County Fair & Westside Choir
Sunday the 14th having been the last day of the Santa Cruz County Fair, on Monday the 15th broccolipwns and I went over to the fairgrounds to pick up his contest entries. He had won a first place ribbon for his Mentos collection, second place ribbons for his Neopets collection and "Tall" photograph, and third place ribbons for his "MySpace photo" and "Applause" photographs. While we were there we also saw nitoya2's sister packing up her garden contest entry.
We had gone to the fair the previous Thursday with a large AFE group, and while we had a good time, we didn't spend as much time looking at the animals and exhibits as usual, because broccolipwns was having fun showing off some of the special features/effects of his camera, plus that he and jongod's younger brother kept taking pictures of each other. On the way home we stopped at nitoya2's Aptos house (though as she's now another Portland college student she wasn't there, in fact it turned out that at the same time we were at her house, violetclm was riding his bike over to Lewis & Clark college to visit her), a small farm which was really something in a garden of eden sort of way, with all kinds of ripe fruit (I ate an apple with bright-pink flesh) and vegetables (plus flowers) growing all over the place everywhere you looked. Her family was in the process of building (by themselves) a caretaker's house with a large tree growing right through the middle of it. nitoya2's brother wasn't home either, but when broccolipwns, jongod's younger brother, and I got downtown, we heard the sound of bagpipes, and followed it a couple blocks to find him playing bagpipe duets in front of the Cinema 9.
So after bringing broccolipwns's stuff home that Monday before last, I was off to the second meeting of the Fall 2008 incarnation of the Westside Community Folk Song/Gospel Choir. There were a whole bunch of new people (so many that there was a chair-shortage issue -- I've never seen so many people there) who had missed the first meeting, including a woman from the local English Country Dancing group, and violetclm's friend Haley, who had returned from her summer in Argentina just the day before.
Last night was the third choir meeting, and during break Haley was asking me how violetclm was doing, and saying that she would be doing more traveling this year before going to college next year. I mentioned that violetclm's friend spacelogic had also been in Argentina this last summer for a much shorter period, and Haley said that they had been together in the same program -- something I hadn't known.
As usual last night's choir warmups had included massaging the backs of the people to the left and right of me (no, not simultaneously), but this time the one to my right was a woman in a purple halter-top who was seriously writhing/undulating all over the place while I was massaging her back -- I wasn't sure what to make of this, and suddenly noticed that I had gotten a kind of pop-eyed crazed mad-scientist look on my face.
Here are the songs we'll be performing in December (I don't know what the performance order will be -- this is just the order I had happened to pick them up and put them into my binder in):
We had gone to the fair the previous Thursday with a large AFE group, and while we had a good time, we didn't spend as much time looking at the animals and exhibits as usual, because broccolipwns was having fun showing off some of the special features/effects of his camera, plus that he and jongod's younger brother kept taking pictures of each other. On the way home we stopped at nitoya2's Aptos house (though as she's now another Portland college student she wasn't there, in fact it turned out that at the same time we were at her house, violetclm was riding his bike over to Lewis & Clark college to visit her), a small farm which was really something in a garden of eden sort of way, with all kinds of ripe fruit (I ate an apple with bright-pink flesh) and vegetables (plus flowers) growing all over the place everywhere you looked. Her family was in the process of building (by themselves) a caretaker's house with a large tree growing right through the middle of it. nitoya2's brother wasn't home either, but when broccolipwns, jongod's younger brother, and I got downtown, we heard the sound of bagpipes, and followed it a couple blocks to find him playing bagpipe duets in front of the Cinema 9.
So after bringing broccolipwns's stuff home that Monday before last, I was off to the second meeting of the Fall 2008 incarnation of the Westside Community Folk Song/Gospel Choir. There were a whole bunch of new people (so many that there was a chair-shortage issue -- I've never seen so many people there) who had missed the first meeting, including a woman from the local English Country Dancing group, and violetclm's friend Haley, who had returned from her summer in Argentina just the day before.
Last night was the third choir meeting, and during break Haley was asking me how violetclm was doing, and saying that she would be doing more traveling this year before going to college next year. I mentioned that violetclm's friend spacelogic had also been in Argentina this last summer for a much shorter period, and Haley said that they had been together in the same program -- something I hadn't known.
As usual last night's choir warmups had included massaging the backs of the people to the left and right of me (no, not simultaneously), but this time the one to my right was a woman in a purple halter-top who was seriously writhing/undulating all over the place while I was massaging her back -- I wasn't sure what to make of this, and suddenly noticed that I had gotten a kind of pop-eyed crazed mad-scientist look on my face.
Here are the songs we'll be performing in December (I don't know what the performance order will be -- this is just the order I had happened to pick them up and put them into my binder in):
- Banuwa ("festive North African traditional song")
- Glory and Honor (gospel)
- Ojos Azules ("Andean folk song" involving poison-drinking)
- Mayn Rue Platz (I should show this to violetclm, I think he will find himself able to read some of the Yiddish now)
- I'm Goin' to the Place (gospel)
- No Rocks A-Cryin' (gospel)
- Spirit, Like a River (gospel)
- Shenandoah/He's Gone Away ('cross the wide Missouri and all that)
- Jordan's Angels (gospel, not that it isn't obvious by most of the names which of these are gospel)
- Wasn't That a Mighty Day? ("traditional spiritual")
- ¡El Cielo Canta Alegria! (gospel in Spanish, or at least a Christian song in Spanish -- we haven't started on this one yet, plus I won't claim to really know the dividing line for gospel/not gospel)