Category Archives: Nostalgia

Lyrically Speaking

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in #sitsblogging, Bass player, Inspiration, Me, Music, Nostalgia, Photography, Random Thoughts

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A lifelong fan of music, I have bought and listened to records, tapes, CDs and MP3s for years. My babysitting money used to get spent on vinyl records I picked up at our local eclectic music/record/guitar store, House of Guitars. I have vinyl in the basement with my high school handwriting on it with dates purchased and the amount I spent.

As a teen I sang along, and I danced (in the privacy of my own room) to 60’s and 70’s music. Once I had my first car, I usually had tunes from the 80’s blaring from the radio/cassette deck. I can still hear my mother saying she didn’t understand how I could sing and drive at the same time. She was always terrified I’d be belting out the lyrics and hit someone, I guess. Never happened. Singing was second nature to me.

It never dawned on me that I don’t find or understand the meaning in the lyrics until just recently. For years my husband has quoted song lyrics to me. He memorizes and internalizes songs. They mean something to him. He’d quote a song, and I would smile and say “that’s nice”, but I really didn’t get what he was on about.

My oldest son is a big music fan. As he’s gotten more into music himself, he’s often asked me, “what do they mean by that?” Or “what are they trying to say here?” And it dawned on me that I don’t know. It wasn’t just an obscure lyric. It was me. I don’t decode songs for meaning.

I know the lyrics. I can sing along to songs I used to play 40 years ago. I have them memorized, but I’ve never HEARD what they are saying.

I’ve played songs on the bass that people think are “deep”, but I find them dull and boring because the music is dull and boring. I hear the beat. I don’t hear the message. A great example of this is John Lennon’s Imagine. At holiday time, my guitar teacher had all of her students play this song. I wasn’t interested. I tried to play it in rehearsals, and my mind wandered and I lost my place in the music. It was stiflingly dull. In discussing it with my boss and friend, she couldn’t understand how I didn’t tear up at the meaning and message behind this iconic song. Honestly, I’ve never gotten that song. I thought it was one of Lennon’s worst contributions and it was overplayed.

I did some research online, and I found that there are other people out there who don’t hear the lyrics, just like me. The meaning eludes them, too. One comment I saw suggested that some people are listening to the chord changes and not the words. I hear the bass and the beat and the guitar solos. I also can’t sing along when I play. I’ve read that playing bass and singing at the same time is very hard to do. Bass is all about beat and providing a framework for the song. If I sing, even to songs I know inside out and backwards, I stop playing the bass. My timing disappears, and I find I’m no longer where I should be in the music.

Everyone is going to think that I’m dumb as a box of rocks, but I just started working on Heart’s Barracuda during my lessons. I’ve heard it a million times. I didn’t know the words. So I downloaded it, listened and read the lyrics at the same time. I had no idea this song was about a fish. I thought it was about a ruthless Barracuda-type person. Again, I could sing it, but I didn’t listen to any of the words.

I have loved music for 60 years. I used to listen to 45’s an old record player in my bedroom when I was a toddler. I can remember playing the Coasters Charlie Brown which was released in 1959, the year I was born. I don’t hear any messages in the music, though. I used to ride my rocking horse and bounce along to the music. I hear the rhythm and the beat. That’s it. I love music, but it’s never been poetry to me. I don’t read poetry either for that matter. My mother tried to share her love of poetry with me when I was growing up. I always tried to make it rhyme and got irritated with it. I never got any messages from poetry either.

Perhaps my love of the rhythm and the beat in the music is why I took to bass and not to guitar. I love my bass. I wish I had had the courage to find it sooner, and I guess it doesn’t matter if I hear the lyrics. I just need to keep the beat going.

Season of Sads

19 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in #family, #sitsblogging, Animals, Cats, Family, Ginny, Holidays, Inspiration, Me, Meg and Dash, Nostalgia, Photography, Random Thoughts

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Facebook brought this up yesterday as a memory from a year ago:

And I’ve done nothing but cry ever since. It was to be Ginger’s last Christmas with us, but we didn’t know that at the time. I can see now how scrawny and sick she was.

We don’t have a tree this year because I did the stupid thing in June and brought a kitten and his very young, untamed mother home. Both of them would climb and destroy a tree in seconds.

Here is this year’s tree:

My lone decoration, and yes, Dash chewed on it while I was unrolling it and trying to hang it.

My grandmother used to tell us when she was small the tree was their present. Her parents put it up on Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed. I’d like to do something similar here.

I am thinking now that in Ginger’s honor, I would like to drag out the “real” fake tree for one day only. I’ll put it up early Christmas morning with all unbreakable ornaments. It will get taken down again that evening.

Not a bad way to remember an old friend.

My Resume (Sort-of)

21 Sunday Jul 2019

Posted by in #sitsblogging, Education, Family, Inspiration, Me, Nostalgia, Photography, Random Thoughts, Rochester, Technology

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Looking back on my personal work history it occurred to me yesterday that I’ve been working steadily for 41 years. That’s a long time. I’m old and getting older all the time.

I’m closer now to the end of my working career than I am to the beginning of it. I started work at 19. At the time I was even shyer, and I was a greenhorn in so many ways.

After a couple of temp jobs, I started out at what is now known as CTG. Back then it was called Computer Task Group, and it provided data processing services to other companies. I worked in the office, and over the years there I did a little bit of everything. I started out at the reception desk as a clerk typist when I was 19. CTG was the first place to send me on a business trip. I took my first airplane flight to Chicago, Illinois for a week of training. I also traveled by car for business meetings in Buffalo, New York and Syracuse, New York.

Nine years later after temping briefly at Eastman Kodak, I landed at ICE Communications, an advertising agency. I was an account coordinator to three account executives (salesmen). They sold advertising and the in-house creative staff made the ad campaigns a reality. At ICE I worked my first job with summer hours. We had half days on Fridays. That was nice.

I was laid off for lack of work two and a half years later and after I came home from my honeymoon, I started at Nixon Peabody. New husband, new apartment, and new job. Within a year, new baby, too.

I worked at Nixon, my first law firm, for twelve years. I also had my second baby while working there. I started as a floating secretary with zero legal experience. I was terrified. I floated for maybe two weeks and took a job that opened up in their Human Resources department, something that fit my background much better. I worked in HR for eight years and then when I was feeling burned out, they tossed me a lifeline.

I moved to the Intellectual Property department and became a paralegal. I learned all about patents. This monumental step would secure me my niche. All my working career to that point had been as a generalist, either general secretarial or general HR work. Anyone could have done my job.

Patent work was unique and complex. It requires a strong attention to detail and focus on the minutiae. Everything has to be exact and correct. Learning this skillset was a lifesaver for me. It made me feel special and unique to know something that others did not. Apparently I’m good at it, too. I’ve been doing this type of work now for 22 years.

While at Nixon, I would also travel by airplane again. They sent me to Washington DC for a tour of the US Patent Office, something they did for all IP employees. They also sent me to Tampa, Florida for a week of patent training.

Unfortunately while at Nixon, my youngest son was diagnosed with autism. Work was telling me I needed to spend more time there – stay later and maybe come in on weekends. My heart was telling me my son needed more of me, not less.

When one of the IP attorneys at Nixon decided to open up his own biotechnology startup company, he took one of Nixon’s HR managers (my former boss) with him. A year later, she asked me to come to the startup, too, so my four years as an IP paralegal (and my twelve years at Nixon) came to an end.

It was meant to be because while working for Integrated Nano-Technologies, I was able to flex my schedule and work part-time. I got my son on and off of the school bus every day so I was there for him. I was almost a stay at home mom.

The startup was different. In addition to keeping an eye on the company’s patents, I did everything else. I did accounting, payroll, and I even sat at the front reception desk, something I hadn’t done since I was 19. We wore jeans and sneakers.

Unfortunately as is often the case with startups, they ran out of money. When I was asked if I’d defer my pay, I couldn’t so I left. I was there nine years. Others stayed, and the company is still around today.

While at INT, I went back to college (at age 51) and earned two associates degrees online.

I was unemployed for eight weeks. It was a nice break, and I got to take a deep breath and relax. The world of patents beckoned again, this time with the opportunity to learn trademarks and copyrights, too. I joined my second law firm, working in Intellectual Property, Woods Oviatt Gilman.

WOG is where I still work today. I’ve been there nine years this year (there’s something about that number – nine years at CTG, INT and WOG). WOG is likely where I’ll stay, if I’m lucky, until I retire.

I’ve been fortunate to work at some great places for some good people, and I’ve had long stays at all of them. I can’t complain. I learned something each place I’ve been, and I think I’ve been a decent addition to each place.

Not bad for a shy kid who only ever wanted to be a stay at home Mom.