Announcement

I've had the good fortune to entice my favorite singer, Nancy Hanson, to come perform for my home ward this coming week. It will take place May 7th, Thursday, 6:30 PM on the church East lawn. Friends, family and any who may be interested are invited to come. There's plenty of room. Call me if you need directions. It's sure to be a delightful evening and the price is right - free!

DC

PS Here's a "cast your bread upon the waters" story about Eva Cassidy: http://www.evacassidy.org/eva/graceandeva.htm

I found out from Dr. Laura that Kohls hired Brittney Spears to represent thier junior girl fashions. I was so disgusted I sent them an email expressing said disgust and promising to no longer shop there. Here's part of their reply back to me:

"Ms. Spears is an international celebrity and pop culture icon who embodies the spirit of the Candies brand and personifies the iconic Candies Girl flirty, self confident and stylish. We respect Ms. Spears right to privacy, and her personal life does not reflect the views of Kohls Department Stores.

It is not our intent to offend our customers, and your feedback will be shared with Kohls Executives for future decisions. We value the opinions of all our customers and appreciate you taking the time to contact us. "

What's wrong with those people? I don't think I need to detail the reasons for being annoyed with this campaign. If you need to get up to speed on the tawdry details of Ms Spears life, you can check out Dr. Laura's blog on her website. Maybe if Kohls gets enough public backlash they'll think twice about using her in the future. Meanwhile, I hope everyone who cares about the corrupting of our youth will express their disgust to Kohls and boycott their stores.

LDS Musicians

I believe I'm stepping into a mine field to even take on this subject, so to lead this off, let me just say I'm no expert on LDS musicians and can only give a very limited perspective. This much is certain, there are more LDS musicians out there making great music of all kinds and all genres than I ever imagined. I have to admit in the past to having taking a jaded view of the whole idea of finding great music to my liking among LDS musicians. I have since found out (once again!) how wrong I can be. Again, I can blame my kids for exposing me. It all started with Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band and Peter Breinholt. Those two played at many local events, most notably the Freedom Festival in Provo. They continue to play locally in spite of RS&RB finding a measure of broad popularity including radio air time and making it on the country charts. I also remember seeing Cheri Call at Freedom Festival and I may have also seen Nancy Hanson there but for some reason she didn't really register until I checked out her wonderful cd "Drops In A Bucket" from the library. Those 4 remain high on my list of awareness. They all fit in with my current interest in folk, country and bluegrass. Another great country duo I recently became acquainted with is Joshua Creek. I found a couple more girl singer I like at:

http://music.mormontimes.com/index.php

They are Amy Van Wagenen and Carrie Scott. Amy sings LDS pop and has a very lovely voice. Carrie sings jazzy, bluesy stuff similar to Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. Quite a unique sound. Of course there's also last year's American Idol finalists David Archuleta and Brooke White. Who can deny Achie's great vocals? Unfortunately for me, I don't exactly match his target audience. Brooke White, on the other hand, has the potential to make my top 10. I'm anxiously awaiting her first cd since Idol. I hope it continues in the Carole King, Carly Simon direction she took on the show. As I first said, there are many more artists out there deserving of mention. I wrote about some others around Christmas time. Also some people will probably take me to task for not saying something about the Osmonds, but who doesn't know about them? I want to encourage exploring lesser known talent. With a little research you can find something you'll enjoy. I hope this piques some interest in LDS music. I personally intend to keep my ears open and continue to support my local people.

Dad's Latest

After reading John's funny post I'm almost tempted to make a list. Just a passing thought. I'm sure I won't act on it!

I thought everyone would like to know Kathy's knee replacement went great. She even slept well in the hospital. That's a first. What a blessing. We brought her home yesterday on account of Stonehenge not taking our insurance. We thought she could use some more physical therapy before attempting the stairs in our home. Turns out she did much better than expected. It's weird, but she walks better with crutches than with a walker. Anyway, things are going well. I'm off this week to help her out. Hopefully by next week she won't require my constant help and will be able to get by with Josh and Matt's help.

I'm finally getting around to using the record to MP3 converter the kids got me for Christmas. It works really well for clean records. The simple software that came with it converts the record tracks into Itunes tracks. If you want to use the more sophisticated software that has noise clean up capability, it becomes more complicated. Being the lazy sort, I'm probably not going to mess with the complex stuff for now. Hard to believe it took this long to get Blood Sweat & Tears on my Ipod. If I'm as happy with this as I think I'm going to be, I won't need to purchase one of their cds or download their stuff. My record has all their songs I really like.

Since I've got some time at home I may just post a time or 2 more this week.

Matt the photographer

Here are some photos Matt took. Can you believe 4 posts on the same day? And I thought this blogging would only be an outlet for my take on the world of music. Little did I know.

More snow fun

Another fun day at the football field with a different cast of characters!

Matt and the snowman

We had Josh and Matt over Friday night to endure a little winter camping out in the back yard (an activity they enjoy all year round). Hey, I've accumulated some decent winter camping gear from my years as a Scoutmaster, so why not put it to good use! The funniest thing happened right after they arrived. Di and Wilky had made a rather largish snowman in the back yard. Matt thought it would be a great idea to climb it. He made it to the top and was sitting on the snow man's head when he realized one of the maxims of climbing, it's always easier to go up than to come down. It took him quite a while spinning around on the snow man's head before he found a toe hold to let himself down. Unfortunately I didn't get to my camera quickly enough to capture it so you'll have to let your imagination run. Here's a shot of the snow man. The "arm" lying on the ground is thanks to Matt. Most of the other embelishments had already fallen to the ground due to the thaw since the snow man was built.