![\"\"](\"http:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/blog1.jpg\" "\\"blog1\\"")
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The audience plants their bottoms in chairs before The CC Strummers have a chance to find a landing strip of their own to set up ukulele and stand. It\u2019s an average day of controlled chaos at your average senior center during the holiday season when folks are a little testy and oh-so-eager to find an oasis of\u00a0feel good.<\/em>\u00a0Maybe at the same time.<\/p>\n Here we are, sixty ukulele players arriving early to make jolly, an exhausted maintenance guy scrambling to set up enough chairs for everyone and then there\u2019s that \u201cterritorial thing\u201d we human beings just don\u2019t seem to outgrow. It\u2019s like we pee on a bush and exclaim to the world \u201cthis is mine!\u201d Our enthusiastic audience rushes to the front of the room, lock their butts onto a chair and fasten their imaginary seatbelts. That\u2019s when I realize we have to push the first three rows back. W-a-a-a-y back. Why? Because we have line dancers in the show. They LINE dance. They do not LAP dance, which is where they will end up if we don\u2019t move the audience away. You can imagine how all that “furniture moving” goes over\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n But finally we tune our ukuleles, do our hand exercises and invite the audience to stretch the tendons in their wrists along with us. And they do!<\/p>\n We take a deep breath then launch into\u00a0Jingle Bells<\/em>. Our new U-bass player thrums a nifty \u201cbottom.\u201d Our percussionist with her array of ringers and whistles and shakers adds fun and sparkle to each song and just like that, the audience sings and claps along and dances in the aisles. The very elderly woman to my right who could barely stand in her walker before the show is suddenly swinging her hips like a happy salsa dancer. How quickly things change\u2026<\/p>\n The music, the rhythm, the sheer number of ukuleles creates an energy that builds and swirls around the room. Music gives us a break from our lives\u2014from our troubles and what ails us, from the stories we tell ourselves, from believing we don\u2019t belong or have someone to love, or to love us. We get to watch this glorious transformation unfold before our eyes. In each other and in ourselves.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lore, a friend of The CC Strummers, clamors to the back of the room with her iPhone and captures the entire group singing the clever Tom Lehrer song \u201cHanukah in Santa Monica.\u201d And since Santa Monica is about five miles away, this song is\u00a0almost<\/em>\u00a0a hometown treasure for us.CLICK HERE<\/a>\u00a0to watch the video on YouTube.<\/p>\n So enjoy the pictures and thanks for taking this ride with us, no matter where you live and what you celebrate. Joy is joy! And make some\u00a0happy<\/em>\u00a0in 2015!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Are you wondering \u201chow\u2019d the big Ukulele Holiday Show go and ho ho ho\u2026yo?” The audience plants their bottoms in chairs before The CC Strummers have a chance to find a landing strip of their own to set up ukulele and stand. It\u2019s an average day of controlled chaos at your average senior center during the holiday season when folks are a little testy and oh-so-eager to find an oasis of\u00a0feel good.\u00a0Maybe at the same … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentry"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":2,"label":"blog entry"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Cali Rose","author_link":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/author\/crbauthor\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":2,"name":"blog entry","slug":"blogentry","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":139,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":2,"category_count":139,"category_description":"","cat_name":"blog entry","category_nicename":"blogentry","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/1442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calirose.com\/wackyworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>