It took me well into my sixtieth year, but I have gotten past Pooh-Bah-ty!!!

congrats, TEd!!

Now we begin the finger-flexing initiation rights [sic]...

my sixtieth year Gosh, Ted--are you counting elephant years or something? This place has only been here for five years.

COngrats, TEd! And only 80% of the posts contain a pun. Try to keep up.

I'd have attained carpel tunnel status by now, but for being disabled by actually having carpel tunnel. What is the term of rhetoric to describe not being a carpel tunnel because you are a carpel tunnel? [/rolling all threads together into one universal ball]

At last my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song.
At last the skies above are blue
And my heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you.

Show me a rose and I'll
show you a girl named Sam.
Show me a rose or
leave me alone.

-ron (it's quite easy to attain carpal status) o.

http://www.ibras.dk/comedy/marx.htm#Rose

Ooo, Etta James, I love that song Father Steve.

We attended the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra concert a fortnight ago and nobody in the audience minded the singing along because everybody in the audience was singing along. They just don't write 'em like that, anymore.

They just don't write 'em like that, anymore.

Too true. My Dad always had music playing in our home, Glen Miller, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong...so many greats.

When I met Hubby, he was surprised at the variety of my musical tastes - and my son's since he grew up listening to me playing this music.

the variety of my musical tastes

Excellent point, bel.

My children were raised in a house where there was always music, both played by the parents on a variety of instruments and played on the stereo. Because my own interests in music were (and are) eclectic, my kids listened to rock-and-roll, folk, classical, big band, Irish, Brazillian and jazz. It is no surprise to me that they grew up to be people with wide-ranging tastes in music. This is one of the things we did correctly as parents, I think.

The world of music is a smorgasbord and there are lotsa poor suckers out there eating as if they were restricted to just one entree.

there have been studies that show that kids that grow up listening to classical or jazz music are much more likely to have a broad range (and tolerance) of musical tastes. those that grow up listening to only one kind, especially country or rock, tend to stick with that.

Padre, I use the food metaphor with my students. it seems to sink in a bit better that way.

kids that grow up listening to classical or jazz music are much more likely to have a broad range (and tolerance) of musical tastes.

I wonder if this is true of kids that grow up listening to only one kind of classical music or one kind of jazz. And how about kids that grow up listening to a wide range of popular music. Seems like we're comparing apples and citrus fruits.

p'raps the point is that people that listen to classical or jazz don't generally just listen to one kind...

Or, as the lovely AnnaS pointed out over lunch, kids that hear classical or jazz at home hear other kinds of music away from home. Unless you specifically seek them out, you're not as likely to be exposed to classical or jazz away from home.

I've been reading from the collected plays of Charles Ludlam, a camp playwright, director, actor on the New York scene in the 70s and 80s. In "Reverse Psychology," the characters inhale 'RP,' an experimental psych. med. that causes you to become wildly attracted to the person present to whom you would ordinarilly be attracted least. At one point, one of the characters remarks that it is a joy to be liberated from 'the tyranny of my taste.'

Please note that this is not directed at anyone at all, nor am I trying to 'make a point.' Only that I laughed when I read it, the author seemed to be doing more than just being clever -- and it seemed a pro pos.

Speaking of not being exposed to music, there's an amazing story (Good title for a television show) in the Magazine section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune, about a kid who was inspired by the sounds of the old ice cream truck. The memory of that sound stayed with him, through his years in public housing, where gun shots echoed regularly...and when his parents could, they got him a keybord. He taught himself that particular music, and then he started to make some of his own, similar to the Scott Joplin tune he recalled. He did get a couple of cds published, but there was no money in it...but he kept up and kept up, because he really loved ragtime. He has just been awarded the MacArthur Genius Grant: $100,000 a year for 5 years...to do what he loves. When the call came, his heat had been turned off, and the electric company had repeatedly notified him that the light would be shut off. God bless Reginald Robinson! Music is, was, and ever shall be important in my life and in the lives of all I hold dear. >^--^<

> kids that hear classical or jazz at home hear other kinds of music away from home.

or (perish the non-pc, anti post-modern reductionist thought) p'raps those homes just tend to have adults of higher than average intelligence and inquisitiveness who naturally lead their kids to explore the whole musical bounty on offer...

(which I guess is a blathered agreement with Rog, as so often!)

p'raps those homes just tend to have adults of higher than average intelligence and inquisitiveness

Shore is hard sometimes untwisting cause and effeck, ain' it?