Wail: one bar that changed musical history

"The Rhapsody was performed by Whiteman's band, with an added section of string players, and George Gershwin on piano. Gershwin decided to keep his options open as to when Whiteman would bring in the orchestra and he did not write down one of the pages for solo piano, with only the words "Wait for nod" scrawled by Grofé on the band score. Gershwin improvised some of what he was playing, and he did not write out the piano part until after the performance, so it is unknown exactly how the original Rhapsody sounded.

The opening clarinet glissando came into being during rehearsal when; "... as a joke on Gershwin, [Ross] Gorman (Whiteman's virtuoso clarinettist) played the opening measure with a noticeable glissando, adding what he considered a humorous touch to the passage. Reacting favourably to Gorman's whimsy, Gershwin asked him to perform the opening measure that way at the concert and to add as much of a 'wail' as possible."

The Disposal Genie: stick your hand right in there

Vitamix FAIL on LIVE TV

Part Five

This CANNOT be true - no no no no no no NO

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What is Death Cafe?

At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death.

Our objective is 'to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives'.

A Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session.

Our Death Cafes are always offered:

- On a not for profit basis

- In an accessible, respectful and confidential space

- With no intention of leading people to any conclusion, product or course of action

- Alongside refreshing drinks and nourishing food – and cake!

If you're interested in holding a Death Cafe please see our how-to guide.





Death Cafe is a 'social franchise'. This means that people who sign up to our guide and principles can use the name Death Cafe, post events to this website and talk to the press as an affiliate of Death Cafe.

Death Cafes have spread quickly across Europe, North America and Australasia. As of today, we have offered 2653 Death Cafes since September 2011. If 10 people came to each one that would be 26530 participants. We've established both that there are people who are keen to talk about death and that many are passionate enough to organise their own Death Cafe.

The Death Cafe model was developed by Jon Underwood and Sue Barsky Reid, based on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz.

Death Cafe has no staff and is run on a voluntary basis by Jon Underwood in Hackney, East London. Also Lizzy Miles who ran the first Death Cafe in the U.S. and Megan Mooney who runs the Death Cafe Facebook page have played a significant role in Death Cafe's development.

We remain energised by the amazing quality of the dialogue at our events and are overwhelmed by the interest we have received.

People often ask why we doing this. Everyone has their own reasons for getting involved in Death Cafe. In the video below, Death Cafe Portland organiser Kate Brassington gives hers.

Our History

In 2010 Jon Underwood decided to develop a series of projects about death one of which was to focus on talking about death. In November Jon read about the work of Bernard Crettaz in the Independent newspaper. Inspired by Bernard's work, Jon immediately decided to use similar model for his own project, and Death Cafe was born.




Bernard Crettaz

The first Death Cafe in the UK was offered in Jon's house in Hackney, East London in September 2011. It was facilitated by pychotherapist Sue Barsky Reid, Jon's mum. It was a wonderful occasion. We went on to offer Death Cafes in a range of places including funky cafes, people's houses, cemeteries, a yurt and the Royal Festival Hall.

Jon and Sue Barsky Reid produced a guide to running your own Death Cafe, based around the methodology Sue developed. This was published in Feb. 2012 and first person to pick it up outside of the UK was Lizzy Miles in Columbus, Ohio. Subsequently hundreds of people have worked with us to provide Death Cafes across the globe.

Death Cafe has received some lovely media coverage including:

- Death Be Not Decaffeinated: Over Cup, Groups Face Taboo New York Times (front page!)

- Death Cafes Breathe Life Into Conversations About Dying NPR

- The death cafe movement: Tea and mortality Independent

- 'Death cafes' normalize a difficult, not morbid, topic USA Today

We are currently working to establish a real Death Cafe in London. Read more.

Death Cafe is also:
- On Facebook: facebook.com/deathcafe
- On Twitter: @deathcafe

Shout outs

Many thanks to:

Sean Legassick of Datamage who hosts the Death Cafe website for free

Phil Cooper of Petit Mal who designed the Death Cafe logo.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. This cannot be true! Perhaps it's an elaborate internet hoax. But here it is. My jaw literally dropped when I saw it. It's one of those, "well, hey, why not?" things, one of those "let's break the final taboo" things - I guess. But I wonder if people come covered in black skull tattoos and all-over flesh piercings, with Megadeath tshirts. Or pictures of Edgar Allan Poe. I wonder if they sit around in graveyards at night, spooking each other out or howling at the moon.

These are, of course, stereotypes. The only time we do "death trips" is at Halloween. Normally, when someone actually dies, it's pretty sanitized. We use terms like "passed away" or "passed on" or sometimes, as in grade school, "passed".

So is this bad or what? Is it "healthy" rather than "unhealthy"? I don't know, but I will admit my very first uncensored reaction to this site was to be shocked, offended, angry, a little queasy, and thinking "this is a whole new low in bad taste". 

It's not the fact that the subject is death. I believe we need to engage with the reality of it much more deeply than we do. It's the fact that this looks like a strainingly artificial attempt to be "cool" about it. I'm not sure why this is - maybe the breezy, oh-so-normal tone of the site, which made me shake my head and think it was a parody of something-or-other - but I get this strange feeling my strong personal reaction to it would be seen as uncool or even pitiable. "You obviously carry a lot of unresolved grief. Here, let me show you how to process it so that you may at last lead a healthy and productive life." 

Any group of humans contains know-it-alls, often cruel ones, and this group does not seem to have any official leadership. Thus the wounded could end up even more wounded. Then again, I am not sure emotion is encouraged in this sort of group, since the site with its skull-emblazoned china cups and black graveyard cakes seems (ironically) creepy and devoid of affect.

I find it hard to even look at this page, though I am trying to read as much of it as I can before dissing it. Maybe it's just the way the information is presented, as if they're getting together to discuss orchid species or dog breeds. This gives me the feeling that you may well have to keep grief out of it and keep the conversation on the lighter side, or at least philosophical rather than experiential. It surely does not strike me as a support group. So how do they screen out the bereaved, who may have a desperate need to talk about their feelings?

Death has swallowed some of my nearest and dearest, sucked them into the void from whence no one ever returns. Some of them have been suicides. Is this really drawing room conversation, do you think? Do these people think a combination of irony and detachment can somehow keep the horror away?

Dying is no tea party, people. It is an abyss, and no one comes back from it. It leaves a mark on one's life forever. The death of loved ones is far more brutalizing to contemplate than your own, which sometimes seems like a blessed release.

Howling with grief in a hospital ward, feeling your life has come to an end, finding no meaning in it whatsoever and hating the idiots who parrot at you "everything happens for a reason" - these grief reactions just don't fit into a tea party because they're signs that people aren't philosophical enough in their grief. They haven't processed it properly and need to get cracking. There's a right way to do this, and it doesn't involve collapsing in hysterics on a hospital floor. Doesn't fit very well with Peek Freans and china cups (even with skulls on them) balanced on your lap. 

Tea party and death, death and tea party. The best this can be is ironic, and the worst - dreadfully insensitive. It occurs to me that this emotionally neutral approach is far worse than "he is not dead, he is just away"  in dehumanizing the whole subject. At the same time, these people are dreadfully hypocritical in their claim to bring death out in the open in a "healthy" way. Healthy, I guess, so long as you aren't uncool enough to start getting all messy and emotional about it. 

Can death and grief be neatly separated? Is that what we're being asked to do here? Isn't that the whole problem in our culture - that we've forgotten how to grieve when someone dies, or are simply not allowed to? Would a grieving person ever feel welcome at one of these skull-decorated-teacup soirees? If not, what the hell is wrong with the organizers? 

Jesus! Do these guys really know what they are talking about?

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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Would you snuggle with a puggle?

Would you snuggle with a puggle?

Oct. 25, 2012 at 6:30 AM
Mish Whalen

Ben Gibson / Taronga Zoo

Is it a bald penguin? A hedgehog?

It's actually an echidna puggle — and it's really cute. Echidnas, also known as spiny anteaters, are egg-laying mammals that live in Australia and New Guinea.

This 40-day-old baby, named Beau, lives at the Taronga Wildlife Hospital in Australia, and was discovered on a path in an RV park.

Puggles are rarely seen at this age because moms stash their young in burrows. The puggle remains in the burrow for many months. The mom goes out to feed, and returns every few days to feed it milk.

Echidnas, like platypuses, have patches that excrete milk for their young to lap up. Beau's human surrogate puts milk in the palm of her hand, and Beau feeds like a mini vacuum cleaner.

Beau's gender can't be determined for a while, as baby puggles of either sex have no identifiable features. In time, Beau will develop quills (here's what a grown echidna looks like) but for now, there's only a rough layer of hair that the nurses call a "five o clock shadow."

Watch the sweetest video clip of Beau's nurse, Annabelle, feeding the little one. And learn more about Beau at the Taronga Conservation Society's blog.

PUGGLE MISCELLANY 

Yes, there is a pattern for a crocheted mother echidna and puggle, and I'm not going to get one.

Upside-down echidna.

Puggle hatching (bring me the sick-pail).

Puggles vs. tardigrades. They're almost the same thing, but one is smaller. The smaller one is better, and I'll tell you why.

TARDIGRADIA

There are tardigrade stuffed animals. There are no puggle stuffed animals, 

or none worth bothering about.

Tardigrades don't have brains. Why have one if you don't need it?

Tardigrades kick ass. They take over countries and rule the world. Puggles don't.

TARDIGRADES DON'T CARE.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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Go home, George (and take Ira with you)

Review of George Gershwin's masterpiece, Porgy and Bess, by fellow composer Virgil Thomson: "One can see, through Porgy, that Gershwin has not and never did have any power of sustained musical development. His lack of understanding of all the major problems of form, of continuity, and of serious or direct musical expression is not surprising in view of the impurity of his musical sources and his frank acceptance of the same. It is clear, by now, that Gershwin hasn't learned the business of being a serious composer, which one has always gathered to be the business he wanted to learn."

Caitlin dances to Pentatonix!

Minions 'n Mermaids: must be Christmas!

Since all four grandkids already had everything they wanted in electronics, games, etc., I was left to try to figure out what else I could give them.

But then. . . it came to me. I knew they didn't have these. . . 

MINIONS! I mean hand-knitted, personalized Minions. Four of them. I thought of this idea about ten days before Christmas, so was in Minion hell for a while, just cranking them out. These guys appeared in the toe of each kid's stocking and were probably better-received by the adults than the kids. I don't know Minions from the bottom of my shoe, and thus was working from a very chintzy photo of a knitted Minion. (Not nearly as nice as mine.) I ended up going back to the original images from the movie. "Which Minion is this?" one of the grandkids asked. Which Minion? You mean they have names?

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. . . 

Mermaid tails!! These were knitted like small sleeping bags and were a hit, thank God, because I wasn't at all sure that: a) they'd know what they were, or b) they'd want anything to do with them. Preteens blow hot and cold. But they took to these and soon were hopping around in them as if in a very strange mermaid sack race. Caitlin has grown so rapidly that I really could've added another 4 inches to hers. From a very petite little girl, she's suddenly (overnight, it seems) as tall as many adults and will soon be looking down on her mother. Ahem. The happy-faces may look strange, but my daughter-in-law prefers not to have her kids' faces on a blog, and I understand completely. Suffice it to say their own faces are a lot prettier. 

Caitlin surrounded by her loot, or some of it, or at least the packaging it came in.  I gave her a makeup kit this year. Yikes.

My lovely daughter Shannon with her nutcracker, Boris. Took a long time to get him to stand on her shoulder like that.

Minions!!

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Scary Santa of the Century (if not the millennium)

There ain't no sanity clause

Have a!

No, really, this IS the worst Christmas song ever!

Gershwin plays Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (solo piano)

As is so often the case, I appear to have come full circle.

I was on an obsessive George-trek some time ago, when it was aborted by someone's astonishingly insensitive remarks. Seldom in my life have I ever had the rug so nastily pulled out from under me by someone who used to (I thought) support me.

He has set himself up as the head of a Spiritualist church in a tiny community on the Island, grabbing the crown and putting it on his own head like some small-minded backwater Napoleon. Since he got into all that, he seems to believe my own psychic experiences (which I used to feel safe to share with him) are, at best, suspect, and at worst, completely fraudulent.

It all just died away then, seemed to end forever, and there was nothing I could do about it but move on.

And then.

Love walked in.

I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with spiritualism for my whole life, but I approach it in a  slightly different way from the blue-haired dowagers sitting around the table with the wee-gee board. I don't believe in "calling" spirits or summoning them or telling them to do anything at all. I don't feel haunted, and I am not at all, one bit, afraid of being taken over by evil spirits. No. It has never been like that with me.

I have had any number of things happen to me which, if you classified them, would have to be filed under "psychic experiences". Many came soon after someone's passing, either someone I knew or knew of. Sometimes, what I perceived turned out to be of some comfort to those who were left behind. I never offered those insights, if that's what they were, unless the situation felt right, unless I sensed some receptiveness and thought it actually might do some good.

THAT is what this is all about, sharing your perceptions in order to help others, not hanging out a shingle or starting an insular little church and making yourself the head of it. And yet, the message I was receiving from this psychic despot was, no, Margaret, what you're receiving can't possibly be authentic. The main reason being, I "don't know enough about it", am a rank amateur who shouldn't even go near this subject, and need to go get an advanced degree from his little University of Evil.

Never mind, I'm getting carried away.

I do feel presences, cannot prove or disprove them, but who cares when it feels like this? This one, when he does come around, just sends me swooning, the vibe is so wonderful.  I ask myself, who am I to be perceiving this? Then again. Why not, when I am willing to leave that door open and see what happens, with neither expectation nor fear?

I have never "seen" George, but lots of people have. There are any number of curious anecdotes about his sudden, startling appearances. He never got to complete his work, had barely started on the mature works which surely would have grown in richness and complexity. But it was more than that. Towards the end of his short life, he was known to ask out loud, "Why can't I fall in love?" It was hard for him to be profoundly close to another human being. His brother Ira probably came closest. 

With this restlessness, this odd loneliness amidst the adulation of millions, then the sudden cutting down of a life not even yet in full flower - it's a combination which might, if you do believe in such things, lead a person to want to hang around on this earth even after they have "passed". 

The sightings aren't usually macabre or scary, though they can be startling. Mostly it's playful and a little wicked, the pranks of a little boy who never grew up. He can be walking down the street in that hurried head-down way, sitting at a player piano with his own music coming out of it, or in his workroom smiling and waving while his poor brother Ira nearly has a heart attack from terror.

When he walked back in recently, just completely spontaneously - I can't really describe the feeling. I don't have the words. An astonishing rush of rapture, a sweetness, a dearness, a - . I'll never get close, damn it - how I wish I could describe it! I can see why people loved him the way they did. 

I just listened to HIS version of Rhapsody in Blue and laughed all the way through it - yes, laughed. That little circular riff in the Andante, the three notes played over and over, sounds more like a slightly lopsided triangle when he plays it, the rhythm a little tipsy so that it becomes so much more quirkily wonderful.  But you can't write that kind of thing down.

People try to define genius in all sorts of different ways. "Why didn't anyone think of that before?" It's so simple! But no one did. And yet, and yet - works of genius appear to have always been there. It's a great paradox.

Gershwin knew he was a genius and spoke almost modestly of it, with that strange arrogant self-effacement that was his trademark. In fact, he had all the modesty of a brilliant eight-year-old who is constantly being told how smart he is. That level of smart is loneliness itself, because there is simply no one else on your level. And yet, for all his warmth and loveableness, he was unattainable, unavailable to people. That inaccessible core found expression only in the music. 

They're writing songs of love, but not for me.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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