Wow, Elizabeth - what a great idea to record this beautiful song for your birthday! And to add a section of video from your party as a five year old was the perfect touch, to show that the song has come full circle. I am assuming that you are the one in the 1997 video saying " that's my favorite" when your teacher announces the song, but I can't tell for sure which little girl is you because you all have your backs to the camera and the video snippet is brief. I am guessing you are the one sitting still in the middle, or maybe the one on the right side who is moving around a bit. But yeah : how awesome to have found your music teacher on FB, and to have recorded your '97 birthday song as a duo.
That is just great. :)
Your teacher Casey made a comment on your FB that said "Happy Birthday to a truly gifted artist", and he is right on the money in saying that. Your voice is beautiful, and particularly when you make a jump to a high note, there is an emotional quality that comes through that I won't try to identify with words, but which is very special. You sing with exceptional feeling, in clear tones. Not easy to do, nor common. Just so you know.
I hope your birthday was a good one, and I am sure it was. :)
I had a nice hike up at Aliso this afternoon. I finally had to wear a jacket, lol. Our Summer appears to be over, and tonight it is downright chilly outside (about 55, haha), but as recently as two nights ago I was still in a t-shirt on my nightly CSUN walk. So that was our Summer, 95 degrees on Thanksgiving Day, but over now. Bring on the L.A. Cold. :)
I did watch a movie tonight, "The Wind That Shakes The Barley" (2006), about the founding of the Irish Republican Army in 1920, and the war of attrition that ensued with the British occupiers of Ireland for the next several years. I ordered the movie from The Libe because after I watched "'71" a couple weeks ago (reviewed here at the blog), I got an Amazon recommendation about "Barley". I recalled the title, and remembered positive reviews, so I wanted to see it, and.......it's a very good film, but pretty grim. "'71" dealt with the seemingly insoluble Irish politics in the context of a thriller, a chase through city streets which was expertly done. "Barley" is a historical war drama, and so the politics are drawn out, and in your face, and so is the anger, the hatred between English & Irish, the horrible stuff like torture from the English side, and cold blooded killing of teenagers on the Irish side. Watching it, you just think "what is wrong with people"?, and though the Irish were no doubt justified in forming the IRA, by the time a peace treaty was offered in 1922 and they refused it and kept fighting, they succumbed to a revenge or attrition mentality that was just as violent as their oppressors, and by the 1970s, when the time of the Irish "Troubles" began, the IRA was nothing more than a terrorist organisation, killing innocent people in bars and nightclubs with bombs. Thank goodness there now seems to be a fairly well established peace since 1998.
I know you went to Ireland a couple years ago, and so I looked up Giant's Causeway and I saw that it's in Northern Ireland. I had to do a bunch of Googling because the political landscape is very confusing for those of us who have not paid close attention. I had thought that Northern Ireland was the part that remained independent, because Belfast was the city in the center of the Troubles. But no - Northern Ireland is now part of the UK. It is the lower majority of the land mass that is now called "Ireland" and is a separate country, independent of Great Britain. It has been confusing to me for years, because when I was little, there was just "England". You never heard about Britain, or Great Britain, and certainly not the United Kingdom. I knew that "Britain" was a historical name for the whole conglomeration, and more importantly for their Empire, when they ruled India and a ton of other colonies, but I always kind of wondered, "what is the deal here"? Why so many names?
And so, when I'd read in the paper about "The UK" or "Great Britain", I would wonder "what the heck ever happened to England"? And I never understood the problem with Ireland, or Ireland's problem with itself.
This movie, "The Wind That Shakes The Barley", just shoves it in your face, without really explaining the problem beyond your typical political examination from Academia (in this case Oxford, where the director attended school), and you know that I think that liberal academics are just as full of baloney as uneducated right wing reactionaries.
So to recap : a movie that is well worth seeing, especially for fans of history. It is very well made, and acted, but the problem is that there is no redeeming human quality to root for, or hope for. Not even peace. It's just a story of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
That's what these people believed in, and what they fought for. For nothing.
"The Wind That Shakes The Barley" gets Two Thumbs Up from me, but I cannot really recommend it, because it is just too much, too relentlessly grim and depressing.
Watch "'71" instead.
As for me, I am gonna try and watch fewer movies that are unrelentingly negative, and most importantly, that don't tell me anything I don't already know, or that give me a view into something I don't need to know.
For the Christmas season, I am gonna look for more BBC productions of any Charles Dickens stories I have not yet seen. Dickens goes hand in hand with Christmas. And, I've got a few more Esther Williams movies coming from The Libe. So I'll be covered.
See you in the morn. :):)
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