So I'm drinking Yogi Calming tea, taking an herb called Ashwagandha and listening to an oddly beautiful album called See You There by Zikzak, who kind of sound like a zen version of Elvis Costello. I'm also reheating pasta (did you know it's more diet-friendly that way?) and, through the free, legit and safe Credit Karma, discovered my credit is far better than I thought it was, which would be a huge relief if the future didn't look so iffy right now.

from "Improving your credit takes some interest" by Lisa Gerstner

There are times when I just cannot listen to the Carpenters because Karen's voice can make me sad, but tonight I am in the mood for the mellowness and the endearing sincere kindness in her singing. I pulled Voice Of The Heart off my cd shelf after reading an article about it that was posted today on the udiscovermusic. How nice to see an appreciation for a rather underrated album:


If there’s a more beautiful ballad than the opening track from the Carpenters’ eleventh album on any of their previous albums then we would like to hear about it. ‘Now’, written by Roger Nichols and Dean Pitchford, is one of the two songs that Karen recorded at her last ever recording session, ten months before her tragic and untimely passing in February 1983. The song’s lyrics are poignant and to add to our sense of loss over Karen it was done in one take, which just shows what a naturally gifted singer she was…as well as someone whose singing was seemingly effortless.

‘You’re Enough’ is the other song on the aptly named, Voice of The Heart, to come from the final session in April 1982, and is appropriately one written by Richard and John Bettis. The album, released in October 1983, is made up of tracks from various sessions between 1976 and 1982 on what was the first record to be released after Karen’s death. Given the fact that the majority of the ten tracks are ones that Richard revisited to make up this record it is much better album than you might at first think, assuming that you have not heard it before.

One of the best songs on the record is a ballad that had been a minor hit for singer Bobby Vinton in 1979. Karen recorded it first for a solo album she was making with producer Phil Ramone in New York. The version on Voice of The Heart is more lush, whereas Karen’s recording for her solo album features mainly just a piano accompaniment. It’s a case of two sides of the same coin; both are beautiful. The version on Voice of The Heart became the lead single to be taken from the album, making No.7 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and #101 on the Hot 100.

Paul Williams is an idiosyncratic song writer, having written such beauties as ‘An Old Fashioned Love Song’ for Three Dog Night, Helen Reddy’s ‘You And Me Against The World’ and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ for the Carpenters, but he probably wrote no better ballad than ‘Ordinary Fool’. From the opening chords of Richard’s electric piano, to Earle Dumler’s oboe it sets the mood that Karen takes up with one of her finest vocals.

‘You’re Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore’ was originally a minor hit for Ruby and The Romantics in 1965 but their version cannot hold a candle to the Carpenters’ take on this lovely ballad. It became the second single from the album and made #12 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The album itself made No.6 on the UK chart, and rather surprisingly could only make #46 in America.

The album’s final cut, ‘Look To Your Dreams’, another Richard Carpenter and John Bettis composition, is a suitably sad, and low-key conclusion. It ends with a piano coda played by Richard and that only adds to our sense of loss. This is not the place to discuss Karen’s illness, but let’s just say, that if there is anyone that can say they have not been touched or cannot recognise the deep beauty in her voice, then there must be something wrong with them. Karen Carpenter’s singing is perfection, nothing more, nothing less.

from:

http://www.udiscovermusic.com/voice-of-the-heart

We've come a long way, but it's not over...

As long as there has been representation of lesbians in fiction, no matter the quality of it, there has rarely ever been indifference in how they are represented. Whether in the pages of pulp fiction, where gay women are clearly seen as "bad" or pitifully portrayed as "confused" or whether it's in more modern novels where happy endings and true love can be found, there is division...just as there (obviously) is in real life.

For half a minute yesterday I felt hope, real, honest hope, that the Vatican might be rethinking its history of demonizing gays and lesbians. Pope Francis is definitely more open-minded and kind-hearted than any of his predecessors on social issues. He was all set, apparently, to recognize that we are people too, with valid contributions to society.

Hardly inflammatory or radical, part of the document states:

“Homosexuals have gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community. Are we capable of welcoming these people, guaranteeing to them a further space in our communities? Often they wish to encounter a Church that offers them a welcoming home."

Nowhere, does it say gays should be allowed to marry or priests must officiate at them. It just states a basic, compassionate truth: that gays and lesbians are people, too, and that perhaps the Christian community should be more open to them.

Today, according to CNN, the Vatican has retracted its position due to "angry assault from conservative Catholics" (more here). Among the less hateful, but no less hurtful, reactions:

Those who are controlling the Synod have betrayed Catholic parents worldwide. We believe that the Synod’s mid-way report is one of the worst official documents drafted in Church history. … Catholic families are clinging to Christ’s teaching on marriage and chastity by their finger-tips.” — John Smeaton, cofounder of Voice of the Family, an anti-LGBT laity organization (I would love to tell Mr. Smeaton that gay people are perfectly capable of being chaste and celibate, but I doubt he'd listen.)

I knew better than to get my hopes up, not to mention that God Himself could accept me for being gay and as long as it's not okay with my parents, I'd still be torn. What does it matter to me, personally, either way? And why do comments (from letters to the editor) like this upset me terribly?

A battered but proud national tradition of paying homage to and buttressing the ancient law of chastity — no sexual relations except between a man and a woman legally wed — has been officially and, with finality, discarded by a nation that famously hoped to be that “city upon a hill.”

It's simple: it upsets me because being gay is not about sex, but about love, and because there is so much hypocrisy linked to the above viewpoint, I have to stop typing for a second so I can calm down. People who are homophobic or, worse, bigoted often fiercely deny they are and explain that they get upset over any couples living together outside of traditional marriage.

Yet, that's just not so...if it were, where are the protests over straight people living together without being wed or straight singles going to bars, merely to hook up with strangers and have meaningless sex? There is no more a gay "lifestyle" than there is straight one. For more of us than not (no matter who we are) we aren't looking for one night stands, but for true love, the kind that you can't find in bars or night clubs or Craig's List.

Homophobic people (and the Vatican) cannot have it both ways. You cannot say gays and lesbians are merely sexual creatures and throw that stereotype around whenever it's convenient for your position, but then say two loving and committed people do not have the right to get married and grow old together when it's painfully evident that's exactly what they want. You can't say in one breath we're "sick" or "mentally ill" and then, in another breath, say we "choose" to be this way.

Honestly, I have no personal interest invested in this. My parents will never make peace with who I am and I have never found that someone I long to grow old with, so I hardly think I'll be making any wedding plans in the future. But, I have seen (and still see) people of the same gender in love who would do anything for each other, who would die for each other, and I just don't get why so much hate is used to fight such a beautiful thing as love.

I know homophobia is always going to exist, no matter how much progress we make in gay rights and marriage. I don't expect to ever change anyone's mind about it. I do, though, wish anti-gay people would be more honest and just admit that they can't (or won't) see gays and lesbians as human beings with hearts and morals and daily lives that are just as normal as anyone else's. I am sad over the reaction to yesterday's promising Vatican announcement, but I am definitely not surprised.

For now, I'll remind myself that some people think more like this man:

“The Spirit was clearly at work in the Synod. We pray that this positive shift in tone and language will also mean changes in hurtful and dated policies.” — Jim FitzGerald, executive director of Call to Action, an inclusive antiracism and anti-oppression Catholic organization





from Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise



starobserver.com.au

It's been one of those days that will swallow you up whole if you let it and then I went exploring in iTunes to try and forget and this song was featured under "New From Your Artists." "Sunrising" is so peaceful and lovely. It's almost as gorgeous as their more well-known song "Life in a Northern Town."

I didn't realize a new comprehensive collection of their music had been released in July. It sounds terrific for any Dream Academy fan:

http://theseconddisc.com/2014/06/20/return-to-a-northern-town-real-gone-preps-dream-academy-anthology-with-previously-unreleased-tracks/

Fragile things...

My mom used to refer to me as "fragile." She'd especially use this word to talk me out of all the reasons I shouldn't do things or go places by myself, even long after I'd moved out on my own. She'd cite my health issues or what she called my "too trusting nature" as why I needed to be extra careful in life.

Both my parents spent most of my childhood and teen years sheltering me so much that by the time I got to college, I wouldn't have known a third of what the other kids knew if I hadn't read so many of the books I wasn't supposed to or asked my younger, but much more worldly, sister.

I disliked that particular "f" word for so long I only recently saw that being "fragile" isn't always a bad word. I mean, if we were too tough to ever ever break, how would know or care how we, or others, ever really feel? How would we be human? Being more open and vulnerable to things means getting hurt, of course, but it also means experiencing so many beautiful things too...

from appszoom.com

Very few things are more fragile than emotions. When you begin to truly accept that you can't always change some emotions (which should be easy to change since you're the one having them) you finally start to get some peace. Your situation may be that you try and try to stop liking someone but you just can't, so instead you change what you can change about it. And that's not so hard to do if what you thought you wanted (acknowledgement, friendship, forgiveness) is something else instead.

Say, for instance, it was never about that person you like (but shouldn't) liking you back, but about forgiving yourself and hoping they never find out. Instead, maybe, the hardest thing for you was caring for them and knowing you had no right to care....that they had their family and friends for that. I think, if you're going to care no matter what do not to care, that possibly, hopefully, it's okay to silently send good thoughts and wishes (maybe even prayers) their way...