Easy To Be Hard

"How can people be so heartless? " I woke up this morning with that song lyric stuck in my head. Funny since I haven't thought of the rock musical "Hair" for decades. Yes, it's funny but rather apt in light of the current political scene. If you can gauge anything from a Facebook newsfeed, it seems a lot of folks are perplexed and dismayed by what is going on with the current presidential campaign. Such nastiness and so little civility makes you wonder "[h]ow can people be so cruel".

What I wonder is where are all the Baby Boomers. What has happened to us, the peace, love, dove generation? Shouldn't we be calling the shots? Aren't there more of us demographically? Well, not anymore actually. According to the Pew Research Center, the Millenials were projected to surpass us sometime in 2015. I think they did since an recent article in CNN Money claimed the most common age in America last year was 22. As a group we Boomers are losing our grip and perhaps our perspective. 

C'mon, there are still well more than 60 million of us and we know kindness. We know love. We know how to make our voices heard. So let's say something. Let's try to do something. 

Find your inner Woodstock. Dig out your Army Surplus clothing. Put on your Birkenstocks and wear some flowers in you hair.  Well, in all seriousness, at least speak up! 

With thanks to Galt MacDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, I will leave you with some  additional lyrics -

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend ...

My First Guitar

My first guitar was a Silvertone H604 from Sears and Roebuck, probably the cheapest and most ubiquitous student guitar of the 1960's.  It was made by the Harmony Company of Chicago which sold approximately 350,000 instruments between 1964 and 1965. So much for craftsmanship and quality control.

Mine had a huge bow in the neck and, of course, there was no truss rod. The action was so high my guitar teacher had to file down the nut after telling my parents that might ruin the thing completely and that he couldn't be held responsible. It's a wonder my young fingers survived the stress. The case was canvas and after a few weeks the ends of the strings worked a hole right through it at the top. My mother repaired it with an iron-on patch. 

Despite all that, I wish I still had it. Sentimentality? Nostalgia? Yes, of course.  It was my very first real musical instrument and I loved it. You can see it here in this YouTube video where Daniel Guareschi plays one just like it.  I wish I had sounded this good back then when I played for hours in my room, but, sadly, I didn't.

Apparently, I was not the only person longing for the guitar of my youth. There were enough to convince the Silvertone Company to reissue the 604 in a new and improved form. 

You can read all about it here - http://www.silvertoneclassic.com/guitars/model-604604e/

Oh, yes, nostalgia and everything old is new again. Did you have a favorite something from your childhood that you wish you had kept?  If so, tell us about it in the comments.

I really miss that old guitar. It was even good enough for Audrey Hepburn in the film Moon River. 

Jammin' with my Ukulele

Ah, retirement! Once you get over feeling guilty, you have time to do a lot of things you just didn't get to while you were working. My plan was to focus on photography and I have (check out the new website  http://www.nearlylostphotography.com/ and the 365 Photo Challenge Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/365photochallenge2016/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel ). But a strange thing happened while I was scanning the local adult ed winter/spring course catalogue for photography related courses. There weren't any but just before I tossed it into the recycling bin, I saw "The Joy of Uke". Hmm. Of course, I registered and three days before the class started UPS delivered my new ukulele. As I held that little Chinese-made, stringed instrument tenderly in my hands, I saw my whole tortured music lesson history flash before my eyes. 

The saga began many decades ago when my aunt offered my mother my cousin Sandra's old clarinet. When asked if I would like to play, I saw a marching band uniform and fancy parades ahead and jumped at the chance. My dreams were shattered when the only available music teacher, our milkman, refused to take me on as a pupil because I was too young. No clarinet for me. But all was not lost since the possibility of becoming a piano virtuoso loomed the year we lived with my grandparents before our new house was available. My Aunt Mary's old piano was in the parlor and I was hooked once my grandfather taught me to play Chopsticks. Lessons were provided and I practiced diligently until, alas, we had to move into our new three bedroom 1960's ranch house in the suburbs. It had no parlor, so no piano for me. 

The next chapter in my musical memoir starts with the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Yes, it was February 9th, 1964, and pop music was my new best friend. Who wouldn't want to play guitar like John, Paul, and George? I must have pestered my parents relentlessly because they bought me a little Silvertone from Sears and arranged for me to take lessons. Sadly, I can't remember my first guitar teacher's name but he had a 1950's wave in his hair and wore a fringed Grand Ole Opry style shirt. No mop top. No mod suit. No singing "All My Lovin'"or "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" for me. 

Still I was no quitter and for about three years I took my weekly lesson in a sad little room above a storefront downtown. My new music teacher introduced me to Mel Bay and his graded guitar method. Now I don't know if Mel Bay was ever in a band but my instructor played in a country western group. He must not have been a singer, though, because we never sang. Instead we worked our way through several grades of old Mel's system. I went from playing "The Merry Men" on the B string to cowboy songs, classical etudes and rousing ragtime tunes. I was a fancy little fingerpicker, but my dreams of rock stardom had faded away and died. Eventually, I just stopped going. 

Over the years since I have dabbled with guitars. I've taken a few more lessons and done a couple of workshops. There have been many starts and stops along the way. Nothing has ever really come together. Friends have occasionally invited me to jam with them, but that's always sounded so incredibly intimidating. I may have been able pick out "Valse Lente, op.33" but there's been no jamming for me. 

Fast forward to "The Joy of Uke" every Tuesday night in the brightly lit music room of the middle school. I sit with about 17 other eager students in front of our teacher who wears a silly Hawaiian shirt.  He calls us all musicians because we are tuning up, sight reading, and playing and singing together. The other night we worked through "I've Just Seen a Face" followed by "Hey, Good Lookin". Ironically, that's the Beatles meeting up with Hank Williams. Things are coming together nicely and I'm jammin'. 

A New Year Brings New Challenges

Part 1
Happy New Year, Everyone. It's time for a fresh start and taking on new challenges. It's that time when people make their dreaded (and sometimes dreadful) resolutions. But it may be the perfect time to just try something new. I read the other day about planning fun and exciting activities for yourself in the coming year rather than "resolving" to do things you don't like so well. Yes, of course, many of us could do with a little less eating and a little more exercise, but how about promising to do something nice for yourself this year?
You could plan a special outing, read that book you've been meaning to get to, reconnect with an old friend, learn a new language or skill. What would you really like to do for yourself or for others this year? How about taking ukulele lessons? (Yes, more about that in a subsequent post). Or perhaps you should join in the photo challenge.
Stop reading here if you hate taking pictures.
Part 2
As you know the 365 Day Photo Challenge for 2016 is on. So far we've had a great response. People really like these things for a lot of different reasons. One is obviously the challenge itself. Can you follow through and really take a picture every single day for a year? I'm betting you can.

In the last post I talked about documenting your life and the importance of that. This may be a big year for you. Perhaps you're getting married, having a baby, starting a new job, or going on an exotic vacation. You'll want to be able to look back on it all and a photo a day journal fits that bill nicely.

On the other hand, maybe this will be a hard year because you've suffered a loss or simply find yourself in a bad space. A photo challenge forces you to really look around and to see things you might have missed. Hopefully, you'll see some good things.

Photography is all about seeing and capturing so perhaps it can make everyone's year just a little bit more enjoyable. 

It's Time for Another 365 Challenge

I know I said in the last post that I needed to stop telling you what I'm doing with my time now that I'm not working. Well, let's make today an exception. Why? Because it's time for another 365 Day Photo Challenge! As some of you may know, we did one of these in 2014. You can see the results on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/barbararicker/365-day-photo-challenge/  You can also look back at previous posts about it if you're so inclined. I'll include those links below.

Why take and share a picture a day every day for an entire year? My quick response would be "Hey, why not?" But some of you may need a bit more convincing so I'll start with this. We all have a camera with us most of the time. We all are living our lives in moments that flash by and are too quickly forgotten. Some of those moments are captured and shared on social media but most are not. Those moments are often lost, but they are special and deserve to be documented. I really believe that the folks who participated last time would agree but I'd love to hear your thoughts so leave a comment below and subscribe to the blog to follow along as we go.

I'm hosting the event for 2016 on Facebook this year. Check out the page at - www.facebook.com/365photochallenge2016

We should be good to go. Hope you'll join us.

Archive -
http://sobarbsays.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-photo-challenge-goes-on.html
http://sobarbsays.blogspot.com/2014/09/about-that-photo-challenge.html
http://sobarbsays.blogspot.com/2014/12/good-bye-to-2014-photo-challenge.html

First World Retirement Problems

Silly title, huh? It just struck me that retirement itself is a first world phenomenon. It's a gift. However, life without the daily 9 to 5 grind does present some challenges.  I'm not complaining and I'm not referring to those things that present as problems for all of us whether we're working or not. This is not about how to get the house "Thanksgiving clean" or how best to organize the food pantry so your crackers don't fall out while your looking for the tuna fish. There's just something different about not working in the conventional way that's hard to explain, but may be worth exploring.

Society defines us and judges us by our work. One of the first questions we ask when we meet someone new is "What do you do?" Or course, by that we simply mean "Where do you work?". But, hey, if you think about that question more broadly, it's really a tough one to answer. I mean, what do any of us do? What are the actions that make up our lives? Should you have to answer that? Could you? How would you?

In the first months of my retirement I've been trying to do just that. I find myself outlining my accomplishments in the silliest of ways. I list my completed tasks at the end of the day and make sure Mo knows I rearranged the bathroom closet and washed the bedroom curtains.  Ta da! I dusted. I bought a new vacuum cleaner. I descaled the Keurig. (Actually, I haven't done that yet, but you get my point).

Have I told you I'm organizing my photos? I'm building a website on Weebly. I made my first YouTube video. I bought a domain name. Okay, okay. Enough already. I need to stop. My first first world retirement problem is  understanding that I don't have to explain myself. It's 9:00 a.m. Friday morning. I just wrote a blog post. What else am I going to do today? Mums the word. 

Retirement Is A Good Thing

In 17 days I will retire. I'm excited. I'm pumped. I've been giddily sharing the news but I'm surprised by the number of negative reactions I've been getting. People seem surprised, puzzled and concerned. I'm hearing: "Really?"; "Are you sure?"; "Do you have a plan?'; and "What are you going to do?".  Well, all you skeptics out there, let me tell you what I have in mind.

•  I will blog more. Sadly, my last post was back in June after a short visit to New Orleans. It was entitled "Three Cab Rides Part 1: The Man from Dubai." Parts 2 and 3 are yet to be written. Sigh.  Part 2 would tell the tale of Cowboy Joe. While we were riding with him, he almost pulled a gun on a guy in a black Mercedes with tinted windows for trying to turn the wrong way on a one way street. Good stuff. Part 3 was to feature Ninth Ward Harold. On the way to the airport he told us about the government blowing up the levees during both hurricanes Betsy and Katrina. Conspiracy theory or fact? He was very convincing. 

• I will walk my dogs more. The three terrible terriers really need the exercise and so do I. We have started a pre-retirement routine where I walk each one separately along a prearranged route. Each pup gets some one on one time and I meet my Fitbit step goal. So far, so good.

•  I will make more photographs or as one of my YouTube mentors would suggest "get out there and take some damned photos."  My CAS, Camera Acquisition Syndrome, needs an outlet. For years the sad refrain has been so many cameras, so little time. 

• I will have a cleaner and better organized house. My mother always told me I should have taken Home Economics. As I assume the role of Home Administrator, I face a steep learning curve.

•  I will mow lawns and shovel snow, two most satisfying activities that yield measurable results and provide time for reflection. 

• I will think of more things to do and I will blog more. Perhaps we should title this post  "Retirement is a Good Thing Part 1.