Holiday Merriment & Folk Music

Another holiday party come and gone. There was enough food for all, and the Horse & Carriage parade was pretty, and a fun reason to host a party, as it begins on our street. Over 100 carriages, ponies, Clydesdales, miniatures horses, & dwarf ponies, decorated with lights, garland, bells.... Some of the riders wore costumes from the Victorian era, creating a bit of nostalgia. It was a beautiful, but cold evening. And for one day, our living room and dining room was clean, though still unfinished, but gave me hope! No dropclothes, tools, or dust, I could see the floor, and felt like we had two rooms, so close to completion! I'm ready to finish them. We don't have the trim up, so we put garland around the 3 window in the living room. We moved a couch, a couple of old wooden chairs, and two tripod lamps into there, and it felt so good. The cats were loving it too! Jim got the house in order, I did the cooking, and tidying and decorating of my music studio, where we ate. Thanks, Jim, for all of your work cleaning yesterday! You impress me.

Jim and I have had a couple of short-on-sleep evenings, for reasons of getting the holiday benefit concert posters and tickets designed and printed (so thankful that Kinkos is open at 4am!) together and distributed to the shopkeepers in town yesterday, and then getting cooking, cleaning, and decorating for our party accomplished. It all came together. And today, the day after the party, we slept in - until 1pm! It was deserved.

Totally unrelated....
I love PBS! Though I seem to turn it on very randomly, I always find programs that I relate to. Tonight, Peter, Paul & Mary are on there. I've always enjoyed their music, from the standpoint of it being folk music, their lyrics, and their mission. They use music for a purpose, other than enjoyment. They offered music with a message. Tonight was the first time that I really, I mean really, noticed how incredibly interesting and creative their harmonies are, and how they actually don't "blend" but they are three people singing "together". I heard the story of how Paul was asked to write a song for Peter's wedding, and the song that came about, and became much more than just a song for Peter's wedding - The Wedding Song, a song about universal love, the one kind that most of us seek. How many times have I heard that song, even performed that song at wedding on flute, yet never closely listened or thought about the words? It's a beautiful song. Their rendition of Pete Seeger's "If I Had a Hammer" is spectacular! Again the harmonies, so unique. And they just sang John Denver's "Jet Plane. It's a song that makes me cry every time I hear it, just because I have a moment in my life that I tie to it. My last year of teaching full time at a public school, we took the steel bands to South Carolina. One evening, we took them all to the beach, after dark, to just hang out as a group, some had guitars, some had percussion instruments. And several of them started singing folk songs, including "Jet Plane." Soon, everyone was singing. I had so many students that I loved teaching and hated to leave them. It was just time to carve my own pathway and course of study.

I'm going to get a cd or 2 of Peter, Paul and Mary and study up on their harmonies, an area that doesn't come naturally to me.