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This day in local history, June 22
Editor's note: The following news items are taken from old editions of The Reporter.
This day in local history, June 22 Editor's note: The following news items are taken from old editions of The Reporter. Check out this story on fdlreporter.com: http://fondul.ac/1Lo8hXO
Published 11:00 p.m. CT June 20, 2015
History.(Photo: Getty Images)
Editor's note: The following news items are taken from old editions of The Reporter, which has been published under several names in the last 150-plus years.
Fond du Lac Daily Commonwealth | June 22, 1875
"Wheat - .94 to .97."
"Robert C. Baker lost a stone from a ring on the camp ground last Sunday. It was valued at $50."
"The Forest House, kept by Mr. Koepfer, a German, no longer has a bar, the proprietor declaring that it did not pay."
Daily Reporter | June 22, 1915
Many berries this season — Home grown strawberries are of an excellent quality this year, but they are not as cheap in price as in former years.
During the past week the home grown berries have been plentiful in Fond du Lac and according to a local grocer, the quality of the barriers is becoming better. Last week many of the berries were water-soaked because they were picked while still wet.
So far there has been no cause to worry about strawberries. If the weather is good during the next few weeks there will be periods when the berries will be dry enough to pick and the crop will be excellent.
The berries are selling this week from twelve and one-half cents to fifteen cents per box. The strawberry season will be undoubtedly shorter this season than in the past few years.
Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter | June 22, 1940
Rural areas threatened by heavy rainfall; Rock River above flood stage — An all-night rainstorm of cloudburst proportions in some parts of the county endangered crops, delayed rail traffic and brought threat of more serious damage from floods today.
At least 3 inches of rain had fallen in the city during the 24 hours ending at noon, and although there were occasional signs of clearing in the north, the government forecast was for continued showers and thunderstorms tonight and Sunday.
Trains on two divisions of the North Western railroad were being rerouted because of washouts south of the city, one county highway north of Alto was closed because of high water, but Milwaukee-bound cars were able to get through, although several inches of water covered sections of the principal highways.
The rain was accompanied by intermittent electrical storms throughout the county, but little damage was reported. Comparatively little wind was felt in the city.
Stained glass scenes added to cathedral — The first two of six new stained glass windows were installed in St. Augustine's Chapel of St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral recently.
The windows were designed and executed by Rec. Robert L. Jacoby, vicar of St. James church, Parkton, Md. They are made with imported French, English and German glass, called "antique glass," because it is manufactured in the same way as the ancient glass used in Europe.
These first two windows are the gift to the Cathedral from Mrs. Sidney L. Little and are in memory of her grandmother Maria Ewen Dudley; her husband Sidney L. Little and her daughter, Isabell Little Carhart.
The other four windows in the Chapel will be installed in August. They are memorial gifts to the Cathedral from Mrs. John Norling, Mrs. W. B. Stephenson, Mrs. and Mrs. William Mowbray and the family and friends of Walter Ruege. These windows are designed by Father Jacoby and are in the process of being completed.
The figures are of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests and the pastoral minister and of St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of preachers.
Read or Share this story: http://fondul.ac/1Lo8hXO
Did you know FDL's Girl Scout Cookies were different than the rest of Wisconsin's?
Oakfield students spread Mr. Rogers' message of kindness

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Panel: Portfolio delivery: from here to there.
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6th November 2014 in London
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Daniel Terhorst-North
Daniel Terhorst-North uses his deep technical and organisational knowledge to help CIOs, business and software teams to deliver quickly and successfully. He puts people first and finds simple, pragmatic solutions to business and technical problems, often using lean and agile techniques. With over thirty years of experience in IT, Daniel is a frequent speaker at technology and business conferences worldwide.
Chris Matts
Chris Matts has over 10 years of experience in investment banking including strategy work as a practitioner rather than as a consultant. His specialist areas are real options, IT risk management, business value and agile analysis. He has been working in exotic credit derivatives for the past few years.
Tony Grout
Tony's passion has been in building software that changes the world for the better at a scale that makes a massive difference. This has been his passion and his challenge for the past 30 years. Tony started and sold two successful software development business before the age of 35.Both working in complex environments, as Lead developer and Head of Sales in the former and Chief Technology Officer in the latter. Tony is currently Head of Agile at Skype. He is bringing sustainable enterprise agility to a fast paced, fast growing organisation with over 1,500 engineers. He still loves to code.Before Skype Tony was the co-chair of the Agile Leadership Council in IBM. His coaching across software labs of 25,000 engineers was instrumental in the endurance of agile.
Marina Oliveira
Marina has been working on increasing organisation's value for almost 20 years. She started in mergers and acquisitions in Brazil advising companies on business worth and improving valuation drivers. She then moved to London to read her MBA at London Business School. Marina has since worked in Strategy, Product Management, and Process Improvement within Telecoms.
Ram Rao
Ram has been working in the Data, Insights & Strategy teams of the top tech Product Companies for the past 10 years. He started off as Quality Analyst after his engineering degree, before moving to the world of Metrics & KPIs. Following his MBA in Sales & Marketing, he then worked in Product Strategy, Marketing and Pricing Analytics.
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Online and On Foot, UN Collects Input On New Development Goals
BY Jessica McKenzie | Friday, May 10 2013
Screengrab of My World survey results
The United Nations is crowdsourcing input on the global development goals that will shape international policies – and the ebb and flow of billions of dollars in aid money – for up to fifteen years. The new development plan will replace the Millennium Development Goals when they expire in 2015. More than half a million people have participated in the crowdsourcing project. Read More
In Jakarta, Open Environmental Data Meets Freedom of Information Law
BY David Eaves | Friday, May 10 2013
At a recent meeting of environmental advocates, a new idea emerged: that open access to environmental data should become an international standard. David Eaves writes that this is a signal that the open data movement is growing up. Read More
Bulgaria Employs Online Tools to Ensure Safe and Fair Elections
BY Jessica McKenzie | Thursday, May 9 2013
Bokyo Borisov after his resignation via Wikipedia
While some activists threaten violence in the run up to Bulgaria's upcoming election on May 12, others have created online tools to help inform voters and safeguard the electoral process.
Pakistanis Take Refuge in Social Media Campaigning Before Election
BY Jessica McKenzie | Wednesday, May 8 2013
Screengrab from the Official MQM Twitter page
In the days leading up to Pakistan's general election on May 11, politicians from the three major secular parties have been forced, by violent attacks on political rallies that have caused more than a hundred deaths, to stop holding political events in public areas. Instead, they have come to rely on Facebook and Twitter as a campaign platform. Read More
New Web Platform Allows Students in Kenya, Uganda to Report Corrupt Professors
BY Jessica McKenzie | Monday, May 6 2013
Screengrab from Notinmycountry.org
Students in Kenyan and Ugandan universities now have an outlet to anonymously report professors and university personnel for corrupt activities or ineffective and lazy work. Read More
Mapping Violence Against Journalists, Social Media Users and Bloggers in Mexico
BY Jessica McKenzie | Friday, May 3 2013
Screengrab from crowdsourced map
In a country where 87 journalists have been killed and 17 have disappeared since 2000, a new crowdsourced map offers a safe way to report and record attacks against journalists, bloggers, Facebook and Twitter users. A combined effort between Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists, as of May 3 the map already had 48 reports. Reports included physical, judicial, psychological and digital attacks.
Google Follows UN Lead In Recognizing Palestine
Screengrab from Google Palestine
Palestinian Googlers might have noticed something different about their search engine homepage on Thursday. Google has changed the subheading of the Palestinian edition, Google.ps, from the "Palestinian Territories" to "Palestine." This acknowledgement by the search giant follows the United Nations decision in November 2012 to recognize Palestine as a non-member state, in spite of objections by the US and Israel.
Now On YouTube: Indigenous Groups Burst Into Brazil's Congress to Protest Land Rights Bill
Screengrab from political journalist's video of protest on YouTube
After waiting an entire day for an audience with Brazil's Chamber of Deputies to discuss a controversial bill, hundreds of aboriginal Brazilians bypassed security guards and burst into the session. The disruption was caught live on the Chamber of Deputies TV channel, and later posted on YouTube. A political journalist posted a second, shakier video that shows confusion and chaos during the protest.
Three Tech Initiatives for Combating the Spread of Malaria
Mosquito via Wikipedia
Although prevention and control measures have led to a reduction in mortality rates from malaria by 25 percent since 2000, 3.3 billion people are still at risk for infection, according to the World Health Organization. The World Health Assembly's goal is to reduce malaria case incidence rates by 75 percent (relative to the rates in 2000) by 2015. There are a number of new products or tools that help eliminate the spread of malaria, from tea to soap, but these are the top tech-based innovations:
IBM Optimizes Ivory Coast Bus Routes by Mining Mobile Phone Data
Abidjan, Ivory Coast (credit: Flickr/SoCE)
Cell phone data might be the next indispensable resource for urban planners. Mining mobility data from 2.5 billion call records, a team of IBM researchers identified modifications to bus routes in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, which could slash travel time up to 10 percent. Read More


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Published25 November, 2017, 2 years ago
UN Demands 'prompt, impartial investigations' of PH EJKs
GENEVA (23 November 2017) – United Nations human rights experts* have called on the Government of the Philippines to carry out prompt, impartial investigations into the high number of killings in the context of the anti-drugs campaign, to bring the perpetrators to justice, and thoroughly review its current policy in this regard, with a view to stopping further attacks taking place.
"A great number of new cases have been reported to us involving killings of men, women and children," the three Special Rapporteurs said in a joint statement.
"Many of the killings appear to be perpetrated by law enforcement officials and by unknown assailants. This seems to indicate a climate of official, institutional impunity, which can only encourage further killings and other excessive use of lethal force by law enforcement personnel or those acting on their behalf or with their acquiescence.
"The Philippines is required to protect its population, and its Government has a positive obligation to take effective measures to protect the right to life. Failure to do so is a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Philippines Duterte Threatens Violence Against UNHRC
Posted on November 23, 2017 by RINJ Foundation
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Philippines was adopted at the 36th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in September. Some 257 recommendations of the UNHRC were aimed at improving the Philippines human rights situation. Of … Continue reading →
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Case Study: Philippines State-Sponsored Mass Murder
When the State Endorses Murder Case: Jericho P. Camitan & witness Erica Angel Navales Fernandez shot dead by alleged Duterte Death Squad (DDS) Vigilantes. We Promised she'd never be forgotten – One Year later the investigation continues. Charges must be … Continue reading →
"We call on the Government to urgently introduce appropriate measures to stop these attacks and killings being carried out."
The experts also expressed serious concern that the exact number of victims was unknown, owing to changes in terminology and conflicts in official reporting, and about the limited number of investigations under way.
Justice is essential to combating impunity, they stressed, noting that relatives have the right to access all relevant information and to receive appropriate reparation.
"States are under an obligation to conduct effective investigations," the Special Rapporteurs said. "For an investigation to be effective, it must be conducted promptly. It must be impartial and independent, it should lead to holding perpetrators accountable, and relatives must be involved."
Some lawyers, human rights defenders and judges working on the cases have suffered harassment and threats as a result, the Special Rapporteurs said.
"It is essential that the judges and the judiciary as a whole are impartial and independent of all external pressures, so that those who appear before them and the public at large can have confidence that their cases will be decided fairly and in accordance with the law," the experts said.
Agnes Callamard
The Special Rapporteurs have raised their concerns with the Government and offered to provide any technical assistance necessary to ensure protection of the right to life in the Philippines.
*The UN experts: Ms. Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Mr. Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Mr. Diego García-Sayán, Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures' experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.


28 Top Christmas Crafts from January – Which is Your Favorite?
Are you a Crafty Christmas Ideas subscriber? AllFreeChristmasCrafts' thrice-weekly newsletter is filled with DIY ideas, tutorials and projects that you can work on all year long. The Christmas season is the most wonderful time of the year, so why not keep it going even when the season is over? Whether you like to craft with the family or make something more complicated on your own, you'll always find Christmas tutorials that suit your needs.
We've rounded up 28 Popular Christmas Crafts from January and we're sharing them with you. Sign up for the newsletter and help us pick next month's top projects!
Musical Christmas Wreath – Use a cardboard wreath form and old sheet music (or scrapbook papers) to decorate your door.
Crystal Snowflake Ornaments – Wire and beads – that's all you need to create your own ornament. This tutorial is also featured in our latest eBook, How to Make Ornaments: 10 Christmas Ornaments to Make.
You might think that January mean the end of Christmas crafting, but think again! Last month, Crafty Christmas Ideas readers were out in full force and they loved everything from snowmen to festive wreaths. It seems that the more versatile the craft, the more popular it was with readers. For instance, the Birdie Ornament isn't overtly Christmas-related (no Santa, snowmen or religious connotation), but it can be hung on a Christmas tree and made in an afternoon. Similarly, the 10 Minute Fabric Bracelet makes a great Christmas gift and can be worn to a holiday celebration. Best of all, it won't go out of style and can be worn all year.
This isn't to say that winter-themed projects weren't popular. Snowmen and snowflake crafts were huge in January which makes sense considering this month is notoriously snowy! Readers loved turning their warm homes into a winter wonderland. January is the perfect time to stay inside and get creative.
Which one is your favorite? Log on to the site and leave a comment on your favorite project. Be sure to tell us why it's your favorite!
First of all, happy New Year! Can you believe it's 2012 already? I vividly remember the start of 2011 and can't believe a full 365 days have passed since then. As they say, time flies when you're having fun… crafting!
If December was any indication, you guys were certainly having a blast crafting for the holidays. Some of the most popular crafts of the year came from our December newsletters, which is no surprise considering Christmas is the best holiday to craft for, in my humble opinion at least! There's just so much you can make for Christmas – from wreaths to ornaments to homemade gifts and cards and so much more! 'Tis the season for creativity!
It seems that you guys were really into recycling, reusing and repurposing old and unusual materials in your Christmas crafting this year. Not only does this lead to some of the cutest and most unique projects, like the Coffee Filter Christmas Trees and the wreath from toilet paper rolls, but it also helps the environment. Talk about win win!
I also noticed that a lot of the top projects were ones that are easy on the wallet. We all know crafting can get expensive pretty quickly, so I love that a bunch of the Top 10 projects are thrifty and inexpensive to make. One of my absolute favorites is the Super Easy Dollar Tree Ornament Wreath because, let's be honest, who doesn't love the dollar store? This particular project is great because you only need two supplies, and one of them is an old hanger which you already have in your closet!
Make sure you check out the complete list of the top 10 holiday craft projects from December 2011 and make note of your favorites to make for next Christmas! There's nothing like getting a head start on your holiday crafting way far in advance! Plus, if you get started now, you can get most of the supplies at marked-down prices and save yourself a bunch of money.
I hope you enjoy the collection and please keep checking back at AllFreeHolidayCrafts.com for more project ideas for ALL of your favorite holidays! I can't wait to start crafting for Valentine's Day 2012!
Which of the top 10 projects from December is YOUR favorite? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
You can see all 10 craft projects in this handy dandy collection! Which was your favorite this month?
August and afghans are two of nature's best insulators, due to the innate warming properties of the letter "A." It's probably no surprise then that we've had a wonderful crop of patterns in the last month, including the gorgeous Fall Colors Ripple afghan and the elegant Bridal Wreath Bedspread.
If you've missed any of our first class offerings over the last month, why not subscribe to our newsletter Laying It All Out? It's the best way to keep abreast of all our newest patterns!
Can you believe that May is already a week old? Well, you know what that means–it's time to count down the top 5 craft projects from last month. These are the projects that FaveCrafts readers loved the most in April. But before I show them to you, make sure you catch up on last month's recap, the Top 5 Crafts of March! And of course, check out what was popular on our sister sites last month as well in FaveCrafts Most Popular Craft Projects: April 2011.
What in the world is the "Cleavage Be Gone?" It's exactly what it sounds like–you wear it under your shirt and hook it around your bra to cover up for modesty's sake. A lot of FaveCrafts readers complain that they can't find modest shirts anymore, so the Cleavage Be Gone is a God send to them! We debuted this easy sewing pattern way back in October of 2010, but you guys loved it just as much in April! By the way, have you seen our Cold Weather Knit Dickie?
It seems that FaveCrafts readers love a good butterfly motif. Is this true? I definitely love butterfly crafts; they're so pretty and they just scream "SPRING!" You guys loved this cute little bag in our spring crochet issue from 4/14. How many of you tried the pattern? By the way, have you seen our Crochet Flower Clutch?
With a name like that, this baby blanket pattern has a lot to live up to! But it really does look extremely cozy and soft. Next time I get invited to a baby shower, I'm going straight to this pattern for the gift. We sent out a newsletter issue full of vintage baby blankets on 4/22, and this pattern was your favorite one! And I can see why. By the way, have you seen our Baby Love eBook from Red Heart Yarns?
I'm sad that Easter is over because it means I won't be seeing adorable crafts like this anymore. But there are plenty of other dollar store crafts to hold me over! If there's anything I love more than Easter crafts it's dollar store crafts. It looks like FaveCrafts readers like them too! We featured this little guy in our Easter issue on 4/5, and he was a big hit! By the way, have you seen our Dollar Store Petal Skirt (I made it myself!)?
And now for my favorite part, the most popular project from April!
This project has been…how shall I put this?…controversial, to say the least. Check out some of our readers' comments (and add your own!). Perhaps this angel is more infamous than popular. But nevertheless, it certainly piqued your interest! We featured it in our "Wacky, Weird, and Wonderful Crafts" issue (the same issue as the Cleavage Be Gone!) and you guys went nuts over it. Would you ever hang an old tampon on your Christmas tree? I know I would! I think it's kitschy. Am I just gross? By the way, have you seen our Delicate Crochet Angel Doll?
If you're sad that you missed the rest of our top projects and our wildly popular newsletters, head over here to subscribe. It's free! And don't miss our Most Popular Crafts from every month.
Hi Sewists! At the end of the every month I put together a collection of the most popular projects. Why?
Hopefully I've given you enough reason to at least check out the top projects of last month. In April I had fun adding a ton of spring projects. From spring bags and purses to handy ideas (literally) like the Hand Sanitizer Holder, a wide range of projects were deemed the best.
Here are a few that the AllFreeSewing community chose as favorites. Feeling left out? If you're not already subscribed to receive our daily newsletters, you're missing out! Don't worry, we'll let you in our club. That way, next month you'll know you helped choose these projects. What's even better? Once you start receiving our newsletters you'll always be up to date on sewing news and giveaways! Yep, we'll actually give you stuff along with these free ideas.
For the full collection, visit The Top Sewing Projects of April 2011.
So, did your favorites make the cut?


Matriculation begins with two years of a basic medical science curriculum as well as introductory laboratory research rotations in the summer before and the summer after the first year of medical courses. During the second year, the student selects a research mentor (if not already done so by this time) and begins to develop ideas for the dissertation research problem. Students complete the second year by taking Step 1 of United States Medical Licensing Examination. Years three through five of the MD-PhD Program, depending on individual progress, focus primarily on the research problem and selected graduate curriculum. Up to eight hours of research credits during this time can apply toward the required Elective credits for the MD degree. Following completion of the dissertation, the student completes their third and fourth year of medical school.


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On being a pianist
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | August 26, 2019
What does it mean to be "a pianist"?
Pianists do not devote their lives to their instrument simply because they like music….there has to be a genuine love simply of the mechanics and difficulties of playing, a physical need for the contact with the keyboard….inexplicable and almost fetishistic….
– Charles Rosen
The members of my piano Meetup group, my students, the people who play street pianos – they are all "pianists" to me.
Yet in the research for this article, I discovered that many people believe the title "pianist" assumes a certain level of capability and should only be conferred upon a select few – professional concert pianists or those who have achieved an extremely high level of musical attainment.
"Oh I'm not a proper pianist!" is a common refrain from the amateur pianists I meet regularly, some of whom are very advanced players. But what is a "proper" pianist? Is it someone who can perform complex repertoire from memory, with confidence, poise and flair, who has undergone a rigorous professional training, who has 50-plus concertos "in the fingers"….? Or is it simply a person who self-identifies with playing the piano?
Google isn't much help either. Type in "Being a pianist" and the search throws up any number of "How to be a better pianist" sites, "top 10 worst things about being a pianist" or "15 steps to become an amazing piano player" (if only it were that easy!).
Hand of a Pianist by Auguste Rodin
A confession: although I have played the piano for nearly two-thirds of my life, it wasn't until I had secured my first professional qualification (a performance diploma, taken in my late 40s), that I felt I could justifiably describe myself as "a pianist", rather than someone who "plays the piano". When I started to give public concerts, sometimes for real money, I stopped feeling like I was playing at being a pianist, a fraudulent concert pianist.
Being a pianist implies an intensity of connection, commitment, passion and focus. For those who play professionally, it can be all-embracing, sometimes overwhelmingly so, for one must live and breathe the instrument and its literature. Work shapes every hour of the day, the cadence by which one sets one's life, always feeding the artistic temperament, the pressure to achieve matched only by the pressure to sustain, and always the uncomfortable knowledge that one is only as good as one's last performance. In addition, the competitive nature of the profession coupled with its job insecurity leads many professional pianists to pursue, by necessity, what is fashionably called a "portfolio career" which may include teaching and lecturing, running summer schools, arts administration or even roles outside the music industry. "Being a pianist" can feel distinctly unglamorous, restrictive, sometimes lonely, often badly paid….
"I play the piano" suggests a more casual relationship with the instrument, something one does occasionally, at weekends, on Sundays….Yet many of the amateur pianists I encounter display a passionate commitment to the instrument which borders on obsession, regardless of the level at which they play. These people are not dreaming of the stage at Wigmore or Carnegie Hall; no, they play and practise for a personal challenge and fulfillment, a sense of one's own accomplishment, to be better than one was yesterday while working towards tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…..It's addictive, constant and consistent, sometimes therapeutic, often frustrating, but always, always compelling….It's founded on love, of the instrument and its literature, and it is this love which drives these people to practise, to take lessons, and to strive to improve their playing, cherishing precious moments in their busy lives to find time to spend at the piano.
It's a state of madness. Unless you're any good. Even then, you drive yourself half mad and waste precious time proving yourself to idiots who haven't a clue – David, professional pianist
There's a frustration with which many of us who play at an advanced level are familiar – that people don't really understand or appreciate what we do, or how hard it is ("does it get easier as you get better?" a friend of mine asked me recently. "No", I replied. "You just get more efficient at working out how to do it!"). I remember the parent of one of my students commenting admiringly that it was "amazing" how the music just "came out" of my fingers. "How do you do it?" she asked. I felt like asking her whether she had ever considered why her daughter, my student, was required to practise regularly…. Yet for audiences and onlookers the magic, the mystique, of the pianist is very potent, and to reveal too much about our craft and art would dispel that.
Frustration, physical pain and constant setbacks. Sadly it doesn't seem to be a mantle I can take off though – it's just what I am
It's my passion, frustrating, challenging and rewarding every day
– Teresa
It is the most important thing in my life, it makes me profoundly happy to play and teach this beautiful instrument and its wonderful repertoire. I never take it for granted. When I play, I am transported somewhere else beyond my music studio…
It means I can be pro-active with the world of music, and not just a bystander
– Terry
It means feeling alive, it's who I am. My life would be useless without music
– Tricia, professional pianist
Being a pianist puts us in touch with a vast repertoire, a rich seam of creativity, and some of the finest music ever written, and still being written. By engaging with it, we bring these works to life, like a conservator or gardener, every time we play. It puts us in touch with emotions and sentiments which are common to us all; it reminds us of our humanity, yet also transcends the pedestrian, the every day. In this way, for many of us being a pianist is an escape: as a child, I regarded the piano as a playmate, a place where I could go to weave stories and set my imagination free. Why should that be any different when one reaches adulthood?
For all of us who play the piano – amateur or professional – being a pianist offers limitless possibilities in what we can create and experience.
The real question is – what would you be without the piano?
amateur pianists at a piano summer school
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Posted in General and tagged as adult amateur pianists, amateur pianists, being a pianist, concert pianists, pianists, playing the piano, professional pianists. 3 Comments
Why paint? How pianists can create their own therapy
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | October 23, 2018
Guest post by Michael Johnson
I have just dusted off 'The Writer's Brush', a book in my chaotic library that reproduces the artwork of 200 well-known novelists and essayists. Looking over their paintings, I can almost hear them letting out sighs of relief as their images took shape on the canvas. Writers often turn to painting for relief from the tyranny of words. It's a form of therapy — the visual arts provide immediate respite.
Pianists seem to be perfect candidates for this same escape yet finding them and making them talk about it is like pulling teeth. I have identified a handful of pianist-painters and captured some of their thoughts, and my hunt continues, but it might be in vain. Composer-critic Virgil Thomson wrote in one of his better polemical pieces, "The music profession is more secret than most … No other field of human activity is quite so hermetic, so isolated."
Some of my pianist friends will even admit that too much time at the keyboard is ultimately bad for the soul. They are weary of working on muscle memory. It's the endless repetition of notes penned by someone else that rankles them most. The late Charles Rosen once told me he dealt with this dilemma by propping a book of detective stories on his piano to read as he repeated tricky passages a hundred times. Is that art?
True artists seek self-expression, artistic adventure. They feel the urge to own their work, and written music strictly limits departures from notation. Some musicians eventually realize they are mere messengers, but of what messages? (Deciphering Chopin's detailed dynamic markings, they ask themselves, "Why did he insist on such constraints?") If they stray too far, their teachers steer them relentlessly back to the page.
My advice to pianists is to grab some pots of paint and start splashing. Painting has a "touch of the miraculous" about it, one artist told me recently. Of all the arts, painting will grant you the most license for creative release.
I have been collecting samples of musicians' artwork for the past year or so, and have been surprised at how committed some of them became, often mounting
their own exhibitions and publishing their visual creations, at least on the internet.
Moreover, I find similar urges among academics, business executives, and even one magician, David Blaine.
Alexander Motyl, a novelist and political science professor at Rutgers University, Newark, N.J., finds painting a release from the straightjacket of words – much as musicians fight the constraints of music. "There are no words, no speech, no 'thinking' in my painting," he tells me. "It's just lines and colors and spaces and visual creations. Stuff happens and, suddenly, you realize, gosh, this is really good."
Somewhere among the painters I find myself, once a struggling pianist, then a working journalist, now a successful portrait painter. I get chills of the "miraculous" when one of my portraits seems to speak to me. My first book of music-makers' ecstatic faces * has just appeared and my recent one-man show of 70 watercolors in Bordeaux attracted press coverage and a few commissions.
While frustration has driven some leading musicians to the drawing board, reasons of course vary. Among those who turned to the pot-and-brush are Felix Mendelssohn, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Arnold Schoenberg, George Gershwin, former Juilliard professor David Dubal, the British polymath Stephen Hough, the Argentine virtuoso Ingrid Fliter, Boston's Russell Sherman, British composer-pianist Richard Rodney Bennett, the Israeli pianist Ilana Vered, The German composer-painter Heiner Goebbels, and the early work of Alfred Brendel. Some Chopin drawings are on display in Warsaw. Ferruccio Busoni, Edward MacDowell, Charles T. Griffes, and Enrique Granados all left visual art among their legacies. Even Mozart doodled funny faces in the margins of his scores.
Stephen Hough tells me in an email exchange that he finds painting more release than relief – a way to explore a different branch of creativity. In playing the piano, he says, "sounds evaporate into the air… but a painting stands as a thing, complete." As he put it in a separate interview, "I've always felt that playing the piano just by itself was not enough." Painting allows him to find a further outlet. "I feel like I need to move in other directions," he said.
David Dubal, pianist, broadcaster, pedagogue and accomplished abstract artist, believes that drawing and painting are things we should experience "all the time". It would "make for a more peaceful world", he tells me. "Painting and drawing have taught me to see and remember. The hand moving on any surface with brush or pencil is a major activity of the unconscious and conscious mind. One must be absolutely ready to let the hand activate its power. It is an adventure and a gamble."
He quotes designer William Morris as writing to his painter friend Edward Burne-Jones, "If any man has any poetry in him, he should paint …"
In one of the quirkiest cases of backward cross-fertilisation, John Cage was so inspired by Robert Rauschenberg's "white painting" (blank canvasses that Cage called "mirrors of the air") that later the same year he composed his most famous work, 4'33", at which a pianist sits quietly at the keyboard but does not touch it.
Left-handed violinist Paul Klee was talented in music and art. He ultimately embraced art, dropping the confines of music altogether and becoming a leading avant-garde painter.
Like Hough, I too find release in painting, sometimes spontaneously. I am often seized by the impulse to sketch a player when I see him or her emotionally high in public. Musicians' faces and body language provide great material for the artist, inspiring my approach to their portraits — joyful, tragic or just deep concentration.
There is a peculiar pleasure in portraiture. The artist must take an intimate, even intrusive, approach to detail, exploring the eyes, noses and lips – their crinkles, wrinkles and folds — to make the subject come alive. An expressive face can reveal something of the individual's inner life, and that is what I seek. It takes time to study these faces. The English painters John Singer Sargent and Lucian Freud were known for their multiple false starts in oils, scraping away the face and starting over and over. Leonardo da Vinci invested five years, off and on, in his "Mona Lisa".
Conductors are some of the most emotive performers in public. Yutaka Sado, Kent Nagano, Paul Daniel, and of course Leonard Bernstein lose themselves in the music. I have seen Bernstein leap so joyfully that both feet left the podium at the same time.
Studying faces puts the artist in a spooky symbiosis with his or her subject. I know I have captured the pianist when I can hear the music or see the subject come to life. I stop short of a related spookiness, however, in the very spiritual conductor Seiji Ozawa who also gets that "miraculous" chill. Intensive study of an orchestral score eventually gives him the feeling that it is his music, that he composed it.
Music can get inside you that way.
* My collection of portraits of musicians is available at Amazon
Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. He worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his writing career. He is the author of five books and divides his time between Boston and Bordeaux.
Posted in General and tagged as guest post, musicians who are also artistis, painting for therapy, pianists, pianists who paint, Stephen Hough. 1 Comment
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | July 15, 2017
Carlo Zecchi, pianist
It wasn't easy to find a Z to complete A Pianist's Alphabet, but Carlo Zecchi (1903-84) fits the bill perfectly, being a pianist, music teacher and conductor. He studied with Busoni and Schnabel. His Paris debut was rather overshadowed by one Vladimir Horowitz but he enjoyed success in Russia in the inter-war years and was particularly acclaimed for his performances of piano works by Scarlatti, Mozart, and Debussy, and of Romantic music.
Posted in A pianist's alphabet and tagged as pianists, Piano.
V is for……Virtuoso
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | January 25, 2017
…a virtuoso was, originally, a highly accomplished musician, but by the nineteenth century the term had become restricted to performers, both vocal and instrumental, whose technical accomplishments were so pronounced as to dazzle the public.
Music in the Western civilization by Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin
Google "virtuoso pianist" and the image search will throw up pictures of Richter, Brendel, Rubenstein, Argerich, Arrau, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Ashkenazy, Barenboim, Lang Lang, Yuja Wang, Trifonov, Pollini, Cziffra, Gould, Kissin, Uchida, Hough, Pires, Ogdon, Schiff, Cliburn, Hamelin, Schnabel, Cortot, Horowitz, Hess, von Bulow, Andsnes….. The list is seemingly endless, with every significant or "great" pianist of today and previous eras afforded the accolade of "virtuoso". Along with the pictures there are 100s of articles ranking pianists – the 25 greatest pianists of all time, the 10 greatest living pianists, 50 legendary virtuoso pianists……
The word "virtuoso" literally means "a person who is extremely skilled at something, especially at playing an instrument or performing". It describes an individual with exceptional and extraordinary technical and musical abilities, but as the opening quote notes, the word is more usually associated with dazzling displays of piano pyrotechnics.
Today virtuosity in the sphere of classical music has become almost synonymous with an over-developed technical facility without a comparable level of musical understanding/interpretation or broader musical education. The word has been misappropriated and more often than not is now attached to the performer who simply plays very fast and loud, or one who attracts more attention to themselves than the music (I am sure we can all think of a few examples…..). It troubles me when the word is used to describe young children playing (seemingly) complex piano repertoire, whose irritating videos are posted across the internet. How many of these "piccoli virtuosi" will actually grow up to be true virtuosi, in the purest, most romantic sense of the word? As we gasp in amazement at these pianists' fleet fingers and glittering pianistic athleticism, the word has come to mean something rather superficial and derogatory.
Virtuosos are constantly tempted to indulge in an undue exhibition of their wonderful technic, and as many have succumbed to the temptation, the term virtuoso has come to be considered by many as slightly depreciatory, and the greatest artists usually object to having it coupled with their names
W.L. Hubbard et al, 1908
For me, and I suspect others who appreciate the art and craft of pianism, virtuosity transcends technique. It is less about the ability to play the fastest, most treacherous passages of Rachmaninoff or Liszt or to scale the high Himalayan peaks of works like Gaspard de la Nuit or Islamey, or to perfectly execute thousands of scales and other 'technical exercises' with amazing dexterity, but rather an aggregate of many skills which enable the pianist to play a million different passages, and to adjust finger and arm weight and touch accordingly to achieve particular effects and sounds, as well as learning to 'speak' the language of music through one's playing and an ability to stand back from the music to allow it to speak on its own terms. Nor is it about flashy piano pyrotechnics and extravagant gestures, which may wow the audience but do not serve the music. Indeed, a number of pianists whom I regard as true virtuosi are also some of the most "immobile" in the profession – Marc-André Hamelin, Murray Perahia and Stephen Hough being notable examples.
A true virtuoso "must call up scent and blossom, and breathe the breath of life"
Franz Liszt is usually held up as the first great virtuoso pianist, yet for many he remains merely a "showman" whose virtuosity was a negative attribute. A poseur and a charlatan, superficial and bombastic, whose playing and music was affected, grandiose and vulgar. But Liszt was no superficial showman: in addition to playing his own music, he played all the best music of his day and all the best music which had been written for the piano. He was "the very incarnation of the piano". In addition, he was a pioneering conductor, concert promoter and champion of young composers (notably Wagner, who described him as "the most musical of all musicians"). His musical outlook in general was noble, transcendental, sacred, orchestral and metaphysical – surely attributes to be admired rather than denounced?
With Liszt, one no longer thinks of difficulty overcome; the instrument disappears and music reveals itself
The virtuoso appreciates and understands that each performance is a "critique" in the purest sense of that term; it is a profoundly thoughtful, insightful, penetrative response to the music in which the performer invests his or her own self in a symbiotic process in which he/she becomes not a re-creator but a collaborator with the composer. The virtuoso respects the demands placed upon him/her by the composer by playing the music with passion, poetry and extraordinary technical ability.
In concerts, the virtuoso approaches each performance, each interpretation as a unique occasion – something I feel is increasingly hard for performers when high-quality recordings are so readily available, benchmarks by which pianistic prowess is measured and which lead audiences to expect a certain manner of playing in live concerts. The virtuoso appreciates that there is no one "perfect" rendition of a Beethoven Concerto or Chopin Étude; that one should never aspire to have the "last word" on any work. It is for this reason that many of us seek out the same virtuoso performers in the same repertoire, either on disc or in concert, to hear how their view of certain works changes and develops over time. Yet for some musicians the constant revisiting of certain works (the Beethoven piano sonatas, for example), or playing them on different instruments (fortepiano, for example) suggests an overly reverential or literal attitude to the composer's "intentions" as they perceive them, and a wish/need to make a final statement on this music and set it in stone. Such performances, for me at least, may come across not as virtuosic but rather as academic, mannered or overly precious.
…the further a performance must travel to reach the origin of the music, the more the artist demonstrates the measure of both his conscience and his genius: his virtuosity
Mark Mitchell, Virtuosi!
The virtuoso takes risks in performance – by which I do not mean coming to the stage ill-prepared. Indeed, the most risk-tasking, vertiginous, exciting or profound performances are often the result of many long hours – nay, years – spent living with the music. Even a flawed virtuoso performance can excite, delight and enthrall far more than a perfect non-virtuosic performance: technique over artistry nearly always fails to impress.
The virtuoso understands that while there is no "definitive" performance, one can create, in that "existing in the moment" of the live concert experience a performance whose communicative and emotional power renders it "perfect". Audiences know this too – these are the performances during which we enter a state of wonder, from which we emerge speechless, hardly able to put into words what we have just heard (often the hardest concerts to review, in my experience!) because the experience of the performance has awakened in us what it means to be a sentient, thinking, feeling, living, breathing human being. I would cite concerts by Maurizio Pollini (in Pierre Boulez's Second Piano Sonata), Steven Osborne (in Messiaen's Vingt Regards), Marc-André Hamelin (in Liszt, Ives and Stockhausen) and Richard Goode (in Schubert's last three piano sonatas) which transported me into that particular state of wonder.
The miracle of an aristocratic performance lies in its capacity to vaporize everything that surrounds it, and in particular all efforts to appropriate it.
Mark Mitchell, ibid.
And there's more – because for me true virtuosity goes beyond the notes. It includes the ability and willingness to tackle a wide range of repertoire. By which I do not mean playing a lot of pieces, as some younger performers feel they should be doing, but rather playing a broad range of music. One of the chief exponents of this art is, in my humble opinion, Maurizio Pollini. Not many pianists would programme Chopin's 24 Preludes, a selection of Debussy's Preludes Book 1 and Pierre Boulez's Sonata No. 2 in the same concert. Stephen Hough and Marc-André Hamelin are also notable examples in their championing of lesser-known repertoire and their own compositions.
People will always be impressed by fleet fingers and noisy piano acrobatics, but for me the most profound musical experience often comes in the quietest, slowest or most intimate moments in music when a venue as large as the Royal Festival Hall shrinks to the size of Schubert's salon through the pianist's power of expression and musical intuition and understanding. That is true virtuosity.
Posted in A pianist's alphabet and tagged as concert pianists, how to define a virtuoso, pianists, virtuosity, virtuoso pianists.
Introducing…..Pianists with Kittens
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | August 8, 2015
There are cats and kittens all over the internet. For some people it's what social networks like Facebook and Twitter were created for: sharing pictures and video clips of cats doing funny things, cats doing cute things, cats doing daft things….. Or pictures of our own furry friends for us to collectively coo over.
Many of my pianist friends and colleagues own cats (I know this because they post pictures of their feline companions on Facebook and Twitter) and it strikes me that cats are good companions for pianists, being self-sufficient and far less demanding or attention-seeking than dogs. (My own cat, a blue Burmese called Freddy, used to sit on the lid of the piano when I was practising, or join me on the piano bench, leaning gently against me as I played.)
Just when we thought there wasn't room for another blog or website featuring cats and kittens, along came Pianists With Kittens, a delightfully witty Tumblr photo-blog which contains pictures of famous pianists with kittens and cats Photoshopped into the pictures. It's a simple idea, but it works because it is executed so well. The choice and the placement of the cat or kitten is both thoughtful and humorous: Garrick Ohlsson seemingly in conversation with a hairless cat, a wide-eyed cat peeping round Maurizio Pollini, a stripey ginger kitty hangs from the arm of Vestard Shimkus, a tabby dives over the shoulder of Nikolai Lugansky, the tail of a disappearing cat in a picture of Lang Lang madly emoting, a kitten flying through the air, as if tossed out of the piano by the extravagant gestures of Yuja Wang. There are many famous pianists featured on the site – late greats such as Richter, Ciccolini, Kempf, Hoffman, Gould, Lipatti, even Chopin and Mozart, as well as living artists, and each picture is accompanied by a YouTube clip allowing one to listen to the featured pianist. Those of us who follow Pianists With Kittens on Twitter have taken to nominating pianists to be featured on the site, and I was honoured last autumn to be featured myself on the site, with my beloved cat Freddy of course. Now it is quite an accolade to be included on the Pianists With Kittens site.
I caught up with the creator of Pianists with Kittens to find out more about how this charming site came to be
Who or what inspired you to create Pianists With Kittens?
The idea for Pianists With Kittens came first from a scholar-pianist friend, Alex Stefaniak, who learned in the course of his research that Clara Schumann was a fan of kittens—no less a source than Franz Liszt reports that she used to return to the piano with bloody hands from playing with them! So I made a (clumsy) photoshop of her with a kitten and immediately my friends requested other pianists.
By popular demand, the Tumblr came into being and then the Twitter account. (NB: Pianists will want to keep an eye out for Prof. Stefaniak's book on the Schumanns and virtuosity. Should be out in the next year.)
What is your own musical background? Are you a pianist?
I grew up with classical music on 24/7, so it always seemed a neccessary accompaniment to life, not something to study for a "career." Now I'm a professional in the music world, but piano is still my hobby.
Do you own a cat/kitten?
A cat and a kitten. The older cat sits at my side when I play piano.
What is your earliest memory of the piano?
Classical piano music was probably on while I was in the womb, but I first became aware of the instrument as such when my parents brought one into the house. I was 6 and started lessons the next year.
Who are your favourite pianists (living and dead)?
I think my tastes in dead pianists are not particularly controversial. Seems that posterity has done a good job with this already. Richter tops my list as I've previously written here. Among his contemporaries, I'll always give a listen to Yudina and Gilels, Sofronitsky, Lipatti. Young Horowitz belongs on this list too.
Among the 19th-century babies, of course Rachmaninoff himself. I love anything Carl Friedberg plays, his Brahms and Schumann were revelatory to me. And the other "fried"– Friedman, for his Chopin. I think just about everything Myra Hess touches is gold, such warmth in her German rep – love her Op109. I like to imagine that warmth is what Clara Schumann must have conveyed in her playing.
Cortot is a favorite. There's nothing new to be said about his amazing pianism, and I love his wrong notes as much as the right ones. His name always seemed paired with Chopin, then I heard his Schumann and liked it even more.
Notably absent from this list are some greats of the Golden Era. I find too much of that repertoire superficial (part of that impression is because of recording technology: hard to record a complete 50-minute Schubert sonata à la Richter).
Among the living, it gets more difficult. There's a whole generation that leaves me pretty cold (the Perahia-Schiff-Uchida generation). My tastes still tend to the Eastern European, so I'd rather hear Leonskaja, Virsaladze, Pletnev, even Pogorelich than those who often grace concert halls in the West—and forget the States! And for the new century so far, Daniil Trifonov.
What is your most memorable concert experience?
When I was a small child (3 or 4) and taken to a local college symphony concert: they played the Candide Overture and I thought it was just the coolest thing.
Favourite pieces to play/listen to?
Too hard to name favorite pieces! I play Bach and Mozart all the time and I love them; can spend hours reading through WTC. Brahms, too, as much of it I can play. As for listening, whatever requires so much pianistic finesse/technique that I can't stumble through it satisfactorily myself: Chopin, Russian rep, the "Impressionist" pieces.
If you could play one piece what would it be……?
I have small hands, so. . . if I magically were to become a great concert pianist with a great orchestra and conductor around, then maybe one of the Brahms or Rachmaninoff concerti.
Follow Pianists With Kittens on Twitter at @PianistswKitten
Tumblr: http://pianistswithkittens.tumblr.com/
Posted in General and tagged as cats, cats on the internet, composers, kitten, musicians with cats, pianists, pianists with kittens, Tumblr, with cats.
Meet the Artist…… Lola Perrin, pianist & composer
By The Cross-Eyed Pianist | April 9, 2015
Lola Perrin
Who or what inspired you to take up the piano, and pursue a career in music?
It picked me, I couldn't keep away from the piano and when I hit my early twenties I realised I had to compose, and knew it would take a good few years to write anything I could say was original. It actually took 9 years to eventually compose eleven minutes of music that I rate; my first piano suite which is a set of seven miniatures. After that, the door was open.
Who or what were the most important influences on your musical life and career?
Edward Hopper, Ansel Adams, observing children set free at the piano, Rachel Whiteread, Carsten Hoeller, Dr Martin Coath's emails to me about the speed of thought in the brain, Hussein Chalayan's ideology that drives his designs, the passing of a close friend and musician and remembering him in a piano suite – these were all triggers, one by one, for my eight piano suites.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
It's unimaginably difficult to get other people to play your work which is fairly usual (so many of my predecessors only started getting played after their deaths), although my work is played now more than it was – it ebbs and flows. It's hard to get it to take off. I'm more interested in composing than promoting so I run out of time to promote my books. I spend less time than I would like on promoting my books because my composing and teaching take priority. So I would say the greatest challenge is ongoing; getting my work further into the repertoire and into the hands of many more concert pianists.
Which performance/recordings are you most proud of?
Always the next one.
Favourite pieces to listen to?
Bill Evans playing 'Symbiosis'
Who are your favourite musicians?
Martha Argerich is high up in my list and I loved seeing her daughter's amazing and intimate film about Martha: 'Bloody Daughter'.
Maybe the one where around 5 and a half people came. I was in a tiny chapel in Hamburg, My show included films and as there was no screen, they were projected onto the amazing and antiquated wallpaper, creating the sense of a one-time-only atmosphere never to be repeated but perhaps everyone would remember on a particularly deep level.
What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?
Once you find your path, never step away from it; no matter how hard it is, do not compromise. Be brave and keep reaching out!
What are you working on at the moment?
I've spent the last year creating "Now You See It" – a composer's response to living in the age of climate change. It's scored for piano and an orchestra of words featuring the voices of activists and innovators at the frontline of climate justice. I worked with co-producer Christian Dymond, researching and interviewing a number of activists around the world; then I created a word based composition using extracts from the interviews and set that within piano composition. It has its premiere in London in March and is going to Hebden Bridge Piano Festival in April, will be on at Markson Pianos Concert Series in October, with more dates coming in.
Where would you like to be in 10 years' time?
On a planet that has switched to renewable energy or NO energy.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Walking to my next gig; that's when I most feel in my element.
Lola Perrin performs at Hebden Bridge Piano Festival on 18th April in a programme which culminates in her "Now You See It" – a multimedia project featuring solo piano with a sumptuous cloud film by visual artist Roberto Battista, and pre-recorded words captured from international activists, climatologists, inventors, writers, and oil rig workers; voices from the frontline of our global climate conversation. "Such a brilliant idea!" George Monbiot
Further information and tickets here
Lola Perrin is a London-based, USA-born composer, pianist, publisher, and Composer-in-Residence at Markson Pianos.
She has been composing since 1992 and performs her compositions on mainland Europe, in the UK (including works for 2, 4 & 6 pianos at Lang Lang Inspires, Southbank Centre) & USA, and has published over 70 piano compositions in 8 books, distributed via Spartan Press. Commissions include silent film scores performed at Barbican, BFI Southbank and Peninsula Arts in Plymouth. She collaborates in performance with writers (including Mihir Bose & Sue Hubbard), scientists, artists and film makers.
Lola Perrin has been taken into the repertoire by concert pianists including; Elena Riu, Kevin Robert Orr, Paul Cassidy, Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble, LP Duo, Duo Gastesi Bezerra, Carles and Sofia. Her technical exercises, commissioned by Trinity College of Music, can be found in their 2015 – 2016 Piano Syllabus Grades 3 & 4.
As an increasing number of pianists and piano duos take up her piano works she is turning her attention to instrumental works. Elysian Quartet and Carlos Lopez-Real have performed her string quartet and saxophone work. Sarah Watts commissioned 'Her Sisters' Notebook' (ten bass clarinets) for Peninsula Arts Contemporary Music Festival 2011 and played it at Irish Royal Academy 2014. Simon Desbrulais and Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble have taken up her forthcoming Suite for Two Pianos, Trumpet and Narrator. During 2014 two instrumental works (String Quartet & Saxophone, Wind Quintet & Choir) are due to be rehearsed / performed in London.
She has been interviewed and reviewed by various media including Berliner Morgenpost, BBC Radio 3 and local stations, The Guardian, Lyric FM. Her recordings appear on radio playlists and occasionally on broadcast TV, are on general release and can be found through digital sites including iTunes (CDs: Fragile Light', 'By Peculiar Grace and other loves'). She also works as a private piano teacher. Pianist magazine ran an interview, June 2014, with her piano student Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, in which Lola made a sneak appearance.
As well as various composition projects, she is also currently transcribing 'Concerto in C Minor' by Helen Hagan, a forgotten 1912 virtuosic masterpiece still in the composer's hand, and creating a concert programme around it.
www.lolaperrin.com
Posted in General and tagged as climate change, female composer, female pianist, Hebden Bridge Piano Festival, interviews with musicians, pianists.


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Q: SVG - привести текст в path
Написал текст, выделил 2 первые буквы. Выбрал контур -> оконтурить объект
На выходе получается для каждой буквы создается path, а сделать так чтобы один path для 2 и более символов.
Собственно какова последовательность действий?

A: Чтобы получить один path для нескольких букв, можно воспользоваться онлайн инструментом - Google Font to Svg Path

Не включенный чекбокс Separate Characters: сгенерирует один path для двух символов "Te"

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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Here are 3 habits of mind that will help you start to find your freedom.
When you are choosing what to eat, notice the thoughts "Should I? How many carbs does it have? What have I eaten today? Do I deserve this? Or similar, as they come up in your mind. Go here instead: Check in with yourself to find out: Am I hungry? How hungry am I? What food would taste best right now? What would happen if I ate it slowly with enjoyment? If I'm not really hungry, what is it that I am looking for?
When you find yourself in despair over your weight and looking at ads for diets, pills and supplements as a remedy, step back from the fear in your mind. Ask yourself, and answer honestly: What has happened when I've been on diets before? If I lost weight, how long did the weight stay off? What happened last time I took supplements or diet pills? Did I end up with a peaceful and empowering relationship with food? Or did it add to my sense of fear and confusion? Ask yourself if you might rather find a path that will allow you to heal your relationship with food and your body permanently.
Discontinue your practice of participating in conversations around good foods, bad foods, how fat you are (or someone else is), how much weight you've lost (or someone else has). What you can't fit into anymore, or what you can fit into now that you couldn't before. How big your thighs are….you get the picture. If this conversation is happening around you, remind yourself quietly in your mind that you are exploring a new way of being with food. That you are beginning to nourish a relationship that will empower and delight you and that it feels better to focus on that than old ways of talking about yourself.
Take these 3 steps and practice one at a time, slowly and consistently. See how you like it!


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Changelog Entry Format
libgfchangelog
This document puts forward the intended need for GlusterFS changelog consumer library (a.k.a. libgfchangelog) for consuming changlogs produced by the Changelog translator. Further, it mentions the proposed design and the API exposed by it. A brief explanation of changelog translator can also be found as a commit message in the upstream source tree and the review link can be accessed here.
Initial consumer of changelogs would be Geo-Replication (release 3.5). Possible consumers in the future could be backup utilities, GlusterFS self-heal, bit-rot detection, AV scanners. All these utilities have one thing in common - to get a list of changed entities (created/modified/deleted) in the file system. Therefore, the need arises to provide such functionality in the form of a shared library that applications can link against and query for changes (See API section). There is no plan as of now to provide language bindings as such, but for shell script friendliness: 'gfind' command line utility (which would be dynamically linked with libgfchangelog) would be helpful. As of now, development for this utility is still not commenced.
The next section gives a brief introduction about how changelogs are organized and managed. Then we propose couple of designs for libgfchangelog. API set is not covered in this document (maybe later).
Changelogs can be thought as a running history for an entity in the file system from the time the entity came into existance. The goal is to capture all possible transitions the entity underwent till the time it got purged. The transition namespace is broken up into three categories with each category represented by a specific changelog format. Changes are recorded in a flat file in the filesystem and are rolled over after a specific time interval. All three types of categories are recorded in a single changelog file (sequentially) with a type for each entry. Having a single file reduces disk seeks and fragmentation and less number of files to deal with. Stratergy for pruning of old logs is still undecided.
As mentioned before the transition namespace is categorized into three types: - TYPE-I : Data operation - TYPE-II : Metadata operation - TYPE-III : Entry operation
One could visualize the transition of an file system entity as a state machine transitioning from one type to another. For TYPE-I and TYPE-II operations there is no state transition as such, but TYPE-III operation involves a state change from the file systems perspective. We can now classify file operations (fops) into one of the three types: - Data operation: write(), writev(), truncate(), ftruncate() - Metadata operation: setattr(), fsetattr(), setxattr(), fsetxattr(), removexattr(), fremovexattr() - Entry operation: create(), mkdir(), mknod(), symlink(), link(), rename(), unlink(), rmdir()
In order to record the type of operation and entity underwent, a type identifier is used. Normally, the entity on which the operation is performed would be identified by the pathname, which is the most common way of addressing in a file system, but we choose to use GlusterFS internal file identifier (GFID) instead (as GlusterFS supports GFID based backend and the pathname field may not always be valid and other reasons which are out of scope of this this document). Therefore, the format of the record for the three types of operation can be summarized as follows:
TYPE-I : GFID of the file
TYPE-II : GFID of the file
TYPE-III : GFID + FOP + MODE + UID + GID + PARGFID/BNAME [PARGFID/BNAME]
GFID's are analogous to inodes. TYPE-I and TYPE-II fops record the GFID of the entity on which the operation was performed: thereby recording that there was an data/metadata change on the inode. TYPE-III fops record at the minimum a set of six or seven records (depending on the type of operation), that is sufficient to identify what type of operation the entity underwent. Normally this record inculdes the GFID of the entity, the type of file operation (which is an integer [an enumerated value which is used in GluterFS]) and the parent GFID and the basename (analogous to parent inode and basename).
Changelogs can be either in ascii or binary format, the difference being the format of the records that is persisted. In a binary changelog the gfids are recorded in it's native format ie. 16 byte record and the fop number as a 4 byte integer. In an ascii changelog, the gfids are stored in their canonical form and the fop number is stringified and persisted. Null charater is used as the record serarator and changelogs. This makes it hard to read changelogs from the command line, but the packed format is needed to support file names with spaces and special characters. Below is a snippet of a changelog along side it's hexdump.
00000000  47 6c 75 73 74 65 72 46  53 20 43 68 61 6e 67 65  |GlusterFS Change|
00000010  6c 6f 67 20 7c 20 76 65  72 73 69 6f 6e 3a 20 76  |log | version: v|
00000020  31 2e 31 20 7c 20 65 6e  63 6f 64 69 6e 67 20 3a  |1.1 | encoding :|
00000030  20 32 0a 45 61 36 39 33  63 30 34 65 2d 61 66 39  | 2.Ea693c04e-af9|
00000040  65 2d 34 62 61 35 2d 39  63 61 37 2d 31 63 34 61  |e-4ba5-9ca7-1c4a|
00000050  34 37 30 31 30 64 36 32  00 32 33 00 33 33 32 36  |47010d62.23.3326|
00000060  31 00 30 00 30 00 66 36  35 34 32 33 32 65 2d 61  |1.0.0.f654232e-a|
00000070  34 32 62 2d 34 31 62 33  2d 62 35 61 61 2d 38 30  |42b-41b3-b5aa-80|
00000080  33 62 33 64 61 34 35 39  33 37 2f 6c 69 62 76 69  |3b3da45937/libvi|
00000090  72 74 5f 64 72 69 76 65  72 5f 6e 65 74 77 6f 72  |rt_driver_networ|
000000a0  6b 2e 73 6f 00 44 61 36  39 33 63 30 34 65 2d 61  |k.so.Da693c04e-a|
000000b0  66 39 65 2d 34 62 61 35  2d 39 63 61 37 2d 31 63  |f9e-4ba5-9ca7-1c|
000000c0  34 61 34 37 30 31 30 64  36 32 00 45 36 65 39 37  |4a47010d62.E6e97|
As you can see, there is an entry operation (journal record starting with an "E"). Records for this operation are: - GFID : a693c04e-af9e-4ba5-9ca7-1c4a-47010d62 - FOP : 23 (create) - Mode : 33261 - UID : 0 - GID : 0 - PARGFID/BNAME: f654232e-a42b-41b3-b5aa-803b3da45937
NOTE: In case of a rename operation, there would be an additional record (for the target PARGFID/BNAME).
NOTE: changelogs generated by the changelog translator are rolled over [with the timestamp as the suffix] after a specific interval, after which a new change is started. The current changelog [changelog file without the timestamp as the suffix] should never be processed unless it's rolled over. The rolled over logs should be treated read-only.
Capturing changes performed on a file system is useful for applications that rely on file system scan (crawl) to figure out such information. Backup utilities, automatic file healing in a replicated environment, bit-rot detection and the likes are some of the end user applications that require a set of changed entities in a file system to act on. Goal of libgfchangelog is to provide the application (consumer) a fast and easy to use common query interface (API). The consumer need not worry about the changelog format, nomenclature of the changelog files etc.
Now we list functionality and some of the features.
Changelog Processing: Processing involes reading changelog file(s), converting the entries into human-readable (or application understandable) format (in case of binary log format). Book-keeping: Keeping track of how much the application has consumed the changelog (ie. changes during the time slice start-time -> end-time). Serve API request: Update the consumer by providing the set of changes.
Processing could be done in two ways:
Pre-processing (pre-processing from the library POV): Once a changelog file is rolled over (by the changelog translator), a set of post processing operations are performed. These operations could include conversion of a binary log file to an understandable format, collate a bunch of logs into a larger sampling period or just keep a private copy of the changelog (in ascii format). Extra disk space is consumed to store this private copy. The library would then be free to consume these logs and serve application requests.
On-demand: The processing of the changelogs is trigerred when an application requests for changes. Downside of this being additional time spent on decoding the logs and data accumulation during application request time (but no additional disk space is used over the time period).
After processing, the changelog is ready to be consumed by the application. The function of processing is to convert the logs into human/application readable format (an example is shown below):
E a7264fe2-dd6b-43e1-8786-a03b42cc2489 CREATE 33188 0 0 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001%2Fservices1
M a7264fe2-dd6b-43e1-8786-a03b42cc2489 NULL
M 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001 NULL
D a7264fe2-dd6b-43e1-8786-a03b42cc2489
The following points mention some of the features that the library could provide.
Consumer could choose the update type when it registers with the library. 'types' could be:
Streaming: The consumer is updated via stream of changes, ie. the library would just replay the logs
Consolidated: The consumer is provided with a consolidated view of the changelog, eg. if had an DATA and a METADATA operation, it would be presented as a single update. Similarly for ENTRY operations.
Raw: This mode provides the consumer with the pathnames of the changelog files itself (after processing). The changelogs should be strictly treated as read-only. This gives the flexibility to the consumer to extract updates using thier own preferred way (eg. using command line tools like sed, awk, sort | uniq etc.).
Application may choose to adopt a synchronous (blocking) or an asynchronous (callback) notification mechanism.
Provide a unified view of changelogs from multiple peers (replication scenario) or a global changelog view of the entire cluster.
The first cut of the library supports: - Raw access mode - Synchronous programming model - Per brick changelog consumption ie. no unified/globally aggregated changelog


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Middle East|Ahmed Seif, Who Was Tortured in Egypt and Became Rights Defender, Dies at 63
Ahmed Seif, Who Was Tortured in Egypt and Became Rights Defender, Dies at 63
Ahmed Seif in 2011. He was imprisoned at least four times under two Egyptian presidents.CreditCreditShashank Bengali/MCT, via Getty Images
By Douglas Martin
Ahmed Seif, whose experience of torture as a political prisoner in Egypt inspired him to become a leading human rights lawyer defending leftists, Islamists, atheists and gays, died on Wednesday in Cairo. He was 63.
His family said the cause was complications from heart surgery.
Crowds leaving the cemetery after his funeral on Thursday held up banners calling him "the sword of the people" and "the exemplary fighter." Among them were his son, Alaa Abdel Fattah, and his daughter Sanaa Seif, who were temporarily released from prisons to attend the ceremony. They have been incarcerated for protesting repression by the Egyptian government.
In his funeral remarks, Mr. Fattah was defiant. "My father died a martyr, and you know who killed him," he said, according to The Associated Press. He referred to the stress caused by the arrest of Mr. Seif's children and the postponement of necessary surgery because of judicial procedures.
Mr. Seif was himself imprisoned at least four times, twice during the rule of President Anwar el-Sadat and twice under President Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted in 2011.
Mr. Seif's contrarian nature, for good and ill, defined his career. In 2011, he found himself in the familiar position of being under arrest, this time for participating in protests against President Mubarak. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, then Egypt's defense minister and now its president, was touring the prison and stopped to tell a group of prisoners that included Mr. Seif that people should respect the military leadership, stop protesting and go home.
Mr. Seif replied that Mr. Mubarak was corrupt. Mr. Sisi "became angry, his face became red," Mr. Seif was quoted as saying in the newspaper The Guardian. "He lost it."
That incarceration lasted only 48 hours. In the 1980s, he was jailed for five years for joining a left-wing group. He endured beatings and electrical shocks, and he came to detest torture as "a form of cancer that can eat up a country's youth and stifle its ability to change, criticize, reform and rebel," he said.
He responded by studying law while in prison. After his release, he apprenticed with a law firm and started volunteering to do legal work for causes he supported. In 1983, he handled the case of Nasr Abu Zayd, a liberal professor who was denied a promotion by Cairo University because of his views. Mr. Zayd was convicted of apostasy and forced to divorce his wife because under Islamic law a Muslim woman cannot be married to an apostate.
Mr. Seif took many unpopular clients, including Islamists with whom he fundamentally disagreed. In 2001, he represented 52 men who were arrested aboard a floating gay nightclub moored on the Nile and charged with "habitual debauchery." Despite worldwide criticism of the prosecution, 23 of the men were convicted and sent to prison.
In 2004, Mr. Seif represented men accused of bomb attacks on tourist hotels in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 34 people. He did not defend the bombings, but argued that the men should have been exonerated because they were tortured to get confessions. Three were sentenced to death, and 10 received lesser sentences.
Two years later, Mr. Seif defended a blogger, Kareem Amer, who was prosecuted on charges of antireligious remarks and insults to President Mubarak. He was the first blogger in Egypt explicitly arrested for the content of his writing. Mr. Amer was sentenced to several years in prison, where he was beaten, according to human rights groups.
Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad was born on Jan. 9, 1951, in the delta province of Beheira in Egypt. His father, he said, belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose fundamentalist ideology was far removed from the leftist views the son adopted. He earned degrees in politics and economics and in law at Cairo University. In a biography on the Human Rights Watch website, he said he joined an underground Communist organization.
But politics, he decided, was not enough. During his five years in jail in the 1980s, he said, "I made a decision that it was no use to have political activity without human rights."
He continued: "The Communists would say secretly, 'It doesn't matter if the Islamists are tortured.' And the Islamists would say, 'Why not torture Communists?' "
The solution was to make basic rights a part of the law, and Mr. Seif gave even Mr. Mubarak credit for moving in that direction, if only for "cosmetic purposes," Mr. Seif said. In 1999, he helped found the Hisham Mubarak Law Center to support people whose human rights had been violated. It was named for one of Egypt's first human rights lawyers.
In the cascade of events that have rocked Egypt over the past few years, the center coordinated demonstrations as well as legal representation for arrested protesters. It also trained a new generation of rights lawyers.
Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who was elected president after Mr. Mubarak's fall from power, named Mr. Seif to a commission to investigate the arrests and military court trials that occurred in the 18 months before Mr. Morsi took office. The panel recommended a general amnesty, which Mr. Morsi accepted. Mr. Morsi was ousted in 2013 in a military takeover and succeeded by Mr. Sisi.
Mr. Seif's wife, Laila Soueif, is a university mathematics professor with a long history of activism. His other daughter, Mona Seif, is a leader of a movement to end the practice of trying civilians in military courts.
When his son was imprisoned last January, Mr. Seif acknowledged in a news conference that his dreams had fallen short.
"I wanted you to inherit a democratic society that guards your rights, my son," he said, "but instead I passed on the prison cell that held me, and now holds you."
A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Ahmed Seif, Who Was Tortured in Egypt and Became Rights Defender, Dies at 63. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe
Ahmed Seif al-Islam Hamad, Pioneering Rights Lawyer, Mourned by Egyptian Activists


Happy Veteran's Day. We're so thankful for our freedoms.
We had a really busy weekend. Christmas orders are pouring in.
Who are you people that are on top of things so much that you're doing your Christmas shopping already?!
I like you. And I'm a bit jealous of you.
Today all three kids are at school and The Man is home from work.
We've waited like 12 years for this.
So you know what we did? Went back to sleep. Got up late and had our coffee at 10:30.
And now our big plans for date day include cleaning and house projects.
We're crazy exciting people, y'all.
We got a bunch of new jewelry designs listed last night.
Soooo, would you like to win something? 3 of you will win $25 gift certificates to TheRustedchain.com!
To enter just leave a comment: Are you ready for Thanksgiving next week?
We'll draw random winners in a few days.
Also, we don't have thanksgiving here, so I guess I'm not ready either.
I feel lucky this time! Fingers crossed!
I need that God-sized dreams necklace!! Beautiful! And no. way. I am SO not ready. But this year, at least, we get to be with family again. :) I'm baking a made from scratch apple pie...yum! Wish you were close, I would bring you a slice!
i am NOT ready for Thanksgiving. Wish I was in MY house.
Love the new God sized dreams AND the Come FLy with Me keychain...and there was one other that i LOVE....I'll have to come back to tell you.
oh goodness, I'm not ready for Thanksgiving. I need to clean my house top to bottom, buy a turkey, figure out how to cook it, tell everyone else what to make, eek!
oh, and Bless Your Heart. So Southern!!!! Must Have!
I'm not ready for Thanksgiving. Thankful it isn't at my house because then I REALLY wouldn't be ready!
I am so not ready for Thanksgiving. The fact that it is next week is making me feel really behind on my the 2 quilts I am making for gifts this year.
I'm not ready, but I am excited because this is my first year cooking Thanksgiving dinner!
We are without hot water and heat right now because we need a new furnace~yikes! I haven't even given thought to Thanksgiving!
Um....I guess I am not ready.
ready as I'll ever be. Well, except for the food shopping, haha so I guess that's a no. not ready.
not really - but pinterest will get me there!!
Not at all ready for Thanksgiving, but both myself & dh have to work anyway so not too worried about it. We'll see if we can get our teenagers to think about cooking that day (not likely!).
Love, love "just the two of us" because I have 2 girls. :-) Gotta get to work looking for those girls a necklace as well!
We actually already had it, since no one will be home for Thanksgiving!
I'm ready for the thankful part of Thanksgiving but not ready for the stress of family bickering.
I am kinda sorta ready for Thanksgiving!! I look forward to football games most of all!
Not ready for thanksgiving, but looking forward to it!
I'm ready for Thanksgiving! I enjoy the time spent cooking with my mom.
I have the menu planned and cleaning the house this week. So, semi ready.
I am as ready as I'm going to be! Not going anywhere and just hanging at home with my daughters (husband is working), so it will be a low-key affair, just enjoying being together!
I am almost ready. Have a lot things cooked and in freezer and checking off my list. Cleaned carpets today. Ugghhh. Love ALL your jewelry.
LOVE just the two of us and NO, I am decidedly not ready for thanksgiving!
Soooo ready for Thanksgiving! My sister and niece are coming from Cali and ALL our kids will be here! Thank you, Lord. Btw, i LOVE the first necklace.
Next week?!?! Not really, but we aren't doing a big meal this year. So, its not a big scary cooking bonanza for me.
With a thankful heart, I have my turkey and the fixings. My joy will be complete when the family is around the table!
I'm not quite ready for Thanksgiving yet, but.. I'm getting there!!
I can't believe thanksgiving is next week. It just creeped up on us. I am ready to devour myself in some delicious food but I am not prepared to cook any of it or even started buying food for it.
I am so ready! I get to take my kiddos "back home" to my mom's for the week (Wed.-Sun.). While there, we get to meet my cousins new baby!
So ready for our family vacation !!!
I'm ready to eat till I waddle, but I haven't grocery shopped or made a menu or plan or anything.
yep I'm ready for Thanksgiving since dinner won't be at my house! I love the "all you need is love" necklace!
Yes, I am ready for Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday!!! I love family and FOOD!
i am not ready for thanksgiving next week! we live away from family & we're still trying to decide if we want to make the long drive this year. i love being with my family, but it's a lot of driving...especially when we have to turn around & do it for christmas!
I am so ready for Thanksgiving! It is my most favorite holiday!
I'm ready especially cause it is at my brother's house so I don't have to host!
No, I am not ready! I did some of the grocery shopping today for our Thanksgiving dinner, but the house still needs a thorough cleaning and we need to prepare guestrooms for family visiting from out of state. Eeek!
As far as being ready.....I'm not. At least we know our plans. Probably something small for the actual day with HUbby and one son then our offical dinner on the Sat. after.
Love the new pieces. I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving with your famialy.
I am ready to have first born home from college, but not ready for anything else...still need to order the turkey!
Love this post...we're just as wild and crazy. We had a date night that was hosted by our church on Friday, free child-care, and we got take-out and watched Lonesome Dove. :) I had thoughts of cleaning, but...the show won out.
I'd love to be ready for Thanksgiving! If only I could get my large family to commit to a time & date!
fabulous!!! thank for the chance!
No way I am not ready! I am hosting at our house on Saturday. I currently have one bag of stuffing. That is it. That is probably plenty to feed everyone though. I don't even know how many people are coming!
I will be ready for Thanksgiving next week when we are all healthy! Luckily no cooking for me-my wonderful MIL has that covered!!!
Shared on FB -thanks for the giveaway!
Yes, I am! We have a big family gathering with all the extended family, so each family brings something to contribute. It is a nice time of reconnecting!
Remember this Saturday is Small Business Saturday - support all small businesses!!
Am I ready for Thanksgiving? Ready to eat? Yes. Prepared for the guests? No. I have a birthday party, holiday parade and a zillion appointments to get through first. I'll be ready when the day gets here. Beautiful new items, Beki. Love them!
I am so excited for Thanksgiving! My family visits our cousins, so we don't have to do a whole lot of cooking. So we don't have to be ready for that...just for a 6 hour car ride.
I am not ready for Thanksgiving! It's coming so fast!
Love the new designs and love the little circle with heart cut-out!
I want the Im not afraid necklace!
I am SO not ready for Thanksgiving. Don't have my work schedule yet, and while I thought being home for the first time in three years would make things better it's just more people to try and schedule. I know it will all work out, but it's just not there yet.
Whaaaaa?????? Rats, heading to the store to get a turkey now!
Love your necklaces, hope to have one soon. Sharing on Facebook so other friends find out about your blog and jewels etc.
I am SOOOO ready. Because I am not cooking...not entertaining. I am being cooked for and entertained aboard a ship bound for Belize! :) And luckily I will be rich, beautiful, and skinny after leaving this comment!
I am so excited for Thanksgiving! Can't wait to spend the day with all my family!
thanks for the giveaway Beki!
Love is all you need is my fav! I'm ready for Thanksgiving time at home with the family is the best!
I love your new designs!
I am ready for Thanksgiving, not that things are prepared, but read to see family, spend time together and relax!
I am not ready for Thanksgiving. :) I'm in Canada right now and we/they have Thanksgiving the beginning of October and that felt odd!
I love your new designs. I'm not ready for Thanksgiving what so ever. (Wish I was).
I adore all your new designs! And I am not ready for Thanksgiving - And I am hosting for freinds and family so need to get busy;) thank you for the great giveaway!
No, Im not ready for Thanksgiving, I just realized yesterday that it was next week.
Love the new designs! I'm not quite ready for Thanksgiving, there's still some things to prepare.
Love the new designs! One is cuter than the next. And, I am not ready for Thanksgiving. At all. And I'm hosting. Oh well.
I pinned a couple to Pinterest!
I'm ready! I love Thanksgiving...food & family! It's the best holiday of the year.
Beki there are too many of your necklaces for me to pick a favorite! :) Love you work!
I'm partly ready for Thanksgiving, the house is tidy but I haven't done my grocery shopping yet! UGH!!
I'm starting to think about Thanksgiving. Wasn't sure if I had the time off until last night (work at a nursing home) so I wasn't sure how prepared I had to be. Getting excited now!
My heart is totally ready for Thanksgiving but my body still has a few things to do. Love you, sweet friend!
Not really. My mother-in-law's boyfriend's family are coming to our house.
I'm ready for our college sophomore to be home for the first visit since the quarter began, but that's it: I still need to order the turkey!!
I WISH that I was ready for Thanksgiving, but I am in NO way ready. I just realized that I have to make a pie on Wednesday. And then there is the driving. We make the great triangle trip each year with 2 Thanksgiving dinners. Is it really only a week away?!?
Definitely NOT ready for Tgiving! It's early this year!
Hopefully the other post deleted since I forgot to talk about Thanksgiving! I'm ready for thanksgiving food, but need to get all my supplies for the food!
This year we made reservations. A first for us.
Yep. I'm ready. Well, at least in my mind. My sister is hosting our family dinner, so I just have to get a few dishes ready to take. No worries!
Yepso ready!! Love turkey day!!
Love them all! Thank you for the chance to win!
Yes, I'm ready!! It's a blessing to be able to share Thanksgiving with my family and enjoy good cheer and scrumptious food! Woot Woot!
Nope. I keep forgetting it's next week!
We had our Thanksgiving last month so I can kick back next week ~ oh and get ramped up for Christmas. Love the new pieces!
Love the new designs. Love them. Ready for thanksgiving!
I think I am ready, but will probably find out next week that I am not - ha!
I don't have to host, so in that sense I am ready, but November is going by way too quickly!!!
Seriously, I am not ready for Thanksgiving at all! My Mom left for Holland yesterday to deal with a family emergency and we are hosting an event at church and two different house guests all before Thanksgiving! It's been incredibly crazy, but we are grateful!
I shared your give away on Face Book!
Not even close. Baby's got bronchitis. I've got walking pneumonia and we're moving this weekend. So uhhh no. Can I cancel thanksgiving?
Love them. I may even have a new second favorite. As for being ready...yes and no.
Pinned the Bloom necklace, beautiful!
I am SO ready for Thanksgiving! I am lucky that my lovely Grandmother still makes the dinner for everyone. She's amazing.
I love the new jewelry. I think Bless Your Heart is my favorite!
Yes! But only because I'm not hosting..so I'm checking out some amazing side dishes and desserts on Pinterest.
Speaking of Pinterest...I pinned this and tweeted.
Ready! Texas for us, then Hesston on Sunday... See you then!
I am looking forward to Turkey and days off work so ... yes I am ready for Thanksgiving.
I'm so not ready...Costco, here I come!
I'm ready! Love this time of year - looking forward to a few days off!
I'm ready - I'm cooking and the menu is planned and grocery list is made. I'll prepare a few things on Wednesday and the rest on Thanksgiving Day. I can't wait!!!
Not really ready for Thanksgiving, but definitely ready to see all my family that's coming into town!
We had Thanksgiving with my extended family last Saturday. Looking forward to time home with just my immediate family!


Sit back and relax anywhere, anytime with this easy-to-use, convenient folding chair. Ideal for outdoor occasions like picnics, BBQs, pool parties and get togethers as well as corporate events and functions because of the branding space that it provides. It even comes with an umbrella holder for enjoying a day out at the beach without being sun-bothered.


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LG releases Apple TV app for 2018 OLED smart TVs, AirPlay and HomeKit support coming later this year
- Sep. 7th 2020 2:40 am PT
Owners of LG 2018 OLED and UHD smart TVs can now use the Apple TV app, as announced by the company today. The app previously launched on 2019 and 2020 models from LG and Samsung, and Apple has promised it is coming soon to smart TVs from Sony and Vizio.
The Apple TV app lets customers enjoy Apple original content with TV+, available Apple TV Channels subscriptions, and the ability to buy and rent TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store.
This announcement has been a long time coming for 2018 LG TV users, with doubts about the company's promise circling as recently as last week. However, the app is now available for real. In most cases, the Apple TV app will be added automatically to the TV's home strip of video apps.
LG also remains committed to adding HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support to these 2018 models. A firm release date was not given, but it is expected by the end of the year.
This will allow users to stream content from iPhone and iPad to the TV without needing to buy an Apple TV box. These features are already available on newer LG TVs, as well as select models from Samsung, Vizio and Sony.
Apple TV+ Guide: Here are all the Apple TV shows and movies available now
Apple TV is Apple's streaming device that accesses the Apple TV+ service ($4.99 per month), Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon Prime, and countless other entertainment apps.