I participate in economic protests, I am thoughtful with my voting in my allegedly “constitutional federal representative democracy” and I distance myself from people who support hateful, misogynist, racist regimes.
It never seems like enough during these “dark times”; and I applaud those who throw themselves onto the front lines of protesting though at times it seems like nothing is accomplished (and some individuals have lost their lives like happened in Minneapolis, MN recently).
I observe the actions of those working to “Make America Great Again“, and it feels like each day they are stripping “America” of what once made it great. I’m not seeing any greatness on the horizon and I don’t know how long it will take for the “country I live in” to heal the fractured relations with the world.
As a person of color (I have both an African American and Native American ethnic background) I struggle with seeing the leadership of the “country I live in” (and once loved) try to erase/hide the country’s past because it makes some people uncomfortable.
I remember when I was first working on my undergraduate degree and I met a woman who grew up in Germany in my German language class, and she told me as a teenager they went on a school trip to a concentration camp. They do not hide from their youth the unfathomable terrible time in history of their country. Studying the ugly historical moments in your country is a path for a society not to repeat them. Our current leadership wants “American” history whitewashed (this word feel very appropriate for what they are trying to do).
But enough of my rant. I had committed not to be too political on my blog but to me this doesn’t feel like politics it feels like a battle between love and hate (racism, lack of empathy, trying to control others life choices, etc.) I’ve always tried to be empathetic and respectful of those who think different from me politically and consider where their perspective arises. but I am struggle with what the “far right” wants to accomplish for the “country I live in”.
What I’ve decided to do additionally in protest of the current state of the “country I live in” is continue to be a loving person and send love out to the world and the people I interact with in person and through online mediums such as this one.
Because love is magic.
Life is magic.
We are the only officially known fully sentient life forms in our galaxy and perhaps the entire universe. That is some big magic!
I’d like to share the words and music of Stevie Wonder which celebrate the magic of love and life to close out this post of my musings:
If It’s Magic
by Stevie Wonder, 1976
If it’s magic Then why can’t it be everlasting Like the sun that always shines Like the poets in this rhyme Like the galaxies in time
If it’s pleasing Then why can’t it be never leaving Like the day that never fails Like on seashores there are shells Like the time that always tells
It holds the key to every heart Throughout the universe It fills you up without a bite And quenches every thirst
So If it’s special Then with it why aren’t we as careful As making sure we dress in style Posing pictures with a smile Keeping danger from a child
It holds the key to every heart Throughout the universe It fills you up without a bite And quenches every thirst
So If it’s magic Why can’t we make it everlasting Like the lifetime of the sun It will leave no heart undone For there’s enough for everyone
Source: Lyricfind.com
We all have hearts… If you have a heart, love somebody. If you have enough heart, love everybody. – Stevie Wonder
We recently returned from a trip to Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina to visit friends in Asheville and to go on a road trip to Charlotte, NC to see Billy Idol and Joan Jett in concert at the PNC Music Pavillion. Yes you read that correctly, rockers Billy Idol (68 years old) and Joan Jett (66 year old) are still rocking in their late/mid 60s!
The Concert
Joan Jett opened for Billy Idol and performed her catalogue of hits (most of the songs I knew). We had fun singing along to songs like “I Hate Myself for Loving You”, “I Love Rock’n’Roll, and “Bad Reputation” (if you are familiar with this song, we were all loudly singing, off key, “I don’t given a d*mn about my bad reputation…”, ha!).
My favorite performance of her opening act was her cover of Sly & The Family Stone’s song “Everyday People”:
A very timely performance with all the interesting stuff going on in my country the past 5 months…
Sometimes I’m right, I can be wrong. My own beliefs are in my song. A butcher, a banker, a drummer, and then makes no difference what group I’m in.
I am everyday people! (yeah yeah)
There is a blue one who can’t accept the green one for living with the black one trying to be a skinny one Different strokes, for different folks! And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
We’ve got to live together! I am no better, and neither are you. We are the same whatever we do. You love me, you hate me, you know me and then, you can’t figure out the bag I’m in.
I am everyday people! (yeah yeah)
There is a long hair who doesn’t like the short hair for being such a rich one that will not help the poor one. Different strokes, for different folks! And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
We got to live together! There is a yellow one who won’t accept the black one who won’t accept the red one who won’t accept the white one. Different strokes, for different folks! And so on, and so on, and scooby-dooby-doo. (oooh, sha sha!)
I am everyday people!
Billy Idol was amazing as was his band. I smiled when he said his granddaughter was in the audience. Mr. “White Wedding”, “Dancing with Myself”, “Eyes Without a Face” is a grandpa now – awesome!
I took a couple video clips but they weren’t worthy an upload to YouTube but if you want to virtually experience the concert I attended here’s the full concert someone posted from the week previous in Tampa, Florida – you can see grandpa Billy rock out (warning: there is some profanity in the performance):
We road tripped from Asheville, NC to Charlotte, NC in our friends’ electric car – a Ford Mustang EV. It was my first time going on a road trip in an electric car and the 130+ mile (209 km) road trip was very smooth!
We arrived to the concert early so we had fun “tailgating” in the concert parking lot having a picnic from the car’s trunk/boot.
Touring the Post Hurricane Helene Devastation
In late September 2024 Hurricane Helene devastated large sections of Asheville, NC (in addition to other areas of North Carolina and surrounding states) but our Asheville based friends live in a housing community on a higher elevation than the lower areas impacted by the river flooding. During the hurricane and after they lost utilities (water, power, cellular service) but their home was not damage. Their previous car however was destroyed by a fallen tree. Thank goodness they were not in it!
While we were visiting Asheville for a couple days before heading to Charlotte they drove us around some of the areas devastated by the floods that still have not recovered.
I took a bunch of photos but they seemed too sad to post, homes and business lost (not to mention all those lives lost) so I thought I’d just share a couple to give you a little taste of what I saw.
On a happier note, my friend S and I spent a day during our visit thrifting and going to bookstores while John and E toured whiskey and cigar bars. We met up for dinner at a sweet outdoor eatery in the River Arts District in downtown Asheville.
Cats Obsessed with Lace
Our friends have two cats and the cats are obsessed with LACE! This was discovered accidentally when S trimmed some lace off a skirt she didn’t want and left on the floor. The cats battled over the lace. She had to cut it into two pieces so each cat could have their own piece of lace!
Here is one of the kitties enjoying their evening “lace time”:
Garden Tour
I’ll close out this post with some images from an amazing eatery in Asheville we visited for breakfast one morning – Sunny Point Cafe.
The restaurant has a wonderful onsite garden where they grow and harvest the produce that they serve at the eatery! You can eat in the garden or just wander around after eating in the main restaurant. It was so zen I didn’t want to leave!
I spent a day at the Hard Rock Hotel wandering about and donating some money to slot machines while John was in his poker tournament.
The hotel’s decor was a tribute to Rock & Roll and when you first enter the hotel they have guitars on their doors:
The also have a guitar shaped Guitar Hotel!
Image credit: kayak.com
The hotel had an AMAZING collection of Rock & Roll memorabilia, primarily instruments (mostly guitars) and outfits that Rock & Roll icons played and wore. For those of you who love music like I do, I thought you might enjoyed some photos of their displays.
The Guitars
Here is a selection of some of the awesome guitars on display:
In case you have trouble reading the sings below the guitars in the images above, they are in order: Lenny Kravitz, Tom Petty, Geddy Lee (Rush), Eric Clapton, Johnny Cash, and Nancy Wilson (of Heart).
The Clothing
Here is a sampling of some of the outfits worn by Rock & Roll icons they had on display:
The signs might be difficult to read in the image above so here are the artists attached to the clothing in each image in order: The Supremes, John Lennon (The Beatles), Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, George Michael, Keith Moon (The Who), and The Temptations.
Of course the images I share in this post do not do justice to what the guitars and clothing looked like in real life. It was amazing to see the displays of Rock & Roll history in person.
The hotel and casino was beautiful inside and I really loved this entire wall of seashells they had on display:
More on our recent trip to Florida in another post, just wanted to share a little about my visit to this hotel/casino.
This post was inspired by a post from a lovely blog I follow, From My Carolina Home: Going Down a Rabbit Hole of Music (and if you do not currently follow this blog, I suggest you check it out – lots of great posts on crafting, home decorating, and life!).
Returning to a Traditional Way to Listen to Music
You might of noticed if you read my post from Saturday, What’s on the Design Wall: “All the Trimmings”, I’ve been tediously working with a lot of small fabric scraps and half square triangles. For example I had to sew 200 2″ x 2″ half square triangles together to create the first section of the quilt All the Trimmings.
Sewing these many tiny pieces together can make you sort of insane unless you have music!
Watching a movie would be a great way to distract myself from the tedium but since I had to make sure the seams all lined up, I’ve been listening to music instead.
For years I’ve been listening to music on shuffle. I use iTunes and have a collection of favorite tunes loaded on my iPhone, or I listen to Pandora or Amazon, Prime Music or the awesome Colorado Public Radio Jazz station KUVO (which is available to stream online also) smartphone apps.
Lately, however, I’ve been trying something different – instead of listening to shuffled music, I’ve been listening to entire albums.
For those of you who listened to music before the music download era, do you remember buying an album (whether vinyl, cassette, 8-track, or compact disc/CD) and LISTENING TO THE ENTIRE ALBUM straight through?
Many albums are concept albums and/or the recording artists had a reason for the order in which they arranged the tracks.
For example – have you ever tried to listen to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moonshuffled into other songs? It doesn’t work as many of the songs on this classic album were designed to connect and flow into each other.
So for the past several weeks, whenever I am in my sewing studio working on a project, I’ve been listening to entire albums (songs in consecutive order as many of the artists intended) and it has been an AMAZING experience!
Listening to albums in their entirety have brought back a lot of memories and I thought I would share a little bit (and perhaps too much on some) of those memories about three (3) of the albums I’ve recently listened to while sewing.
I was a huge fan of the band The Police during their heyday and thought the lead singer Sting was like one of the hottest men walking the earth (you are quite impressionable as a pre-teen, ha!). But I did not really grow to appreciate the breadth of his talent until he went out on his own.
His first big solo album, The Dream of the Blue Turtles came out in 1985 and I loved it but his next album Nothing Like the Sun blew me away. This album featured his ongoing collaboration with some amazing Jazz musicians such as the amazing saxophonist Bradford Marsalis.
Sting spent time in South America and one of the most powerful songs on the album, They Dance Alone(Cueca Solo) is a powerful metaphor referring to mourning Chilean women who dance the Cueca, the national dance of Chile, alone with photographs of their disappeared loved ones in their hands as a symbolic gesture of protest against the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet whose regime killed thousands of people between 1973 and 1990 (Wikipedia).
They Dance Alone(Cueca Solo) is a chilling and powerful song, hut the for me one of the most powerful and beautiful song on this album is the song Fragile. It always bring a couple tears to my eyes when I listen.
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetime’s argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are
– Sting
I love to attend live concerts, especially when I was in my 20s and 30s (yup I am older now!) and one of the most memorable concerts I attended was when I saw Sting and his band (including Bradford Marsalis) play at the RPI Fieldhouse when I lived in Upstate New York. He was touring for the Nothing Like the Sun album and played many songs from the album as well as classic songs from when he was with The Police.
I remember nearly falling over a railing I was holding on when he came out shirtless with just an acoustic guitar to sing Message in a Bottle as one of the encores with the audience joining him in harmony midway through the song.
It would have been quite a fall and I would not be blogging to you right now so it was good I paid attention at the last minute!
I found this obscure video on YouTube which was likely from that tour, to give you a sample of my experience except Sting is fully clothed in this video (smile):
I grew up listening to Stevie Wonder as I primarily listened to whatever my parents were playing on their turnable which was usually R&B, Jazz or Blues. I remember watching the Grammys as a small child and it seemed like he was always awarded Grammys.
He did receive a Grammy in the mid 1970s for the incredible album, but I did not really appreciate the depth of Stevie Wonder’s greatness and talent until I was an adult.
I think sometime in my 30s I bought the CD Innervisions just to add it to a library I was building of classic albums and ended up falling completely in love with the album and realizing his genius.
image credit – discogs.com
The album is an incredible masterpiece and I think it is best appreciated listening from start to finish. I do not have a favorite song on this album as each song is a work of musical art.
Here is a sample courtesy of YouTube:
Wait a minute. I do have a favorite song from this incredible album – the sad but beautiful All in Love is Fair. I always have it on my iPhone playlist.
I first heard of ZZ Top in the 1980s during their “Pop Music” MTV phase with songs like Sharp Dressed Man and Gimme All Your Lovin. But in the early 1990s, while living in Houston, Texas, some friends at a dinner party one night introduced me to their earlier work to include the completely bad*ss album – Deguello!
image credit – amazon.com
When I first heard the songs La Grange, I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide, Cheap Sunglasses, etc. I was blown away!
Here’s a little sample courtesy of YouTube:
And yes, I had to stand up from my sewing machine on some of the songs and dance about the room. But during the song La Grange I was able to just sing “Hmm, hmm, hmm” in a gravely voice while still sewing!
If you like rock, like real yummy Texas Bluesy Rock, here’s another sample for you (but don’t try to craft/knit/sew to it or you might mess up your piece – ha!):
There is currently a pretty cool documentary about ZZ Top currently on Netflix called The Little Ol’ Band From Texas
I lived in Texas for 8 years and it is like living in another country outside the United States – it really is a unique place with a distinct culture! Everyone needs to visit Texas at least once in their life!
And More Music…
I was originally going to discuss 5 or more albums on this post but I knew I might lose a couple of peoples’ attention if I kept running on about albums (hey Tierney isn’t this supposed to be a blog about crafting?!?!).
But here is a list of some of the other albums I enjoyed listening to in their entirety while I worked on my endless half square triangle quilt:
Brothers in Arms – Dire Straits
The Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
Zebop – Santana
What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
Kind of Blue – Miles Davis
Too Long in Exile – Van Morrison
Ten – Pearl Jam
Legend – Bob Marley & The Wailers
Tapestry – Carole King
Court & Spark – Joni Mitchell
A Love Supreme – John Coltrane
Talking Book – Stevie Wonder
At Folsom Prison – Johnny Cash
Listening to great music gives me a lot of comfort during these challenging times and inspires me to keep sewing!
Postscript
Now if you prefer listening spoken word over music for your crafting and you enjoy podcasts, I’d like to recommend a new podcast by one of my blogging buddies, author Tammie Painter: The Book Owl Podcast.
image credit: thebookowlpodcast.com
I’ve been following Tammie’s blog for a while and it was fun to actually hear her voice!
Currently there are only two episodes (well three if you count the introduction episode) and I’ve highly enjoyed them both. She takes a topic related to books/literature and presents her research in a humorous and engaging way.
You can find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I used Apple podcasts and I was able to pull up the podcast through the Podcast app on my iPhone.
Of course I hope this puts pressure on Tammie to give us another episode soon (smile)!
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