go through some piece of my electronic home (desktop, laptop, server space, Dropbox, etc.) nada
• laugh more, hug my family more, share myself with friends more… good stuff here; lots of good stuff here
• attend chats and sprints on Twitter (at least one of each)  one #row80 sprint;  I also made the last 10 minutes of the #StoryDam chat before the #k8chat (about Street Teams) came on; good stuff, but I had to leave the #k8chat early.  Fortunately Kate Tilton posts a chat transcript on her website

Thank you, Letter R!

Photo credits:

• Le Jour ni l’Heure 8643 : L’Été — vue prise d’une fenêtre de la maison de Maurice Ravel à Montfort-l’Amaury, pentes du château de Montfort, Yvelines, Île-de-France, samedi 18 août 2012, 16:24:22 (Photo credit: Renaud Camus)
• Impressionism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
• (Photo credit: duncan)

ST4S — Weekend Wonders

Welcome to the next installment of “Some Thing 4 Sunday” all!

Happy Crabbies

There’s a problem with these Sunday posts, a problem best expressed by asking “some thing?”  How I pick a solitary thing out of all that a normal day can offer?  It can get challenging.  Good weekends (and this has been one of those super, awesome, amazing, love it! weekends that feel like the world is brand new) have so much happening that picking just one thing to focus on seems impossible.

And the so-called “bad weekends” have the opposite problem.  Nothing seems worth noting.

A lack of inspiration isn’t a problem this time….  What a wonderful weekend this was!

Treasures for me

But I probably should focus on one thing since I’m already pushing the “late night” limit again (yes, last weekend was pretty wonderful too).  So, as much fun as the sale at Grandma & Grandpa Mabee’s church was, that was yesterday, and doesn’t count as a Sunday adventure.  But I am still tickled at the trove of nifties I bought for $8.00. And really, can you blame me?

And I also probably shouldn’t dwell too long on the fun we had at the Normans Kill Preserve where the Boodle found acorns well over an inch in size nearly everywhere on the path and got the chance to try climbing a rope swing someone had hidden in the woods.

Oh, and the concert!  I definitely shouldn’t spend too much time on the beautiful opening night concert put on by the Albany Symphony last night….  Certainly not!  It would be decidedly unfair to discuss after the fact how Clarice Assad‘s Nhanderu took me back spiritually to shadows and campfires and skies full of stars and fiery volcanic eruptions and the calls of the gods of earth and sky…  of birds and the dawn of humanity, of beasts in the throes of survival and the peaceful green of forests.  Then came a sublime violin concerto by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky‘s Fourth Symphony with its fire and passion….

New ladder styles

No, I definitely shouldn’t dwell on that.

So today…  we made today another family outing day.  With one small mission on our schedule, we stopped off at the Boodle’s school to trim off dead wood from an old apple tree in their playground.  Between hauling logs and gathering apples, I kept myself pretty busy.  Not too busy though…  After picking up two full bags of apples for saucing, I headed over to check on my hubby’s progress, to almost walk into…

Bothered Bees

Yeah… I didn’t get closer than that.  After stepping back carefully, I checked in the tree and saw that there had once been a huge hive about 25ft or so up.  Now the hive was in several pieces, several of which were on the ground.  Given the gathering on this layer of comb compared to the others, I almost wonder if the queen wasn’t being sheltered in that small swarm.

The Half Moon in harbor

Once we’d accomplished our mission, we headed up to Albany to spend some time at the Corning Preserve in Albany and walk down to see the Half Moon.  The skies were cloudy, hinting at rain but never bringing it.  There was enough sun to make the Hudson River glisten.

And the Boodle found a new passion…

He wants to be a tour guide on the ship.

There was more to the day, of course.  There was time for the Boodle to play on the playground, moments of laying back on benches and watching the clouds…  there was even a short train with an orange caboose!

It wasn’t a planned weekend.  Except for the concert, we had no idea of what we would be doing until we got in the car.  And it was a wonderful weekend…

How was yours?

Climbing apple trees is a childhood rite of passage