Remembering Donna Summer

I want to pay tribute today to the beautiful and oh so talented Donna Summer. As many of you know, she passed away yesterday from cancer. Like everyone else, when I saw this sad news I was shocked and saddened and simultaneously so many memories came flooding into my mind. It sounds cliché nowadays, but when artists like Ms. Summer pass away, we do remember their work as a soundtrack to our lives. Donna Summer was known as the Queen of Disco and she was definitely that...but she was also truly an AWESOME singer!

When I saw on Twitter that she had passed, my mind immediately went back to my seventies childhood and wanting to be a combination of Donna Summer, Diana Ross, and Chaka Khan J . I always imagined that I was this great singer when I was a child even though I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. But I let it rip anyway. I would tie pieces of cloth around myself in elaborate styles and fashion myself an evening dress. Then I would go out into our yard and stand on this huge rock that was my stage and I’d sing Donna Summer songs to our cats. The cats would ignore me or run away, but I was gettin’ down! Some of her songs had saucy lyrics, but in the 70s it was about the party and it wasn't about over analyzing everything. It was just fun and great music! When she brought out “She Works Hard for the Money” when I was a teen, I had dropped the makeshift dress and climbed down off that rock, but I was still singing along!

Donna Summer sang so many great songs and if you go on Youtube, they are all there to enjoy forever and that is a great thing! She will be truly missed, but her music will live on and that is the beauty of music.

Some of my favorite Donna Summer songs are: "I Feel Love", "She Works Hard for the Money", "Bad Girls", and "Last Dance".

"Last Dance" (below) is my all-time favorite song by her and it's the first song that popped into my head when I heard that she had made her transition. It showcases her beautiful voice and it makes you want to dance!

Rest in peace beautiful Donna Summer...

Super Full Moon

Here's an interesting video that I found about the Super Full Moon that will be visible tonight (May 5th). The video isn't too long so I hope that you'll take a look. I'm fascinated by the full moon, so having a bigger visual to look at is right up my alley! When I was back home, even when it was just the normal full moon, I loved to go outside into our field and take a look at all of that gorgeousness :-) There is just something so calming and extraordinary about a full moon. It makes me feel like I'm truly a part of the human experience, because I realize that I'm not the first and I won't be the last to gaze up at it and that binds me with everyone who ever looked up at the moon. Also, I just love having that moment to stand and just contemplate whatever crosses my mind in that moment...or I don't have to think about anything at all. That is the beauty!

So I will be watching and I hope that the weather cooperates and gives us a clear sky for a while here. But even if the clouds don't disappear, I will still know it's there :-) I hope that you'll join me! Have a great weekend and happy Super Full Moon night to you!

 

Presidential Medal of Freedom

I had planned to blog today about one of my new favorite things as I mentioned in my previous post. However, that has now been bumped to my next post. Something happened yesterday that I want to highlight because it warms my heart every time. I guess in a roundabout way you could say this is a post about a favorite thing after all :-)

Yesterday, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to fifteen honorees at the White House. This is the highest civilian honor given in the United States. I always love when this ceremony comes around because I love getting the chance to see who is honored and also to really “see” these people. When I watch this ceremony I always look at each and every face and it’s like you can almost feel the honor along with them. Their life’s work is laid out in front of them at that moment for the world to see, but most importantly, for them to see the great expanse of their own lives. In those moments, I see their humanity and I feel my own.



Often I will know several of the recipients, but there are many that I’m usually becoming aware of for the first time. I’m always drawn afterwards to learn more about the contributions of these extraordinary people. That is what I love about this award…you have the well-known and the unsung who are honored. These people have just been themselves and served in their own ways and that is a what life is all about as I see it.

The honorees this year are as follows:

Rep. John Lewis – civil rights icon (He was called early in life to do the right thing)

Maya Angelou – poet, author (I’d love to have her gift for words)

Yo-Yo Ma – amazing cellist (Listening to him play makes me want to play music again, even more. By the way, I played the flute in a former life ;-) )

John H. Adams – Natural Resources Defense Council – Co-founder

Bill Russell – NBA Hall of Famer, basketball legend, and human rights activist

Stan Musial – Baseball legend of the St. Louis Cardinals

Angela Merkel – German Chancellor

Jasper Johns – artist; considered a major influence upon pop, minimalist, and conceptual art

Gerda Weissmann Klein – Holocaust Survivor

Dr. Tom Little – optometrist killed in Afghanistan while on humanitarian mission

Sylvia Mendez – civil rights activist

Jean Kennedy Smith – Former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland

John Sweeney – AFL-CIO President Emeritus

George H.W. Bush – Former U.S. President

Warren Buffett – Berkshire Hathaway CEO, philanthropist

Congrats to all of them and I look forward to seeing the honorees next year!

Mini Cam Moments #6 and A London Trip

Brit Boy and I had a great weekend. On Saturday, we relaxed around home and watched movies that evening. Earlier in the afternoon, going into evening, we watched a Dolly Parton special of her performing and telling about her rise to fame. It was very interesting. I love biographies and things like that. It’s so intriguing to learn about peoples’ paths in life. I really enjoyed watching the special.

We rested up a bit and relaxed on Saturday in preparation for our outing on Sunday. We went into London to go to see the Michael Jackson Memorabilia exhibit at the O2, where we would’ve seen him perform back in July. We were quite disappointed like many others that we didn’t get to see him perform, so this was a way to still be a part of things.

At the beginning of January, I was sitting around watching videos on Youtube, and there was an ad that popped up advertising the exhibition and I said to myself, “Oh yeah.” I knew in the back of my mind that the exhibit was going on, but I hadn’t really brought it to the front of my mind and thought about going until then.

So after my “oh yeah” moment, I mentioned the exhibit to Brit Boy and we decided to go. Once we got the tickets, we realized that they were going to be doing work on the tube line that we needed to take to get to the O2 Arena, so we had to figure out another path. Here’s the thing, every time we plan to go to London lately, there is some kind of shutdown or strike. It’s like they know we’re coming. LOL. They love us there ;-)

Anyway, we decided on taking another route and it was a great adventure. We took the train into Paddington as usual and then we hopped onto the tube and took it to the Elephant and Castle stop (I’ve got to research why it’s called that) :-) And then we took the tube to the London Bridge stop.

At this point we walked over to the River Thames to catch a catamaran to the O2 Arena. This was a cool way to travel! We loved it! Here are a couple of short videos of us floating along down the river to our destination.

The first one is when we went under Tower Bridge. You can see my camera and I do one of my things, which is twist the camera to get the action. LOL. So I hope you all don’t get dizzy. The second video was taken when we were at a stop. I thought that the sun shining on the water was just so beautiful. I hope you enjoy them!

Here’s Mini Cam Moments #6 to continue my series ! :-)





We really enjoyed traveling this way and we’ll have to do this again :-) The Michael Jackson exhibit at the O2 was great. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but it was very nice. They charted his early career with his brothers in the Jackson 5 all the way up to him preparing for the concerts in London. They had: several of his outfits, past and present; an early contract from when he was a boy; several awards; plaster replicas of his hands and face that were used for his Ghost mini movie; and various other personal items. The "Ghost" mini movie was quite long, but here's a link to a portion of the film. If you don't have time to watch it all, I totally understand, but if you get a minute please check this out from about 1:25 to 5:00 in this video to see some of his best choreography in my humble opinion. We also saw this white shirt he wears in this piece at the exhibit.

My favorite bits of the exhibit were the handwritten lyrics to one of his greatest hits, “Beat It” and a video that they showed of his influences and how he incorporated them into the style that was all his own. I got the sense even more that his musical genius came from an acute understanding and appreciation of performance history. It is clear to see his homage to James Brown and the Nicholas Brothers and Fred Astaire. He was a true student of performing and an innovator in his own right for sure. I also thoroughly enjoyed the various quotes from him that were scattered about the exhibit.

The thing that gave me a lump in my throat though was a small, unassuming exhibit in the corner of the room. Inside the case there were two plastic containers and a water bottle. These three pieces were from Michael’s children. You see, his children packed him a snack everyday in containers like these while he was in rehearsals for his “This Is It” shows. And I know that people say all manner of things about Michael Jackson, good and bad, but at the end of the day, he was a father to these beautiful children and my heart just broke for them all over again when I saw this simple part of the whole exhibit. A cynic might say that it was put there for effect, but I don’t choose to see it that way at all. To me, this signified love and a part of Michael Jackson that we will never know, but a part of him that his children will carry with them forever. So that’s good enough for me :-)

I came away from the exhibit being very glad that we went. We loved it. The exhibit can never replace the fantastic show that Brit Boy and I could’ve seen, but it was nice to see the exhibit on the very last day on a beautiful Sunday. It was a great weekend :-)

Please check out Brit Boy's take on our day at his blog :-)

Mini Cam Moments #5 and Snow!!!!!

Hello all :-) Things are getting more back to normal around the Yellow House after the holidays. We finally got our new washing machine after nearly a month of waiting on the landlord to get his backside in gear ;-) So now I’m making my way through mounds of laundry. I may dig out by spring. LOL. Seriously though, I’m making some progress. Also I’m getting back into the swing with my school work after this break. I’m on the tail end of things now so I’m excited about that.

In more picturesque news, we had snow here in many parts of England overnight and Wiltshire, where we live, got its share. It’s still snowing now. I wanted to share a few photos with you. These were taken a couple of hours ago, so the snow is deeper now, but you can still see what it’s like here today :-)

These are photos that I took when we took our walk earlier. I told Brit Boy that some places look as if someone took a snow machine from the movies and just blasted things. It’s fluffy snow this time that snuggles up to everything :-) I hope you enjoy this peek into our world today.






And here’s an entry into my series of Mini Cam Moments. It’s been a long while ;-) This is me and Brit Boy walking along. Check out our feet. LOL. I love the sound of crunching snow. You can hear kids playing in the background. They were sliding down the hill nearby and enjoying the snow. I thought about joining in :-)



Have a great day wherever you are!

Charter for Compassion

One night last week, Brit Boy and I were channel surfing and stopped to watch Christiane Amanpour’s new show on CNN International called Amanpour. I've loved her reporting from all over the world over the years, and now she has this where she does work from the studio. Anyway, the discussion on this episode was about the Charter for Compassion that was unveiled this past Thursday. The discussion was very intriguing. Here’s a video to explain what the charter is about.



We have a lot of problems in our world today and some days I just shake my head at how things are. We are continually told how dark things are and they are in some ways, but there is also light still in our world. I’ve had to remind myself of this a lot lately :-) So when I heard about this, I took a look at their site and I have to say, it has lifted my spirits.

When you go to the site, you can read about the acts of compassion that others have committed, like this one and many others. Then it gets you to think about what we all can do. Some may ask, why do I need a website or charter to make me do something that I already do or something that we should do anyway? Well the answer is, we don’t need this site or a charter…compassion is free and available to all of us every day :-) But I’ll tell ya, personally, I’ve been a bit down lately and seeing this space where you can go and find people showing their true hearts and then sharing it is powerful for me. We get fed such nonsense and negativity every day, so it’s nice to read something that lets us see the true beauty of human beings. I think sometimes we forget :-)

This is what has me smiling today. I hope you enjoy checking it out. Have a great rest of the weekend!

A Windy Day

It definitely feels like fall/autumn around here. Even though we didn’t have a particularly hot summer here, the air still feels like it has taken a turn. Autumn is my favorite season, with spring coming second, so I’m loving the change in the air. It always feels like a new beginning, but maybe this comes from memories of school days :-)

Yesterday I went out for a while and got caught up in a bit of a gusty wind. It was both thrilling and startling. The winds are legendary around here sometimes, such as the time when the winds blew down our fence :-) If only I had had a kite yesterday.

When I came inside, I decided to do a bit of moviemaking. So here we have my fourth entry in my mini cam moments series. I didn’t get the impressive wind gust on video...of course ;-) Isn't that always the way? However, you can still see the trees dancing around outside.



The sound on the video is the washing machine chugging along :-) And our yellow rose bush is doing its last bit of blooming. Something has gotten to the leaves in the last couple of days though. All is well though.

It’s rather calm outside today. Think I’ll go outside ;-)

Have a great weekend everyone and to all of you in the USA, Happy Labor Day Weekend!

My Second Mini Cam Moment - Butterfly

We had a nice weekend around the Yellow House. The weather turned out okay too. Brit Boy has been on vacation this past week and he's off this week too, so we've been doing lots of hanging out. We're planning on taking a trip into London on Wednesday so we're looking forward to that.

On Saturday we had sunny weather and it brought the butterflies out. Here's a short video I filmed with my handy little retro mini cam. So this is the second in my mini cam moments series :-) We have a white and purple butterfly bush or buddleia as it's sometimes called, in our yard/garden and over the last few sunny days, we've been visited by various colorful butterflies. I looked it up and it seems that this is a peacock butterfly, but I'm not absolutely sure. It looks similar though. I'm hoping to get some better video on another sunny day. Butterflies don't hang about so it's hard to catch a good glimpse :-) Anyway, I wanted to share this mini cam moment with you all to let you see a bit of our summer. I did this video from inside whilst looking outside since I didn't have time to make it outside. The clanging sounds in the background are Brit Boy in the kitchen :-) I hope you enjoy this and I hope to get more when the sun shines and the butterflies return again. Have a great day!

Mini Cam Moments in Salisbury

Last Tuesday I went along with Brit Boy for an appointment he had in Salisbury. I’ve been meaning to share a bit about it, but I’ve been doing school work for the last few days and am now just getting caught up.

A few days before, I was looking around some stored things and found my mini video camera that I’ve had for years and never use anymore. The camera is very tiny and old school and makes funny little pixelated, jumpy movies. (smile) It gives the movies a zany quality that I like. We have a new video camera, but now that I’ve found this one again, I’m going to use it and make my funny little movies. (smile) So here’s my first video in my series. I’m calling my series “My Mini Cam Moments”. I’ll be doing them periodically and sharing them here. This video is a test of sorts that I did to see if it’s still working.

This is a short video of us driving into Salisbury with a view of lovely Salisbury Cathedral in the distance with a few groups of trees along the way. (laugh) Enjoy!



Also, I took a couple of photos of the flowers on display along the way here and there. The first one was taken along the road in Salisbury where I recorded the video.



This second photo is in a village along the way back home. I just thought that both flower displays were beautiful and so summery. I hope you enjoy seeing what I see when we’re out. (smile)



Well, that’s all for now. We won’t be going to Salisbury this week, but if we go anywhere good, I’ll certainly share it here. Happy August!

Stand By Me

This morning I came across this video through clicking on a link from a Twitter friend of mine. And I just want to say, it truly, truly lifted my heart and mood. I've been feeling a bit low these past few days and it just made me remember so much about human nature and the good that is still out there. This video brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my face simultaneously. Seeing people from around the world doing this together gave me what I needed today. We hear so much in the news everyday about how much we all can't get along...we all hear that story everyday and I for one get tired of it. So I love this video because it is not mired in cynicism. This video just shows what we can do as people in this world. A perfect song choice. This video was done by a group called Playing For Change whose goal is to connect people around the world through music. This made my day...I hope it makes yours. (smile)