Character, Emotional Health, Goals and Dreams

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right

May 31, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

Two wrongs don’t make a right. That’s what Grandma always told me when I tried-by force-to make my little brother do it my way. I have no better words with which to address the heartbreaking events ongoing in the country I love. Two wrongs don’t make a right. We must acknowledge a string of wrongs-too many to count. Somewhere in the middle of that string is the cruel, unjust, unacceptable, and un-American, death of George Floyd in the hands of officers sworn to uphold the Constitution. We must make it right. More and more wrongs will not make it so. Yes, it may feel like jousting with windmills. But now, right now, might be the time to go all Don Quixote.
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lay peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star! – The Impossible Dream, Mitch Leigh, 1965

Character, Home and Hearth, Music and Theatre, Neighborhood

The Perils of Improvisation

May 22, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

She came up on the patio porch about 7:00 last evening while Andrea and I were woodshedding Wayfaring Stranger; Andrea leading on mandolin and I, fumbling along on guitar – my second or third or fourth axe. It was a warm evening and neighborhood doors and windows were open. She cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed up against the screen door, peering in like a snorkeler ready to dive.

“Is that you smokin’ weed?” she asked – and laughed. She knew the answer. No one smokes inside. A few moments earlier I had detected a sniff of the same pernicious flora wafting in from the sidewalk and wrinkled up my nose. Andrea laughed at me and said, “If you’re going to do concerts, get used to it.”

Now the shadow snorkeler at the door continued, “Thanks for praying for us. It really helped.”

Neighbors are close and noisy, walls are very thin, my daughter is very vocal and active in her faith. She reaches out to the neighbors the second she is prompted. I am the quiet one, shy, and frankly, it’s not in my personality to say everything I believe or philosophize. No. I take my feelings directly to the piano. Sometimes, I am so timid I close the door.

“We sing along with the piano,” she continued. “My family knows most of the words to the old hymns.”

My Elvis and pop-folk to hymn ratio is about eight to one. Perhaps my neighbor perceives the hymn value in Love me Tender, Can’t Help Falling in Love, and Danny Boy. Or maybe it’s You Raise Me Up or Water is Wide – those often masquerade as hymns.

Andrea and I rounded out the second verse of Wayfaring Stranger and paused. The neighbor added, “But sometimes we are singing along with the hymns and the piano just goes da da da off to a different tune all together.” She made a spiraling motion with her finger. I laughed out loud, “That,” I said, “is the peril of improvisation.” Next thing you know she’ll be complaining that she can’t reach the high notes and I’ll have to move Unchained Melody out of the key of “C.”

“Can you do Amazing Grace in “A”? I asked Andrea as I strummed a I, IV, V. This one’s for the hymn loving lady on the porch. Andrea lead. I followed. We eased into a rhythm. The lady’s live-in came out their door. She pulled him into a hug. And they danced. Yes, they danced with Amazing Grace on our patio and then moved off down the sidewalk.

And that is why we make music – why we improvise – so people can still sing and dance.

Family, Health and Long Life, Home and Hearth, Music and Theatre

In A Music House

May 18, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

I have been long gone from the music house I grew up in – the house where my dad bought my mother musical instruments and paid for our weekly lessons – but when I visit, Dad will frequently ask for those old hymns. Time was, my mother and I would play duets. Duets happened less and less frequently this past decade as arthritis, knee surgery and the pain of old age exacted a toll on Mom. However, in July of 2018, when I paid a regular visit home and sat down at the well-used piano, Mom surprised us by maneuvering her walker to the vibraharp, picking up the mallets and joining in. Bent and gnarled, she was nearly leaning on the tone plates. After three tunes, she was fatigued – so she sat – on the organ bench – and played a medley. Thankfully, I had presence of mind to whip out my cellphone. Mom didn’t know she was being recorded. Please look past my shoulder and beyond my attempts to accompany by ear and enjoy an 85-year-old woman who didn’t quit on her music – or the old tunes.

Mansion Over the Hilltop

It Is No Secret

When We All Get to Heaven / At the Cross

My youngest son came to visit. This in itself was a grand occasion. I hadn’t seen him in the flesh for 16 months – though we do have the advantage of Duo Video calls and Instagram. We hiked. We ate. We talked. The kids pulled out the mandolin and guitar and I sat on the piano stool and luxuriated.

Andrea Shellabarger, mandolin, Philip Shellabarger, guitar, May 10, 2020

Soon I exclaimed, “Oh! It is wonderful to live in a music house!”

My 31-year-old daughter looked at me blankly, “But Mom, we have always lived in a music house.” Now that she mentions it, this is true for her – and for her brother(s). She grew up in a home where the acoustic piano was in use not only for family pleasure, but for the teaching of countless piano students. Frequently, both guitar and piano rehearsed together for the occasional music and worship gig. I taxied them to marching band and chorale rehearsals and performances. And yes, I treasure the memory of the night I sat down at the piano to relax and my pre-teen son crawled under the bench, curled up against the piano, basked in the vibration of the strings. Even when the kids flew the nest and moved out on their own, housing was with other band members – in the rehearsal house. Music was expected. Rehearsal required.

My daughter holds the lease now and I am the roommate in my current domicile for an indefinite period of time. I got the blank look again the other day when I expressed my reticence to embark on vocal exercises with neighbors so close or to play the piano and practice guitar while she reads and writes in the adjoining room.

“Mom,” she remonstrated, “when I lived with the band it was expected you practice your instrument two hours a day in addition to band rehearsals. When everyone plays more than one instrument and practices two hours a day, the projects are going to overlap. Get used to it.”

Sheesh, and I feel like I am encroaching when I woodshed for a few minutes, play piano for an hour, practice guitar 30 minutes and try to wrangle the bass for fifteen.

Yes, my children have always lived in a music house. Their roommates have been fellow band members.

Thank goodness they have never known the poverty of living with roommates who have a television running every waking moment and who, rather than cooperating to schedule times of silence for piano practice, simply turn the volume up to hear the telly over the piano.

It was not like that in the house I grew up in. When I was growing up, many years we didn’t even have a television – and the times we did, it was never allowed on Sunday. Instead of television, we practiced our instruments. And on Sundays, we played hymns.

Family, Health and Long Life, Holidays and Traditions, HOME, Relationships

Mother’s Day 2020

May 18, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

Saturday, I returned from a 24-hour trip to Grand Junction in which I had seen my 86-year-old mother finally pain -free and at peace. I was exhausted. I could hear my daughter talking to our neighbors in the back yard. I snuck into my bedroom, closed the door and crawled onto the bed. A couple minutes later came a knock at my door, “Mom? Can I just say hi!” It was my youngest son whom I have not seen for 16 months. Unbeknownst to me, the kids had been planning this surprise before I got the call that Mom was in her final hours. So grateful for the gift of perfect timing. I got to see my oldest son on Saturday and enjoy a hike and brunch with my younger two children on Sunday. And I rest in the knowledge that my mother is not sorry at all to be released from this life.

One of my friends, who knows what it is to lose a parent, called it “bittersweet.” Indeed, that is the essence of life. But the sweet lasts. Hang on to that!

Cherry, Andrea, Philip on Mother's Day 2020 — Cherry, Andrea, Philip on Mother’s Day 2020

Kevin (Eldest Son) and Cherry, March 2020

Music and Theatre

Music Heard Round the Neighborhood

May 8, 2020 Cherry 1 Comment

Did you ever wish to visit Bourbon Street? Not for the drink, but for the music? Did you ever walk into the music building at a university and stop and listen to the cacophony coming from practice rooms and see the students conducting to tunes in their heads in the lobby and breathe and say, “feels like home?”

The other night, about half an hour before sunset, she took a hike. Right there on Paul Wilbert Memorial Trail, a saxophone bleat caught her attention. She stopped dead in her tracks to listen. Clearly, from 300 feet below in the neighborhood, came squawking sounds of reed music. Someone was practicing outside. She was delighted. Memory took her back to childhood sessions lolling in a hammock with trumpet pressed to her lips. Was it a student? And then, reed properly wetted and adjusted, the musician eased into 60s jazz, bending a few tones, undulating, something familiar. This was no beginner. This was a gift to the neighbors. Mark it on your schedule, 7:00 pm every night.

She has pinpointed, in various forays around the neighborhood, a kit drum house, two guitar houses, the saxophone house and a banjo house. It’s a quaint Victorian neighborhood, four blocks from downtown old town, half degenerating and half up-town restoration. But, musicians live here. Artists thrive. Rich cultures mix. People walk their dogs – and their children – and themselves, every morning and evening. Skateboards trundle by, bicyclists call to one another and stop and chat. The weather is so fine, she opens her door each evening at 5:00 and plays through a piano repertoire for an hour. Folk songs, sixties, seventies, a nod to the eighties and nineties, something fresh; a river set, an Elvis Presley sampling. Good grief, she’s been playing for over 60 years. That’s a lot of music.

Last night as she launched into Danny Boy a particularly loud conversation caught her ear because it stopped right outside the window for the dog to do its business. Business complete, the human came right on up the porch, chattering on a phone all the while, and peered in the screen door. “I am talking to my friend in Buenos Aires,” she explained with thick accent, “She wants to know, do you know your music is heard in Argentina?”

“Hola!” the pianist called, waving to the screen. She continued to play with pride and an increased sense of excellence and performance. After all, she is going international. Her music is heard ‘round the world.

Character, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Hiking and outdoor beauty, Spiritual Well Being

Golden Rule Hiking

May 6, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

I don’t often read or quote the Bible anymore, but verses learned at a young age, like any other classic recitation, frequently pop into my mind unbidden to inform and motivate.

“Every place where you set your foot will be yours!”(Deuteronomy 12:24)

“I will give you every place where you set your foot.” (Joshua 1:3)

These words have pushed me to get out every day, to hike harder, farther – to persevere and claim.

My name is not Abraham or Moses or Joshua and though I would love to own a little postage stamp of this land (and my own four walls), I am perfectly aware this land has been deeded to someone else for decades.

But the health that rises up to meet me on the trail, the whole health; mind, soul, body? That I claim. And the beauty? All of it is given me-every place I set my foot. All is mine. Each and every gift of the hike. The gifts of putting one foot in front of another are numerous:

Inspiration

Insight into myself, and to others

Perseverance

Peace

Balance

Dopamine, Endorphins, Serotonin

Empathy

Independence

Resolution

Application

Stamina

Perspective

These are gifts the trail gives to me, and I must walk the length and breadth to claim the gifts. The best gifts are to be coveted, not out of greed, but out of wanting well; and if you are going to do to others as you would be done to and love your neighbor as you love yourself, shouldn’t you be about the business of loving yourself – taking care of yourself as much as you possibly can? Go ahead. Raise the bar. Claim your gifts from the trail.

This Land Is Your Land

Family, Hiking and outdoor beauty, Metaphor

Sounds of the Trail

May 3, 2020 Cherry 1 Comment

Did you know that an oriole hopping about in bushes and leaves makes about the same amount of noise as three does standing together and fidgeting in the underbrush? Recently, I found this out for myself on two consecutive days. The first day, I slowed my pace and looked about for the rustling, hoping it was not a skulking bobcat or spraying skunk. A relatively small bird was making the most of grubs and caterpillars with gusto ten feet to my right. It ignored me. Next day I heard what I identified as the same noise ten feet to my left. Expecting to see yet another avian variety, instead I spied three deer ladies, posed and staring inquiringly back at me. “Please don’t stampede,” I said under my breath.

Yes, I rely on, and am grateful to retain, my auditory sense. Hearing once kept me from stepping closer to a rattler braided into a yucca bush. Usually I can hear elk or big horn before I see them and avoid collision. A spinning sprocket has its own individual voice and I can frequently tell whether it is fore or aft and find a rock or wide space to cling to before I hear the startled operator croak, “on your left.”

But the wind? The wind changes everything. Are the trees going to fall on me? Or is that creaking and groaning actually a derailleur changing gears? The pines and juniper make me skittish. Yesterday I was out of the woods, and in the gambles oak and sage brush when I heard the fast approach of a cyclist who clearly needed to oil his chain. I jumped into the grass and yucca and turned to see a wizened oak leaf, dried into a gnarled fist shape, driven by the wind – rasping all the way – chasing me down the dirt path.

Some days are becalmed but for my forward tread. Not a breeze. Lizards and snakes soundless, unnoticed unless you see them. On one such day I hiked a familiar trail. Taking a right turn at a fork I thought to myself, “Private property up ahead, I’ll just walk to the sign and then turn back.” Suddenly. Noiseless. There in the willows. As surprised and curious at my silent approach as I was by hers; a doe.

Character, co-dependence, Emotional Health, Health and Long Life, Metaphor, Music and Theatre, Poetry and Prose, Spiritual Well Being

Herewith, I lay these heroes to rest

May 1, 2020 Cherry Leave a comment

Quarantunes #7

They say, no matter how multilingual one is, in times of stress, we return to our native language. There was much that was lost during COVID-19; but there was also much that was gained. I found freedom of expression in a return to my creative languages. I have learned to share again through music and words via technology. There has been time for reflection on my past – and time to ponder how much of that past I want to take into my future. Welcome to May, 2020! As we begin to come out of our isolation cocoons and venture back into our new normal; this week instead of a piano snippet; I present you an original reading, “I Saw My Hero Fall.”

I SAW MY HERO FALL

I saw my hero fall before my eyes

Gut-wrenched I was because for moment’s pause

I thought utopia had finally come

He was so handsome – understanding – wise

I saw my hero lying on the bed,

his arms entwined; with those of someone else

And though he never ceased to lavish me,

I could not acquiesce – be one of three,

To me, who once treasured his hero heart;

Dead. He is only a man after all.

I found my hero slow to act when back

To back with hardship shared, he shut me out

And I was left in cold and stone, to make

A home for me alone, from sticks and straw

That I myself had faithfully gathered

From the common man, I expect failure,

Not from men to whom I swear my fealty

From the riff raff, I endure rejection

But not from those entrusted with my heart.

I saw my hero fall, beside the desk

A massive falsehood swirling in his head

He had forgotten who he was, who I

Sideswiped by multitude mutinous lies,

Karma of ruthlessness returned to haunt,

And that is why I’m shy of any man,

who trumps my hand at brains, brawn, heart or lust;

I saw my hero fall, and I can trust

In mere men, no more, when gods are needed