[finchfeeder]

Originally Posted by BillSPrestonEsq

the elms?

We have another winner!
and...a new player!
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Yes!
You have won a pair of sunglasses from the Dew Drop Inn gift shop.

Originally Posted by BillSPrestonEsq

I had an elm tree in my front and back yard growing up.

Bells were my first experience of reading music. I was about 12 and there were girls who played at church, but, none of them could handle the low bells. Several people asked me since my elder brother was a concert pianist and they figured I had some music in me...

we actually won a few competitions in the central valley. But yes, I learned to read music playing the bass end of a handbell choir.

I really was bad at piano. So much so that my teacher suggested a new instrument. I just had difficulty with my hands doing the same thing but different accross the middle of me.

I have a lot of respect for those of you who have studied the piano. Some here may already know that I have had run-ins with piano players who do not seem to respect guitarists but aside from that, I do think highly of the piano player. For some reason, it seems to me that the piano is most basic and that piano players probably know the fundamentals of music. Am I wrong?

Bill, I think that is so cool that you played the bells and learned to read music like that. Church really does offer us many opportunities that we might never have without church.

[finchfeeder]

I miss Nate.
I wonder where he is and what he is doing.

I don't know if I will ever get over what Nate said about liking Jennifer Knapp for beauty. I like Jennifer Knapp. I think that she may be the very best artist that we have but I never would have labeled it beauty.

The Newsboys brought to my attention the fact that words like: ooh and aah are actual lyrics in our songs.

On guitar, I like cleans. In the sound booth, I am always trying to make people sound clear and audible. Others keep insisting that I put sound effects on but I keep turning sound effects down and off.

So, I like cleans but the Newsboys take it to a whole other level. The Newsboys are like surgically sterile, pristine clean. They exactly sing: ooh aah exactly, el preciso, on each beat:
all fall like a million pie-ces ooh aah.
I drives me crazy.

Words like ooh and aah are supposed to sound ad-libbed, spontaneous.

The Beatles:
She loves you! Yeah, yeah, yeah!

OK. So. I know that yeah, yeah, yeah are the lyrics but when the Beatles did it, especially back then, it was...like...wild and crazy! They were being goofball. It was silly but we enjoyed it and it worked. It's a bouncy song. Carefree. It was about shaking our heads to make our long hair flop around and drive our parents insane. It was about breaking out of the polyester Pat Boone, Kate Smith and show tunes mold. It was about being wild. It was not about precision. How did we get from breaking free...to a man sitting, hunched over his desk, painstakingly writing: ooh aah into his song?

Elvis:
Sometimes, if Elvis forgot the words or the words did not fit the music well, Elvis would...like...do a humming type deal.
Elvis was like:
umma, umma, umma.

The other day, my husband was listening to his live Doors song. Really great stuff! Morrison was a poet.
Morrison made up words and sounds:
Bub-bub-bub-doo Alright! Yeah!
rest
Save our city
music
Give up your vows
What the crap was he talking about?
Who cares? It sounds great!

I hope that all of my friends know how much I love Aerosmith! Steven Tyler. Nobody screams like Tyler! Perfectly timed screaming! So cool!
Tyler is like:
i-chi-chi-chi-chi-chi-chi- AAAAAAAA-HHHH *jump aroung the stage*

Jennifer Knapp, now she has zillions of them! Knapp does like a growl from the throat that kinda reverbs up and out the mouth. Knapp sings things like: er, a and then kinda slops some words in next to it in these wonderful songs to Almighty God and it really does not seem disrespectful. It sounds, yes Nate, beautiful.

[finchfeeder]

6 pages already! I am so pleased!

I have decided to invent another game to add to the first one. Musical letter scramble. What is this word?

socurpines

[Mrs. Leboman]

Is Jennifer Knapp back out in the public arena? We saw her a few years ago and then it's like she went into hiding or something.

[finchfeeder]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Role Modlin

Is Jennifer Knapp back out in the public arena? We saw her a few years ago and then it's like she went into hiding or something.

I have noticed that she is missing too. The last I saw, they put out a CD of songs that she had already done.

Are you a big fan of hers?

[finchfeeder]

I really enjoy quotes. Please feel free to post your favoites at The Dew Drop Inn.

"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."
-Phillips Brooks

"Everyone can afford to give away a smile."
-Unknown

"The most flammable kind of wood is the chip on your shoulder."
-E. Joseph Cossman

"Goals are dreams with deadlines."
-Diana Scharf Hunt

"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression."
-Haim Ginott

"Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them."
-Brendan Francis

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."
-Dolly Parton

"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope."
-Bill Cosby

"In each of us there is a little of all of us."
-Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to."
-Arnold H. Glasow

"Mistakes are the portals of discovery."
-James Joyce

"A smile is a passport that will take you anywhere you want to go."
-Anonymous

"An apology is a good way to have the last word."
-Unknown

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."
-Confucius

[finchfeeder]

Here are a couple of quotes that I would like to open for discussion:

"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
-William Jennings Bryan

"It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny."
-Jean Nidetch

Is this true?

Is this people playing god?

Is this an idea of what some Christians would call, "The World?"

[finchfeeder]

I am really feeling quite devistated by what happened yesterday.

Boy did I mess up.

You don't have to comment. That situation is so complex and yet at the root quite simple, I think.

Boy did I mess up.

[finchfeeder]

My stepdaughter has begun sending us email. She sends us the most hideous things. She sent a video of one woman punching another woman in the face and she sent a video of a little kitten playing by swatting at Saddam's dangling feet.

I have decided to forward to her all of the beautiful pictures that people send to me. Her father whole heartedly agrees and urges me to do so.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by finchfeeder

My stepdaughter has begun sending us email. She sends us the most hideous things. She sent a video of one woman punching another woman in the face and she sent a video of a little kitten playing by swatting at Saddam's dangling feet.

I have decided to forward to her all of the beautiful pictures that people send to me. Her father whole heartedly agrees and urges me to do so.

I identify with this. My dad sends me footage of cameras on smart bombs blowing Iraqis up and other war stuff. To be honest, seeing Saddam dangling dead would not faze me. One of my proffs at Moody showed footage of the aftermath of the kurdish gas attacks and my memory is fuzzy on whether there was footage of the attack. Thus, as horrible as this sounds, a thousand deaths for him seem hardly scratching the surface of justice, and yet to torment him would have been to become him.

In my mind he is a monster so foul, I am incapable of pity towards him.

However, I have made it a point not to see the execution tape or footage of him dead for that very reason.

But I am sick of the wartime macabre video emails. I mean, I do not find any joy in seeing soldiers or civilians die. (and dad has sent footage of both) To him its patriotism to watch in his eyes. To me its horrible.

War sometimes is the only method to accomplish a means, but as one man in history whom I deplore stated so succinctly, "war is hell" - William Tecumsah Sherman.

I don't know what to do except hit delete anymore.

[Tony]

Originally Posted by finchfeeder

Here are a couple of quotes that I would like to open for discussion:

"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
-William Jennings Bryan

"It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny."
-Jean Nidetch

Is this true?

Is this people playing god?

Is this an idea of what some Christians would call, "The World?"

I suppose the error in these quotes is to say that self-determination is all there is to self-direction. Especially when they say that the alternative to choice is merely chance.

Both quotes seem to leave God out of the equation.

[Tony]

Originally Posted by BSP Esq.

I don't know what to do except hit delete anymore.

I've gotten pretty good at that in recent years.

[psalm63adam]

Originally Posted by Mrs. Role Modlin

Is Jennifer Knapp back out in the public arena? We saw her a few years ago and then it's like she went into hiding or something.

The rumor out there is that she's gay, and her record company forfeited her contract.

[finchfeeder]

Originally Posted by psalm63adam

The rumor out there is that she's gay, and her record company forfeited her contract.

Bummer in triplicate.

Adam, you do not have to stay on topic in my journal. I sought you as a friend because I enjoyed your posts. If you have something that you want to talk with us about, please feel free to post here.

How about giving us a Zoe report? Where are you at with your grieving?

[finchfeeder]

Originally Posted by Tony

I suppose the error in these quotes is to say that self-determination is all there is to self-direction. Especially when they say that the alternative to choice is merely chance.

Both quotes seem to leave God out of the equation.

Tony! Thank you for this post!

I was thinking that there was something missing from those quotes. Your analysis is so clear and precise! It really helps me. I am drinking in this display of intellectual brilliance like a person lost in the desert without any water.

I think that I am going to send the concepts of people being gods and "The World" to the recycling bin. They strike me as religious rhetoric and are not very helpful to me. I have wasted a lot of time trying to understand what people mean when they say those things.

Your way is better and I thank you for it!