Cali Rose | Cali Rose

18 May 2014

“AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU” & YOU & YOU

I have added another song to the pantheon of birthday ditties. As if there aren’t enough, huh. But my song has a couple twists. Astronomy and fire.

Astronomy:

The lyric of my song includes this line: “So your birthday has come. Another spin around the sun.” When my November birthday rolls by I remind myself that the Earth was at this same location on her 365 day orbit around the Sun as last year and the year before that. Give or take. Birthdays are locked into time and space and gravity. And Happy Birthday to Albert Einstein too!

The “Fire” Thing:

I remember hearing, or reading, or dreaming a phrase that went like this: “The more candles on your cake, the brighter your light shines.” Well that is sweet, isn’t it? And hopeful. And probably not true. Except for a precious few who light up a room without candles. But maybe there is some deeper mystery at work here. Something timeless. About us. It is quiet, yet bright as the sun, and has nothing to do with the birthday date stamped on our driver’s license. Please don’t roll your eyes. I’m only a little cuckoo.

Some of our happy CC Strummers smiling for the camera!

Well however one views the ineffable currents that move our lives, singing is fun and so is playing the ukulele and celebrating birthdays. Since we are all hanging out in the same earth orbit, I figure a birthday Shout Out to one is a birthday Shout Out for all. So, Whoo-Hoo!

The CC Strummers and I have been practicing our birthday song for weeks and finally the big VIDEO day arrives. We wear birthday hats and crowns. There are balloons and a Happy Birthday sign I hang on the back wall. Michael, our video & techie dude has set up his wide-angle, high definition camera. There are more CC Strummers these days and we need a bigger camera!

As I am editing the video on my computer, a little thought bubble bursts over my head: Why not wish folks happy birthday in THEIR language too? Using titles and fancy fonts. So I Google “how do you say happy birthday in different languages?” Suddenly I am face to face with a roster of languages that scrolls from north to south. Many are written in alphabets that would make calligraphers swoon. So I copy and paste, copy and paste and voila (French!), my song “And Happy Birthday To You” has taken on an international flair.

bday4 — Clowning around before we video our birthday song.

Of course I am making a bold assumption—that everything on the internet is absolutely correct. Are you laughing? Thai, Indonesian, Korean…they all look Greek to me and I can’t make out the Greek either. So I’m taking a leap of faith here that these phrases really mean “Happy Birthday” and not something like “You can take your birthday and shove it where the sun don’t shine.” Well, that IS kind of astronomical…

You gotta watch the video! CLICK HERE. It’s short, so sweet, “educational” and share-worthy. What would Einstein say? Maybe… “And Happy Birthday To You.”

ccstrummersatsunburst — Here are The CC Strummers in the recording studio where they play and sing on two songs from this CD.

This song is on my newest CD “Smile, Smile, Smile.” Please give the studio version a listen at iTunes, Amazon & CD Baby where all my CD’s and individual songs are available to download & purchase.

Thanks a million everybody!

1 May 2014

PASS IT ON

Lucky me. I get to run in a lot of different circles. The desk calendar that hangs behind my computer is a patchwork of colors and circles and arrows and Post-Its. In three different sizes. Gasp…

One recent Tuesday I aim my car south because my calendar says “Scholarship Reception.” This is one “circle” that is brand new for me. I land at The Japanese Garden on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. For years my father-in-law Jack was a vice-president there and my mother-in-law Connie immersed herself in everything CSULB. She attended the basketball games, theater productions and helped co-found “Women in Philanthropy” which offers scholarships to deserving students. The staff, the students, the community of people who work together to make Cal State Long Beach such a warm and collaborative institution, all of this was the centerpiece of their lives. Connie passed away a few years ago and we lost Jack last winter.

So this year their long-time presence and contributions are being honored with a special scholarship in Connie’s name. I am here to represent the family. The family I married into. Connie was the “good mother” to me, but I didn’t realize it, like in my belly, until she was gone. Why does that happen? That so much of our real connection with each other is obscured in the petty details of the moment that it seems we can only grasp the truth in retrospect? What a great big bummer that is…

susanjeanettecali — From left to right: Susan (Connie’s dear friend), Jeanette and “Shorty” (me).

Folks gather under the tent, perch at the round tables where I meet some of Connie’s friends and Jack’s colleagues. I munch on the spring rolls and marvel at the whole gestalt of it all. A very lovely woman, Jeanette, who will earn her degree in Management Information Systems this year, is Connie’s Memorial Scholarship winner. She works in the “real world” while attending college and values the education she is receiving because nothing has come easy for her. I get to witness the power of “legacy” before my very eyes. If Connie was here, she’d be all aglow.

It’s interesting, the way we talk about “gifts.” As if a gift is a thing. A commodity. Like someone has a “gift” to write a poem or a song or paint a picture that makes you feel something. To grow a garden or a good kid or a new business. To bring out the best in others or to cook a perfect soufflé, to discover a new planet or medicine that cures the awful disease.

Of course what “we do” is important, but “what we are” is the true gift. I keep these wise words of author Natalie Goldberg at the ready, not far from my crazy calendar:

“Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in each other’s presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that other person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps, as if to say, “Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place.” This is how we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.”

14 Feb 2014

ORANGES AND UKULELES

Crazy weather we are having these days? Have you noticed? Are you digging out of snow and ice? Are the temperatures hovering south of zero? Here in California it’s been warm and dry. Scary scary dry. Listening to the news this morning on my clock radio, the in-depth NPR report compared the drought in California’s central valley, the fruit basket for all of us who like to eat, to the Dust Bowl.

All of a sudden the politicians are talking about it. Freeways signs implore us to conserve water because we are in a serious drought. Which makes the oranges I received from a friend (and Mother Earth), an even more poignant and cherished gift.

Tom is one of our ukulele players in The CC Strummers and he makes frequent driving trips to the central valley around Fresno to visit his mother. His 97 year old mother. And her boyfriend… (You go girl!!!) The boyfriend just turned 100 years this month, still rides the tractor and works the family farm. They grow the fruit that we love to eat. Tom was just there with the extended family to celebrate the Big Birthday. The boyfriend got $100 bills as gifts. Not too shabby. He plans to spend them at “the casino.”

The family has a prized orange tree in front of the farmhouse. It was planted 100 years ago, about when the boyfriend was born. The tree is their private reserve and Tom brought me a bag of oranges from this very tree. A la natural and treasured. They are the size of grapefruit and taste like sweet, gooey orange sugar. Just think of everything that makes just one of these oranges possible—a hundred years of sunlight and soil, of people, generations of people, caretaking the tree and each other.

And the water… It’s all there in each bite.

Well, thanks to Tom, I’m getting plenty of Vitamin C this week so I’m feeling fortified for a really fun evening at Dave’s Island Instruments on Friday, February 21, 6:30 to 8:00 P.M. in Lakewood, California. This is a “good vibes” music store that sells not only ukuleles but all things “island-y.” You should see the exotic “drums”! Better yet, you should tappity-tap the exotic drums. Every month Dave and his fellow Island Music lovers invite a “special guest strum-along leader” to do a mini-concert and ukulele workshop. This month I “got tapped” for the job!

Admission is only $5 at the door and there is room for about 30 people. I will bring a handful of charts to share so we can make music together. We’ll talk about creating grooves on the ukulele and pumping some rhythmic intensity in our playing. What fun. Please join us.

Dave’s Island Instruments is located at 4115 Los Coyotes Diagonal, Lakewood, CA 90713. It is near the intersection of Carson and Los Coyotes Diagonal, behind the gasoline station. Lots of free parking. Phone: (562) 706-1719

BYOW! Bring your own water…

1 Feb 2014

A LIFE WELL LIVED

The full-page obituary in the Los Angeles Times reminded readers that up to ten days ago Pete Seeger was chopping wood outside his farmhouse in upstate New York. And then he died. At age 94.

We should all be so lucky.

There is a marvelous Zen saying: “Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water.”

I have no idea what “enlightenment” is or “who” it may happen too, but I am suspicious of Mr. Seeger—that maybe he touched something very mysterious, something beyond the gray matter of his brain and lived his life from that place. It is reflected in the way he moved in the world, the ideas he valued and remained faithful to and the music, ah the music. Can you hum his songs? The ones he wrote or sang right into the national psyche? This Land is Your Land. If I Had A Hammer. Turn Turn Turn. We Shall Overcome. Are they part of the soundtrack of your life?

Pete Seeger showed us that music grows community and heals aching hearts. It gives us a rarified opportunity to experience something enlightening in ourselves. And in others. Music is sound AND silence. And there are untold goodies to be found in both.

caliandbanjo — Gigging a few light years ago…

I love doing my shows and probably got into this biz because I wanted to be noticed and feel special and fortunately I had a knack for singing and playing an instrument. The first gig I remember was at the Veterans Administration Hospital where I played the guitar and sang songs like “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round The Mountain” for the injured vets and encouraged them to sing along. I pulled off this stunt during a lunch break when I was in my first semester of nursing school doing clinical rotation at The VA. It was fun being the “girl singer” in a sprawling ward of men and I got my first glimpse of how a certain song elicits a smile or perhaps gives another a second wind.

That gig changed my life. I realized I liked this singing stuff a whole lot better than giving sponge bathes. I dropped out of nursing school and quit my night-shift job at the local emergency room. Soon I was doing what I love to do–making music–and getting paid for it!

But if you really want a big dose of “happy,” bring a whole bunch of people along on the ride. That way we all get to feel special. Pete Seeger was the living embodiment of this, beckoning and showing us what is possible. What feels right.

He says: “… when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.”

Maybe a few among us reach the mountaintop and catch a glimpse of something that changes us forever. But we have to return to the mess of everyday life. We have to chop wood.

But we can sing too.

thursdayccstrummers — The CC Strummers Thursday Class at the Vets Memorial Building in Culver City, California

I whipped up an arrangement of “If I Had A Hammer” as a tribute to Pete Seeger for the Thursday class of the CC Strummers. We played through it a couple times and are feeling that “Pete Seeger” magic. It’s like taking a little trip to the top of the mountain.

We snagged a video so you can join in and sing along. Click here to watch.

21 Jan 2014

GAB FEST WITH FOOD

It’s not easy making a living as a musician in Los Angeles. Or probably anywhere. In order to bring home the booty we need a reasonable command of our instrument, whatever that instrument is. But there is so much more.

We need bulldog tenacity. Abundant energy helps. And what about all those juicy distractions that seduce us at every turn? Gotta say “no” to them. Over and over again. Because they arrive like a flock of birds.

But if we are lucky we find our “village.” We discover other people who are gliding–or slipping and sliding–down the same road. Or at least on a similar trajectory.

I am talking about “networking” and I’ve been part of a long-standing network of women who play the keyboard for a living. Every year or so we gather the whole bunch of us and catch up on the latest dramas, offer moral support, share news about our new CD or musical or book and oh the gigs–glorious and otherwise. We have among us a jazzer who has been declared a living legend here in Los Angeles and a warrior woman who has taken on the power’s-that-be at the Grammy Awards for dissolving her category of music (Zydeco). We have talented writers, entertainers, teachers, business entrepreneurs. Keyboard players all.

And so it goes one Wednesday when twenty-plus of us pull our chairs around one long table in the food court at the Westfield Mall. There’s sushi to our left, pizza to our right, Vietnamese in front and a whole array of other tummy-warming choices stretching north and south.

I marvel at the conviviality of the whole thing. We are women who work in a field that is highly competitive. The economy has not been kind to artists. Of course we are taking care of ourselves first. That said, one can sense the generosity of spirit that comes through. Like any community, I feel closer to some than others, but that’s okay too because I know how difficult it is to be a woman and a musician in this town and appreciate that we are all working as artists, however that appears and unfolds. We are exploring new paths, reinventing old ones and above all, finding ways to keep doing what we love to do. We know, in our bones, that music is food for the body and heart and soul. Sushi is good, but the right song at the right time can change your life.

The great lyricist, Dorothy Fields, one of the first women to break into the male-bastion of American music, kicked open the door for women songwriters to follow, including the songwriters at our table in the mall. She hit it big in 1928 with her song “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.”

She had to “play” with the big boys and not take their sometimes patronizing and dismissive attitude personally. The “boys” called her the “Fifty-Dollar-A-Night Girl.” I bet Dorothy got a kick out of that and maybe took it as a compliment. In those days, songs had about fifty words. A publisher would give her an assignment to write the lyric for a melody. She’d whip out something amazing that night, bring it back to the publisher the next morning and collect her fifty bucks. She wrote well. And fast.

I think Dorothy was one tough cookie. Today we need to be tough too. But we do have each other.

11 Jan 2014

SHOUT OUTS!

We get into our routines, don’t we? Hubby likes to wake up super early, check his Facebook page and head to the local hole watering here in Culver City for coffee. Sometimes even before the sun comes up. The Roll ‘n Rye is his home away from home and the waitresses take good care of him. Sometimes he’ll report back later with a sterling tidbit about the morning. Like this…

The deli is post-holiday crowded as a little girl emerges from the bathroom with mommy in tow. She throws up her arms and announces, “I just went pee-pee!!!” She’s not holding back, this one. It’s a “shout out” and she might as well be telling the world she just won the lottery.

To tell you the truth, I often feel like doing the same thing since peeing is one of my favorite things to do, and why not share the joy? But alas I surrender to social custom and keep the excitement to myself.

Well, speaking of Shout Outs…

It’s a new year and I’m jumping back into the TEACHING thing… I think with the same gusto as our little “pee-er.”

My four-week workshop “Ukulele For Beginners” begins January 18, 2014, 11:00 to noon at Boulevard Music in Culver City, California. We meet consecutive Saturdays and start at the very beginning. You’ll be singing and playing a song the first day. Here is the flyer with all the shout out info.

Beginning February 15, from 12:30 to 1:30 P.M., I am teaching an ONGOING Ukulele Workshop, also at Boulevard Music. More tips and tunes, chords, strum patterns, finger-picking and nifty tricks on the ukulele. Sign up for four classes as a time. The ukulele is a joy, especially when we play with other people.

The CC Strummers, my ukulele group at the Culver City Senior Center, is a magnet for new players, new friendships and glorious fun. We have grown so much that they moved us to a bigger room. Classes meet twice a week, Mondays, 3:30 to 4:30 P.M. and Thursdays 10:00 to 11:00 A.M. We do rock and roll, swing and country music, Latin flavored songs, Hawaiian gems and songs in five languages. Because we can…

It was standing-room-only at our “Holiday Ukulele Show Spectacular” last month. Click here to see our snazzy version of “Chantilly Lace” on YouTube. It’s one minute of rock n’ roll fun.

I also offer SKYPE UKULELE LESSONS and let me tell you, this is so cool. It feels like we’re in the same room and learning from each other. I love doing this. Lessons are only $30 for an hour. Please email me so we can make arrangements for a lesson. You can use my website to pay via PayPal.

So here’s a toast to the New Year. For all of us. Pee happy!

25 Dec 2013

“HAPPY HAPPY” TO ALL OF YOU!

A few lines from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times caught my eye. Actually it was an obituary, a beautifully written one, for the great actor Peter O’Toole. A man, whom by all appearances, lived very wide. As well as long.

“Once a thing is solidified it stops being a living thing. That’s why I love the theater. It’s the Art of the Moment. I’m in love with ephemera and I hate permanence,” he said.

While most of us check our safety nets every morning lest we fall from the high wire act of the day, he seemed to relish the ever-present potential for disaster. Or exhilaration. Knowing full well those moments come and go… A big theater, this life is, and we, the actors get to play our roles, steal a scene or two, disappear into the story, take a bow. For a while.

And now the winter solstice has come and gone. Barely. So has Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. Christmas and New Years will soon be memories too, melting into the ones that came before.

Of course we want the good things to last. Our love affairs and friendships and families. The great job. We wish each other good health. We want our body parts to keep on going and going just like the Ever-Ready Bunny.

And conversely we want the lousy stuff to go away. And sometimes it does…sometimes it doesn’t. The love affair that goes from good to crazy. The friendship that suddenly changes sides. The toxic aunt who broadcasts bad news like a radio station. The job that sucks the life force from you. The achy knees, allergies, the chronic this or that, the bummer diagnosis. Be gone…

But Peter O’Toole, the actor, had the gumption to honor all that which does NOT last. Which is fleeting. A wise man, indeed, because it does appear that everything is fleeting. And SO precious.

Gotta love this great big ephemeral life! “Happy Happy” to all of you…

25 Nov 2013

HAPPY “TWILIGHT ZONE” THANKSGIVING

The Butterballs are on sale along with spiral cut hams, golden yams, Brussels sprouts and pumpkin pies. Harbingers of the “thank you” holiday ahead. But I know it’s Thanksgiving, for sure, for sure, when I see the commercials for The Twilight Zone Marathon on KTLA. Ah, turkey and terror.

A long time ago, when my parents and I landed in another galaxy far far away—also known as Los Angeles—my father snagged a downstairs “two bedrooms and a den” in an adults-only apartment building. I am coached to act like a “young lady” so the landlord will not regret his decision to offer a one-year lease. I am able to maintain this charade long enough to make it through the probation period. There aren’t any kids on the block anyway so it’s not like I can go all wack-a-doo.

Then she appears. A thin scrappy girl, maybe a year older than me. Her dishwater blond hair hangs straight and scraggly over her shoulders. She is probably twelve years old and has a sort of pre-pubescent Jodie Foster vibe about her, straight out of the movie Taxi Driver.

And she curses. Oh I love that. She made a skateboard. MADE a skateboard. It is basically a board with a set of roller skate wheels screwed strategically in front and back. She named her skateboard “Damn It.” Those old-school metal wheels hiss like fingernails across a chalkboard as she sweeps past me down the alley until she spins out in the dirt. “Damn it!” I hear her wail from afar. I decide this is the coolest thing ever.

One day she tells me her father is Rod Serling. Yes, THAT Rod Serling. I will never know if she was telling me the truth, but why would she make up something like that? But then again, it’s not like we were living in the “high rent” district either. I wanted to believe her.

I also got the impression that things were a little dicey at home. Nothing specific is said, as I recall, but thinking about it now, maybe she had a little too much “alone” time. The memories of our brief friendship haunt me still.

Then there is “Little Girl Lost.” Episode 26 from Season 3 of The Twilight Zone. I saw this show when I was also a little girl lost. And it seared into my bones.

Here’s the quickie story: Little girl hears voices inside the wall of her bedroom. She crawls under her bed and falls through a mysterious portal into another dimension. All she can do is cry out to her daddy for help. Good daddy dives into the opening in the wall, tears through psychedelic blurs and blobs, grabs the little girl and they escape through the mysterious doorway before it closes forever. (Program note: The family dog earns an extra biscuit for bravery too).

Commercial. I start breathing again…

I saw that show light years ago, but to this day, I still cannot look under a bed, or any furniture for that matter, without thinking about the little girl and the doorway to The Twilight Zone. Just last week one of my ukulele students and I are perched on the sofa in the living room, which doubles as my teaching studio. Her yellow pencil topples off the music stand and rolls under the couch. I drop to my knees and reach my hand underneath along the floor… Oh God, there’s the wall… Is it opening up? Do I hear voices? My heart is racing…

The truth is, I have not been sucked into any mysterious portal to another dimension. So far. But then again, some crazy part of me believes this time will be different.

Actually I have been sucked in. By marvelous storytelling. By the work of a genius who understood our collective fears and brought the whole mess of them into the flickering light of day, right there on our television screens. In striking black and white. The truth is I found a little piece of myself in almost every episode.

So when Thanksgiving rolls around, I remember the gutsy girl who showed me how to ride a skateboard and who probably needed a friend as much as I did. I hope she found her way in the flickering light of this world. I remember the Little Girl Lost too. All I have to do is look in the mirror to find her.

And I remember to say “thank you,” every chance I get, “thank you,” for the whole glorious mess of it all.

Happy Thanksgiving.

3 Nov 2013

A SWEET SUNDAY IN HUNTINGTON BEACH

Do you hear this sometimes? Or even say it yourself? “There aren’t enough hours in the day, by golly.” Or “So much to do and so little time.”

Well today is your lucky day! That is if you live in one of the states that slides the clock back one hour to standard time. Around here, in our cozy condo treehouse, I’m using that extra sixty minutes to clear my desk. I mean REALY clear my desk. And then hubby, Craig Brandau, and I are going to rehearse for something pretty darn exciting that happens next Sunday, November 10, 2013: The “Fall for Ukulele” Mini-Festival at Island Bazaar in Huntington Beach, CA (that’s Surf City to the rest of the world).

They have invited us to be part of their first ever festival. Craig and I will be sharing the day with Sarah Maisel who is one hot jazzer and the incomparable Bryan Tolentino who brings his aloha spirit all the way from O’ahu. And Shirley Orlando, the mistress of teaching and owner of this musical oasis of joy, will show us “flutters and flourishes” on the ukulele!

Admission includes workshops all day, a catered lunch, a big fat wonderful ukulele strum along and an evening concert that will be spectacular. Tickets are going fast. If you live in Southern California, or know someone who does, please pass this along.

The ukulele is red hot these days. For so many reasons. Here’s one: It’s called the People’s Instrument. Why? Because almost everyone can learn to play a little and make happy. For themselves AND others.

So, please join us for plenty of “make happy” next Sunday. And don’t forget to make happy today. We get a whole extra hour of it…

1 Nov 2013

HAPPY BIRTHDAY — TO ALL OF US!

halloweenbday4 — (from left to right) Yoshie, June, Betty, Cali, Lucy & Janet

I want to share a great big THANK YOU to my ukulele group, The CC Strummers, with them and with all of you on my elist. Considering the vagaries of life, everyday is a birthday as far as I’m concerned. For me and for you. But isn’t it extra wonderful to share your “birthday” with the people who mean so much to you?

So Thursday is Halloween and I’m all decked out in my hippy threads because I have to dash to Ghost and Goblin gig after class.

halloweenbday1 — Here’s Easy Ed (dressed as an ukulele player from Molokai) and me, Hippy-Chick, celebrating mid-morning Halloween.

Today is also our our Pick-A-Song Grab Bag. Folks call out their favorites from our CC Strummers songbook and we all play them together beginning with “When I’m 64” then “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “They Call the Wind Maria”…

Suddenly Ray, our big Teddy Bear Ray, barrels though the back door excitedly uttering something about something and giving me the distinct impression it’s a fire drill. Or worse, a fire! Do I hear the police helicopter circling? Do we need to duck under the tables and kiss our asses goodbye? (Hey this is earthquake country…)

But then a big beautiful birthday cake appears at the rear of the room and all of you, The CC Strummers, are singing Happy Birthday to me.

AT THE SAME TIME!!! BY EAR!!! YES!!!!!

I’m already a little disoriented, wearing the black wig and dark glasses and playing dress-up and all that, but now I am just plain stunned… Into momentary silence. You have to know that hardly ever happens.

“Come on Cali, blow out the candles.” So I make my way to the back of room and behold this beautiful cake decorated with swirls of icing, sugary pink roses and TWELVE CANDLES. Only 12? Oh thank you! Forever childlike, yes? We ukulele players know THAT. It takes Janet and Lucy and June a few minutes to slice the decadent carrot cake into pieces for everyone to share so we keep right on playing and singing. Because we can…

The folks in The CC Strummers know that I’m a gluten-free babe. They bring me gluten-free recipes and take-out menus from our local restaurants that feature gluten-free dishes. Breads, cakes, cookies are tricky business for those of us who can’t eat wheat flour, but the marvelous Rising Hearts Bakery is located right in the “heart” of Culver City and every morning they bake the most splendid of everything doughy. “Comfort” made delicious. And this Thursday morning, they also bake my special birthday cake. Can you taste it? In your imagination? You wouldn’t dream in a thousand years that it is wheat-free.

halloweenbday5 — My birthday is really Sunday, November 3. But I celebrate ALL YEAR!

How do you adequately say “thank you” in a situation like this? To people like this? For remembering my birthday in the first place, for stealthily passing the big card around for everyone to sign. How did you do that? It feels like whatever words come out of my mouth, they only brush the surface of the gratitude that I feel.

Every once in a while it is amazing how I, how any of us, get from Point A to Point B in such a surprising and elegant way. You see I am a full-time performer but about 3 1/2 years ago I acted on a “it-came-in-the-middle-of-the-night whim,” to begin teaching ukulele at my local senior center. The very next day, an eight week Beginners Class was inked into the Culver City Senior Center calendar. It happened THAT fast.

There were 15 people in that first class and today we have two huge classes every week. Earlier this year The CC Strummers outgrew our original room and we moved to larger digs across the street.. And new folks keep on coming.

It’s the ukulele. The People’s Instrument. In a world where more and more of us are using electronic gadgets to connect with each other, in our classes, we actually do connect with each other. For real. One song at a time.

Alas, these classes are such a joy for me and because of you, The CC Strummers, I am becoming a better teacher (and student). Because we are all teachers AND beginners… At something.

I am SO lucky to have all of you in my life. Thank You!

tracyandcali — Here’s Activity Director, Tracy and me, at my Halloween gig (Vintage of Cerritos Retirement Home). Go “Sixties!” Peace…

22 Oct 2013

FLY FLY! STAY STAY!

During one of our many ”let’s-explore-LA” driving trips, my parents and I inched past the backlot of MGM Studios. From the street it looked like a western scene with California chaparral hugging the ground and groves of eucalyptus and oak trees set against the mid-size urban mountains. In the midst of all this “nature” and mélange of desert colors I saw a tall, long painted backdrop of a bright blue sky. “Maybe they are filming a western today,” my father opined.

It was very exciting for me to see this. Like being in Hollywood. Except we weren’t in Hollywood. We were in Culver City. And little did I know that many years later I would actually live on this wedge of earth where they used to make movies.

Way back when, when MGM needed to sell off some their assets, they also sold this land. To a developer. Thankfully whomever “developed” our collection of buildings had the foresight to VALUE green space. AND old trees. AND the lake. Yes, we have a lake. A big ‘ol lake. Supposedly Johnny Weissmuller swam in “our” lake when he filmed his Tarzan flicks and that “Old Man River” was really “our” lake in the movie Showboat.

lot3mgm001.jpg.w560h443 — MGM’s Backlot #3 (from MGM History)
http://mgmhistory.tripod.com

Well, speaking of the lake… Yesterday morning, I heard a ruckus of honking and hooting outside. This is not all that surprising really, because urban living is urban living and couldn’t we all write a book about the sounds our neighbors make?

But this was a little off the bell curve so I poked my head over the balcony railing to check it out. By then the cacophony had stopped and I didn’t see what it was or where it was coming from. So I wrote the whole thing off to “ducks.”

Mating.

We share our MGM lake with a flotilla of ducks. This is their home too, year-round. It’s really quite sweet until mating season. Let me tell you, duck mating season is not pretty, especially if you are a girl duck. There is nothing erotic or even joyful about the whole prolonged process. It’s loud and mean spirited, at least from my anthropomorphic point of view. Suffice it to say, if you happen to believe in reincarnation, just hope you don’t come back as a lady duck.

So I wrote off all the hooting and hollering to them ducks and went on my way. Except word spread quickly, neighbor to neighbor, and people dropped what they were doing and charged to the lake. To see the most unexpected and elegant sight.

Forty Canadian Geese had just arrived. With accompanying fanfare. Our lake is an official flyway for migrating birds so we might get one or two representatives of some exotic species dropping in for a few days, but never forty of them. All at once.

Well this kind of event messes with the established hierarchy in the lake. The turtles poke their heads above water, twirl around and quickly disappear. I can only guess that the fish are also hugging the muddy bottom. The ducks are a flutter and heaving together at one end of the long lake as the geese settle in at the other and assess the territory as only wild things can. They quickly find food. Grass. And they are unusually fearless and friendly as humans approach with small children and cell phone cameras. They are big, like turkeys, and when they bob up and down in the water, en masse, somehow they all face the same direction. And shift direction. Together.

geese1 — All geese pictures by Christina E.W.

I think human beings do this too, although many would not cop to it.

The folks around here say the geese are on their way to Mexico and taking a little siesta before they continue south. I wonder to myself why they don’t just stay. It’s okay. We’re “south” enough and have experience with that mating stuff around here and can live with it. As long as we can take pictures. And maybe there’s room in the Homeowners Association Landscaping Budget for extra grass…

But Mother Nature always wins and these beautiful creatures are moved by some deep, primal force. So are we, but I think the distractions of life get in the way of feeling that stuff. But watching this “National Geographic” scene unfold, quite literally, in my communal backyard, is a reminder to me of the mysterious and grand “something” that really moves us.

And soon the geese will be gone.

It’s a crazy coincidence but right now, today, I’m reading a delicious novel by Richard Ford. It’s called “Canada.” The second half of the book unfolds in the desolate plains of Saskatchewan during hunting season when Canadian geese fly through on their way to, say, Culver City…

And suddenly forty of them actually land HERE. In “real life.” Fiction meets non-fiction. Yeah, yeah. I guess it all depends on your point of view…

geese3 — Food and Beverage & Entertainment for our visiting geese.

5 Oct 2013

ATTENTION LATE BLOOMERS

When you love to do something, keep on doing it. If you can. No matter what they say. Or don’t say. I can’t tell you how many body blows I’ve taken over the years just doing what I do. Making music. Or how many times I’ve heard my mother’s I-told-you-so-voice in my head scolding me “you should have stayed in nursing school” when I got fired from a gig or didn’t get the audition, or whatever. Somehow I kept going anyway and in the process put in my first 10,000 hours of practice. Singing. Playing an instrument. Telling a story, a joke, heckling a heckler.

You see, when I first started out I was so scared to sing in front of people or talk or stand up without falling over, that I would throw-up before a performance. Slowly that turned into plain old pre-show nausea, which is a vast improvement over hurling. But for too long I am still a deer in headlights and plenty sure I am going to get mowed down by something or someone.

Really it is amazing that I hung in there at all, considering… My singing teacher was befuddled by the terror that struck me before a performance. “You’re there to express, not impress,” she would say. “Do you love music? Then share that.” It all sounded like a bunch of Hallmark card hooey to me. At the time. But she was a smart teacher, a gardener of sorts. She planted seeds.

And I’m lucky because somehow those seeds got watered, apparently when I wasn’t looking, because today, finally, I really enjoy performing and am not astral-projecting out of my body when everyone is staring at me.

What’s the cause of this metamorphosis? Everything. And everybody. Everyone I have encountered or brought into thought. Talk about “connection.” And maybe growing up a little has helped too. Not taking things quite so personally, or seriously, and realizing how quickly this life passes anyway. Poof. Whatever I did this morning already feels like a dream. So I play a song, give it my all, then let it go and move on.

I am pleased to report that there is no nausea (or worse) before my CD Release Party and Concert last Sunday. In fact I am thrilled to be there. To share what I love…making music. I am thrilled that folks have purchased tickets to breathe the same air together for two hours. To laugh and sing along and that hubby joins me on a few songs, adding a bit of sass and class. I am thrilled that it’s a full house and I get to be the “singer-songwriter” for an evening and perform my own tunes.

Then let it go.

And thanks to all of you!

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Speaking of moving on… Here’s a note to the SoCal locals (and locals at heart).

Starting Saturday, October 19, 2013, from 11 to noon, in Culver City, California, I am teaching Ukulele for Beginners, a four-week workshop that gets you playing and loving the ukulele.

So you say you can’t carry a tune. That your fingers are too big. Or too small. You think a “beat” has something to do with some dead poet. You’ve never played a musical instrument because your “favorite” aunt said you have no talent for that sort of thing… Well screw that. The ukulele beckons. Almost everyone can learn this humble, joyful instrument and make music. There is precious little in this world that is more wonderful.

Here’s the flyer. So fly over to Boulevard Music and join the ukulele revolution!

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Author Archives: Cali Rose

Astronomy:

The “Fire” Thing: