Well folks, it’s a new new year. It isn’t an old new year. :)

Just a note of interest here - I installed a new antispam plugin here at my blog and I have found many comments that had previous slipped my notice to approve. So if you have been commenting and not seeing your comments here, my apologies! It will help if you use the same name and contact info - once you’ve been approved once, your comments will show up immediately without moderation.

That is good news indeed, since the plugin took care of thousands of spam that I had been planning on going through  -all 255 pages of it - to delete them and check if I had any real comments to approve.

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Last night everyone was watching a movie and I remembered that it was New Year’s Eve and there is a sort of party downtown where they have lots of concerts at different buildings, and ice sculptures in the park. So I decided to go out and figured it probably wouldn’t be that cold because it had snowed all day, and of course it doesn’t usually snow when it’s dreadfully cold. I was so wrong. As soon as I got out and felt the snow crunch under my feet, and felt the inside of my nose freeze on inhalation, I knew I had underestimated. I decided to go check if the free coffee I had heard about was a rumor, and I found that there was indeed free coffee, which I thought would warm me up. But that meant that one of my hands had to hold on to the coffee and remain outside of my pocket, in the -14 degree windchill :P

I got a schedule and walked down to where a bluegrass/folk/blues group was playing - Amy Black and the Red Clay Rascals. To put it shortly, they had nice instrumentalists and nice voices. No public critiquing, though. She sing nicely in tune! (Which is a relief, always ;) You never know with the little concerts that go on at different places.).

Secondly, at the same church I listened to Adam Bergeron, who is a local and who I am acquainted with but I haven’t seen in a long long time. It was really a great concert. It made me feel. And I got to sit in the front row, which was just a few feet from the piano - it was as if he was sitting next to me, actually, because of the way the piano was situated with the piano bench being in the left aisle between the pews. He played Reverie, To A Wild Rose, Minute Waltz, a waltz by Greig (if I remember right), a variety of other classical pieces, and a few compositions. He ended with a classical improvisation. I don’t know why, but the waltz was just incredible. If I closed my eyes, I could see the chords differently - and it was fun to let the music carry me, to listen without conscious anticipation, but following the notes. It’s like being lead around the keyboard - sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes to  discordant chords and other times to flowing like a waterfall with sweet major chords and runs, others running with tears, with percussive left hand octaves pounding out thunder. And if you consciously analyze this stuff too much, I wonder if it wouldn’t go away! So I’ll stop talking about it now :)

Posted by Bonnie under Uncategorized, health