life — Page 217

Mom

April 24, 2014 at 8:25 am by Claudia

mom

My mom passed away early this morning. I got the call from my dad around 4:30 am.

We have known for the last 10 days that the end was near. I haven’t written about it because this time felt intensely private and I wanted to hold it close, to be quiet and contemplative, to honor this transition.

My heart is broken. I can’t imagine a life without my mom. Yet I know she’s free now and for that I am profoundly grateful. She seemed peaceful the last few days, with no pain. She died in her sleep.

She leaves behind my father, three living children, eleven grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. She is now with my brother and all those loved ones who have already made their transition. She and my father were married for 67 years.

She was the best mom. I adored her.

I’ll write more about her later. For now, I’m going to take a few days off.

Thank you for your love and support,

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Saturday Fun: Record Store Day

April 22, 2014 at 8:39 am by Claudia

On Saturday, my husband informed me that it was Record Store Day and to honor the day, he wanted to visit two of our local record shops. Count me in, I said.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know how I feel about record stores. In fact, I’ve written two posts about records and record stores; Things I Miss: Record Stores, and Things I Miss: Record Albums. I lament the loss of large record stores with new albums appearing every day; thumbing through the albums, reading the liner notes, discovering new albums and artists. Some of my best memories involve record stores. I had a huge collection of albums, most of which are now warped and unplayable after being stored for many years. Big mistake. Breaks my heart.

Don and I have been slowly buying vintage vinyl records. And new vinyl is increasingly becoming popular again, which gives me hope. I think there is a real difference in the sound of a vinyl record and a CD or MP3. The vinyl sounds more live, more exciting – less perfect in the best possible way.

It’s nice to be able to download music, of course. I do it myself. But where are the liner notes? Where is the artwork on the album cover? Where are the lyrics?

It’s not the same.

Interesting information: Musician Jack White, who has a store/studio in Nashville, is a big proponent of vinyl. He has a Record Booth in his store where you can record your own record! Don wants to do that. So do I! His store and studio are very cool and are decorated in a wonderfully retro style. In honor of Record Store Day, he recorded the world’s fastest record – recorded, pressed and distributed in under four hours.

Here are some photos of our day.

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Don, outside our favorite local record shop.

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I look so much like my mother in this photo.

Thumbing through the albums. Ahhh, I’ve missed this! That’s the owner in the background. He’s smart and funny and knowledgeable. Plus, he has a Record Store Cat named Watson who was sleeping on top of the albums that were just to the right of the group in this picture. Watson is inscrutable and clearly the lord of the manor.

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I include this simply because I seem to be wearing two pair of glasses. Interesting trick.

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Don with a Loudon Wainwright album. He ended up buying it.

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Oh, Joni. I have this album somewhere. Hours and hours of memories.

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I posted this on Facebook because it made me laugh. A spoken word album of correct pronunciations. Since I have spent years teaching this very subject, I remarked that I could have saved myself all the hours put into creating lesson plans and played the gosh-darned record instead.

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Look what I found! A near mint condition soundtrack to my favorite movie. I have this album somewhere, but I know it isn’t in great shape. So I snapped this baby up and it is now living in Mockingbird Hill Cottage, along with an Earth, Wind and Fire album that I also purchased.

I dare you to stay in a bad mood when Earth, Wind and Fire is on the turntable.

Go ahead. Try it.

I dream of a big record store, full of thousands of albums, with music playing and all sorts of music to discover. But, in the meantime, I’m sure happy that these charming shops exist, with owners who love vinyl and want to share that love with everyone.

It’s Earth Day today. Let’s use this day (and every day) to urge our world leaders to finally do something about climate change before it is too late. Or we might just end up with an Earth that is uninhabitable.

And finally, I wrote about this yesterday but I’m not sure how many of you saw it, so I’m reposting:

On another note: Several of you who subscribe to this blog via email have mentioned that you have not been receiving recent posts. This is a Feedburner problem and it seems to be happening across the blogging world. The short answer: there’s nothing I can do about it but trust it will be sorted out eventually. Feedburner often has mysterious glitches. May I offer some easy, practical advice? Most readers subscribe to a blog via email because the blogger doesn’t post every day and they want to know when a new post is up. You know I post every day. Every Day. So, barring unforeseen circumstances, there will be a new post on this blog every morning. Why not simply bookmark the blog on your browser and click on it at some point during the day? Quite frankly, that’s how I read blogs. (The only blog I subscribe to is my own and that’s just to keep tabs on whether the email is working – and it has been working for me.) Bookmark it. You can rest assured that a new post will be up by 10 am every morning. Like clockwork.

Happy Tuesday.

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Life’s Too Short to Worry About This Stuff

April 19, 2014 at 9:23 am by Claudia

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In the Life’s Too Short/I Can’t Waste Any Time Worrying About This Stuff Column:

Data Breaches: Every time I turn around lately, I’m on the receiving end of an email or letter informing me that a website or store or utility company I have done business with has been the victim of a ‘data breach.’ That between some date and another date, some nefarious group hacked into the site with the result being that some of my data, i.e., credit card info, name, birthdate, address, might be in the wrong hands.

When this sort of thing first started happening, I felt the usual panic, wondered what to do, wrung my hands, etc. But now? I just shrug my shoulders and shake my head and maybe change my password or maybe ignore the whole thing. If this sounds like an ostrich burying its head in the sand, you might be right. But the fact is, we all provide personal information online or at the cash register. We hope, of course, that that information is secure but there is always the risk that it might not be. In this age of digital everything, personal information is readily accessible – too accessible – but that’s the way of the world nowadays.

The people behind all of this are contemptible, of course. They do bad things that affect innocent people. I think it’s terrible. But, in the end, I can’t go into a panic every time I this happens, because it seems to happen more and more often. I can’t be worrying all the time about identity theft. There’s so much written about all of this – especially on the web – that one can quickly be overwhelmed by it all. I’m not going to be blissfully ignorant, but I refuse to let this crap rule my life.

So I shake my head, shrug my shoulders and move on.

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Rules on Blogging: Please stop. Please stop with the ’10 Things That Make a Good Blogger’ kind of posts. Or ‘What Every Blogger Needs to Know.’ Or, even more maddening, ‘How to Coordinate All Your Social Media or When to Schedule Your Pinterest Pins or your Facebook Posts or your Instagram posts” or “How to Use Social Media.” Always with the proviso that you must do these things if you want to be taken seriously. There’s just too much of this kind of ‘expert’ advice out there. And the result is that we lose that individual stamp that is so vital, the thing that makes one person’s blog different from every other blog out there.

I realize, of course, that for many bloggers, their blog is their business. I get it. And I respect that.

Regretfully, at least to me, blogging has changed. What started out as a creative way to share with each other and expand our world, to journal, to share photos, to create, to write – let’s stop for a moment and say that again – to write, has now morphed into an arena where everyone has to have a new project on the blog every day, then has to Tweet or Facebook or Pin and hype the heck out of it. And every stat has to be checked and rechecked and compared to every other blogger’s stats.

If there’s any way to squeeze every ounce of joy out of blogging, that kind of stuff is sure to do it.

The number of bloggers out there has multiplied and multiplied and multiplied some more since I started blogging six years ago. The arena has become much more competitive, with everyone vying for readers, for ad clicks, for a rung on the ladder of ‘blogging success.’ It’s exciting, for sure, this blogging world. And blogging can lead to recognition, to possibilities, to maybe even a book deal. All well and good. Though, as to book deals and blogger hype, I have to raise this question: When did everyone become an ‘Expert?’ The internet has suddenly given everyone a chance to claim the title of Expert. Really? I’m highly suspicious about that one.

Let me say here and now: I don’t claim to be an Expert on anything.

I don’t want to see blogging become the equivalent of a strip mall, where everything is the same and the content is so similar that one could be in any city or town with all of the shops so interchangeable that nothing is really new or fresh or original.

I have to stop myself because there’s SO much I could say about all of this and I will, someday.

Really, in the end, my point is this. I started blogging for the sheer pleasure of it. It brings me joy. Anything that takes that joy and boxes it up and surrounds it with a list of ‘rules’ and things I must do will be summarily tossed out the window.

Life is too short and joy is too hard to come by. It’s too precious to mess with.

Happy Saturday.

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Mom

Saturday Fun: Record Store Day

Life’s Too Short to Worry About This Stuff

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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