Posts

Showing posts from September, 2004

WPAQ: Voice of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Image
Category: Music Genre: Country Artist: Various Artists This is the review done by Tom Sheridan at allmusic.com: These on-air recordings made between 1947 and 1950 at the Mount Airy, NC radio station offer a fascinating snapshot of the musical milieu of the time. From breakdowns like "Old Joe Clark" by the Gurney Thomas Band to the gospel harmony of "I'm Living Down Here on Borrowed Land" by the Silvertone Gospel Harmonizers, it's priceless material. ----------------------- I'll add to it that these recordings hearken back to a long gone era for me. Sure, we had TV growing up but our family spent alot of time listening to the radio and to old albums. My Dad's folks had a 78 record player too. But most of all these recordings make me think of my Grandpa Orville, Mom's Dad who was a Kentuckian through and through. For anyone who has a music library and appreciates old timey music, this CD is for you

The Lucky Girl

I suppose it would be about 10 years ago this summer when I first met the spunky & delightful Gwen Plouhinec, a.k.a. "The Lucky Girl" . Gwen is from Rennes, in Brittany (France) and I met her through happenstance. She was working as a traveling occupational therapist down in a rural hospital in Tennessee. She was in the United States on an H1-B nonimmigrant Visa and was working for a company who assigned her to facilities they contracted with for 6-12 weeks at a time. It just so happened she was working in the same hospital as another traveling therapist, Heidi Shubert, an Australian who originally came to the United States to work with me. Heidi and I had known each other for about three years when she brought Gwen up to Indianapolis for the Memorial Day weekend and my Indy 500 race party. Now I had a huge crush on Heidi, with her constantly messy hair, big smile and awesome Aussie accent, so when she said she was bringing a friend I said sure. I knew I would like G

Missing Posts

Over the weekend I thought I posted a couple of stories about Dr. Dave's wedding and the rehearsal the night before. Apparently they are floating out there in blogspace. I attended a fabulous outdoor wedding, amidst not so fabulous outdoor weather. It was the wedding between one of my employers, Dr. Dave and his fiance Pamela. It was held out at Dr. Dave's river place, also known as Tarkio. There were about 300 people in attendance. Rain has been falling over Missoula constantly for about 10 days and even though Tarkio is 45 miles west, the rain was constant there too. But as these things often do, the rain stopped just about 15 minutes before the ceremony was to begin and held off long enough for us to gather down on the beach and watch the wedding celebration take place. They wrote their own vows, which they recited at the same time and were wed under an alter made of river driftwood. It was lovely. On Friday they had a rehearsal dinner for 100! It was held at

Watch Out for Neon Drivers

This afternoon I had to run an errand at lunchtime that involved the use of my car. Now I normally don't drive during the weekday, especially at lunchtime, merely for the reason that a gazillion people are all trying to cram as much as possible in an hour and are generally rude and inconsiderate on the road while doing so. So it was with a certain dread that I got into my car and headed across town to the busiest and most McDona-Wenda-Old Navy-Best Buy'ed part of town, the Reserve Street corridor. This is a section of town where all the new development is taking place, where Reserve Street serves as a connector between US Interstate 90 and US Highway 93 and where all the box stores are located. I was heading to the Eye of the Beholder, a custom framing and art shop located in a strip mall next to a mini Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut was packed with painters, construction workers, truck drivers and a few office folk looking like ducks out of water...all enjoying the $5.99 all you

The Straight Story

If you thought David Lynch could only make movies that were a bit off center, then you need to see the movie The Straight Story . It's a great movie that will pull at your heart strings and have the whole family in tears. It's slow, and I mean s-l-o-w, moving but at the same time it feels just right. The movie is based on a true story, about a man who drives his lawnmower across Iowa and Wisconsin to see his ailing brother. Harry Dean Stanton is in the flick, a plus for just about any movie. It also stars Sissy Spacek and Richard Farnsworth, Farnsworth in particular does an outstanding job. The scenery is fantastic and the stories created along the journey help make the movie a success, at least in my book. Check it out this month on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) here in the states.

Multiply

Oh this blogging type thing is getting out of control. I just joined another service called Multiply . It allows you to upload photos, keep a group calendar, share recipes and do just about anything else you want. And since (as my Austrian friend Martin so aptly pointed out in my newly added guestbook)my blog is more of an online diary, the multiply site will let me expand outside of the diary concept...thanks for the kick in the pants Martin. I found Multiply while visiting the blog of a Brazilian girl featured on the blogger home page. Since her site is in Brazilian Portuguese, I just started clicking on links to see where they would take me. in addition to some info on chocolate and some cool photos, she has links to Multiply, Friendster and Fotolog.

My Friends, the Superheroes

Today I realized just what superheroes some of my friends are, day in and day out. I happen to work for a group of surgeons and I also consider all three of them my friends (Two of them have been my friends long before I moved to Missoula). I work as their Practice Manager, meaning I run their business. My office is across the hall from the main clinic and my interactions with patients are usually brief (when I'm across the hall and cross paths with them) or about issues related to patient care or their bills. I am not a clinician and I'm never involved with actual patient care. The patient care issues I hear about are usually related to appointment wait times, confusion (or complaints) about their bills or when they want to pay a compliment to our staff or the doctors. It's pretty cool to work in a doctor's office where the patients oftentimes bring in treats or send cards or make things (painting, carvings, etc.) for the doctors and staff. It's a testam

A Note About My Guestbook

Just a quick note, the guestbook I am using is a free tool that has a few glitches. in the case of my guestbook, I thought it was customized so it would show the person's name, what country they were from, a link to their homepage (if any) and their comments...doesn't look like that is what they activated. I will try to fix it tonight.

Sign my Guestbook!

When you visit the Blogger website, you not only can find out about blogging, but can also learn about other bloggers. Tonight I dipped into the website of an Armenian blogger, who happens to live in the long disputed region of Nagorno-Karabagh. The blog is super cool and the blogger, Ara Manoogian, has a great feature I decided to add to my site...a guestbook. On the right hand side of this page, right under my profile, you'll find a new link that says, "sign my guestbook". Click on it and a new window should pop up allowing you to sign the page. don't worry, I'm the only one who will see your email address and url (if you enter them). I just added it tonight and it should be live by tomorrow morning (or whenever the $1.99US clears paypal). Sign away and welcome

50 Cents and the Meaning of The Koran

Some time back I spent 50 cents on a book written in 1953 by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall. The book was published then by the New American Library as a Mentor Religious Classic and is entitled, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran . Over the ensuing years I picked it up at various times (usually whenever I reorganized my bookshelves or moved) but never gave it a serious reading. The paperback cover is torn and the pages are yellowed. I originally bought the book out of sentiment, as the first girl I can honestly say I loved was Ela, a Turkish-American girl from a Muslim family who I dated in College and pined after for many years afterwards. My experiences meeting her family and some of the things that happened during those stays (like the fact she couldn't speak directly to me in her parents house and also was not allowed to make eye contact) made me want to know more about Turkish culture and Islam. Long after we broke up (err...I mean, long after she broke up with me 'c

Well, This Explains quite A Bit

Late last night, while watching highlights from yesterday's college football games, I saw a commercial for an Internet dating service called eHarmony. Although I've played around with Internet match services in the past, it's not something I'd normally consider. But the combination of AW and I biting the dust (at least I think that's what happened, I'm still unclear on this), my emotions of the day and a spontaneous, "what the heck" that sort of popped into my head at the moment, I decided to visit the eHarmony site. eHarmony touts itself as being the perfect way to find a match, using a 29 dimension profiling system to properly match people. I spent about an hour filling the thing out, almost quitting three or four times. But I battled through all the psychological profiling (you know, where you're asked the same thing 5 different times in a slightly different manner) and carefully read through the terms of the agreement before I pushed the

9/11 Thoughts

I got up early this morning, while the sky was still grey and the morning air cool. I put out my American flag, more of a traditional act of respect in my family than anything else, but I thought it appropriate nonetheless. It was early enough that I stepped outside in my boxers and a T-shirt, I knew no one else would be around. I came inside and started thinking about what to do next. The house needed cleaning, the yard needed cutting and my laundry needed to be done. I turned the radio on and the Weekend edition of All Things Considered was just starting. The host started talking about New York and how residents of the city were marking the third anniversary of the events of 9/11. I hadn't planned on participating in any sort of memorial to those who died, American, Bangladeshi, Honduran, British, South African and others alike I'd thought my flag was enough. But as I stood in the living room, thinking of how to go about the morning, I found myself drawn to the story on the

The Politics of Dancing

This has been a fun week in Johnny O's blogland...I seem to have somehow gained an international following. My Mind: Lifesized has gotten all kinds of crazy hits this week and even some comments. I think that is totally cool. When AW and I were in France this summer we had one of those days from Hell that has a way of turning into a great story. It's a long story but let's just say it involved getting stuck on a bus at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside of Paris which then got delayed by a bomb threat, which then got stuck in traffic, which then dumped us in a slum and so on. During this 6 1/2 hour ordeal I first exchanged glances, then hellos and then a conversation with an Iranian guy named Hossein. Hossein was in Paris for a quickly arranged business meeting and had somehow gotten himself into the same predicament as AW and I...turns out he's a pretty cool guy. We've stayed in touch via email, first exchanging pictures of where we live (my pictures were

A Labor Day Scorcher

Busy, busy, busy is the story of my life these days. Since my post last Thursday I've been to Boise and back ( a 7 1/2 hour drive from Missoula), played in another Ultimate tournament, experienced the unpleasant task of having to terminate an employee at work and spent countless hours wrestling with my own thoughts (ohhhhhh, cruel world). This past weekend was Labor Day weekend here in the States and, like most Americans, I used the three day weekend to get out of town. I headed south to Boise, Idaho to participate in the Boise Scorcher ultimate tournament with a team from Missoula. The drive to Boise is really spectacular and I saw a bull moose on the way down through the mountains. The weather was perfect and the sunset on the way down was added to my list of great sunsets. Our team had won a tournament the weekend before in Jackson Hole, Wyoming but we weren't really expected to make much noise in Boise. Scorcher is a tourney that brings out some very good teams and

Holy Crap, Did George Bush just Speak Spanish?

What genius! What bravado. GW Bush is giving his convention speech right now and I'll be damned if he just didn't stammer through, "we will leave no child behind" in Spanish. That was pure genius. Now you may wonder just what the heck a fiscally conservative Democrat like me would be doing watching the RNC...I believe this is important, important to know what all (notice I didn't say both as I am also following Nader...sorry, the Libertarians lose me with some of their crazy gun ideas) sides think. The RNC has been truly amazing...I cannot believe the bullshit flying out of the mouths of some of these speakers. Gov. Patacki tonight said the Bush inherited a recession...that is untrue [sidebar...GW just through out his first salvo for a pro-life, anti-gay, pro religion, right wing constitutionalist agenda and the crowd went crazy and now he's launching into his anti-Kerry bit]. This election will be incredibly close. The RNC has been tremendously eff