Tag Archives: theatre

Gratitude List 1821

(1) We’re getting off to a great start in the third week of our five week rehearsal period for the musical Pippin.  I’m very much enjoying the professional atmosphere at the regional theater company I’ve been so fortunate to have discovered.

(2)  It was good having the weekend off.  On Sunday I worked with Karlie, who knows all her parts for the three-part harmonies she’s going to sing over herself.  Here’s a recording of her singing the low part to the scratch track of Ode to the Universe that I’ve created with my music production software.   You can probably see where it’s headed if you use your imagination, and Karlie is a joy to work with.

(3) There’s an Open Mike every Monday night at a club around the corner from the theatre.   They’ve got a full length Young Chang concert grand, one of the better pianos I have had a chance to play.   They gave me three songs to close the place.  I did My Heart Belongs to Daddy, then Cody sang “Hunted” from Eden in Babylon, and finally I did “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”  Looking forward to going back next week.

(4)  My new therapist is really working out very well.   This morning I’ll have the fourth session of the five I committed myself to, and I am really looking forward to it.  She gave me a good book called Shame and Guilt: Masters of Disguise and she is in all manners a competent and in fact gifted therapist — quite a contrast to the last three I tried.  .

(5) Just letting you know I am presently creating this gratitude list on the new MacBook Pro I got on a $550 steal from Backwater.    So far I am having the same experience as when I graduated from the Android to the iPhone.  I simply never want to go back and use a Windows machine again.  (Guess I’m addicted to the fancy colors.)   Grateful for all the good gifts God gives us, in good time.

Every good gift, every perfect gift, comes from above.  These gifts come down from the Father, the creator of the heavenly lights, in whose character there is no change at all.– James 1:17

 

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Gratitude List 1817

(1) It’s a new day.

(2) Grateful for Spokane Faith and Values and in particular for the current Afterlife Series.    I was able to pitch in with my own take on the concept, and am fascinated with all the different ideas people are propounding.  I very much enjoy the discussions all the interesting journalists and religious figures I have met there.  It feels good to be respected and for my opinions to be considered.  But it feels even better to be among people who can disagree with each other, not only without fighting each other to death, but actually enjoying the great diversity of opinions that we, as thinking human beings, tend to form.   God bless them all.

(3) People are really nice to me here in this curious little hamlet — even people whom I am afraid may regard me only as a weird freak on strange trip.   This really is a pretty cool town.

(4) Saw a fabulous production of Stephen Sondheim’s COMPANY at the Regional Theatre of the Palouse on Saturday, thanks to my friend Cody who drives.  I rarely leave the area (or even my house for that matter) but this time I’m glad I did.   It’s a show about marriage, and I happened to have been the Assistant Musical Director of the first nonprofessional production of it as in 1972.   Fifty years ago, yet I remembered practically every word and note.   Excellent production in a wonderful little theatre.  I got to sit second row orchestra.

Cody and I played and sang two songs from Eden in Babylon in the Green Room after the show, and the Artistic Director emailed Cody today to ask what my name was to see if he can get me on staff at R-Top.   When one door closes, another one opens.  I sure enjoy teaching singing.   Thankful for Cody too, that’s two jobs in a row he’s got me.

(5) Not sure which of three blessings to report, so I’ll capsulize.  I had a great four mile run on a beautiful afternoon on Friday, had a great conversation with one of my previous pastors (and it turned my head around), and I am starting in with a new therapist tomorrow at ten.   She says she will advocate for my true diagnosis with my new doctor once she’s convinced what it is.   She and the doctor are both runners, and that somehow seems it will help.   Looking forward to a new chapter in this surprisingly new life.

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Gratitude List 1806

(1) I turned in Part Two of my series The State of Christendom in Contemporary American Culture to Spokane Faith and Values.

(2) On Saturday, I gathered 2 hours and 40 minutes worth of conversation between me and a formerly homeless person named Benjamin Clewell for a future podcast. Though it will probably take me more than two days to edit it down to size (all things considered), I will still probably have a decent podcast by Wednesday based on Christendom Part Two.

(3) Nice to be inside the nice warm house while the snow is falling down outside my window.

(4) Thanks to enhanced income over the past two and a half months, I have paid all my back bills as well as all this month’s current ones, and am stocked up with enough food for more than a month.

(5) Karlie Smith has learned the five new songs I wrote, and also has agreed to sing on the Oracle Production Project, which is my present day baby. Am in the process of contracting other reputable people, including a bassist, guitarist and drummer of some repute. It’s all in the early planning stages – but we can make it work.

Please donate to Eden in Babylon.