Ukulele Music Festival

This past Saturday I went to a Swallow Hill Music sponsored festival in honor of Denver Urban Gardens, at Ruby Hill Park in Denver. I had never been there before, but it is a pretty place with lots of hills and grass.

One of the main events at the festival was a mass ukulele lesson. The organizers were trying to break a record of 851 people playing together, but unfortunately, it didn't happen. It was fun anyway!

I already knew them, and I think the majority of the people there did, too, but we were taught the C, F, and G chords, and then we were able to play and sing King of the Road.

The guy in the red shirt led the lesson. His name is Ukulele Loki.



It was fun. People are so happy and friendly when they have a ukulele in their hands. Ukulele Loki often said, "there's nothing stressful about playing the ukulele," and I think he's right.

Before the lesson a Denver band called Mono Verde played. They refer to their style of music as Latin Reggae, which may seem a little strange, but it is fun to listen to. Here they are:



Also playing a set of music was a guy out of Chicago named Justin Roberts. He does kids music, and by the way people were participating and singing along, he must be pretty popular. It was funny to watch some of the parents who were into it way more than their kids.



I really liked his song about Willy the Whale who Walked on the Water to Weno, Nevada.

The festival ended with concerts by Lucy Kaplansky and Patty Larkin. They each did a set of their own, and then they sang some duets together.



In this picture, Patty is on the left and Lucy the right. They are fantastic and really make me wish I was a professional folk singer/songwriter/guitar player, etc.

Good times!

Welcome, Fall!

TO AUTUMN ~ John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Pizza Puffs!

Confession: I LOVE pizza.

Sometimes I feel like I should have outgrown this by now and moved on to more sophisticated foods, but I haven't and probably never will. I'm hardly think I'm alone though.

Anyway, a couple months ago I cut out a pizza puff recipe from one of Rachel Ray's magazines and finally got around to trying it tonight.

It was super easy to make, and the results were super delicious. Here's the recipe and a photo.

Pepperoni Pizza Puffs
3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup whole milk (I used skim because that's what I had.)
4 oz mozzarella cheese, shredded
4 oz pepperoni, cut into small cubes (I used slices and just quartered them)
pizza sauce

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 24-cup mini-muffin pan.

Whisk together the flour and baking powder; whisk in the milk and egg. Stir in the mozzarella and pepperoni; let stand for 10 minutes.

Stir the batter and fill the muffin cups. Bake until puffed and golden, 20-25 minutes.

Serve with warmed pizza sauce for dipping.



While these were baking, and boy did they smell yummy, I was thinking of all the other ways you could make them. Basically any pizza topping chopped fine could be added to the batter.

They probably make a better appetizer than whole meal, but I didn't have any problem eating them for my supper.

Try them. You'll like.

Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival

A few years ago when I was working as a nanny, I got pretty good (so I sometimes thought) at at drawing with sidewalk chalk. My drawings were mostly limited to bugs and flowers, but I had fun messing around with shading and outlining and things like that.

Yesterday there was a sidewalk chalk art festival at the community college near my house. There, I saw how the pros did things. It was pretty amazing.

It's hard to tell from my pictures, but most of the sidewalk art was probably at least three feet across, maybe more. Most of the artists had been working on their pictures all day, putting in around eight or even more hours into their pictures. For their sake, I'm really glad it didn't rain.

Here are some of my favorites.












The last one of the Norman Rockwell picture was probably the most impressive, even though it was far from finished. Some of the shading and detail in that one was amazing.

So, the next time I have a wide expanse of sidewalk at my disposal, I'm going to get me some chalk and see if I can improve on my past attempts. It's doubtful that I will be any better, but it might will be fun to try.

5 Months, 4 3/4 Classics

Wow. I haven't written about my classic reading in several months. Mostly this is because I got stuck on my April classic and wasn't going to write until I finished it. It's still laying unfinished on my table, hence the 4 3/4 classics in the title of this post.

I've strayed from the original reading list I came up with in January, and I'm not even sure some of the books that I'm calling classics are in the true sense of the word, but this is my game, so I can make up the rules, right?


I started off my reading in April with a bang. A real, bonafide classic, written in 1722 by Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders. The title page of my copy has a subtitle which says the story contains, "The Fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders, etc. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Three-score Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent."

I didn't finish reading this one, so I can't say it with absolute certainty, but I'll wager that that pretty much sums up the book. The first quarter of the book about Moll's childhood and first marriage was interesting, but then it became very dry and repetitive. Moll gets married, something happens to her husband, she takes a lover to support her needs, she has a child out of wedlock and gives the child up, she becomes a thief to support herself, repeat and repeat and repeat again.

Three-fourths of the way through I just kind of stopped reading. I never saw her grow rich and die redeemed. I don't think I missed much. Maybe I'll finish it someday and find out.

May's reading was much more exciting. I read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewiss Carroll. It is very fun, very crazy, definitely not boring or repetitive. I think Alice is really annoying, but the rest of the characters are super fun. As a bonus, there are also lots of fun poems in the book. Someday, I'm going to memorize Jaberwocky, like my sister has. I already know the first line: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves...

For June, I picked up the 1931 Pulitzer Prize winning novel Years of Grace, by Margaret Ayer Barnes. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. It is the story of a Chicago woman, starting at the turn of the century when she is a young school-aged girl and ending when she is in her fifties. It is the story of her life detailing her experiences with her first love, marriage, three children, an "affair", and her later years. I found the plot to be kind of lacking and the first half of the book is a lot better than the second. Toward the end the author tried to put in too many ideas and issues of the day. Progressivism, feminism and divorce played largely, which caused the author to create rather ugly characters that I, as the reader, did not care about. I'm fairly sure it would not be considered for the Pulitzer Prize today.

For July, I read the first book in the Nancy Drew Series: The Secret of the Old Clock, by Carolyn Keene. I had never read a book from the series before, and when I discovered it was written in 1930, I decided it could count it as a classic. Who knew Nancy Drew was that old? I had no idea. Anyhow, it was just about what I expected - a kind of poorly-written, easy to solve, Nancy Drew saves the day mystery, but fun to read none the less. Here's and interesting fact: There was no such author as Carolyn Keene. The books series was written by a series of ghostwriters.

Lastly, I'm counting Tom Stoppard's play Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as my August classic. How I got through college without reading this one is beyond me, but basically it is the story of what goes on behind the scenes of Hamlet with Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, which is pretty much nothing. I didn't really understand the hoopla around this one. Kind of funny, kind of boring, but now I can say I have read it.

So there you have it. 5 months. 4 3/4 classics.

Stay tuned for September's selection.