Big city gold: Philadelphia

September in many parts of the world means fall/autumn which, in turn, often means golden leaves. Jude’s also gone with gold for her Life in Colour challenge, so we’ll take a break from our Wyoming trip and concentrate on that. Arizona doesn’t do autumn in the same way as much of the country, but I think I can go archive diving and come up with some gold. Philadelphia does do gold as you can see from this magnificent organ, the largest operational pipe organ in the world, unexpectedly found in Macy’s Department store. Read more about its fascinating and lengthy history by clicking on the highlighted link below as well as listen to it being played, which happens twice a day every day of the week except Sunday and more often during the Christmas season.

In its present configuration, the Wanamaker Organ has 28,482 pipes in 461 ranks.[2] The organ console consists of six manuals with an array of stops and controls that command the organ. The organ’s String Division forms the largest single organ chamber in the world. The instrument features eighty-eight ranks of string pipes built by the W.W. Kimball Company of Chicago.[2] The organ is famed for its orchestra-like sound, coming from pipes that are voiced softer than usual, allowing an unusually rich build-up because of the massing of pipe-tone families. The artistic obligation entailed by the creation of this instrument has always been honored, with two curators employed in its constant and scrupulous care. The organ, with its regular program of concerts and recitals, was maintained by Wanamaker’s throughout the chain’s history, even as the company’s financial fortunes waxed and waned. This level of dedication was maintained when corporate parentage shifted from the Wanamaker family to Carter-Hawley-Hale Stores to Woodward & Lothrop to Lord & Taylor to Macy’s. “Pipe Organs”

Pink Martini

One of our favorite groups is Pink Martini, a group that can do all types of music in all sorts of languages on all kinds of instruments and all superbly. I’ve been privileged to hear them more than once, this time with my husband in Chicago where they also brought along the Von Trapp grandchildren. It was marvelous and naturally the stage was lighted in bright pink.

for Life in Colour: pink and Squares: bright

One Word Sunday…music

The sound of water is music to my ears, whether from a babbling brook, the back-and-forth wash of waves, or water rushing over rocks. Is it to yours?

“It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

One-Word Sunday is hosted by Debbie at Travel With Intent.

Friday Fictioneers: The Night Shall Be Filled With Music

If I could, I would arrange my poem differently, but I’m a hostage to the vagaries of WordPress.  So I beg of you to forgive the formatting and allow yourself to hopefully be swept away into the music of the hundred words.  The particular words grew from an idea based on  Rochelle Wisoff-Fields‘ picture below.

Copyright Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

The Night Shall Be Filled With Music

The music of my soul…
	the quiet vastness of the mountains
	the soothing reiteration of waves playing on the sand
	the vivid flower colors
	the chuckling of the stream
	the endless canopy of stars 
	the stark beauty of the desert
	the play of animals

The music of my mind…
	words dancing on pages 
	creating word and pictures
	birthing joy
	provoking laughter
	coaxing tears
	sharing stories
	stealing into my soul

The music of my heart…
	your yawning morning stumble
	your image on my not-so-smart  phone
	your loving smile
	your hair beneath my hands
	your heart against mine
	your hands playing me

–

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done

There’s music in the sighing of a reed;
There’s music in the gushing of a rill;
There’s music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
~Lord Byron

Want to read more? Click below.

Wednesday wisdom

Here are a few quotes I like that I ran across recently in books I was reading.  The books were fiction, not non-fiction; mysteries, not classics or philosophy; demonstrating that there is wisdom to be found in many places.

If you’re going to San Francisco…

This guy’s evidently going and I’m not lion. (But he is.) Anyway, here’s a version of the song that brought this silliness to mind, a flash from a past I was alive during but didn’t partake in (inhaling or exhaling.) However, I did love the 60’s music. Enjoy.

Friday Fictioneers–A Noteworthy End

 Fictioneer:  n.  1. A person who participates in a weekly challenge to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt.
2. A person who  tells stories that may or may not be based in reality.
3.  A person addicted to writing once-a-week, 100-word stories.  No cure is known.

If you are not a Fictioneer, you’re welcome to read offerings other than mine by clicking on the blue link monster that follows my story.
If you read, feel free to “like” and comment.
Fictioneers love responses!

copyright john nixon

How many musical references can you find?  Don’t be afraid to be Frank.  Or…maybe not.

Word count:  100
Genre:  If you can’t tell, I’ve failed.

A Noteworthy End
(Overheard at the wake)

 “The key to it all (according to Frank) was to be natural and a sharp dresser.”
“Yeah, he always pulled out all the stops!”

“He liked to say ‘Oppor-knockity tunes but once.’”
“He also liked ‘Just duet.’  Drove me nuts.”

“Have you seen Dal Segno here?”
“Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Never mind.  It’s fine.”

“Frank liked to fly by the seat of his pants. And he was really getting into the piano.
“True, although he didn’t always conduct himself very well.”

“But what a finale!
“He’d love it!  He always went for Baroque and besides, it’s all over YouTuba!”

The music of rain

Notes and chords…

I wanted to include a video I took on this same day, but WordPress won’t let me do it without paying for a special program.
So instead of enjoying a melody, you’ll have to be satisfied with a chord or two.
I hope you enjoyed the music.

Friday Fictioneers–Medley

“It’s that time of day, when you can say, ‘Head for the….beach, not mountains.'” (No Busch in my house, thank you!)  It’s midweek Friday, time to put on your thinking caps and trot out the old (or new) saws for everyone’s reading pleasure.  I really, really wanted to get away from feel-good stories, was looking for a good sci-fi type offering–even had the germ of an idea float by.  Float?  Beach?  🙂

Then my mind was overtaken, hijacked even,  by not one, but many flashes from the past.  I admit; I succumbed.  As Boz Scaggs once sang on his Silk Degrees album (CD these days):

What can I say
What can I do

Three a.m. It’s me again
And wouldn’t you know
Things would have to end this way

That’s what I’m talkin’ about.  You’ll see.

Medley

 We took the last train to Clarksville,( ‘cause we’d been California dreamin’), and a big yellow taxi to the beach. The fog looked like smoke on the water. The morning sun was shining like a red rubber ball.

Ignoring the beach boys, I spied a long, cool woman.  (No black dress!!)  Now I’m a believer!

My wife protested, “But we were happy together.”

I retorted, “We had a good thing, baby. I know it’s kind of a drag, but I was born to be wild.  Let’s live for today.”

She swung the green tambourine like Serena. Everything’s a purple haze.

***********************************************

Can you find all the song titles?  There are fourteen plus one group name.  If you didn’t grow up in the 60’s. don’t remember the British invasion and all that not-jazz-but-rock-and-roll and didn’t see the Beatles for the first time on Ed Sullivan, you may refer to this page of 60’s song titles to see where I came from.  It’s not a definitive list (“Red Rubber Ball” is shockingly missing) but most of what I used came from it or from my memories:  http://largeflowerheads.com/id52.html.

It’s been suggested that I have a playlist, so here it is:

Last Train to Clarksville…..The Monkees
California Dreamin’…..The Mamas and Papas
Big Yellow Taxi….Joni Mitchell
Smoke on the Water….Deep Purple
Red Rubber Ball….The Cyrkle
Group–The Beach Boys
Long Cool Woman….The Holllies
Now I’m a Believer….The Monkees
Happy Together….The Turtles
Good Thing….Paul Revere and the Raiders
Kind of a Drag….The Buckinghams
Born to be Wild….Steppenwolf
Live for Today….The Grass Roots
Green Tambourine….The Lemon Pipers
Person–Serena Williams (not the 60’s, I know, but…)
Purple Haze…Jimi Hendrix

Friday Fictioneers–Music: The Speech of the Soul

First things first.  For all of you who aren’t my friends on Facebook, here’s a picture of a Friday Fictioneers meeting in New Jersey on Wednesday.  The culprits are: Rich standing, your truly sitting on the left, Sharon on the right.  A great deal of fun was had by all.  Hopefully there will be more meetings.  We’re planning a history tour of Philadelphia next.

On to the writing.   A group of scribblers gathers weekly from around the globe for a virtual fun fest of writing based on a picture chosen after enormous deliberation by our intrepid leader, Rochelle Wisof f (no “h”)-Fields.  Once we’ve written and posted the innermost thoughts of our fevered brains, we read what everyone else has written by clicking on the little blue link critter found after our stories.

No reason you can’t join in the fun.  Possible categories of participation are (singly or in any combination): reading, pressing “like”, commenting, writing your own story and linking it by following Rochelle’s directions, or going mad from trying to do all of these for all the stories.  No matter what you choose, it’s so much fun that you’ll find  yourself happy that Friday comes on Wednesday each week. (Does that make it like Daylight Savings time, giving we get an extra few days and hours of daylight each week?)

Music: The Speech of the Soul

In the thirty years since her initial audition with the orchestra where he was principal cello, their marriage had weathered the drama of the music business, the travel, long hours, and friendly competition.

When arthritis gnarled his hands too much to play, he rejoiced in her first chair appointment, never missing a performance.  Now, after the stroke, he lay locked inside himself, unable to communicate.

By his hospital bed, the cello a hard-won concession, she closed her eyes tightly against tears, whispered his joshing words from that first day, “We could make beautiful music together”, and began to play softly.

************************************

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination
and life to everything.”
― Plato

“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”
― Leonard Bernstein

“Who hears music, feels his solitude
Peopled at once.”
― Robert Browning, The complete poetical works for Browning

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”
―Victor Hugo