Good morning! It is an especially good Monday because Art got our taxes done yesterday. We owe the Feds a lot due to my first full year receiving Social Security benefits.
Just dawned on me today that it’s almost “tax season.” 😦
Nice story today on singer Roberta Flack who died at the age of 88. I remember we’d sing her hit song while working in the Sears snack bar.
~ … Roberta Flack was born on Feb. 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, N.C, and moved to Arlington, Va., in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, as a young child. Sitting on her mother Irene’s lap while Irene played piano and organ at their Methodist church, Flack began to tinker herself, then to properly play, demonstrating a prodigy-grade prowess as a young child that those around her clambered to support.
A Sunday-school teacher paid for Flack to take lessons. Flack’s father, Laron, brought home a ramshackle upright piano from a junkyard, which the family restored and painted green. By age 9, Flack was playing Chopin nocturnes, crying at the keyboard because the music moved her so powerfully. At 13, she accompanied her church’s choir on Handel’s “Messiah.” “I was not scared or embarrassed or hesitant at all,” she told a British broadcaster in 2014. “All you had to do was say, ‘Roberta, play.’ And I’d play.” …
… “One of the hassles of being a black female musician,” she told Time in 1975, “is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul. I’m a serious artist. I feel a kinship with people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. If I can’t play Bartók when I want to play Bartók, then nothing else matters.”
At age 15, Flack went to Howard University on a full scholarship to study music. Though she excelled there, a dean advised her to go into teaching, given the dearth of opportunity for Black women in opera and classical music. In 1959, she took a job at a segregated school in rural North Carolina, then transferred to a school in Washington, D.C. …
… Flack’s debut album appeared in 1969. Titled “First Take,” it was recorded in only 10 hours. There was so much music built up inside the woman; all she needed was for someone to put a microphone in front of her and press record. ..
.. The album didn’t cut through commercially at first. But two years later, in 1971, Flack caught her break. While driving on a Los Angeles freeway, Clint Eastwood heard an overlooked track from “First Take” on the radio—”The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”—and knew immediately he’d found the score for a climactic montage scene in his coming directorial debut, “Play Misty for Me.”
Flack’s rendition of the song, penned by British folk singer Ewan MacColl, was nearly 5½ minutes long—so unhurried and contemplative that it sounded almost prayerful. Flack had insisted on recording it at a shockingly slow tempo—“deathly slow,” she once called it—over the objection of her producer. The result dripped with emotion, with wistfulness.
The movie elevated the song and Flack’s career along with it; within a year of the film’s release, she was one of the biggest acts in music, headlining the Newport in New York Jazz Festival at Yankee Stadium. In 1973, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” won a Grammy for Record of the Year. …
~ Clint Hill, Who Sprang to Kennedys’ Side as Shots Were Fired, Dies at 93
The Secret Service agent leaped onto President John F. Kennedy’s limousine in Dallas in 1963. Hill was credited with saving Jacqueline Kennedy’s life, but was haunted by his inability to save her husband. ~
So far this season, we’ve been invited to three weddings.
All asked for money as gifts, not actual gifts.
Two couples are in their thirties and are buyings houses, the third couple are 18 and 20 year-old missionaries going to a Central American country and therefore told us point black they’d return any gifts given for cash. (This was a card in the wedding invitation).
Okay, I get it. Sort of. (Why don’t they want their grandmothers’ china?), but how much?
Oh, the wedding gift conundrum. I never know how much to gift. We tend to give a gift card to Canadian Tire – that way they can get appliances, dishes, or yard tools, or other tools, pet supplies, etc. I feel that is a practical gift. But the amount…no clue?
Wandering Views 
Good morning! It is an especially good Monday because Art got our taxes done yesterday. We owe the Feds a lot due to my first full year receiving Social Security benefits.
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Thinking of Chas and wondering what he’d have to say about how things are going in the USA today.
Maybe I will have some Cheerios and coffee . . .
I feel so blessed to have gone to see him with Art and Jo in his home while Elvera was still able to go out for lunch. God is so good!
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amen
jo
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Good morning, all. A beautiful day here. But brother leaves today. He has had. Good view of how dad is doing.
mumsee
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I am sure, Mumsee, that your brother loved seeing how your dad is thriving under your good care!
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53 degrees and snow is melting!
Dropped off lots of stuff to Goodwill. Spring cleaning! Stopped in at Sam’s got gas in the car and now taking a break.
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Just dawned on me today that it’s almost “tax season.” 😦
Nice story today on singer Roberta Flack who died at the age of 88. I remember we’d sing her hit song while working in the Sears snack bar.
~ … Roberta Flack was born on Feb. 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, N.C, and moved to Arlington, Va., in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, as a young child. Sitting on her mother Irene’s lap while Irene played piano and organ at their Methodist church, Flack began to tinker herself, then to properly play, demonstrating a prodigy-grade prowess as a young child that those around her clambered to support.
A Sunday-school teacher paid for Flack to take lessons. Flack’s father, Laron, brought home a ramshackle upright piano from a junkyard, which the family restored and painted green. By age 9, Flack was playing Chopin nocturnes, crying at the keyboard because the music moved her so powerfully. At 13, she accompanied her church’s choir on Handel’s “Messiah.” “I was not scared or embarrassed or hesitant at all,” she told a British broadcaster in 2014. “All you had to do was say, ‘Roberta, play.’ And I’d play.” …
… “One of the hassles of being a black female musician,” she told Time in 1975, “is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul. I’m a serious artist. I feel a kinship with people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. If I can’t play Bartók when I want to play Bartók, then nothing else matters.”
At age 15, Flack went to Howard University on a full scholarship to study music. Though she excelled there, a dean advised her to go into teaching, given the dearth of opportunity for Black women in opera and classical music. In 1959, she took a job at a segregated school in rural North Carolina, then transferred to a school in Washington, D.C. …
… Flack’s debut album appeared in 1969. Titled “First Take,” it was recorded in only 10 hours. There was so much music built up inside the woman; all she needed was for someone to put a microphone in front of her and press record. ..
.. The album didn’t cut through commercially at first. But two years later, in 1971, Flack caught her break. While driving on a Los Angeles freeway, Clint Eastwood heard an overlooked track from “First Take” on the radio—”The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”—and knew immediately he’d found the score for a climactic montage scene in his coming directorial debut, “Play Misty for Me.”
Flack’s rendition of the song, penned by British folk singer Ewan MacColl, was nearly 5½ minutes long—so unhurried and contemplative that it sounded almost prayerful. Flack had insisted on recording it at a shockingly slow tempo—“deathly slow,” she once called it—over the objection of her producer. The result dripped with emotion, with wistfulness.
The movie elevated the song and Flack’s career along with it; within a year of the film’s release, she was one of the biggest acts in music, headlining the Newport in New York Jazz Festival at Yankee Stadium. In 1973, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” won a Grammy for Record of the Year. …
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/roberta-flack-who-won-back-to-back-grammys-for-record-of-the-year-dies-at-88-fa6903aa?st=ZwzuuS&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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And while I’m on obituaries …
~ Clint Hill, Who Sprang to Kennedys’ Side as Shots Were Fired, Dies at 93
The Secret Service agent leaped onto President John F. Kennedy’s limousine in Dallas in 1963. Hill was credited with saving Jacqueline Kennedy’s life, but was haunted by his inability to save her husband. ~
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So far this season, we’ve been invited to three weddings.
All asked for money as gifts, not actual gifts.
Two couples are in their thirties and are buyings houses, the third couple are 18 and 20 year-old missionaries going to a Central American country and therefore told us point black they’d return any gifts given for cash. (This was a card in the wedding invitation).
Okay, I get it. Sort of. (Why don’t they want their grandmothers’ china?), but how much?
Suggestions?
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Oh, the wedding gift conundrum. I never know how much to gift. We tend to give a gift card to Canadian Tire – that way they can get appliances, dishes, or yard tools, or other tools, pet supplies, etc. I feel that is a practical gift. But the amount…no clue?
LikeLiked by 1 person