As The Music Plays #9

Posted on 02/11/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

This is a series of posts about the music I play while writing.  This time we’re up to Try To Remember.  This is a song about nostalgia and was originally written for the 1960 play The Fantasticks.  The song’s lyrics were written by American lyricist Tom Jones while Harvey Schmidt composed the music.  The folk singing group, The Brothers Four recorded this song as part of their 1965 album, Try to Remember.  The album reached 76th on the Billboard chart.

The Brothers Four are most remembered for their 1960 hit, Greenfields and being part of the folk music scene in the 1960’s.  I’ve always liked the group and their mellow and yet rich blend of voices.  They never became as big as other groups of their time.  While they are a great performance group, they aren’t know for writing their own songs.  They declined in popularity by the end of the 60’s as musical tastes changed to more rock and roll.  Still, they’ve been a group ever since and still tour.  Members of the group have changed a bit over the years, but their sound hasn’t.

Here’s a version of Try to Remember that they recorded sometime around 2012 and they posted to YouTube:

I like this version and like that it’s sung by older guys.  It makes the nostalgia feel stronger than when sung by someone in their 20s.  Nostalgia is the feeling this song creates and as I age, I find that I do more thinking about the past and find the lyrics of this song to be real feelings for me these days.  I do recall listening to the song as a teen.  I liked it then because of the pacing of the melody and the deep richness of their voices.  It’s a melody that lulls you into reflection — into a space where you slow down and think about things that used to be.

It’s also a perfectly structured poem.  Look at the verses and you’ll see a clear ABAB rhyming pattern as in:

Try to remember when life was so tender

That no one wept except the willow

Try to remember the kind of September

When love was an ember about to billow

The structure of the poem gives us these rhyming couplets with a strong dose of repetition.  It makes the lyrics easy to remember and easy to internalize.  The metaphors are clear and don’t take much effort to understand.  The symbology borders on simplistic but the over all arch of the song/poem builds a strong warm nostalgic feeling.  It gets me thinking of what used to be.

It gets me into a story telling frame of mind and that why this song is on my music to write by play list.

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Friday Wisdom – Pizza

Posted on 02/09/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

As I’ve mentioned in the past I’m running for president as part of the Pizza Party. Our main aim is to stabilize the economy by setting up a federal agency that delivers fresh hot pizza to every American home on a Friday night. We’ll use only American grown and manufactured products — we foresee benefits such as, economic growth, improved health by providing fresh organic ingredients, and a major effect on Social media by turning the conversation from politics to why does the government make and deliver Hawaiian style pizzas. Also, Heather and I have been watching this great program on Netflix about pizza chefs so I am inspired by pizza. Here’s more information on the subject:

I’ve been working on a new pizza joke, but so far it’s kind of cheesy.

Can’t believe I did this, but I bunt my Hawaiian pizza. I should have used aloha temperature.

Why don’t pizzas play golf? They always slice.

I think the main difference between a pizza and a pizza joke is that a joke can’t be topped.

I was at the store yesterday and saw this new kind of vegan pizza, it’s called a pepperphony.

I never understood square pizzas, is it because pi are square?

The police just arrested a gang that was stealing frozen pizza. Apparently their plan wasn’t well thawed-out.

There are two types of people in this world, pizza lovers and liars.

I just read that Hollywood is going to make an action movie about a pizza. Working title is Pie Hard.

Did you hear about the pizzeria that went out of business? They never made enough dough.

My pizza broke, but I was able to put it back together with some tomato paste.

I always invite the mushroom to my pizza parties — he’s such a fungi!

I asked the pizza place to cut my pizza into 6 slices, because there’s no way I could 8 slices.

Do you know the difference between a good pizza joke and a bad pizza joke? The delivery.

How do you get a college graduate off your front porch? Pay for the pizza.

What would a pizza say if it could talk? I don’t know, but I’m sure it would be cheesy.

I burned 2000 calories today. That’s what happens when you forget about the pizza in the oven.

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Wednesday Quilting – Table Runner Progress

Posted on 02/07/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

The snow we had on Sunday is mostly melted, but it’s still cold out there making it perfect indoor project weather.

I just finished the straight line quilting on my table runner. Here’s what it looks like right now:

This runner is about four feet long and about fourteen inches wide. The pattern is called, “Curvy Log Cabin.” Here’s a closeup of one of the dots:

It’s all done with rectangles and by varying the width of the different rectangles you get the illusion of a circle.

The quilting on the dots is all straight lines done with a walking foot on the machine. The next step is to do some quilting on the edge band. Here I’m going do some free motion work. We’ll see how well I do with that.

I’m trying some else out here — I’ve recorded some short video of the quilting process. If I do it right, I’m hoping to make a two minute recording of me quilting. Yeah, just what I need another hobby, but I’ve been wanting to do some video work for awhile and this is just a test to see if I really like that.

That’s it for this week – If you need me I’m back to reading manuals and figuring out feet.

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As The Pizza Cooks — Episode 21

Posted on 02/04/2024 by Andrew Reynolds

It’s been snowing all day.  Unusual for our town.  We decided not to drive to church and instead watched the service on zoom. Then I just settled in at the large sewing machine to quilt my table runner.

We’ve had lunch, tea and measured the snow at about 5 inches and agreed that by the time the snow ends we should have closer to 7 inches.  This is only the second time this season we’ve had snow.  We did have a day of rain awhile ago, but this is the high desert and today’s snow will be about a quarter of all the perception we’ll get this year.  Looking out of my office window right now, the snow has stopped and my neighbor is out with his snowblower clearing his driveway.

The light is fading as sunset approaches and it looks like the roads won’t be clear until tomorrow.  We live out on the edge of the city and are a low priority for the snow plows.  It’s likely that the sun will melt the snow long before we see a county snow plow.

It’s just a day to stay indoors and wait for warmer weather.

Yesterday was the interesting day.  After a nice dinner with our daughter, we went to hear our local art museum to hear the live recording of the podcast, “Museum Confidential.”  I’d never heard of that podcast before.  I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, but from time to time I find an interesting one.

This podcast is hosted by Jeff Martin and is a look behind-the-scenes of museums.  They were interviewing the curator for the Nevada Museum of Art and the artist Cannula Hanska Luger about Luger’s exhibit at the museum titled, “Speechless.”  Heather and I have seen the exhibit and it’s always enlightening to hear what the artist has to say about their work.

It was an interesting conversation and I found it interesting that the relationship between curator and artist is more complex than I thought.  Normally we think of a museum curator as the person who maintains the catalogs and archives of the museum and decides what is on display and what is in storage.  Turns out to be much more than that.  Especially for an art museum.  While the museum does have historical artifacts and is a repository for the past, it also strives to engage and educate us and has a eye towards the future as well.  This museum does a have good collection of art from the part, but it also works with contemporary artists to bring current and living art to the community.  It also has a strong education program with a lot of art classes for children and adults.

I won’t relate the whole conversation I heard — the pizza’s cooking — the big thing that impressed me was that there is a dynamic between artist and curator that I hadn’t expected.  Luger’s exhibit wasn’t a finished piece of art when they invited him to show something and his conversation with the curator and museum community along with a visit to the museum influenced what he brought to show and in fact inspired him to create certain pieces just for this show.

I think the podcast will be published later this week on NPR’s website if you want to hear it.

That’s it for this week.  Full dark is here and I’m still thinking about last night’s program, this morning’s sermon and am waiting for the timer to buzz so we can eat pizza in our warm home.

But I’ve also noticed, that a neighbor of ours who is a lineman for the local power company is still not home.  He left hours ago in his repair truck and while I wait in the warm with my thoughts, I wonder about him pulling wires in the snow to restore power to homes that are now in the cold and dark.

I hope you’re home warm or have a neighbor like mine who’s willing to work in the snow and cold to bring warmth.

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