Connections

It's nice to have celebrity friends.  The other day in the car, I had the radio on and they were playing what sounded like a theme and variations on "Deutschland Uber Alles."  It was really an amazing recording and I knew that I was only going to be able to listen to it for a few minutes and would not be there to hear the end and hear what it was.  

I think I was going to the store, so I was not in the store long. Naturally when I came out, the piece had finished but I realized that it was our friend Stephen Peithman's weekly show, "Connections," a show which explores links between concepts, themes and people in classical music, from medieval to modern.

Some of the themes include the Jazz Connection (Jazz inspired works by Gershwin, Ravel, Milhaud, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Copland and Bernstein); The Haydn-Mozart Connection, exploring the friendship between the two and the music it inspired; The Young Person's Connection, A program for the young—and the young at heart; and The Reworked Connection (How Chopin, Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel, and others re-worked some of their most familiar pieces)

I dropped Steve a note saying I had listened to a short part of the show that day and wanted to know the piece he had played.  He explained that this was his "Anthem Connection," show exploring the root and variations of "Deutschland Uber Alles" and "America the Beautiful / God Save the King."  He asked if I would like him to burn a CD for me of the whole show.  This afternoon, I found it at our front door and we listened to it on our way to see Seussical this evening.

Capital Public Radio streams their shows and I would strongly encourage anybody who thinks this sounds like an interesting concept to listen to the show--it's an hour, but so worth it.  "Deutschland," for example, has been an Anglican hymn, a Haydn string quartet and the rousing German national anthem (an outgrowth of the original, which was an answer to England's "God Save the King" and extolled the good qualities of the Emperor).  The program is fascinating historically and there are some amazing recordings.  I highly recommend it.

We have a new fence.

Robert Frost said "Good fences make good neighbors."  One can only hope.

This is the house owned by the guy I used to call Mr. McCoy (since we had a Hatfield-McCoy type feud going about the dogs for several years).  He has since moved and now rents the place.  The fence has been falling down for a long time and I suggested awhile back that Walt contact him about sharing the cost of a new fence, but he didn't get around to it, and the other day Mr. McCoy stopped by asked Walt if he would consider paying half the cost of a new fence

It was supposed to take two days, but they finished it in one--perhaps realizing that today was the best weather they would get all week and that tomorrow it may be back near 100 again.

I'm thrilled with it.  It is now a solid wall, taller than what we had before.  I'm hoping that without the ability to see movement in the back yard of Mr. McCoy's house the dogs won't feel moved to bark all the time.

Earlier in the day, I had gone to Atria to take my mother to her TB test at 11:20.  I knew she wouldn't remember.  Someone from Atria met me in the hall and said that she had just awakened her.  Not surprisingly, when I came in, she was upset, disoriented and didn't know where she was.

I pushed her to get dressed and told her I would make sure she got to the room where they were doing TB tests.  She just said over and over again that her head wasn't right and that she didn't know where she was or what she was supposed to be doing,  God, I wish I knew how to answer that question for her!!!

She was a tad better when we got back after the test (though she wasn't sure where her apartment was) because when she pulled the "don't know what I'm supposed to be doing" line I reminded her that the thing she was supposed to do today was get her TB test and that she had done it, so she had completed what she was supposed to do and she could relax the rest of the day.  Surprisingly this did seem to calm her down, at least momentarily.

I didn't stay long because I was in the middle of a zillion things at home and I have to go take her to get her hair cut tomorrow.  She really doesn't want to do that, but when I tell her the beauty parlor is inside Atria and she won't have to leave the building, she relaxes a bit, but still doesn't look happy about it.  I, however will feel much better when it is finally the right length again.  She looks like an old crone these days because not only is her hair too long, but she sometimes doesn't bother to brush it and when she does, it is just all straight and stringy. If she could actually look in a mirror and understand how bad she looks, I don't think she would be so unhappy about being dragged to the beauty parlor.

Her wound is looking better, but goddammit, she put nail polish on it again.  I don't know WHY she does that.  It's either nail polish or lipstick.  The lipstick is easier to clean off!