December 18 – colors of the sky

colors of the sky
pastel mornings, oils at noon
watercolor nights

The angle of the axis and rotation of the globe have combined so that my day starts and ends in the dark.

Very few benefits to this but I get to see the sunrise and sunset each day.

It happens in my rearview mirror but still.

I had lived my entire life in West Michigan until moving to North Georgia about 10 years ago.

I thought that things like sunsets and twilight or first light and full dark were pretty much constant.

I never thought that these things might be influenced by a locations distance to the equator.

It makes sense, geometrically, but who goes through their day thinking geometrically (besides my brother the math teacher).

Weatherunderground.com posts the different times for:

Sunset
Civil Twilight
Nautical Twilight
Astronomical Twilight
Length of Visible Light

I am not sure what the difference in those things mean exactly but I am sure my good friends Chesley McNeil at WXIA or George Lessens at WZZM could explain it.

Here in Atlanta for December 17, there is 10 hours and 50 minutes of visible light.

Further up the globe in Grand Rapids, there is 10 hours and 5 minutes of visible light.

There is more light down here in the south.

But if you compare the time from sunset to astronomical twilight, Grand Rapids comes out on top with a total of 103 minutes of total twilight compared to Atlanta’s 90 minutes.

We noticed this right away after we moved down here.

The sun comes up fast.

The sun goes down fast.

I look out the window in the evening and think we have time for a walk while it is still light.

By the time we get outside, it is full dark.

Not much color to dark.

Most likely if you were looking for a color based adjective for night time, the word you come up with is inky.

But daylight.

I have as much ability in art as I do in music.

I can look and listen.

I look at the colors of the day.

Pastels done in sidewalk chalk to capture the powdery pinks and blues of morning.

The strict separation of colors in oils for the full sun of noon.

Spreading wet watercolors on a damp piece of paper for the evening.

Alice Walker writes, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.”

I am not going to stop my car and get out and look at the colors in the sky.

I am not going to get out my phone and take a picture of the sky (I know it wouldn’t work anyway).

But I think God would be pissed off if I, at the very least, didn’t notice the show in the sky.

It happens every day.

December 17 – vacation hot spots?

vacation hot spots?
lounging endlessly with books
no need to travel

I remember when I was working the information desk at the Cascade Branch of the Kent District Library I was asked, “How do you know so much about the world?”

I answered that librarians had been everywhere, done everything and seen the world … just not in the first person.

When I was in college, I would roam the labyrinth of the Grad Library at the University of Michigan (reportedly some 5 million books on the shelf) and randomly take books of the shelves until my arms where full then I would sit in the reading room and disappear into the books.

What the library staff thought when they found my stacks of books left on the table, I never stuck around to find out.

This shelf surfing continues to this day, both online and in my local library.

Searching for the odd fact, photo, story or even recipe.

I was thinking about this because I keep reading stories about the best places for a vacation.

The 10 places you have to see before you die.

The 50 cities you have to visit.

It seemed to me that many of the descriptions included the phrase, “a great place to relax”.

A place to relax with a book.

I have to ask, “Why do I have to travel to relax?”

Travel headlines are about long lines, unreliable airplanes, reliably awful co-travelers and weather.

I am not a traveler.

I have no travel bucket list.

I have to say this is not a criticism of those of who do love to travel.

If you enjoy traveling, I am all for you.

I even admit, when I travel, I enjoy the opportuinty to see new things.

I sat on the front porch of the house were Elvis was born this year.

Top that!

For the most part, it is just not me.

I travel the world, just not in the first person.

Come aboard.

You will find me nearby.

Lounging endlessly through books, through the web.

No thought for time.

No need to travel.

December 16 – Carols at Christmas

Carols at Christmas
Words seemingly carved in stone
New lyrics? Now wait!

I am willing to be old as I really don’t have a choice.

I am willing to be old fashioned in many things by choice.

In too many things if you ask my wife.

Last couple of weeks, Church has performed songs for the Christmas season.

Songs which I would have called traditional Christmas Carols.

But the tradition ended with the 2nd and 3rd verses of these traditional songs.

New, modern, evangelical lyrics replaced the old words.

The gears in my brain went out of sync.

I was a little bit shocked and a lot bit dismayed.

This wasn’t wrong.

But this wasn’t right either.

I thought some things were beyond the wrecking ball of time.

I never sang a Christmas Carol that I thought that the words or the meaning could be improved.

Well there was that year I was teaching the 4th Grade Boys Sunday School class and I told the boys that when we sang ‘Angels We Have Heard on High’ for the Church Christmas Program, instead of GLOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOO -OOOOOOOOOOOORIA, we could get away with OOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO-REOS (and we did too) but I digress.

I find it hard to imagine anyone sitting back, looking at a piece of sheet music to O Come All Ye Faithful, looking at the new lyrics they just added and saying, ‘There, that’s better!’.

According to the Macmillan Dictionary Blog, Carol is a very old word, dating back at least to 1300. It originally meant a circle dance, and came from Old French carole, and possibly ultimately from Greek and Latin, but its etymology is obscure.

The first OED citation for the current meaning – “A song or hymn of joy sung at Christmas in celebration of the Nativity. Rarely applied to hymns on certain other festal occasions” – comes from 1502:

Speaking of Oh Come All Ye Faithful, yes, I know it was Adeste fideles læti triumphantes in the Latin and it was changed into english somewhere along the line.

And I know Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (The times change and we change with the times.)

If you ask me, some things shouldn’t be, don’t need to be changed.

But then, no one asked me.

December 15 – rarely opened up

rarely opened up
memories filled drawers
follow forever

I wrote the other day about my room mate, Doug, who in college put much effort into creating cassette tapes of his favorite songs.

Doug got in touch with me to let me know, he still had those tapes in a shoebox somewhere.

Understand, these tapes were created in 1983.

Hard to believe, but almost 40 years ago.

Since then we had moved out of that apartment in Ann Arbor.

Doug took a job and moved to Washington, DC, got married, moved several more times and now lives in New Mexico.

And this shoebox moved right along with him.

A shoebox filled with memories.

In the corner of my workroom (now filled with Grand Kidz toys) is an old dental tool cabinet that belonged to my Grand Father,

It’s old drawers are packed full.

Packed full of memories.

Randomly open the drawers and you might see:

A number 13 pool ball that sat on my desk when I worked at WZZM13. The pool ball is one of the original set that came with the pool table my Father bought from old pool hall in Grand Rapids.

A baseball stamped ‘OFFICAL BALL MIDWEST LEAGUE’ that I got at a West Michigan White Caps game when a player during warm ups in the outfield got tired of the drunken bums razing him from the bleachers and he turned and threw that ball at them. My son Frank says to me, “I didn’t know you could get a ball that way!”

A bunch of wooden show pins with the kids name wood burned onto them that we got at the Dutch Village.

Keys to old locks.

Along with assortment of photographs, knick knacks, birthday cards and bits of history that themselves are keys to locks on old memories.

Understand that since getting married, we have moved about 10 times with a move from Michigan to Georgia added in.

This stuff is still there.

Most likely a lot of will make the next move as well.

I am getting to the age where my memory isn’t what it used to be.

About myself, I used to quote the line from Citizen Kane, “I remember everything that ever happened to me. That’s my curse.”

But not anymore.

No control over that.

I do have control over the memories stored away in drawers.

I will keep those as long as I can.

December 13 – carpooling commute

carpooling commute
driving to work with Ludwig
Where does the time go?

Wandering down the information superhighway, I came across a folder labeled “Complete Beethoven Piano Trios”.

I downloaded the folder and added the contents to my iPhone and forgot about it.

Commuting to downtown Atlanta everyday and back home again, I yell at my phone, ‘Hey Siri, play music!”

Siri answers, “Playing all songs, shuffled.”

These Beethoven Piano Trios showed up in the mix.

I had never heard these pieces before that I was aware of.

Where had this music come from?

It was like finding a book from a favorite author that had never been published.

They may be great.

I don’t know.

They are FUN to listen to.

That I do know.

Energy, excitement flows from the music into my brain.

I can’t say I know much about music or music theory or what makes great music.

I have little to no musical talent of my own.

I have no sense of rhythm.

I do know what stirs my soul.

I do know what brings myself into a piece of music.

I don’t care if its Beethoven, Ellington, Le Vent du Nord, Queen, Allman Brothers or Earth, Wind and Fire.

I know when I hear it with my toes so to speak.

Which brings me to marvel at the availability of music today.

I doubt there is a piece of recored music that isn’t finger clicks away from my ears.

Back in the day, Doug, my college roommate, would create cassette tapes of his favorite music.

To get some of his favorites, Doug would call radio stations request lines and ask for certain songs.

Then he would set up a tape recording of that station and wait, poised like a tiger, to leap and hit the record button when (and if) the song played.

Through this method and recording songs from records and other tapes, Doug would create a library tape of favorites.

The funny thing about this is that our refrigerator was on its way to dying.

Every once in a while it would kick on and as it started, the compressor or whatever would falter and all the lights in the apartment would flicker for a few seconds.

If the stereo system was on, a loud bbbbbwaaaaaaaaaaaappppppppppp, would come across the sound system.

Somehow, this interference would also end up on Doug’s tapes.

We could be making one of this never ending trips back and forth to home from Ann Arbor with one of Doug’s tapes playing Styx or REO and without warning we would hear bbbbbwaaaaaaaaaaaappppppppppp.

BUT I DIGRESS.

Beethoven’s Piano Trios.

Unexpected find.

Unexpected music.

When they are over, its 20 minutes later on my commute.