skip to main |
skip to sidebar
...did I forget to mention as of late that I LOVE this city. I just showed some visitors around 2 weekends consecutively and I never tire of it. my feet yes, my mind no. the fotos are some of my tourist moments. and I don't know what it is that makes me love Toronto as much as I do, but one of the only other major cities that I love as much as Toronto is Madrid. I could roam them both endlessly...I'm still going to have to say that it is probably because my Mum used to take me to Toronto when I was younger as a getaway weekend...we'd wander and shop and eat breakfast in bed and chocolate mousse for dessert...just roam around Toronto. years later, i have to make my own breakfast to eat in bed...but, i still roam Toronto...Shanesya said recently that Toronto isn't her 'connect' city...she likes a smaller city...but me, I think me and Toronto are soul sistas. ha.
YES....I actually used to live quite close to the Chattahoochee in Atlanta, GA. I kayaked a part of that river once and drove across it daily...then I found out, there is a song...oh my...
Chattahoochee
Way down yonder on the chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie
We laid rubber on the georgie asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught
Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking ’bout cars and dreaming ’bout women
Never had a plan just a livin’ for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was
A lot about livin’ and a litttle ’bout love
Well we fogged up the windows in my old chevy
I was willing but she wasn’t ready
So a settled for a burger and a grape sno-cone
Dropped her off early but I didn’t go home
Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking ’bout cars and dreaming ’bout women
Never had a plan just a livin’ for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was
A lot about livin’ and a litttle ’bout love
Way down yonder on the chattahoochee
It gets hotter than a hoochie coochie
We laid rubber on the georgie asphalt
We got a little crazy but we never got caught
Well we fogged up the windows in my old chevy
I was willing but she wasn’t ready
So a settled for a burger and a grape sno-cone
Dropped her off early but I didn’t go home
Down by the river on a friday night
A pyramid of cans in the pale moonlight
Talking ’bout cars and dreaming ’bout women
Never had a plan just a livin’ for the minute
Yeah way down yonder on the chattahoochee
Never knew how much that muddy water meant to me
But I learned how to swim and I learned who I was
A lot about livin’ and a litttle ’bout love
Silvina visits Toronto from Atlanta with Paco and Marina, Rafa and Noelia, and the other Paco. It was a Spanish throw down fiesta! OLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
----
I don't bite or nibble my cookies. I devour them whole and then chew.
sometimes people are appalled or highly confused...they ask "but where did the cookie go?". ha.
----
tenacious
One entry found.
tenacious
Main Entry: te·na·cious
Pronunciation: \tə-ˈnā-shəs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin tenac-, tenax tending to hold fast, from tenēre to hold
Date: 1607
1 a: not easily pulled apart : cohesive 'a tenacious metal' b: tending to adhere or cling especially to another substance 'tenacious burs'
2 a: persistent in maintaining, adhering to, or seeking something valued or desired 'a tenacious advocate of civil rights' 'tenacious negotiators' b: retentive 'a tenacious memory'
This morning I open Stacy's email, the title reading:
"this is such a Kate thing to say...
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
-Marianne Wilson, A Return to Love "
Stacy, I will read this probably daily, as a reminder...hope you do too ;-)
Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.
-African proverb
When you lay your lips on me
and breath, I begin to chime.
--
Outside ideas of right doing
And wrong doing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.
-Rumi
Jeanne’s British accent counting the beats as my arms float up, up, up, legs moving through the air, tilting head, remember, deep expression.
“Peanut, send a message from your face to match your movement, go on!”.
Yes, ballet is a part of who I am.
Thanks Mum, for paying for every ballet lesson of my life, buying new ballet slippers as my feet grew, taxi fares so I could get to ballet when you had to work nights, sitting, waiting and watching me all the nights you weren’t working, taking me to the cone and shake shop after ballet for ice cream (!!!) and coming to every recital…
It’s not a duty you owed to me. It’s a gift representative of the myriad of things that you sacrificed for me. Wow. I’m not sure that I’m worthy Mum (…come to think of it, I hope God doesn’t strike me with lightning). Love, love, love you Mum.
Two Rivers
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,
Repeats the music of the rain;
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain.
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:
The stream I love unbounded goes
Through flood and sea and firmament;
Through light, through life, it forward flows.
I see the inundation sweet,
I hear the spending of the steam
Through years, through men, through Nature fleet,
Through love and thought, through power and dream.
Musketaquit, a goblin strong,
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;
They lose their grief who hear his song,
And where he winds is the day of day.
So forth and brighter fares my stream,--
Who drink it shall not thirst again;
No darkness taints its equal gleam,
And ages drop in it like rain.
1856
Emerson
Last night was my first Opera experience completely by chance! I'd been thinking about trying to see an Opera for the past couple of days and went downtown to investigate New Age Opera tickets at the Canadian Opera Company (if you're under 29 you get a great deal!). Then, an extra ticket, last minute (due to illness, sorry for Malcolm's wife but many thanks to the both of them...as I came to learn, an Anglican native of Stratford, On and his Jewish New Yorker wife, they met in New Mexico horse back riding!) was offered to me at the box office (as I was enquiring about future tickets while talking on the phone to Enrico) which meant that I was about to have my first operatic experience with a centre floor orchestra seat (how fortuitous!). The Opera: Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. It was a grand start with Opera. Simply grand.
Eugene Onegin
An Opera by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
(or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
This opera, by Russia’s greatest composer, the writer of the famous "Pathétique" symphony, has been staged several times in recent years, and may yet have a larger place in the repertoire. The libretto, based on a story in verse by Pushkin, is unfortunately disconnected and lacking in incident.
Mme. Larina, a landed proprietress and the mother of Tatiana and Olga, is visited at her country estate by Lenski, a neighbouring proprietor, who is engaged to Olga. He brings with him his friend Eugene Onegin. Tatiana, an ingenuous-minded girl of romantic disposition, sees in Eugene the hero of her girlish dreams and falls in love with him. In a letter to Eugene she confesses her love, and appoints a meeting. Eugene, a disappointed, misanthropic person, keeps the appointment, but returns the girl’s letter and advises her to restrain her feelings. Then (with the second Act) comes Tatiana’s birthday and a dance given in its honour by Mme. Larina. Eugene Onegin is present, and capriciously aggravates his friend Lenski by his attentions to the latter’s fiancée, Olga, a heartless flirt. Maddened jealousy leads to a duel, and Onegin shoots Lenski. Some years elapse. Then Tatiana is found at St. Petersburg by Onegin as the wife of Prince Gremin. He now falls deeply in love with her, and in a trying scene pleads with her to fly with him. Tatiana, although admitting her love for him, declines, and makes her escape; whereupon Onegin ends his existence.
The usual overture is replaced by a prelude framed on the Tatiana motive, though the composer has throughout the opera made a more sparing use of "leading themes" than he had done in his earlier "Vakoula the Blacksmith." There are many interesting features in the score, including the wonderfully exquisite duet for Tatiana and Olga, and the lovely scene in Tatiana’s bedroom, both in the first Act; the quaint, old-fashioned waltz and the arrestingly original mazurka in the second Act; the brilliant polonaise, the dainty waltz, and the grandiose finale in the third Act. The character of Tatiana greatly appealed to Tchaikovsky, and his letters show that he took much interest in the work. It is not, however, until the last Act, in the impassioned scene between Onegin and Tatiana, that he would seem to have been stirred to write real dramatic music. The chorus of peasants and their dances in the first scene are typically Russian, and the whole of the ballroom music is captivating.
"Eugene Onegin," finished in February 1878, was first performed in March 1879, by the students of the Moscow Conservatoire. "Never was any opera rehearsed with such zeal," we are told. Tchaikovsky had been away from Moscow and only put in an appearance at the last rehearsal, when the theatre was in darkness except for a few candles in the orchestra. In the scene in which Tatiana writes her love-letter to Onegin, he was deeply affected. "How lucky it is dark," he said, "for this touches me so that I can hardly restrain my tears." There was an unprecedented rush at the performance, but the music was of too high an order to be appreciated at a first hearing. Even the St. Petersburg critics spoke coldly of the work, and not until five years later was it heard in that town. Time, however, increased its popularity, and when the piano score was published it had an immense sale. After having been played in several Continental cities, it was first performed in England at the Olympic Theatre, London, in October 1892. Tchaikovsky thought highly of the opera, but did not consider it suitable for a large theatre. He wrote eleven operas altogether, but only "Eugene Onegin" is known, or likely to be known, in this country.
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (whose surname is sometimes spelt as as Tschaikowsky) was born in Russia in 1840, and died (of cholera) at St. Petersburg in 1893. He studied law; entered the Government service; became a pupil of the Petersburg Conservatoire; and in 1866 teacher of harmony there, a post which he held till 1877. After that, he devoted his whole attention to composition, latterly with a pension from the Czar. There was a good deal of romantic mystery about his life and career, particularly about his marriage. The honorary degree of Doctor of Music was conferred on him by Cambridge University in 1893.
