Concerts

This weekend cantabile and friends offer up Salomone Rossi, a Jewish Italian Renaissance composer, colleague to Monteverdi. I love the music. I'm studying, vocalizing, taking care of myself.

Boo!

We had a gorgeous and spooky Hallowe'en here. The trees are still in full color, the night was cool and pleasant. I love seeing everyone strolling through the neighborhoods and knocking on each other's doors.

That's Jesse with the chains and two of his schoolmates.

Linnea and Tor with two friends. Man, were they excited!

I ate candy. It started with candy corn, and progressed from there. My swearing-off of sweets lasted a month, then gradually caved in.

Hope you all had a spooky time!

PeerTrainer

I've joined a PeerTrainer group to log diet and exercise and chat about it. You can watch me log, if you want to. I've added some links about my health activities on the side of this blog page.

Still Here

Bruce tells me my journal is "woefully out of date". Uh, yeah. Well, we've just been having too much fun. Phone camera pictures aren't much to look at, but here are Tor (on the slide) and Linnea (underneath, making eyes at a new friend) at Look Park. We rode the train twice, once sitting in the very front, once sitting on the very back looking back at the tracks as we wound through the woods. Then we played here and fed goats and listened to the peacocks screech and saw two young hawks fly down from the clouds to visit their imprisoned brethren and squeak their high, wailing calls.

Jean and the kids are off to Maine. I'll be on my own, with my neighbors, friends, musical get-togethers, books, apartment reorganization, and mellow afternoons at the pool. Oh, yeah, and work. Must. Not. Forget. Work. :)

Joe; Strength for Life

His name is Josef Arnould. He's the most knowledgable and capable fitness advisor I've met. He is coaching me in exercise and other fitness issues, and it's an incredible pleasure. Check out his Stronger After 40 program. I'm working with him at his Strength For Life center in Northampton. His book, available from the web site, is a startlingly good read packed full of insight. What luck to run into him! (He regularly stops by Blue Moon, downstairs.)

Coffee

Coffee makes my hands shake, makes me feel tired, and makes my mind sluggish. Hm. Maybe I should stop drinking it?

Catching up

One month between postings. Water under the bridge:

• Cantabile performance of Rossi repertoire;
• Delightful building of my own Linux system from the bottom up;
• Fascinating beginning of my Fruit Tree organizing project;
  
• Much time with children;
• Much time with friends;
  
• Dietary collapse;
• Apartment renewal;
• Emotional breakthrough;
  
• Bill-paying catastrophe; and, finally,
  
• An amazing, pleasant, and great trip to Arizona and Texas with the kids.

Tor, Linnea, Jesse, and I

1. flew to Arizona,
   
2. had a perfect visit with Grandpa Fred and Grandpa Kay
   
3. with a special guest appearance by cousin Lindsey and her children Dylan and Peyton,
   
4. flew to Texas,
   
5. were treated royally by Aunt Lory, Uncle Kerry, and cousins Carly and Dana, and
   
6. flew back home to Massachusetts.
   

All in the space of a week, with many good connections made between my children and the Olsson side of the family. A triumph! Yay for me! Yay for us! Yay for Olssons!

I have great kids.

The Little Mermaid - Broken

I've always been charmed by The Little Mermaid.

Intimacy. Computers.

The thing about this blog is, how intimate do I want to get? This is basically a public forum, so a reserved approach is appropriate, but that leaves out a lot of fun/interesting/important stuff.

I am way deep in Unix land these days, lifting out mostly just to do some parenting, visit with the neighbors, and eat not-so-very-well. I'm making some computer-space to look at my life, but am I doing it to look at my life, or using a look-at-my-life idea to fuel my computering? You're probably confused by that last sentence. Not enough context. I really don't like to think of computer programming and software and interfaces as mechanistic tools. I'm there to explore a world of relationship, form, action/reaction, personality, ethos. So when I'm there I'm understanding, recognizing, judging, shaping, reshaping, moving, dialoguing. I encounter the ghosts of countless other programmers, and leave my own shades for others to love, hate, fear, be amused by. This romanticized computer world isn't just fanciful. Without this kind of relationship with the machines, they will become more and more disconnected from humanity, more mechanistic, less caring. I'd forgotten that.

Back from Arizona

I am marvelously wrapped up in programming. More on that later, I expect. I did go to Arizona and enjoy time with "the six," my idiosyncratic family of origin. I guess all families are idiosyncratic, only we're more so! Mom wanted for her 75th birthday to fly in a helicopter over the beautiful desert mountains near her home. This is Weaver's Needle, an old landmark that I've never seen from this angle before. It was a really beautiful ride.

Don't forget to click on the picture to see a larger version!

Airport Time

At Bradley International Airport. I was scheduled to leave here at 6:20 AM arriving Phoenix at noon. But the Dehavilland Dash 8 had some trouble starting an engine. Anyway, now I'm scheduled to leave at 1:20 PM, arriving in Phoenix 6:45 PM.

I don't really want to leave the airport and come back, going through security again, so I'm sitting in a very comfortable upholstered chair in a book shop, laptop plugged in, connected to airport wi-fi, a latte almost finished by my side. Bleary eyed, but patient.

Mom's Birthday!

All we siblings are flying to Arizona to celebrate Mom's 75th birthday! Her present to herself: a helicopter trip over the Superstition Mountains. And we're invited. Woo-hoo! The kids and I made a little present for her--hope she likes it! I have to get up about 3 AM to get to the airport. Oh my, I'd better finish packing. :-)

Ouch. I won't be singing with Novi Cantori this spring due to a conflict with my trip to Arizona and Texas with the kids. The trip's more important, but what a loss.

We're having wonderful light, long snows these days. It's peaceful.

Sometimes coffee can be just the ticket. I stopped at Esselon (somebody else's photos) this morning in between ferrying kids around.

Still Here

I haven't posted anything for a while. A brief rundown: Jean and the kids spent a couple of days on Cape Cod visiting with Grandpa Zimmer; Jesse's had a tough cold; I've been working on linux software, LFS and parted. I keep waiting for my apartment to clean itself, but it's very stubborn. Well, so am I. ;-)

Yet another glorious sliding day! And still no photos! I'm catching cold, but Lynn and the gang were kind enough to let me join them for an incredibly good roast chicken dinner with all the fixin's, followed by a bittersweet Valentine song by Livia.

Ice skating on Paradise Pond (Bruce's photo) with the kids and Jean. Oops, didn't take the camera.

Valentine Blizzard

We had a blizzard for Valentine's Day. Bruce took this photo.

Spot Light

Jesse is helping with spot lights for the high school play. What fun!

Jan

My beloved cousin Jan sent these hearts. Click on them for more detail. Forgive me for saying, and it's more than a pun, she is an artist with heart!

I spent the day in the hills at Red Gate Farm with Linnea and Tor in a kind of preschool farm program. Beautiful, cold day. I took my laptop and got work done in a chilly back room. Linnea and Tor helped "train" a sheep dog name Cuzco.

Marji took this picture at the valentine-making gig last Saturday. Tor, me, Jesse, Linnea. Thanks, Marji!

Delicious dinner and good company at Lynn's with Livia, Nancy, and Susan. Livia played a couple of her songs--soul-soothing.

Bruce

Bruce is upset that I haven't mentioned him in my blog yet. He's my buddy here at Eastworks. We look out for each other. He's a photographer with a magical touch.

Open Studios

It has been open studio night for the 2nd floor here. Very fun. Food, art, interesting people in interesting studio spaces. This is one of Denis's works, called The Bomb.

Old-Fashioned Valentines

My wonderful friend Marji gave a workshop on making old-fashioned valentines this morning. Boy was it fun! She has so much cool stuff! It was like raiding a treasure trove. Jesse, Linnea, and Tor and I made valentines, with lots of neat people helping. Oh yeah, it was at Wistariahurst, a great 19th century mansion in Holyoke, where I often participate in musical events. Some friends are performing there tomorrow. I'll probably go.

Oh, this is the valentine I was working on. What with helping the kids, I didn't really finish. I think it'll be for my favorite neighbor, Lynn Hoffman. Uh oh, what if she reads this? ;-)

SuperTux

Okay, I have to admit I've gotten pretty darn good at SuperTux, a jump'n'run game for Linux.

Tom

My friend Tom Friedman was mentioned in a New York Times article yesterday that talked about art selling before a show even opens, via e-mailed images. Tom had a fabulous and fabulously received show at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. I didn't get to go, dang it, but I provided computer programming for two of his works.

Raphy

The opening reception for Raphy's show at the A.P.E. gallery in Thornes is tonight, but I'm too wiped to go. I'll stop by another time, when I can linger and appreciate his work. Raphy cashiers downstairs at Blue Moon and works his art on the 2nd floor at Red Horse Press.

Cold and windy outside, but Linnea and Tor and I had a blast sliding down a snowy little hill, while we waited for Jesse to finish his violin lesson.

I'm trying to use Google Documents. It's much slower than programs running on my own computer. I tried to share invoice documents with Steve, but he said he couldn't access them without creating a Google account. Bad, bad, bad. I like the idea of working on documents on the Internet. That way I can use whatever computer is at hand. Maybe I'll try some other online software.

I am so sleepy. Carpool time.

My Kids

Tor, Jesse, and Linnea on their hops, in the apartment. Click to take a closer look.

Eastworks

I live in an old mill building in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Will Bundy has transformed this place into Eastworks, a community of artists, artisans, yoga and meditation centers, funky warehousing operations, and a myriad of other businesses and individuals. The top floor is all residence/studios. The 1st floor is all commercial storefronts. It's a great place to live and to explore. To see where we're at, you can go to Google Maps and search for Eastworks, Easthampton, MA.