Music
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Color Me Chagrined
You’ll remember that back around Christmas, I heard a wonderful tenor singing “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” on a radio program, and could not find information about the singer, who I heard the radio host identify as Pete Smith. Some of you emailed me and left comments here in an attempt to assist me. I posted here my intention to email the “Seems Like Old Times” program director, Craig Orndorff and request some assistance. His gracious reply both satisfied me and shocked me. Here is what he wrote: Hi SK, Thank you so much for the kind words. I’m glad you enjoy the show. Great to have you…
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Christmas Eve, 2023
It’s been an interesting day. Very mild and sunny, very springlike. We enjoyed a very mellow time of it, right up until I started to microwave a biscuit and some sausage leftover from breakfast for a snack. When I pressed “start,” the display of numbers went blank, and then the entire bank of kitchen lights went out, along with the lights and the fridge out in the utility room. I went to the cellar to look at the breaker box, but no breakers were tripped. Still, I flipped the proper ones off, then on, then back off and let them sit for a while. Turned ’em back on and nothing.…
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Last Saturday in the Fall
The good news is that Joy Cartwright is feeling much better, and I am grateful. The bad news is that I am feeling pretty crappy. Started feeling very droopy yesterday after, with all those flulike symptoms of dizziness, achy bones, flushed face, sneezing, completed congested head, etc. It’s been a real fun time and I’m trying not to re-gift it to Mrs. Orr. *** Speaking of Mrs. Orr, she took the oldest granddaughters out yesterday for their birthday. They wanted Chinese, and so after they ate, they asked their MeeMaw to take them to a used bookstore they particularly enjoy. Yes, they are definitely our granddaughters with their hunger for…
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Warm Fades
Today was one of those October days that seemed ordered from a catalog, ticking off the options: electric blue sky…flaming riot of leaves falling and swirling in the wind….mild, warm breeze…long stretches of silence split only by birdsong. We ate brunch at a new place one town over, recently opened by a retired firefighter and his family. Just after they opened, one of their sons died tragically, and they had to close up for a while. Since they have reopened, we decided to give them a try today. It’s a little cafe’, clean and nicely decorated in a firehouse motif. Nothing fancy. We heard our waitress talking to a patron…
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Halfway Done
October has swept in with its blazing flourish, its browning, crumbling, scything sweep, making the cheeks ruddy and the shoulders shiver, remembering the heavier garments that have hung ignored for months, the articles of garb we don’t want to use but for which we are grateful when we take them up again. And now, in the middle part of the tenth month, we are grateful. Our neighbor arrived Friday night with his loader and attacked the enormous pine tree that has reclined in his pasture since Palm Sunday since he hoisted it off our shared fence and dropped it on his side. Mrs. Orr and I reminisced about the day…
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October, Enter Stage Right
The hummingbirds are gone for the year, I think. We saw a couple yesterday, and heard them as they were droning around in the trees, but that was earlier in the day. By early evening, they were not to be seen. This morning, no hum nor squeak greeted me when I opened the back door. We watched all morning for them but no hummingbirds. I took down all the feeders and replaced the nectar except in one, which was mostly being used by wasps, anyway. All the day long while we were outside, we strained our ears and eyes, but never heard nor saw any of the beautiful little paint…
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Quiet Entry
Purple-Hull pea blossom The first Sunday of fall, and it has strolled in quietly. The sky is completely overcast, but no approach of rain. It was chilly enough on the front porch this morning for me to have to don a light jacket. Mrs. Orr and I sat out there, her shelling peas, me watching the birds. A downy woodpecker was on the downed pine, his steady staccato attack ringing across the valley. A pair of titmice took turns bathing in the birdbath while a goldfinch perched at the edge, sipping and watching. A murmuration of starlings in the next pasture swung and swooped and startled my wife with…
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Days Upon Days
The temperatures are so very mild here now…about 72F , sunny and mild, with rock-bottom humidity. The sensitive antennae of my bones tell me that winter will approach with more speed than I had anticipated. Mrs. Orr and I were talking recently about how we used to dread the hot weather — because in Texas, that’s really all we had — and how we welcomed the fall and winter months. Not no more, ese! The cold has an effect that it didn’t in our salad days, so there is a novel sense of dread now with the shifting sun patterns and the almost-chilly breeze. I am watching the hummingbirds closely,…
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Royal Pains
It’s raining softly here today, and the valley is quiet except for the protestations of cows who are methodically being separated from their calves. We love the rain and the clouds, but there is an uncharacteristic sad feeling in the very air. And time is passing much too quickly. There is some Alanis-level irony in the fact that the squash we so carefully planted in the garden has done poorly, but one lone “volunteer” plant that sprang up, probably because of a bird depositing a seed, in a bed of shrubs bordering the back porch. This one unintentional plant has provided enough good squash for several meals so far, and…
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Labor Day
The humidity was heavy in the air this morning, much more pronounced than yesterday. It will be an oppressively hot day, but looking at the calendar, I am mindful that this will change more quickly than I like to believe. The sun is beginning to get that Emily Dickinson “certain slant” to it, and the days and evenings feel slightly different, as though there has been some subtle but great turning — which there has. This earth is moving and tilting in preparation for the months that will bring winter to this hemisphere. When I look at the skies, whether in the blue of day or the pinpricked black of…