Lo and behold, I saw a couple of posts from The SB today. Are you back home, girl, or still in Iceland? One post was about the need to play more 7th chords, something I have been focusing on for several months myself. I decided I wanted to get more jazzy when I watched an old Allen Holdsworth instructional video and I saw him playing all of these two and three string inversions, and I thought it would be a good style to adapt to, due to my semi-claw of a left hand, lol. And I have been learning a whole bunch of 7ths, 9ths, 11ths, and stuff that I just make up on my own. I can't really play a full six string barre chord anymore, but in another sense having a bad hand has opened up my creativity a bit.
I'd like to take about a year and do nothing but write music. I don't know if it will ever happen, but it would work best if I had someone to write with, to bounce ideas off of like I used to do thirty years ago with the Late Great Mr. D. We wrote some tunes back then, and they were okay, but they weren't really developed. They weren't filled out musically, because I didn't know enough about the guitar neck in those days. I could hear music in my head but did not have the knowledge to fully translate it through my instrument. So we had a lot of songs, but they were melodically unfinished.
Now, I would know how to fill a song out, to develop melody and harmony lines, etc. Singing in the choir and learning to read music (sort of, lol) has helped me to make a big jump in my understanding of composition, and so has three decades of playing guitar. When me & Mr. D were writing, I was a novice, and had only been playing for a few years, having first picked up a guitar at the age of 19, in 1979.
But yeah.....I'd like to write some more music. I can do okay with my left hand, and if I wrote something I couldn't play, I could have someone else play it.
Tonight's movie was "The Far Horizons" (1955), a widescreen Technicolor adventure story starring Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston as the famed American Explorers Lewis and Clark. The film starts off with President Thomas Jefferson announcing to Captain Lewis the news of his Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States. The Prez therefore wants Lewis - and Lt. Clark, whom Lewis has chosen as his partner - to head an expedition to See What Is Out There in all this land Mr. Jefferson has just bought, and If Possible, to take the expedition All The Way To The Pacific Ocean.
And oh yeah.....watch out for Indians along the way.
Luckily, they run into Sacagawea not long after beginning their journey. She is being held captive by a tribe rival to her own, and after encountering L&C, she escapes to join them.
The film was made in 1955, and so, in what would be considered a very un-PC casting today, the producers selected Donna Reed to play Sacagawea. She was very white, of course, Jimmy Stewart's sweetheart in "It's A Wonderful Life" several years before, and she does a credible job as the Indian Girl of American Lore, in brown makeup.
I don't know how historically accurate the script is, but you do get a History Lesson of sorts. I found myself doing some Googling to reacquaint myself with Sacagawea, whom we studied in (I think) 8th grade American History. Or maybe it was 6th Grade. I don't remember much about the stuff I learned in school. But anyhow, the film becomes more of a romance than an adventure by the time it enters it's final half hour. Clark has fallen in love with Sacagawea, and vice versa, and that theme is given precedence over the expedition through the Oregon Trail (that part I do recall from history class).
Overall, it's an entertaining film, from a historic standpoint, and as an adventure in Widescreen Technicolor. Mostly, though, it's a romance, and at the end........well, I shant tell you, for I do not wish to rip your guts out.
But then I suppose I have told you, in a sense. And you may already know the story of Sacagawea.
So, I give "The Far Horizons" a solid Thumbs Up as a Big Screen Big Color Big Movie Star Historical Flick, Competently Made. Had you seen it in the theater in 1955, you would have loved it, and you will certainly like it on your TV set in 2017. Please bring a single Kleenex for the ending. Thanks. :)
The other post I saw from The SB was a pic of two beautiful owls in their nest high in a tree. The photographer captured Mr. Owl nervously presenting Mrs. Owl, who has her babies under her wing, with the family's evening meal, a captured rodent. It is clear that Mama Owl runs the show, which is usually the case no matter the species. They appear to be a Happy Family though, and that is all that matters. I saw another post today, just a random one on FB, of a Red Tail Hawk who had become lost and disoriented in the Texas storm, and he or she had found some humans in a safe place and decided to hang with them. The video was very touching indeed, because you can see the need of the wild bird to stay in a safe place, with humans (against what would normally be it's instinct), and you can also see it's trust, in it's eyes, trusting the humans to protect it from the storm.
We are learning every day about animals, and how amazing they are, how intelligent. I have talked about the Bird Chatter I hear late at night in the trees of Reseda, and the many different languages that can be discerned. I have thought that A Whole Nuther World exists in those trees, much as I have thought that Another World exists for the multitude of spiders in Aliso Canyon, whose webs entangle the tree branches throughout the entire park. The copious bird talk and the widespread webs show me worlds that exist alongside our human world, and that we don't usually notice. But in a tragedy like this storm, perhaps some of the more intelligent animals, like that hawk, are left with no choice but to say, "Hey Humans, I have always been aware of you, even though I am not of your world. But right now I need your help, so could you help me"?
That is exactly what the Red Tail Hawk seemed to be saying in that video.
Beautiful and incredible communication - inter-species communication! - brought on by dire circumstances.
Thank You Lord for showing us. ////
Mega Hot today. It was still 97 degrees at 11:30pm, Good Lordy Moses.
See you in the morn, when it will still be hot.
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