Being Inspired By Others ................Riccardo Muti

Thank you Judith for letting me share this! Please check out Judith's wonderful blog.
Judith writes beautifully and is a trained musician as well as a lover of music.
She is an inspiring gal and I appreciate having the opportunity to meet her through this
blogging community.

I would enjoy hearing your impressions of this music.



Beauty and Music......What feelings are inspired in you the listener?

Your thoughts and ideas are invited and welcome here.



Intermezzo from the opera, Cavalleria Rusticana, by Pietro Mascagni
Conducted by the great Riccardo Muti

Delivering the Unexpected with Style and Grace...Susan Boyle

Click Here.



Yes Virginia dreams do come true. By now, I suspect that you have heard about Susan Boyle
and the 20,000,000 plus views her youtube video has received since last Saturday. Jo , of Majority of Two, has a similiar post and I would expect posts are crossing with bloggers everywhere.

Susan, a middle-aged never been kissed unemployed church volunteer from an impressive family of musical talent has delivered the unexpected. Susan has the voice of an angel and an incredible musical range of talent.

Without a doubt the listener can see she is a talented singer . Susan was gracious in the face of judge and audience reactions that almost amounted to sneers for her physical appearance that did not jive with expectations.

Susan's success is rewarding to my mentality of God Bless the Underdog!
I love Horatio Alger type stories where people succeed, in spite of adversity, to achieve their dreams. I applaud situations where a person exceeds expectations in spite of all odds.

Have you watched the video? I invite your reactions and your thoughts on what are the messages for each of us in this phenomena. I have watched the video 10 or 12 times and spent the first several times in tears.

It is not just the beauty of the performance. That is evident. It is the beauty of being real. I salute Susan for being who she is and allowing her talent to shine through and apparently not feeling the urgency for a beauty make over in order to do it.

It is the reminder that in our youth obsessed society realness can in evidence without apology. I do not mean that I in any way object to anyone putting themselves forward in the best light they see fit. I support every individual's right to do so. I do find it sad and limiting when anyone is judged primarily by looks and age.

For me, the tears I experienced in the viewing of this performance are about refusal to give up on dreams. This refusal in spite of life wearing us all down just in the living of it. What are your thoughts, feelings or reactions? You are invited to share whatever touched base with you.

PLAYING FOR CHANGE...Stand by me.

The Playing for Change Community is a group of artists and inspired people
who have come together to connect the world through music. This is a Multi Media Movement created to insprie, connect and bring peace to the world. This is an idea whose time is here.....This video highlights what is similiar about all people and the love and joy in life we are all seeking in spirit.

To check out the website, go here. Let me know your thoughts about this connection and the love and life giving force it inspires towards acceptance and world peace.

How do you see it? As a community of Artists, Writers and Muscians your ideas and thoughts are welcome and invited and deeply appreciated here. My stance is that all persons sharing the earth have the right to life and peace. Thank you for your time and care in sharing.

Happy Easter to everyone and wishes for the spirit of renewal for you and yours that it brings!

MEME.. Influences and Tripping the Light Fantastic with Mary Jane and Sniffles

CatVibe thanks for tagging me for the Meme of 25 Influential things in my life!
I confess. I have been tripping the light fantastic on life's highway. I am just bee-bopping along watching rainbows and checking out new spring candle scents without a great deal of direction and purpose. Truthfully, if left to my own devices, I might mostly live my life this way. Fortunately or not I have influences directing me toward a more active involved lifestyle!

This life dance is fun and a tad addicting and includes things like enjoying buttercups and fresh winds and wishing to be at the ocean. I am doing those small celebrations of Spring that may have taken the place in our lives through the Pagan rituals of the distant past. My kind of dance right now for today..

I say all that to excuse the fact that I am a tad behind of responding to fun requests from favorite bloggers. If I have visited you a bit less, forgive me and put it off to spring fever. Ah well......I am stepping up to the plate this evening. You can always count on me to appear..although at times it will be with a slow hopefully measured waltz rather than an East Coast Swing!

Catherine at Witnessing a World of People and Places has given me this great invite by tagging me for my life influences. So hear goes Catherine. I think that is a great idea!

To be truthful. I am a compulsive reader. I fear I may always have been. I cannot remember a time when I was not. So some of my influences were happenstance because they appeared in front of me and I could not resist the read.


I am one of those people you hear about who must read the backs of cereal boxes, items left on the table and pages of open books. As an adult now, most of the time I am able to be more discrete about this.

I have learned NOT to read over peoples shoulders and to not read while they are talking or sharing scenery with me on day trips.This learning took years of being surprised at family and friends exasperation with me for not taking time to smell the roses . My family learned early on that if there was something they did not want me to read...best to not leave it in my sight.

I have always wanted to be a fairy child sprinkling magic fairy dust with a tinker bell type wand.. This longing has survived through adulthood. One of the primary influences for this was certainly my childhood training where only the good survived by the hardest. A tad bit of fairy dust could definitely come in handy.

Another part of the influence was comic books. My mother briefly worked at a comic book factory where she was able to bring home free comic books. You can guess the outcome with her eldest girl child being a READER.

It did not occur to my rather naive mom that comic books would need a censor so I got an overly wide range of reading material for a second grader. From these opportunities I developed a deep love for science fiction and fantasy and superhero comics that is still with me today.

I definitely got over the interest in horror comic books. Some of the ones I read were pretty horrific. My exposure to those books was at a young age prior to comic book content regulation. I try not to think of those too often. Mom read an article of outrage printed in our local paper about the need for comic book content revision for young children. Much of the variety of my comic book collection disappeared shortly after she read that article. Her theory was definitely better late than never.

It was during this period that I first encountered Mary Jane and Sniffles. Here is a site summary of this much loved and whimsical series. I still love them!

You can visit this site here! Here is info from the site that tells the tale well!

In 1941, when Dell Comics licensed the Warner Brothers cartoon characters, they let a tiny and adorable mouse named Sniffles sneak into the back pages of the first issue. Of course, mice were nothing new to the world of comics and animation, even then. So Sniffles' success hinged on his partnership with a small blonde girl named Mary Jane.

Mary Jane, like many other characters before and since her, possessed the ability to shrink to a fraction of her normal size, in order frolick with Sniffles in a kingdom of living toys.

Craig Chase, the creator of the stories, named the flaxen haired pixie after his wife, Mary Jane. But the girl's method's for shrinking and the quaint little rhymes preceding each resizing effort were purely part of his whimsical imagination.

When the series debuted, Mary Jane sprinkled herself in magic dust and chanted, "Magic sand, magic sand, make me small at my command!" At times, she'd vary her pleas to the powder: "Oh, magic sand upon me fall, and make me very, very small!"

But after eight years or so in print, the magic sand was no longer necessary, and Mary Jane murmured, "First I shut my eyes real tight, then I wish with all my might! Magic words of poof, poof, piffles, make me just as small as Sniffles." And with a cross of her fingers, she'd become miniscule.

While this Dell Comics duo did delve into the TV world during the 1940s, their small screen series wasn't quite as successful as their lengthy print run. They continued to appear between the pages of Dell Comics and Four Color Comics until 1961. The pair occasionally cropped up after that, in the end pages of a Bugs Bunny comic title during the '70s.

Here is my personal list of influences ....including my possible favorite of Mary Jane and Sniffles.
1) Anais Nin--anything she has written including her diaries.
2) Marion Zimmerman Bradley-- love anything she has written but especially the Mists of Avalon
3) Mary Jane and Sniffles, Dell Marvel DC and , Superhero comics in general..
4) Rumi , Rilke
5) Khalil Gibran
6) Kitaro--I can be on cloud nine in a heartbeat with his Morning Prayer.
7) The King James Bible
8) Dance...always.... and nearly any kind.
9) ) Elias DeMohan-Sound ,Color and Vibration System of Personal and Spiritual Growth
10) Carl Jung
11) The Poems of Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney And the writings of Ray Bradbury
(Not in the same category I know but equally well loved)
12) Mary Stewart (The Arthurian series)
13) Children of the Gods
14) Clarissa Pinkola Estes (Running with Wolves)
15) You already know what to do
16) C. S. Lewis
18) William Shakespeare
19) John Bradshaw....On: The Family and numerous other recovery and discovery authors popular in the 1990's
20) Deuter-Visionary Music for Healing and Well Being
21) Desiderata
22) D.H. Lawrence
23) Mrs Foster... My neighbor--An Africian American Woman confined to her bed for years of her adult life and my friend when I was a sixth grader
24) Historical Novels by Frank Yerby that I discovered (because of their informative sexual content) in the sixth grade
25) Dan Millman--The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and others.
26) The Beautiful and Wonderful Yellow Brick Road of the Internet Community. What a gift you are!

I could go on forever....This is enough for today. Thanks for listening! Here are folks I am tagging for their contribution.....The 25 influences they will share. I would like to tag these folks . Check these special bloggers out!

Allison at Keep Calm and Carry On
CathM at Catherine Mark-Besant
Christopher at View from the Northern Wall
DB at Vagabond Journeys
Diane at Coexist
George from LostNights Scribblings
Jesse at The Main Art Blog @ 1968
June Saville at 70 Plus and Still Kickin
Lorenzo at Crowned with Laurels
Shadow from 1 door from Heaven


Courtesy of Ghost Dansing