Advent 1

At some point during Advent I have been wont to write a family message to all the friends on my list of friends and acquaintances so that they may be up to date on this family's doings. And thus, again this Advent, I am working on THE message, knowing full well that it will be a labour of love that will hardly be read in its entirety by all recipients. Ergo: a posting to tell everybody in one fell swoop about my family.

Point 1: I love my family. They are a mighty good bunch that shows when we are together. Then we joke, tell funny stories, and show our love for each other in many different ways.

Point 2: Thankfully they all have employment. That helps with the jocularity when we are together.

Point 3: Thankfully all of us have a solid foundation in the teachings of the Christ as found in the pages of the New Testament.

Point 4: We are all healthy, not counting an occasional cold that I consider to be caused by forgetting the daily intake of a large quantity of vitamins.

Point 5: Every one branch of the family can point with a sense of pride to one or more stellar achievements reached in the past twelve months.

Point 6: Because of the contents of these five points I, as the father and grandfather of the flock, I am very proud of this bunch of people even if most of them do not share my great enthusiasm for a hefty helping of Christmas Stollen and pressed almond bakery products. Oh well, you cannot be perfect all the time!

So to all my children and grandchildren and spouses my thanks for your great contributions to the wellbeing of this our family. I love you.

Dad/Opa

Thanksgiving Redux

We've had the family Thanksgiving get-togethers. Two of them this year. Most family members were gathering except son Steve and wife who needed to be with their Marine son in Key West. and grandson Daniel Kirk who with family lives in San Francisco and is unable to fly across the country at a moment's notice with his family.
I miss Daniel and Steve but I understand. It is the way it is.
Steve is a man and as men are constructed he does not keep up with his Dad by visiting and/or calling on the landline but he does the next best thing which is he and his wife moved into a house across the street from me so they can keep tabs on dear old Dad from afar.
Daniel, well that is a little more complicated, or it would have been without his daily contribution to the world of deep theology-writing under the title of Storied Theology. I am told that grandson Daniel Kirk has a following of around 500 souls who read his writings (I am one of the 500) and I must say I am impressed with the vast territory he covers and how well he does it.
Blogging seems to run in that Kirk family and I say that because his wife Laura Kirk is a blogger too, albeit not on the same quantity level as her husband. She writes about wonderful, glorious creations of culinary origins that make me wish she were still living here on the eastern Seaboard, in close proximity like across the street from me but for now that seems to be wishful thinking. Sorry but I just cannot get that gorgeous lamb dish she prepared this past Easter out of my mind. By the way, look in my bio for the title of Laura's blog.

Now to come back to where I started, those of the family who live rather close by in the Eastern part of the States, we had a great two days of feasting. One the more traditional version, expertly prepared by the youngest daughter, the other equally expertly prepared by the older daughter whose spread included breakfast dishes like bacon and eggs and the Dutch delicacy called "poffertjes" that resemble small yeast pancakes eaten with a true dollop of real butter and covered with a hefty bunch of 10X sugar. On Thanksgiving with a cold wind blowing you do not mess around with dietary considerations.
And now, getting closer to the time that this batchelor needs to make decisions about what to eat for supper, or if he should eat supper at all because his stomach is still feeling nicely filled, this is becoming a real problem because if he wants to eat supper it is close to the time that he needs to dig in the freezer and pull something edible out to defrost.
And, frankly, having feasted at the tables of my daughters, and knowing full well the much lower level of my quality cooking, I may just eat a few oatmeal cookies, a bit of great tasting milk chocolate with hazelnuts, and wash it all down with a great homegrown cup of real black coffee.
Ah, a great idea for "supper".

Ravings on Beauty

In one of the groups I attend the talk came around to beauty. Now that is a topic we can get heated discussions about with various people representing various age groups, each being extremely loud and assertive in raving that their idea of beauty is the one and only.
It brings to mind something that happened in the days of Moses who went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments. Moses was gone for an exceedingly long time, something like possibly two weeks. and the Hebrew people were left to their own devices and became restless. Two weeks was an awfully long time to be without a leader, spiritual or otherwise, and they decided to build a thing of beauty that they figured would be a joy forever. When the golden calf was finished, this thing of beauty was inaugurated with much hoopla and given over to the masses for their use in addressing their God named Jahweh.
In the middle of all the great dancing and prancing and caterwauling and what else could pass for duly worshipping God, Moses appears with in his hands the rules of living Moses received from God Himself. Moses sees what is going on and is mightily disturbed. He acts just like your parents acted when they had been absent from home for a week and left the house in the hands of their son to safeguard and sonny-boy on Friday night invited his entire group of friends to come over and have fun with the stash of wine bottles and stronger stuff. These "friends" did not let this invite get stale and when Mom and Dad came home in the middle of the night.......well, it could have been forwarded to Shakespeare who would have fashioned it into a great sonnet.
The point is that the Hebrew people considered the calf a thing of great beauty that was supposed to be used in their worship of God and Moses looked at the same golden calf and considered it a piece of blasphemy. In our day and time we have sopmething similar going on, and for our example let's take music because I know more about music than about painting or writing poetry.
Church music was created 'way back to help in the deeper worship of God. It did so for those people back then (apparently because there came so much of it ad nauseum) so, thankfully, a new type and style of music for the church was introduced and brought to the glory of God through the works of Bach and a few others. It was good and glorious for a while until people had had enough of it and the music of the streets in the big cities came to claim ownership to a slice, resulting in a convenient weakening of the text and an accompanying weakening in the worship experience of the populations.
I belong to the older school. To me the praise music of Bach, Handel et al is glorious and I think leads me straight to the throne of God. Also the music of some 20th century composers such as Ralph Vaughn Williams (who started out as a church organist and found the traditional English church music to be a bore of the first order) can be for me an entrance to the throne of God.
But as I said I belong to the older school. I listen to the praise songs from the young generation and find them to be musically poor to the extreme, and their texts border on the nonsensical, a lot of syllables saying and meaning nothing. But I am told the young think differently of it.
Stay tuned. I may have opened a can of worms that might lead to a very worthwhile interchange of opinions and ideas. You are invited.

How Now Brown Cow?

The November 2 election has come and gone, the usual aftermath is in full progress and I am waiting.
Waiting for what you may ask, and in reply I submit to be waiting to hear the elected ones say, loud and clear. what positive changes they will bring to the table, and how they will go about making these positive changes into law and why.
Up till now I am hearing one of the top senators say his first objective in the next two years is to make sure that our President will not be re-elected. Another elected person says his aim is to cancel the new health legislation, and the tirades continue.
These quotes are uttered by elected well educated persons. Their negativity tells me their high school and college diplomas are a joke. What they say is not at all why they were elected (at least not by me). Grandstanding is for a different time. Now the time has come to present us with thoughts on how to finish getting the nation out of the mess the previous Republican regime has managed to get us in.
How now brown cow?
I am waiting to hear and I am not the only one.
Alex H.

The Day After.

Written the day before voting day - Nov. 1, and I just cannot wait for tomorrow to arrive. Tomorrow is the blessed last day that we will see those ads, especially those on the boop tube, that give us all manner of gory details about why mr. so and so is no longer grandioso with the party, and that miss so and so is a disgrace to the nation.
Who cares!
This is election time for our governing talking heads, for elected people who we elect to solve problems - real problems. Have we heard any positive plans for solutions? Once in a while I thought I detected a whisper of positivity but it was so faint I could never disitnguish it from the sssshhhh swishing types sound of the background.
My flat screen tv did its best to give me the latest but last night, in the middle of a right good program on PBS (you know which channels they use on your remote/tv set?) I heard a click and the screen turned Carolina blue and even the tv set gave up (well, we both know PBS does not carry ads in the middle of a program) but the set refuses to come back to life.
The cable company promised to send a techie to my house in the middle of the voting day, so I look forward to an evening of reports from the porch of Uncle Bob's house in Goose Hoppers Gulch switching off to reports from the hot asphalt lanes in the States' and Nation's capitals switching off to an ad about acidic indigestion causes and remedies.
It promises to be back to normal. We can sit back and watch our new leaders do what they said they would never. But yes, there will be a few who put their hands to the plows and who will make an honest attempt to make things right for mr. average of whose club I am a member.
May that tribe grasp the opportunity and assist in re-making our nation into the great country that I so well remember.

What Am I Doing Here?

One day, when I was in a pensive mood, I began to ponder the question "why am I here in this place at this time".
The question had been asked a few times in earlier years but with few or no answers. Now, on this day, I had the time and desire to figure out an answer that I could live with. And so I began with looking around in my belief system if the answer could be found there, in what I call the dim recesses of my brain.
Thus it appeared to me that the answer to the question could be found in the type of work I was engaged in before retirement, and that work was centered on music. Now you may think I am leading in to a killing tirade against present day pop and rock music but, surprise, surprise, I am not going that route.
My involvement with music (after getting a degree) was with choral music in a definitely old timey conservative setting. That period ended after twelve years when I changed to a church whose pastor told me one afternoon we needed to have a mini staff meeting and met me in a restaurant where he promptly ordered a beer. After all those years in a church where alcohol was worse than sin, here my pastor and I sit, talking church business, while enjoying a nice beverage in moderation, meaning one glass each.
There came a 27 year stint at the local College as head of the music department and now I am retired and liking it, and thinking the question of why am I here needs an answer.
I think I have found an answer. Working in churches was sharing the world of Christian choral music with the same congregation year after year, suddenly I found myself in the world of ALL music, sharing my enthusiasm for good music with groups of students who were no longer static but changed three times a year, two semesters and one summer session. This college is a state institution so I could not major on Christian principles and dogmas but much music had been composed by writers who were known for their Christian beliefs like Johann Sebastian Bach which showed in their works.
So I think the answer to why am I here comes because of my personal and church backgrounds that gave me a total overview of the great, wonderful world of music that over the span of 27 years was shared with some 27,000 students, a total number that makes me feel humbled because it shows the number of people I exposed to what my God in Christ wanted me to tell them.

Let's worry about worrying.

There is a worrywart in my family, one person who takes great pleasure in worrying about this, that, and the other. That person has certain days for worrying about certain things and that would be fine if the worries were about things that really matter. But they do not. They are the little things like at 6 o'clock in the morning when it is cool outside let us worry about whether this jacket would be warm enough to make the short trek to the curb to get the morning papers, or would it be better to wear a sweater, and if so, should it be the gray sweater with the picture of the dove or would the blue sweater be more like it.
Today is a great day. The sun is shining, temperature for the pm. will be in the low seventies if we can believe the weatherman who had said that two days ago it would be 80 and on that day it barely made it to 72. OK we all make mistakes once in a while. No need to worry today. Nor ever.
Even in the long ago there was the saying for unnecessary worrying not to be afraid that the man would fall out of the moon. Worrying takes too much energy that could be better spent on thinking positively which is what I would like for most of the political ads on the tube to do.
And for those worriers who would like to quit worrying but seem to be unable to achieve that blessed state of mind let me refer you to any of the four gospels in the New Testament that feature examples galore of leaving the worries behind and live a life of joy in making a contribution to the wonderful world that God created, a world that stands in dire need of getting back on solid ground.

Panthers and such

Once upon a time the big city next to the small city in which I live wanted to host her own football team. A big push in the media got enough of the do-re-mi together to fund the construction of a nearly perfect stadium and a team of players was assembled according to the rules. The team got a name, the Panthers. They played a fine first season and we were happy.
The following seasons came and went and as they went so went the fortunes of the Panthers. We began to lose more and then more games so that I joined a growing number of tv football watchers that said it is painful to see those high-priced dudes fumble and tumble, an excercise they can perform easily for much less money in any local excercise club.

As of this writing they lost all five opening games of the 2010/11 season and I am sad for them, for us, and for our reputation. All I can do is wishing them for the rest of the season to straighten up and fly right, to show us what a multi-million dollar salary per individual will truly purchase and deliver on the playing field so it becomes again fun to watch the games.

Science and Religion

There appeared an article about a new book asking whether God is the real true Creator of the universe. Before I go any further let it be known that I do think God is the one who gave birth to the universe and this same God is the one who maintains it.
It is unfortunate that this book's statement is addressed again. I had assumed (a very dangerous supposition indeed) that the subject had been laid to rest with the understanding that there are two camps so strongly convinced of their standpoints that my camp applied the Jesus' principle of wishing the other party well and let it go at that.
Undoubtedly the co-author of the book is one of the highest regarded scientists named Stephen Hawkings and so his standpoint carries weight in the scientific community. But there is the other party whose opinion I found being vindicated in more or less popular vein by a, for me, most interesting series of programs shown on the Science Channel with the title of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman as the emcee. In one of its hour-long programs a scientist remarks that as science advances in knowledge about the universe science continues to arrive at places where no progress seems to be possible. This scientist states as his belief that here science has reached the borderline of the "house of God" (my choice of words) and at this point entry will never be permitted. As a further point in this story it was mentioned that this scientist (whose name I do not remember) said there were many in the scientific community who thought like him.
And with that I rest my case.

Ravings About Food and Eating

Those who know me know I like to eat. Those who know me well know that I enjoy eating and especially eating food that is well prepared by a person who takes pride in putting a great meal on the table. I am a bit overweight with a belly that could well be reduced in sticking-out bulk size if I were a little more serious about doing my share but, you know, I was raised on a daily ration of great Edam and Gouda cheeses plus once in a while a nice helping of smelly French and Italian products. That was and is still good eating for me with cholesterol count below 200.
Why did I not explode in size like Mr. Five by Five? Because when I was growing up we did not have computers to play games on. We went outside with neighborhood kids and played very active running games like soccer and hockey. That got rid of whatever is now tainted as not being good for you. It was good in my youth, it is still good in yours. But only when coupled with daily activities that make you sweat. So there.

Back on Track

For more than seven years my trusted computer's hard drive decided it had enough of the game, laid down its head, and gave up.
The guru was called who determined that he could fix it for a price that could be handled and the machine plus guru walked out of the house to the great relief of the dog who thought it was an imposition to have a stranger sitting in his master's chair.

Five days later the guru called to say a new hard drive had been installed and most of my old files were copied onto the new drive. Took the machine home, hooked all the wires and plugs in the plug spots and we're ready to go only to find out that several programs were atill missing. Fortunately I had most of the program discs and could reinstall them.

Why am I telling all this? To let you know in just a FEW words that I am back to writing a serious blog when inspiration comes to me for a visit. Till then and cheers!

Whaaddowedowith our children

Once in a while there is a little storm brewing in a teacup about how to handle your kids. On the one side is a reputed and popular middle aged man who has studied this matter and weekly writes a newspaper column based on questions from readers. On the other aide are some parents who do not agree with him.
My children were born when Dr. Spock was it-on-a-stick. My wife and I we read his answers and we even read his book that was the bible in every young household. And as we read we laughed and said to each other that the Spock method would produce a generation of adults that had absolutely no sense because it was based on the child being the number one person in the house and needed to be cuddled, appeased, given in to.
This particular morning I am sitting in the Public Library looking at the contents of books I thought I might like to read, when the backdoor opened and in walked a mother. With one hand she navigated her young child, with the other hand she held on to the books she was returning. The two=year old child stumbled and fell down. It did not get hurt, it did not cry, but immediately Mom was down on her knees cooing and kissing the child, all the time saying in a whiney voice how sorry she was for the child. After about two to three minutes of this example of how not to bring up a child the show ended. Kiddo still did not cry but was now sitting at a table busy with crayons and a coloring book.

The Old and the New

From time to time I become cquainted with a different meaning of the word "antique". It used to be that antique stood for an object that was some one hundred years old. That concept was enlarged (many years ago) to include fluids and/or ideas.

As the P.B.S. Antique Roadshow tells it the American families have a never ending stash of antique objects in their homes that came down from parents and grandparents and further back still. We have no problem here even if that object has a monetary value many times the expectation of the present owner.

Our problem has to do with the fact that we, meaning parents and other middle aged adults, have difficulties with the new ideas that are cropping up regularly. I am far from an ace mathematistian and I can still vividly remember the day my children came home with a new concept called simply "the new math". I asked them what was new in this math. They tried to explain it but either I was "too old" to grasp this new idea, or the children were too newly acquainted with this new idea I never quite understood what the fuzz was all about.

In my days of teaching college level music courses and worked with church choirs there were always new ideas coming down the pike issued by well-meaning officials sitting ensconced in the higher echelons of governance over those situated on lower levels. There came a plethora of suggestions (read: directives) to use certain text books, more suggestions (read: directives) to use approved choral music and (and this I found even more galling) how to interpret that piece of music. What did these higher-ups think? That we who had received many years of training and practical work in various fields of music did not have what it takes to look at, say our choirmembers, and realize what they were capable of in the areas of musical understanding and of technical performances. Many of us were and are willing to take a look at new ideas. Many of us were and are still willing to give the new idea a try if it would fit in with our present ideas and techniques that work so well for us and for our choirs and classes.

I have said my say for now. As to the new math I work much better with the old, having not understood any of the benefits of the new math. But for those of you who understand the principles of the new math may it serve you well and may you find ways to teach it to my great-grandchildren in such a way that they will understand.

ah

Family Matters

For those of you who enjoy peeking into the hidden meanings or messages this will be a posting about my family.
I have a great family. Very supportive in telling me oftem with emphasis that I am of a former generation and do not know much about what is going on in the present real world.
So I ask what is going on in the real presence and I get the standard answer that parents have received through the ages, the three word answer of "I don't know" which is really a four word answer but shortened even before Twitter. A variant of this answer is often "Well you know" with a voice level trailing off into a distant nothingness.
Now it is true that I am of a slightly earlier generation where we had some values slightly different. Yes, I do hear you groaning "there he goes again" but I do not intend to stay on this highway. Instead let me switch off to a branch of family life that this whole family does truly enjoy. We enjoy getting together and we enjoy eating. We also have a great dose of humor and when we are together at a meal or not at a meal but together we laugh and carry on. There are stories being told that are mostly true but dressed up a little bit as it has resided in the mind of the raconteur and has become infused with his/her background.
But that does not matter. The story is still funny and, maybe, we have heard a version of it at an earlier get-together, it is still funny when told by someone else who tackles it from a different viewpoint.
Yes we may be a different type of family. Many families I am acquainted with do not often get together and when they do it is to settle a dispute or some such foolish thing that in the end does not amount to a mountain of beans, no, not even to a hill of beans but has been left to fester instead of being taken care of in its infancy.

How did I get from starting out to talk about me and here I am saying things that tells you how proud I am of my family. Yes I am. We have come through some hard times individually and as a family. We stuck together, we supported each other, and it looks like that we now have arrived at a plateau where we can relax and take time once in a while to smell the roses. We can do this smelling in the small family circles of each individual family member and we certainly do it in the many times we join each other for no other reason than to have the feeling that we want to be where the laughter is. Family of mine I love you very much.

Alex H.

About Pets and Hereafter

In the newspaper was a story about a couple and their dog, a Lab, seven years old. The dog and the couple were devoted to each other. This dog got lung cancer, was successfully operated on but after several months the cancer came back and the dog passed.

I have written about this subject somewhere else but this sad story made me return to a question that I had never fully answered. The question: will we be reunited with our pets in the hereafter?

The answer I give myself is the answer I think to see confirmed when I join pets and loved ones in the hereafter. And that statement implies I believe in life being forever. Not only for people but also for animals. Which brings up another subject for a hefty debate namely do pets go to a hereafter and there continue their lives.

If you expect an authorative answer to these questions from me you will be sorely disappointed. I have no real, true answer. But I would like to hear from any readers who will want to join the quest in a thoughtful manner.

Alex H

Me And Those September Years

Several years ago I took the step that landed me in what the song says are the September years of my life. I had happily traversed some four score of years without feeling a bit aged, enjoying the work with students, but with the day of departure from my work at the College the number of my years became suddenly an item of great interest to a bunch of people. They looked at me with questioning eyes, a look that found its way to their tongues, "Well I never".

True, I nevered either. Blood pressure a little on the high side. Pop a pill at breakfast and that was that. Never gave it another thought. But then I landed in the hospital. Flat on my back. My colon was the cause. It had grown a polyp that was too large for the doctor to remove in hbis office. Suddenly the blood pressure was of intense interest to doctors and nurses and to young ladies in uniforms learning how to wake a sound sleeper every two hours during the night to take a look at the numbers.

There came the 5 o'clock in the morning visit of the resident doctor in training. "How do you feel?" I felt fine but a good cup of black coffee would have made me feel finer yet. "You sure you're okay?" Yes, I felt fine. Just let me go home in time for lunch so I can cook a three-egg Western omelet.

At home and at work all went well until the news leaked out that my age was in the low eighties. Remarkable was the word of the adults. Cool said the young adults. Good genes said my doctor.

How do you feel, people ask, and I answer "Fine". That is true. I feel fine but yet there is a slowing down. We're getting closer to the October days. The old enthusiasm for the work at the College and at home is slightly diminished which is caused by the muscles. Not by the brain. The brain is still hard at work analyzing pieces of music I had not heard before. The brain is hard at work helping me to learn new skills as a retiree such as cooking a decent three-course meal for supper that goes beyond slapping a hamburger patty on the stove to be eaten topgether with the contents of a bag of chips.

The September of my years is sliding into the October of my years. It is a process that goes softly and much of the time unnoticeably because available amounts of time have a habit of filling up with things that need to be done. Some of those things I know from way back like running a vacuum cleaner. And some other things are of more recent vintage like cooking meals or straightening out the computer that went berserk when I, mistakenly, hit a wrong key.

The October days are a time for slowing down. Smell the roses. What is the hurry? It is amazing the things I see by the side of the road when I am walking, things that I missed entirely when I zipped by in my car. There is that row of crepe myrtles in full bloom. A few houses down from there are this neighbor's colorful patches of flowers that give life to his house. I hear the barking of dogs a few blocks away. The birds have lengthy discussions as they perch on tree branches. And I look at my bush with the snowball-like blooms that I planted some thirtyfive years ago.

This is a time of enrichment for the retiree, a time for me to enjoy the smells of summer changing into the smells of fall, followed by the sights and smells of winter. It is also the time for the grandparent to pay attention to and to enjoy his spouse, his children, the grandchildren, and the six great-grandchildren.

I am getting used to living the slower life of the October days.The poet Browning said "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be....". I am beginning to understand more fully what this poet is talking about.

Alex H

Symphony Ravings

Let us now continue on the road of musical myths encountered in the college classroom setting. The title of this chapter should be just one word: SONG.

For my students every piece of music was a song. I use the past tense here because I am still hopeful and trusting that through my working with some 200 students through a semester of MUS101 they would learn that songs are pieces of music that are sung. That is different from a Beethoven composition titled Symphony which is played by 70 or more instruments that do not include guitars.

Here we get into a confusing situation for many of these students. They have never listened to any pieces of music that were not played on guitars. And there were drums. Usually just a few but they are not called drums. They are in the percussion section. Oh my! They have to learn foreign names.

And it gets more better (as one of them said to me). That group of instruments forms an orchestra and in an orchestra are instruments like they have never before seen.
The few students who are into jazz have seen a clarinet which they call knowingly by the name of "liocorice stick" but there are other "sticks" with names like bass clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon. And that is a whole new kettle of fish especially when later in the course we start talking that some of these woodwinds are played with only one reed and some others have to be played using two reeds. And the players need all the lung power they can muster so that even smoking cigarettes ia a no-no. As one student whispered to a neighbor: "They have no fun in life no more" which should have been grounds for shipping him off to English090.

But after a few sessions listening to selected compositions with commentaries slowly but surely the majority of students became more interested and knwledgeable. Before the end of the semester we all could tell the difference between a flute and a bassoon by the sounds they emanate. And there came a time when a couple of students sold their tickets to a big rock concert for half price and opted for going to a concert in downtown. I like happy endings. Don't you?

Alex H

Symphony Ravings

Chapter One.

The way I understand blogs it seems that many postings are opinion pieces. Here then comes an opinion piece on music at you. Get ready to read and to fire back at me if you want to.

In the years that I was active as a music teacher/instructor one of the first myths I addressed was that music is entertainment. Well, yes. some music is entertainment. Some of that is good music (e.g. some music for Broadway shows) but the bulk of what I hear when I flip through the radios on the FM band is downright awful noise. That also goes for a video I watched recently in its entirety of a U2 concert. The concert was supposed to tell me something of religious thoughts of the lead singer. I think his lyrics reflected that but musically they could not be understood neither by me nor by some of the youngsters in the audience I talked with.

Please understand that for the first one hundred or so postings on music I will be talking about serious music that has a message or is meaningful. It can be about the type of music I hear in my church on Sunday mornings that is regarded by some worshipers as "filler music" when they can ruimmage through their handbags for a lipstick. That music is not filler music at all. It is full of meaning to lead the congregation in meditation. (It seems that some people are afraid to be quiet and meditate....afraid of what may show up in their minds of a distressing nature. But that is for a later posting.

What will good music do for the listener? Stay tuned. When I get on this soapbox....

Alex H

Symphony Ravings

To my family and some dear friends:
The Ravings number one has been sent. It was sent to only one friend so it could be tested in actual usage and it worked.
So here then welcome to blog number two that I will send to all my family and to friends. I would appreciate hearing from you (or reading from you) that you were able to access this blog.
Pater Famili