Saying Yes!--BWA Chorus
It's surprising the places saying "yes" to a friend takes you. Yesterday afternoon, I ventured out in the midst of a thunderous tropical storm because of one such "yes." Some moist minutes later, I found myself sitting in a circle of women with a music folder on my lap singing Christmas carols in preparation for the British Women Association's (BWA) Christmas Luncheon. The BWA Christmas Luncheon is a festive gala and fundraiser-a high point of the holiday season. Each table is assigned a name and attendees decorate their tables and themselves in keeping with their names. Table names range from Santas and Elves to Fruitcakes and Crackers (crackers being party poppers not saltines-think British). A prize is awarded to the Best Decorated table.
For a few years I have been a member of the bawdy "American Table," as we are called, although our group has a more International flavor than the title indicates, including representatives from Australia, South Africa, Holland, Transylvania, Texas (a country unto itself), New Zealand and the US. The unofficial "bawdy" in our title is the one constant (and no doubt why we are called the "American Table" in contrast to the demure and understated "British Tables.")
One year ours was assigned the title "Angel" table. We dressed as angels, decorated our table with clouds of fluff, sparkles, heaven-sent silver-wrapped chocolates, buckets overflowing with bubbles and billowing smoke, and flew away with the grand prize. Last year ours was the "Bell" table-quickly changed to "Silver Belles." The eleven of us arrived as Hand Bell Choir dressed in black tops, matching silver hoop skirts, red sashes and bell earrings. Bells jingled from our skirts and jangled on our wrists and ankles. We decorated our table with a red runners and gaudy silver papier-mâché bell-shaped bottle covers concealing spirits and juice. We took the grand prize, again (our closest competition being the Gifts who had tied packages onto their heads like hats). We celebrated our victory as any true Hand Bell Choir would, with an rendition of "Silver Bells" to the accompaniment of our swaying/playing belle skirts. While our performance elicited mixed reviews: applause and hoots, high-nosed "those Americans," glowers and head-shaking, I have a suspicion it also planted a seed...
For this year's luncheon, the BWA has decided to add Christmas Carols to the Christmas Luncheon festivities. They are putting together a choir for the occasion. My sweet friend Barbara had been recruited to play piano and asked me to join her. After the unsolicited spectacle I had made of myself last year, everyone knew I could sing (loudly and off-key, but with enthusiasm), and that I knew the words (or made them up). How could I say no?
About ten ladies were already assembled when I arrived at the BWA house for the first official choir practice, yesterday. I knew most of the ladies. But even those I didn't seemed to know me. (A reputation had preceded me, but which one? I wondered.) One woman stood when I entered and came forward, offering a wide smile and ebullient "You must be Kelly!" She turned out to be Diane, the choir director.
After giving everyone a chance to "settle in and get acquainted" Diane corralled us into a half-circle around the piano. "We'll begin with a few easy songs to limber up our voices and bring us at ease," Diane said, passing out song books.A few bars into Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Diane stopped us. "I want to tell you right now." She paused, looking around. "You all are capable of doing much, much more than you think you are. I am hearing some interesting things." (What did interesting mean? )
After warm-ups, Diane passed around the official songbooks and pencils and began directing us to make musical notations on our music. "The little seven with a dot is a rest," she instructed, "circle those." Pf meant something fortissimo, mm something else, mp or pp or p each mean softer or softer still or even softer-or something else. I glared at Barbara's back. She misled me. This wasn't a going to be the casual fa-la-la sing-along around the tree, this was a real choir-as in Vienna Boys'-with altos and sopranos, two-part and three-part harmony and notations called fortissimo and something-crotchets. "Is something-crotchet a real music term?" I asked Elsa, the girl next to me. She smiled, thinking I was making a joke. As if...
Being the only non-Brit in a British choir (Aside from Barbara, a Javanese married to a scot and to a Brit by marriage, who I wasn't counting since she was at the piano) is not easy. Even if I could read music and did know how to sing properly, it wouldn't have been easy. The lyrics change from one side of the pond to the other. Who knew "bring us some figgie pudding," is part of the real lyrics in We Wish You A Merry Christmas? And while lyrics can be read, pronunciation has to learned and remembered. Flat or not, when most of the group is singing "bean" and one lone voice belts out "Ben" it's bad. (How do Brits pronounce womb, anyway?)
As rehearsal progressed, Diane stopped us from time to time with suggestions and encouragement: "I'm hearing some interesting things!" "try to keep to just one line, top or bottom whichever you think, but only the one-you may have to follow it with your finger" "want to have a go at adding a top?" (Top what?)
I finally got up the courage to ask Diane the question I had been wondering since the moment she started dividing us into tops and bottoms. "How do I know which I am supposed to be?"
Diane looked at me, sizing me up, no doubt wondering if asking me to turn in my song book would be committing some sort of political faux pas. "Do you have more difficulty holding high notes or holding low notes?"
I shrugged. "Sometimes both." I admitted. "Will you do me a favor and sneak up behind me sometime while I am singing and tell me."
I think Diane thought I was joking, then realized I was serious. She nodded. "A very good idea," she agreed, adding, "For the time being, why don't you try to stay right in the middle and just sing the tune. We need those who just sing the tune, as well."
During O Christmas Tree-a less that adequate translation according to Diane (different even than the American version)-the score became "quite daring" and the bottom (the alto line) crosses over the top (the soprano line) meaning that the low voices are supposed to sing higher notes than the high voices are singing-which doesn't sound so tough, but...
On about "let's try that once again" number 15, it struck me that the scene was like something out of a movie: a hap-hazard bunch of British women, a Javanese pianist, and one bawdy American coming together in steamy central java to organize a choir in time for the Christmas Fete. Yes! I can see the flashing marquee now: The Alto Who Climbed Up the Scales and Came Down a Soprano.
- Last practice the BWA sprouted antlers--must have been in tune!
Fight if you must--but leave the goldfish out of it!
My sis-in-law Liz sent me this article written by a friend of hers, Mark Fleming, and originally published in the Pasedent Citizen on September 29, 2009:
No charges filed in goldfish dispute
By MARK FLEMING
Jewelry and goldfish were at the heart of a Pasadena domestic dispute Saturday, when a man reported his common-law wife had kidnapped his seven pet goldfish, and was holding them hostage in an argument over some jewelry she said he had taken from her.
When a police officer went to the couple’s residence in the 1100 block of Queens Road to try to negotiate the release of the unfortunate fish, the woman said she was unable to return them, as she had already fried the fish and eaten three of them.
No charges were filed in the case, according to Vance Mitchell, public information officer for Pasadena Police Department.
Speaking for fish-lovers everywhere, this is just wrong. Since this story was published, Fleming has been asked my many if he is going to write a follow-up to this story. He said he didn't plan to as he had "bigger fish to fry."
Why is it always the fish who suffer?
Where is That Fountain?
In our pursuit of everlasting youth, there may be such a thing as going too far. And I may have gone there... Monday last, for our weekly Artist's Date, the GGs (my creativity recovery group) took at trip to the Nu-Skin office. We had appointments to check our skin in their patented, revolutionary, computerized skin analyzer.
For the test, I put my face inside a cave, with my chin on the chin-rest, and my forehead smashed against the top. The technician asked if I was wearing make-up, pressed a few buttons, the machine whirred, lights flashed and the test was done. Moments later an image of my face appeared on the monitor.
Whether the results would have been more accurate had I not been wearing make-up, I frankly, do not care. As it was the image showed more blotches and wrinkles that I care to ever gaze upon again. I gasped in horror. Was this really what I looked like? What everyone else saw when they looked at me? More make-up-I definitely need more make up. "Turn it off! Hurry!" I begged.
Stone faced, the porcelain-skinned technician outlined half my T-zone-the area from mid-nose, beneath the eye across the cheekbone, around the "apple" of my check and back up the base of my nose, pressed a few more buttons and a page with the results of my analysis spit out: I had 392 uneven patches, 9 sun spots, 3 deep wrinkles, 79 extra-large pores, and 108 blotches-on that tiny portion of my face; roughly 1/10th of the whole.
It's no wonder I said yes to so many products when it came purchase time. I went home with my costly Fountain of Youth magic, fully committed to using every elixir as directed! Daily, weekly, thrice daily, whatever it took, I was going to make myself forever young.
Yesterday I took the 1st step with a visit to my hair stylist. "Make my hair young, hip, fresh!" I told Roberto. (Fresh is what we in Jakarta call all of those together, what advertisements call new and improved.) He tried...
This morning, I began my new beauty regime. (So what if it has taken me almost 2 weeks to open my goodie bag. I never said when the commitment would begin. I had to wait for exactly the right time.) I went straight for the big guns-to what the salesman called the "signature" product in the Nu-Skin arsenal-The Face Lift. When explaining how to use The Face Lift the salesman had effused: apply it, lay back with your feet up and eyes closed, listen to soothing music, relax. You'll feel it working. Whaa-lah! 20 minutes later your skin will be tighter, firmer, younger, fresh!
I mixed a teaspoon of powder A with a teaspoon of potion B, stirred, applied it to my face with upward strokes, as directed, set the timer for 30 minutes (not 20 as I had been told), plugged in my I-pod, and stretched out on my yoga matt with my feet propped on the elliptical machine. (Ok, so it wasn't the luxurious silk-pillowed Bali bed with the feathered fan wafting the salesman's description had conjured-I wasn't about to get this gunk on my good stuff.)
Seconds after application, The Face Lift started working. And boy did it! As it dried my face began tingling, tugging, pulsing, itching. It was more irritating than any of the nylon labels I had ripped out of my clothing. Worse than a million ant bites. Worse than a sandy, wet swimsuit on a long, hot car ride home from the beach-and I was supposed to stay still, not touching, not scratching, not twitching my nose and relax????
But the end of song one, I realized the enormous mistake I have made with my IPod selection; I should have loaded it with a book on tape or NPR program instead of Ella. At the end of each song I counted out the time remaining-at 3 minutes per song I was going to have to endure this tickle-tingle-itch torture for 9...8....7 more slow, bluesy, whiny songs? I hate you Ella!
Mid-song 6 my IPod died. Take note: Check Your Charge; enduring torture in silence is triple torture. "Curtis" I yelled-as much as it's possible to yell without opening your mouth or moving your lips-"Urtis! Urtis! URTIS!!!!!" He saved me by swapping his iPod for mine. (As payment he took blackmail photos while I stiff-lipped "OP, OP-IT-IGHT-OWWWW!!!)
Seconds before I gave up all my top secret secrets the timer dinged. I raced into the shower and spent the next five minutes "soaking" off The Face Lift.
My mother always says, "You have to suffer to be beautiful." For all the suffering I did this morning, I should look like Mrs. Flippin' Universe. But do I? Did The Face Lift work? My face definitely feels different. As for "tighter, firmer, younger, fresh"... You decide:
Take it! Take Another Little Piece...
"Take it! Take another little piece of my heart now, Baby..." That line, sung in Janis Joplin's rasping, soulful screech popped into my head today as I was tallying purchases. My friend Sri is having a moving sale. She and her husband Jamie have to move houses-hopefully not away from Jakarta, but that depends on where Jamie gets a new job.
Let me begin by saying that contrary to what you may think upon entering my house, or snooping in my closets, I am not a big shopper. I do not enjoy mall shopping and am quickly overwhelmed by department stores and rack-upon-rack, floor-upon-floor, shelf-upon-shelf of choices. That being the case, I love buying treasures on holiday, especially handicrafts from their creators. And, I love, love my buying friend's castoffs.
Several of us met a Sri's the morning of her moving sale. The music was playing, coffee was brewing, and the table was laid with tasty cakes and treats. We jibber-jabbered for a while, while each of us sneaked side-long glances at the sale items. The furniture for sale had been left in place, but the smaller pieces were artfully arranged in a mini-shop along one side of Sri's living area.
In mass, at some unnamed signal, we girls rose to the occasion. We managed to paste our personalized "SOLD" stickers on much of Sri's "for sale" items even though they were not great "bargains." In some cases, as with the Lombok serving dishes we divvied up, we could have purchased them new for the same price. Sri explained away our purchases saying maybe it was easier to buy hers because she had already taken the time to weed through all the not-so-great serving dishes in the shop and hand-selected the best of the best.
Sri is correct: Shops stuffed with dishes, handicrafts, or fabrics, like extensive menus, can be overwhelming. It is easier to make a decision when you have limited choices-especially when a friend with exemplary taste and an artistic eye has limited the selection. (In restaurants we, meaning me and most everyone we dine with, often let Curtis do the selecting for us because big menus don't daunt him.) With menus, I'm happy to leave the selection to Curtis; when it comes to Indonesian anything, I'm delighted to leave the selecting to Sri. Not only does she know what everything is and what it is used for, she also has a flair for color and design.
However, today, while mentally screeching away with Janis, I realized there is much more to this Friend-to-Friend selling than Sri's explanation suggests. Everything that has gone into making an artist is woven into anything he or she creates. So, when I purchase a piece of art or handicraft from an artisan, I am in essence buying a "little piece" of that artist's heart. Just as anyone who buys one of my books is buying a little piece of me.
Sri talked about how happy she was to have us, her friends, buy her treasures. Not because she wanted the money, or because she wanted the stuff gone. It was because she didn't really want to be selling anything at all. Sri is a collector. She remembers each place she bought something, who she was with when she bought it, and who she bought it from. And many of her treasures, including those she is selling, she bought from other friends. So it is not as much as moving sale as a Friend-to-Friend hand off. An adoption service. She said she didn't mind selling her treasures to her friends because she knows they are going to good homes, to live with people she loves.
And I love buying things my friends have bought. Yes, I love, love, love that Sri weeded through the piles and stacks and shelves to ferret out the loveliest, most original, and well made, interesting items and I don't have to. But more, I love buying from my friends, because when I take those treasures home, I am taking a "little piece" of my friend's heart, too!
Dance, Y'all, Dance coming to Texas this Fall!
My new picture book, Dance, Y'all, Dance is on its way! It's official launch date–Birthday–is November 1st, 2009 at the Texas Book Festival in Austin, TX. All sort of events are planned including Book Signing, School Visits, and Story Times. I hope you'll come out to see me and to help welcome Dance into the world! Dance, Y'all, Dance Kick-off Schedule:
Oct. 24, 1:30-3:30: Book Signing at Katy Budget Books in Katy
Oct. 27: Visiting schools in the Sugarland: Cornerstone Elementary, Brazos Bend Elementary, Walker Station Elementary
Oct. 28, 10:00 am: SCBWI-BV Schmooze, Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators, Barnes and Noble, College Station, TX
Oct. 31-Nov. 1: Texas Book Festival, Austin, Texas
Happy Birthday Dance, Y'all, Dance!
Nov. 1, 11:00-1:00: Book Signing at Texas Book Festival, Writer's League Booth
Nov. 2, 7:00-9:00 pm: SCBWI-Houston Meeting, Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators, Tracy Gee Community Center, Houston
Workshop: "Picture Books -It's What You Don't See That Counts"
Nov. 3:
Hastings Elementary School in Duncanville, Texas
Nov. 5, 10:00-11:00:Children's Story time at Blue Willow Books, Houston
Nov. 5, 1:00 pm: Visit Calvary Episcopal School
Nov.; 6: 8:00-1:00 pm: Visit the Kinkaid School
Nov. 7: Sam Houston Book Festival, Huntsville, Texas
Workshop: "Picture Books are Like Icebergs: Harvesting Crystals"
Nov. 9, 5:00-9:00 pm: Family Book Night at the Kincaid School
Dance, Y'all, Dance Postcards, Bookmarks, Activity Sheets and Teacher's Guides are available! If you'd like to have any of these materials, visit the "contact me" link on my website and send me your mailing information.
Come on! Dance y'all! Whoop it up! I sure am!
Walking Into The World-And Over The Edge
Mondays, the GGs (my Girl Group)–a Sisterhood of Creative Explorers–gather. We are working through Walking Into the World by Julia Cameron. It is a follow-up to The Artist's Way, her twelve-step guide to creative living. One component of Cameron's creativity recovery program is the Weekly Walk. "Most of us spend life on the run, too busy and too hurried to walk anywhere," Cameron writes, maintaining the solution to many of our problems will arise if we make time to walk. "Native Americans pursue vision quests, Aborigines do walkabout. Both of these cultures know walking clears the head." And so, for the duration of the course, she asks us to commit to weekly 20-minute walks. "You will find these walks focus your thinking and instigate your breakthroughs," she concludes.
According to her instructions we are to put on comfy clothes and shoes and just go out walking-"go far enough and long enough that you feel both your body and your mind "unkink." Jakarta is many things, but it is not walker-friendly. The streets are busy, loud, cloudy with fumes, often rutted and potholed. The sidewalks-where there are sidewalks- are riddled with holes and loose stones and catawampus paving, or are crowded with parked motorcycles and food carts. No matter how many kilometers I walked, my mind and body would never "unkink." And so, I have taken Cameron's proclamation: "Where you walk matters less than that you walk," as permission to take my weekly walks on my backyard treadmill.
Giving due credit, the image "backyard" conjures is far from the truth. The area beyond my French doors is better described as oasis or resort-a delightful place to "unkink" even without the walk.
Oasis or not, it takes me longer than the proscribed 20-minutes to warm up my creative world. First I have to examining my garden, looking for weeks that need pulling, bushes that need pruning, twisted flags, untidy vines (Oasis are the bottle-blondes of gardens). The twisted flags can eat up 10 minutes easily as I imagine myself untangling-untangling-untangling them. I follow the yard survey with a run through of everything I could be doing if I were not walking on the treadmill and chase that with everything I plan to do when I finish. Eventually, after breaking the cycle with a 3-5 minute run which leaves me nauseous and too oxygen deprived to think, I drift into that mindless, floating place from wince solutions come.
I was there, totally there, last night -completely unkinked and free, drifting, bouncing, floating from thought to thought to...the solution. I had walked into the World, Julia's World, so lost in my alpha that I forgot where I was-and stepped right off the edge.
Fortunately, the treadmill backs into the corner of the patio and the walls stopped my fall.
Julia Cameron should paste a warning label on the next edition: Creative Recovery Can Be Dangerous.
- See, the pink flag is tangled in the vine--and who didn't roll up the hose?
Jakarta Bombing Victims--You Can Help!
Victims of the July 17th bombings at the Marriott and Ritz Carlton Hotels in Jakarta are still suffering. Many are still in the hospital--here in Jakarta, in Singapore, and some have returned to their home countries. Many, along with the physical and mental anguish they and their families are suffering, are additionally burdened by money worries. Even expats, gainfully employed and supposedly well-supported by company benefits, who were in those hotels-on company business-are encountering financial difficulties as costly medical treatments quickly gobble up their benefits. Word is that the Ritz and Marriott dare not offer monetary assistance to the victims or their families for to do so would be to admit culpability. Fortunately others have stepped up to help:
The British Chamber of Commerce has begun a fundraising campaign for the victims and families of the July 17 bombings. The money will be used where it is deemed most needed. Some will be used to assist with those receiving medical treatment for their injuries and some to help the families of the victims. One such example is the family of the Banquet Manager whose wife gave birth the day after he died in the bombing. If you would like to help this very worthy cause please contact bisnis@britcham.or.id
The Indonesian Netherlands Association in conjunction with CastleAsia have also launched a fund raising campaign for CastleAsia employee Max Boon who was severely injured in the bombings (For more about Max Boon see the Aug. 19,2009 posting). Max Boon lost both of his legs in the blast. Not only will he be permantely disabled, he also faces a long and difficult recovery and rehabilitation period. (And I have been told his insurance is, or has, run out.) If you would like to contribute towards his fund please contact: messagetomax@castleasia.com
While we may not be able to stop terrorists, we can help to alleviate the suffering they cause.
Info courtesy of WNJ (What’s New Jakarta) Newsletter 3/09/09
The Day the Rainbow Died
Make a wish/Have a ball/Dream a dream/Be it all…/If you want it, you can get it/But to get it, you’ve got to want it/Anything you want to try…../Just let go and you'll fly highhhhhhhh.../And Make a Wish!*
I’m making a wish. I am wishing, dreaming, hoping someone, or a lot of someones, realize how gray our world will be without rainbows—especially this rainbow, the Reading Rainbow…
On August 28th Reading Rainbow died. After 26 years of celebrating books Reading Rainbow is off the air.
Why in the world is Reading Rainbow—a program celebrating books and reading and ideas--going off the air?
“Because no one — not the station, not PBS, not the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — will put up the several hundred thousand dollars needed to renew the show's broadcast rights,” explained, John Grant, who is in charge of content at Reading Rainbow's home station.
What’s a few hundred thousand dollars in the grand scheme of things? Consider how much more than that we, the United States of America, spend on other things—war, for instance--wars against things like drugs, poverty, pollution, people...oh yeah, and illiteracy.
Grant noted that while the decision to end Reading Rainbow had to do with funding cuts to PBS, it “can also be traced back to a philosophical change about TV and reading. He says the change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on things like phonics and spelling, the basic tools of reading”….And PBS and CPB and the Department of Education want to put funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read. They think “teaching the mechanics of reading should be the network's priority.”
Silly me, I thought that was what teachers and parents were supposed to do…maybe that’s why funding for education is not of highest propriety…why pay teachers? Heck, let’s let TV teach our children “the mechanics of reading.”
Reading Rainbow is not and has never been about teaching children to read. Reading Rainbow does something more…something huge: “Reading Rainbow" Grant notes, “taught kids why to read, you know, the love of reading, encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.”
We don’t seem to mind spending heaps of money to bully people into doing the “right thing.” So why not peel off some good old American greenbacks to do a really right thing: Bring back Reading Rainbow.
Better yet, skip PBS. PBS will go on to create other, wonderful programs—that’s what PBS does, provide “quality” programming for television viewers, programs like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the only programs with longer runs on PBS than Reading Rainbow.
Let’s turn instead to those “for profit” TV program producers, the one who bring us “quality” TV shows packed with plenty worth learning to love: violence, rage, anger, slaughter, decapitation, blood, cussing, crime, crime, crime…
ABC, NBC, FX, CBS, Fox, HBO…why don’t YOU bring back Reading Rainbow?
Come on, use a couple of hundred thousand of those dollars you charge sponsors to air commercials for products they want us to buy—and buy us a program we want to watch—and want our children to watch. One that celebrates reading and imagination.
Butterfly in the sky/ I can go twice as high/Take a look/ it's in a book/ -- Reading Rainbow...
For the full NPR story go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112312561
*Theme from “Make a Wish” with Tom Chapin, the 70's morning show that fostered my grand ideas.)