*Salem was the site of the witch trials of 1692, and because of that has been built into a major tourist destination around both the witch trial history and the rather large Wiccan and pagan community that has made the town theirs in recent years.

They even let me help rase the sails.

More pictures of our lovely evening

Fair warning:

This post is going to be a little bit weird–maybe a lot weird–depending on your perspective. I promise, that this really is useful to me, which is why I’m sharing it. Of course, it may, or may not be useful to you. Please take whatever you find useful and leave the rest.

Monsters???

Here’s the idea:

The most important thing about monsters

Here’s the key

Approaching my monsters

Thanking Your Monsters

Need I say more? Just watch:

I’m not sure whether I should give Havi Brooks credit for pointing this out in her Item! post this week or not.

I think she would appreciate it, so I will. I mean, she does have her own duck after all.

Nathalie Christie is THE tiny soprano. (She calls herself that.)

Natalie Christie - The Tiny Soprano

When presented with a tragedy on the scale of what’s happened in Haiti, or what happened in New Orleans after Katrina or any major disaster, it’s natural to want help. Many of us give money or volunteer our time to help in whatever way we can. This is a terrific thing to do. But some of us are moved to do more. Natalie was moved by what happened in Haiti and by what she saw other bloggers doing — offering something of themselves, of their own work, and donating the proceeds to relief in Haiti.

So Natalie turned to her gift, her art, her voice, and decided to share with us an amazing performance of a song cycle by Samuel Barber. I’d like to encourage every one of you that reads this to go to her blog and click the “buy now” button. Make the $10 donation and download this wonderful recording.

Now, if the term soprano sends chills up your spine, and conjures pictures of a very large woman wearing a horned helmet, let me ask you to set your prejudice aside, and let me assure you that Natalie is not anything like that. She has a truly lovely, lyric tone, and communicates beautifully in what she sings. So even if classical music or opera is not your thing, take a chance, you’ve probably never heard these songs before, sung by anyone, and I think it’s likely that you’ll never have a chance to hear them sung better.

And besides if you’re to make a donation to relief in Haiti, who do you trust more to deliver your $10: your cell phone company, or a professional musician and mother of three.

So do it now, just go to Natalie’s blog, click the “buy now” button, you make your donation through PayPal easily and securely, and be downloading the music in moments.

Thank you, all of you, for participating in this, and thank you Natalie for letting us make a difference through you!

PS — please excuse the somewhat hard-sell in this blog post, this is me, doing what I can do to help the people of Haiti.

Every three minutes there is a new diagnosis of invasive breast cancer.

Every 13 minutes someone dies from breast cancer.

More than 180,000 people, women and men, will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the US this year alone.

This has got to stop!

It’s time for all of us to step up, and do what ever we can to end breast cancer.

This whole train of thought was started a couple of days ago, when I got an e-mail from a dear friend by the name of Andrea Berman. We’ve been friends since college, and she’s a very cool person and a geek to boot. Andrea sent me an e-mail because she has committed to participate in this year’s Avon Walk for Breast  Cancer. She’s going to walk close to 40 miles in a weekend. It’s up to us to support her with our donations.

Please go to her Avon Walk for Breast Cancer personal site and donate whatever you can right now.

But there is more than not that we can do, as connected people on the Internet, we can blog and tweaked and Facebook and stumble and digg and whatever else you can think of to make sure that every one we are connected to knows about this challenge, and the commitment that we are making to help solve it.

Just to provide a little extra incentive, if you make a donation of any amount, and let me know in the comments of this post that you’ve done it, I’ll send you a link to a special meditation video that I’ve created. This 12 minute video uses my Binaural Journeys technology combining binaural beats, binaural drumming, natural sound and music to guide you effortlessly into a state of creative relaxation. The visuals in this program are amazing photographs of spectacular tropical flowers. As the imagery takes you into the miniature world of the flower, the binaural audio track guides you into yourself.

Just remember, the only way to get this video is to make a donation through Andrea’s page, and then let me know about it in the comments here. Of course, this is on the honor system, and there is no need to say how much you’ve given, what’s important is that every one of us give.

It’s amazing for me to think that just over a month ago, November 24, 2009 to be specific, I first started posting regularly on this blog. It feels like forever ago.

I consider myself a pretty technically hip guy, I’ve used all sorts of computers essentially my whole life, from the Apple IIs to early versions of DOS (I first worked on DOS version 1.1) to the many iterations of the MacOS and the endless saga of Windows, not to mention occasional forays into Linux. I did a little bit of web design, mostly to help friends over the years. And there’s always been a list of people for whom I am their unofficial tech support department.

I truly didn’t understand how much another world exists on the web, particularly in social media. As I’ve gotten me into this whole “web presence” thing I have at times felt like I’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole. There’s a whole new language, Pingbacks and TrackBacks and WordPress and inbound links and outbound links and follow links and no follow links and on and on and on…

I’m learning, and having a great time, and meeting so many amazing people who I would’ve never met otherwise. Getting to know all of you through twitter and Facebook and your blogs and your comments here is really wonderful.

So I’m learning, I hope that I never stop learning, not as long as I’m alive. Even though there were times when I feel overwhelmed by it all, it’s expanding my world view, my map and my perception. And all of that is a wonderful thing.

Thank you for being a part of my online world, and joining in the conversation.

I’ve decided to take on a new challenge in 2010. I am challenging myself to be creative in some way, each and every day.

I’m doing this in a way that is slightly formalized.  Recently, I found the blog of Leah Piken Kolidas  – Create Every Day. I found her through http://www.sankofasong.com/blog/ which is also cool.

For the past few years Leah has presented this challenge. It’s a very informal thing, if you want to participate, you sign-up on the Creative Every Day Challenge page on her blog, or not. She provides suggested monthly themes on which you can create, or not. She provides a variety of ways to participate with other folks who are taking the challenge, or not. I think the best thing is, that she makes it very clear that it’s up to each person to decide how they want to participate, to what extent, and how publicly.

Some people may choose to blog every day about their creativity, I am choosing not to. I will post about it from time to time, but certainly not everyday. I actually think that unless writing a blog is a primary creative outlet for you, that posting every day about this challenge doesn’t make a lot of sense. The idea of the challenge, the way Leah describes it, is to do something creative. That may be working on a painting, or piece of music, but it’s just as legitimately cooking dinner, finding a cool way to play with your cat, or anything else that involves creativity. As I think about it, I think I probably am creative every day in one way or another. I do lots of creative stuff.

My goal in participating in this challenge, is to notice my creativity more, to be more mindful, and grateful of what I create. See, I think for many of us, we’re already creative every day in many ways. One of the best ways I know to amplify creative output is to notice the creativity that I’m already engaged in. Once I’m in that headspace of creating, often ideas just flow about lots of things, some related to what I’m doing, others not. So I am choosing in 2010 to honor my creativity by paying more attention to it.

It’s just about dark here in New Hampshire as I write these words. We are beginning the longest night of the year, today is the winter solstice. I’ve always found it fascinating the number of cultures that have stories and festivals that center around this time of year in the coming return of the light.

The Sun Sets - Longest Night of the Year Begins (photo by Wolfgang Staudt)

To me it is extremely significant in the focus in our culture on holidays celebrating light at this time of the year. In my little corner of the world here for most people that’s Christmas, for my family it’s Hanukkah, for others Yule and so many other festivals. Maybe it’s a natural thing that in the time of the year when dark is so pervasive that the celebrations of these festivals tend to focus on expressions of light. The range of these is amazing: the often very secular decorating of houses with spectacular lighting displays, the lighting of the candles or oil in the Hanukkah menorah, the burning of the Yule log and maybe most importantly the gathering of loved ones often around the light of candles or a fire in the fireplace.

Labyrinth of Light - A Solstice Celebration (photo by Itzafineday)

Imagine, living thousands of years ago, long before we had any understanding of why the seasons change, why the days grow longer and shorter. Imagine how frightening it could have been to notice the days getting shorter and shorter and the nights getting longer and longer, and wondering if the process would ever reverse. No wonder, it became a tradition to hold our loved ones close at this time of the year. Even today, when we have little question that tomorrow will begin the lengthening of days towards the summer solstice, we are still drawn together in the dark time of the year, to celebrate with lights.

A gift (photo by Hamed Saber)

I wish you holiday gatherings and celebrations full of light and love!

I have a couple of special treats to share with you for the holidays. My (Jewish) family has always seemed to find it somewhat perplexing that I like Christmas music, in fact I like it rather a lot, though I couldn’t tell you why. So in the holiday spirit I have three things that I want to share, though I must warn you, they are not quite typical.

Happy Christmhaneid (Photo by Frankie Roberto)

My friend David Gallant is an amazing DJ, no, not the kind that plays music at people’s weddings, at least not normally. Dave is a club DJ, the kind of guy will beat match the tempo of each song to the next one and keep the crowd dancing nonstop all night. I have to admit, that while I tremendously admire his skills, modern” dance” music is not my style. However, I’ll make an exception for his “X-mass X-mix.”   Go to his blog and listen to or download this very cool mashup of holiday standards.

Speaking of mashups of a rather different kind, I would like to introduce you to one of my all time favorite pieces of music.   It’s a klezmer arrangement of the standard carol Joy To The World.  Just in case you’re not familiar with it, klezmer music is a style played originally by Eastern European Jews. It tends to be very upbeat, and features a style of clarinet playing which is absolutely unique. Let me point out the (possibly obvious) absurdity of a klezmer arraignment of any sort of CHRISTMAS music, but the Klezmonauts do it amazingly well.  Like I said, this is one of my all time favorite pieces of music.

I’ve saved this third one for last because it’s the one that I suspect you may have seen.  It’s a video of a performance by the a capella group Straight No Chaser of their amazing version of The 12 Days of Christmas.  This video was posted on Youtube in 1996 and since then has been viewed over 10,000,000 times.  It’s another remarkable creation.

Happy holidays – which ever ones you do or do not celebrate – to you and yours!

I feel like it is now time for a complete change of pace. I’m sure that you are reading the title of this post and wondering what in blazes a doowopera could be. Well the only way to really find out is to watch the video below, so do it now you’ll be glad you did.

So why am I posting this? The first reason, and probably the most important is that I absolutely love it. But there’s more to it than that.

I think that this is an incredible piece of work, the singing is technically difficult and done extraordinarily well, it also works so well as a piece of comedy. Often when people try to do cross style musical parody it falls flat because it doesn’t work on its own. In this piece, it’s so successful for me on many levels.

But it also goes a level deeper for me personally. In the last two days I’ve made posts about the massive vandalism of pianos at my alma mater Ithaca College.   This piece connects me to Ithaca in a special way. You see, the Puccini aria O mio babbino caro which forms the basis of this piece is from the opera Gianni Schicchi. As a junior at Ithaca College I was the sound designer for a production of this opera as a part of the theater department’s main stage season. I remember very clearly being in rehearsal  and looking forward to hearing it night after night. To me, this is somehow one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written. I don’t know why, it just is. And to see it transformed through such musical and comedic genius really makes me happy.

What you think of the video? What you think of opera? Please comment below.