cool stuff

Zen Habits a blog about organization, goal setting, time management, etc. and can deliver to your email. Thanks to the Heatons for this one!
www.ted.com/.../speakers/benjamin_zander.html
The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander, conductor and inspiring speaker, can be heard lecturing on TED talks which is full of great speakers. Positivity and musicality abounds here.

Younger Next Year Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy till your 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Dr. Harry Lodge is very inspiring. Our bodies are geared to hunter/gatherer modalities and not to modern day tv watching; keeping active signals to our brians that it is spring, not winter and therefore anti decay. Excercise every day (two days a week strength training, and four days aerobics) for the rest of your life!

KenKen, Will Shortz presents a new puzzle like Sodoku created by Tetsuya Miyamoto

Autumnal Bliss

Barnard School

We had a lovely two days of singing and dancing at the school in Barnard, Vt. with 70 kids, K-6.
Here's the place and the guidelines on the wall outside one classroom:

good reads

loved all of these!!!!





Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen
The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
Bridge of Sighs, Richard Russ
Still Here, Ram Dass

here's what Marcus Zusak says about writing the Book Thief, set in Nazi Germany, winner of many awards:

At that point, I started writing and I didn’t stop. In the end, The Book Thief took me three years to write. If nothing else, I know it’s a far different book from anything I’ve done before, which is what made it so challenging. I was also finally satisfied that there was a good sense of imagination in it. In three years, I must have failed over a thousand times, but each failure brought me closer to what I needed to write, and for that, I’m grateful.

News flash

Flash: Sam is now on the You Tube "Featured Video's" (one of three) and as of tonight there have been over 70,000 views of a puppet movie of his rendition of "Wedding Dress" by an Icelandic director, Sigga Sunna Reynisdóttir.
Also, someone posted him on Wikipedia and lists him as brother of the "great" Stefan Amidon. (Peter and I are in there too). Fun.
Also Sam is included on the two cd set Awake my Soul, music from the dvd on Shape Note music which includes a compilation cd of young new renditions of shape note songs. Hear his version of Kedron on their site.

On Success

I saw this quote outside a music room door; it was attributed to Emerson but I read now that he may not have written it after all. still, its a good'n:

To laugh often and much
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children:
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social
condition.
To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived
This is to have succeeded.

Scotsmen, thanks

Thanks to our our Scots tour guide at the Edinburgh castle

Thanks to singer and dancer Alistair Brown for all his great recommendations for our time in Edinburgh. Here he is chef extraordinaire at Pinewoods Family Week parade.

Goldsworthy sculptures

My sister Annie I had a wonderful vacation in the Lake District in England and then a few days in Edinburgh. We saw these Andy Goldsworthy sculptures in the Royal Botannical Garden.

Had a bus tour one day and my favorite was this view down into a valley where Beatrix Potter had a house built at Troutbeck which later was given to the British National Trust.

my father

I Am Standing Upon The Seashore
By Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore.

A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come
to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says;
"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull
and spar as she was when she
left my sideand she is just as able to bear her
load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone
at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout;
"Here she comes!"
And that is dying.
*****************************
John Wilson Copeland, longtime resident of Madison, died Sept. 9, 2008 at Garden Terrace Nursing Home in Chatham, NJ. Born to Samuel Bruce Copeland and Margaret Wilson Copeland on Sept. 13, 1922 in New Castle, PA, John attended Linsly Institute in Wheeling, Muskingum College, and Oberlin College. He served three years in the US Navy Reserve from 1943-1946, returning to Oberlin to finish his bachelors degree in 1947. There he met Alice Tear of Youngstown whom he married in 1949 and who survives. John received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cornell University in 1953. He taught philosophy at Boston University (1951-55) and at the University of Pittsburgh (1955-65) before joining the faculty at Drew University where he taught until his retirement in 1990.
John was passionate about photography. An avid photographer himself, he advised the Drew Photography Club for many years, and served as the Director of the Drew University Photography Gallery from 1974 to 1996, bringing exceptional exhibitions to Drew by photographers such as Philippe Halsman, Imogen Cunningham, Berenice Abbot, Edward Weston, Bruce Davidson and Arnold Newman. He took courses in New York at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and elsewhere, and enjoyed colleagues he met through photography. He was deeply committed to the spirit of Drew University where he continued his affiliation as emeritus professor after his retirement.

Recent Good Reads/ Farmer's Market

Thanks to Roger Katz for these photos of Saturday's Brattleboro Farmer's Market music making with Mary Cay Brass.

Stefan told me about a great website called Good Reads where you can post the books you've read and share lists. Here are some of my recent faves:
Snow Flower and Secret Fan by Lisa See
Wonderful book telling the story of a woman in Confucian China in the eighteenth century where foot binding and women's secret writing called nu shu were carried on; where women were secluded in rooms as early as the age of 6 years old after being betrothed by a matchmaker.
The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller (author of The Good Mother). Reveals the dark side of disloyalty and choices made (for better or for worse) in marriage and separation. Trust and need.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.
Wow. Intense little vignette of a wedding night gone awry. Powerful writing, both in its hilarity and sadness. Brilliant sense of storytelling in its timing and unfolding.