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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Just For Fun

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds (click to enlarge):


Clever — and inexpensive, too!

This busy board also helps a toddler to develop his small motor skills.

15 comments:

  1. Dang! I want one. This will help with motor skills AND an early development of the Tim The Toolman Taylor growl :)

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  2. Not only an aid to developing "small motor skills," but a greatly of teaching children how to recognize and cope with practical problems that arise in the lives of everyone who has a home and ought to know about.

    I wonder if it could be marketed successfully?

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  3. OFF TOPIC but hopefully of Interest:

    A LIVE New York performance of Beethoven's Sonata #7 for piano and violin, Opus 20, #2 with FreeThinke at the keyboard is posted right now at WESTERN HERO.

    http://westernhero.blogspot.com/


    I hope you will listen, and make some sort of comment since you've known me only in the context of fiercely opinionated blogging.

    SilverFiddle was very gracious to post my performance at Western Hero.

    Not trying to "show off," believe me, I just hope to show that I am not all words with nothing of substance behind them.

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    Replies
    1. As I said over at SF's site:

      What a treat!

      FT has proven himself with this performance that he really is an accomplished pianist.

      Delete
    2. thank yu, AOW. I wish I had more recorded evidence of what I've dine, but much of it has been lost because it was stolen from my car ages ago.

      Perhaps you might want to feature the Schumann sonata, and the Stravinsky suite we performed in that reuctal here sometime?

      It's not that I want to "show off," but I would like people to be aware that there's more to me than the poetry I write and the too-often aggravated statements I make at the various blogs.

      I'm trying to get away from all the agitation, and concentrate more on the good things in life instead.

      Delete
    3. I particularly enjoyed the Stravinsky, FreeThinke.

      Although I'd have enjoyed it more if the recording quality weren't a little sub par.

      I wouldn't call it showing off. I don't think anyone doubts your musical competency.

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    4. FT,
      I hope to get around to posting the Schumann sonata. I did send TMW the links for both the Schumann and the Beethoven.

      Delete
    5. But SilverFiddle only featured the BEETHOVEN yesterday at Western Hero, and did not post –– or even mention –– either the Stravinsky or the Schumann, Ducky. So I am puzzled, if not entirely displeased with your reaction.

      Perhaps you were given a "Private Hearing?"

      I agree about the recorded sound in the Stravinsky. Unfortunately, I had no control over the recording engineer.

      The recital went well, but Beethoven, of course, is much the superior piece in every regard, so of course YOU would choose to single out the STRAVINSKY –– a light-hearted, relatively inconsequential work transcribed for violin and piano from an orchestral suite taken from a BALLET. Though hardly "showy" in the manner of nineteenth-century virtuoso salon pieces, The Suite Italienne is, nevertheless, technically demanding on both instruments. I admit to being pleased with the way we carried it off.

      You never fail to run true to form, I'll give you that. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't chide us for not featuring one of the most obscure works of John Cage. §;^D

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    6. Well it's like this, Freethinke:

      1. Do a search with the criteria, FreeThinke & Youtube and voila.

      2. I listen to Beethoven live at least once a month and find it powerful. But I am often drawn to less commonly featured composers. Ergo the Stravinsky

      3. The post came shortly after a concert program that featured Haydn, Beethoven and Britten.

      4. If I were going to chide you, which I was absolutely not in the mood to do till you once again got all critical, I would have mentioned that my favorite pianist is Bill Evans and he could kick your ass off the bandstand.

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  4. Thank you,FT.
    I had hoped that I would get the opportunity to hear you perform. I just wish that my hearing could do your talent justice.

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    Replies
    1. Very sweet of you, Warren. Thank you.

      Great music belongs to everyone. It's a foolish myth that so-called "classical music" was composed to appeal only to royalty, aristocrats and snobbish pretentious elites to reassure them of their superiority. That, as they say, is a lot of HOOEY.

      Unfortunately, "classical music" has gotten a bad rap with John Q. Public, because it DOES challenge the listener and requires audiences to familiarize themselves with it through repeated hearings before its great power and charm begins to touch them, although I was a gone goose the moment I was first taken to carnegie Hall for a Young Peoples' Concert at age six, and my parents, bless them had been playing the stuff to me since I was still in the cradle.

      To become intimately involved with great music is to love it. If you are never exposed to it, and it is never presented in a favorable light, –– as it USED to be before "The Great Dumbing Down of the West" began in earnest ––, classical music is likely to remain in the realm of the Obscure and Forbidding.

      Too bad! But I see the situation as part of the deliberate scheme to render the majority helpless by conditioning them to remain as ignorant as possible. About the time they took prayer and Bible reading out of the schools, they also began to remove Choral Singing and Music Appreciation by claiming it was just a "frill" we could no longer afford in the race to catch up with the Soviet Union after they stole a march on us with Sputnik. The was when those in power started to encourage us to see "Science" as the "enlightened" replacement for GOD.

      An ill-informed, misinformed, or better yet anuninformed population is much easier to control and dominate.

      Like everything else it's a matter of EDUCATION and CONDITIONING.

      Being honestly able to enjoy the great treasury of Music in Western Civilization –– a vast body of literature that spans roughly eight-hundred years –– makes it much easier to endure loneliness, heartbreak, hardship and frightening challenges. At least it certainly has worked that way for me.

      Delete
    2. Warren,
      If it's any consolation to you, I have found that I headphones help me to appreciate recorded music. I've got quite a bit of hearing loss in my right ear. So far, my left ear is holding up just fine.

      Delete
  5. I missed this at WH. Listened this morning on my way in. Very nice.

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  6. Is this how you teach the kid to be a safe cracker?

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