Category: Family

Posted on

Okay, my day is completely off the rails.

And I don’t mind one little bit!

The pup woke me about 1AM because he had the hiccups and wanted to go out. He came back in about 30 minutes later and was not his usual bouncy self. He curled up on the couch, and I sat with him for another half hour while he snoozed next to me.

Sometimes if he’s not feeling well, he’ll need to go out several times in quick succession. Last night he didn’t, do the usual thing. After a while I went back to bed and he joined me taking his usual spot at the foot of the bed.

About 6:45AM I’ve got a puppy nose in my ear. Opening my eyes, I see a very worried look on the pups face.

I know that look!

I roll out of bed and he’s already at the sliding door. I open the door, and he makes it out onto the deck and tosses his cookies. I’m pulling on sweats and heading for a kettle of water to rinse the deck. He’s already down stairs in the yard retching again.

You feel so helpless when they’re sick. After a couple of minutes he comes slowly back up the stairs. I open the slider and follow him inside. He gets a small drink of water, then jumps back up on the couch curled up Husky fashion.

That’s where we are now, I’m sitting here beside him. He’s not curled up, instead he’s alternating between having his head propped against the arm of the couch, or having his head propped against me. (I think the alternation is about being too hot on one side or the other.)

So my day is now all about attending to my sick friend. It’s only fair, he’s taken very good care of me these past months so I’m happy to return the favor.

I notice that he wakes up every half hour or so, looks around, finds me in the room, then goes back to sleep. I guess he figures I’m watching the doors and windows for him so he’s safe and all is well.

I’m going to try for a nap later in the day. But right now I think I’ll tackle the job search. At least I’ll be able to knock that off my ToDo list.

Posted on

Wow! The other half had a lot of musical scores in digital format.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a filing system for either Paper or Digital scores.

Screenshot 2023 09 30 at 7 29 50 AM

I’ve been trying to collect up all the music (Digital and Paper), and sort it with the intention of making sure that it got to the people that could use it and who would appreciate the effort.

I’m using a 32GB thumb drive now and unlike previous attempts will hopefully not run out of space.

I’ve also been finding a lot of duplications. I suspect that is in part due to the lack of a filing system and in part it might be further evidence that he’d been “off” for a while and was doing a damn fine job of hiding that fact from me.

No, I’m not angry about it. I’m just a little sad. He did his life, his way, as do I. We called “Shotgun” on each other’s journey through life and rode together for a long time. It’s cool, even if I am a little sad about the way things went from time to time.

As an aside, I have no clue how music is supposed to be catalogued, or indexed, or anything else.

I’m just doing what seems “Right” with the music much the same way I’ve done with every other curveball that’s come my way over the past 10 months.

In addition to the actual musical scores, some of which are only identifiable by opening them. (I’m fixing that slowly but surely.) I’ve also run into actual recordings where he was playing and recording into GarageBand either via a MIDI connection or he was using a microphone. Hearing him play has been somewhat jarring because I recognize his style and technique. It’s okay, but I’m still prone to crying over stuff like that, because the memories of him practicing a particular piece come flooding back. 

I’ll be a little sad over not being annoyed and hiding out in the office as he played the same measure over and over again trying to get it just right. In a way it was like RAP with Classical music!

I hate RAP!

As I typed that, I was smiling through misty eyes.

I’m sorting the music as best I can. If something has Hebrew characters in it, then it’s obviously going into the Jewish music folder. If it’s written in Russian It’s probably a fair bet that too is going to be Jewish Music. That is also true of German and Spanish.

I’m so out of my depth!

I’ve been looking for keywords in the scores. If I find anything that is recognizably Hebrew or Yiddish I know where to file it.

Christian music is a little easier because there I only have to scan for “Jesus” or Holy Ghost or Father, Son and Holy Spirt. You don’t find those kinds of references in Jewish Music.

Things start to get dicy when there are no lyrics, only the musical notation. If the title isn’t obvious, then I’m in a bit of trouble. 

If I can sound it out and recognize the roots or the rhythm of the piece  then I’ve got a shot at getting it in the right place. Some music is instantly recognizable as Jewish when you hear it.

I recognize the names of many classical pieces, or at least the composer so those scores go into the Classical Folder.

But wait! There’s more…

The harp music, the organ music, the piano, harpsichord, and even accordion music is all in one big assed digital pile.

For him, this presented no problem. He’d open an arrangement and know exactly what instrument it was for just by looking. Hell, I think sometimes he didn’t care what the score said the instrument was supposed to be. I think he’d just figure it out on the fly. That’s what a classically trained musician can do. It’s a skill built up over a lifetime and it’s amazing to watch in action.

I’ve been trying to sort the Harp and keyboard music into separate folders. Some of the folks that will be looking at this are classically trained musicians, but others aren’t.  Some of the amateur choir members can carry a tune and read music, but I know the other half curated very carefully what he gave to the choir.

It wasn’t about him disrespecting them, it was about not wanting to frustrate them with super busy scores. Sometimes he’d sit down and manually do choir only notation as a new file that he’d print here. Then we’d assemble the choir books if he wanted or needed my help.

I was probably next to useless because I didn’t read music. But I could follow instructions, run the printer, punch holes in pages, and we’d be spending the time together.

I know I could just hand all of the over to “Real” musicians instead of a hack like me. One reason that I don’t is because also mixed in this big pile of musical scores are receipts, and medical evaluations, and all the usual documents that one accumulates. So I have to be the one that filters all of this stuff out. 

Some of the pieces of music where he’s actually playing are in Apple only formats. Not a problem for me… But the Synagogue and Church are Windows based. So I’m letting my super fast computer handle processing the music into something universally playable. That takes time. Not much in the way of computer time, but time listening to the various edits and editions to determine which one is most likely to be the “Final” version that he’d want distributed.

Perhaps I’m doing all of this as much for me, and the other half, as I am for the Synagogue and Church.

It’s tedious, and time consuming. But I’m hoping to construct something that he’d be proud of. 

Posted on

So this thought hit me while I was making the bed

I caught a blip from the news that a children’s show has recently added a non-binary character.

For some reason I flashed to my childhood, watching Looney Tunes, and Hannah Barbera cartoons. Nowadays, Looney Tunes is too violent so children must be protected. GI-Joe and Transformers were sponsored by Hasbro.

Sometime in the late 70s or 80s there was parental uproar over children’s cartoons because they were sponsored by folks like General Mills and Post. The cartoons were marketing sugary cereals to children’s every Saturday Morning.

Hasbro nakedly used cartoons to market transformers and GI-Joe toys to boys. Mattel peppered The Bugs Bunny / Roadrunner Hour with Barbie, Malibu Barbie, and a ton of other toy ads.

Generally speaking the Parents, and FCC came to the conclusion that using cartoons to focus marketing to children was probably not a good thing and enacted some controls. Around the same time, Parents became aware of a growing phenomenon called Anime. Typically Anime characters have exaggerated features, particularly the female characters.

Female Anime characters tend to have exaggerated breasts, hips, and often have very caucasian features. They are also scantily clad, or depicted in skin tight outfits where their breasts are barely contained. Anime shows and movies are not for children, they’re for adults or young adults. Teen boys in particular were getting very interested in Anime. If you’re old enough you might remember Heavy Metal… Anime art is much more detailed.

A great example is Ghost in the Shell. There are some really racy images and it makes sense that Teenage boys would have been very interested. Especially prior to the internet.

At the time boys had National Geographic, the Sears Catalog, perhaps they’d sometimes find their dad’s Playboy, or Penthouse magazines and “just read the articles”. Where else was a read blooded American Boy supposed to go to see partially clothed members of the opposite sex?

Concerned parents… Actually known as prudish American women took action with Anime too. OH NOPE! My Son is not going to be a horn dog like his father!!!!

Secretly, some Fathers would rent VHS tapes and share them with their sons. Hyper-Realistic Animation is an amazing art form. I said it… I’m standing by it!

All of this flashed through my head when I heard that a kids show was including a non-binary character.

What I thought was, “I’ll bet a lot of Americans are wishing for the simplicity of just marketing Lucky Charms, Trix, GI-Joes, & Barbies right about now…”

If I were a parent now, I’d have ripped the TV out of the house. I’d have a nice monitor where we’d stream movies or plug in DVD’s and watch things as a family. Our internet would be locked down. (Except for a few dirty sites that I’d vetted for my son(s) to “discover” when they were old enough.) I’d be spending at least 2 or 3 hours a week making sure that inappropriate sites were always locked out even if they changed weekly.

I’d be looking at what sites my kids went to for their school work. I’d be paying attention and if my kids school started teaching all this woke bullshit, I’d be trying to figure out how to do homeschooling.

My children would be able to decide for themselves how their sexuality would play out. They wouldn’t be told by teachers what they were supposed to think or feel about how or with whom they wanted to express their sexuality.