"Can I Recover Christmas?" ~ Our New Song

The unplanted bulbs and falling leaves will keep for another day!
Last year I wrote a Christmas song for Roots In Austin, using my power as the author to break up the character Caroline's romance shortly before a Christmas season began. That may not have been kind of me, but the breakup let Caroline sing a holiday song as the approach of Christmas reminded her of what's been lost rather than what she expected. The song was recently finished and I think it will work well for her lovelorn situation in the play. But undertones in the lyrics told me they had deeper meanings, for other situations. Over this long Thanksgiving weekend Philo and I added photos and turned the song into a video for our Station Kaefka on YouTube. So far the reception for our latest musical child has been very kind - thank you to all who have already watched it. To the rest of you - get out your handkerchiefs!



"Can I Recover Christmas" music & lyrics copyrighted. If the screen won't play, try this Link to YouTube.


Although "Can I Recover Christmas?" wasn't ready last year, another of our copyrighted songs was finished by the beginning of December 2007. It's a happy song about the lovely annual tradition of Spinning Under the Tree of Lights at Zilker Park in Austin. This year the tree will be lit at 6 PM on Sunday December 7th, with the rest of the Trail of Lights festival beginning on Sunday December 14th, running nightly through December 23rd. The Trail hours are 7 PM to 10 PM.
A few days ago I had a conversation with Laura Esparza from the Cultural Affairs Division of the Austin Parks Department. Laura told me that the Trail of Lights festival will be more environmentally friendly this year. The change over to LED lights is in progress and food service now emphasizes recycling. She also noted that the power for the lights comes from wind farms. I loved the tree and like having another reason to think Austin is cool! You can go to the Austin Parks Department if you'd like to find out more about Spinning under the Tree, or Walking the Trail of Lights. Now here's an encore of our Spinning Under the Tree song to get you in the mood. Either click the screen or try this link to YouTube.



The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

"Texas in May" & "The Pond Song"

If you've been reading this blog for awhile (and have noticed the sidebar) you know that I've written and copyrighted more than a dozen garden songs and that Philo and I have made some of them into videos on YouTube. A few are parodies, but most of them fit together and tell a story - they're part of a musical play called Roots In Austin. This weekend two more of the songs went up on YouTube adding more pieces to the story.

When I wrote "I Don't Want to be in Texas When It's May" more than 4 years ago, it was an attempt at writing poetry. My comic, nerdy love poem to Lilac Time in Lombard seemed to be lyrics, so I asked my son Ted for help. Ted wrote music for the lyrics and our song became a favorite at family gatherings. Our song is now a video - it went up this weekend on Ted & Diane's YouTube station. (he and his wife Diane are professional musicians). You'll be blown away by Ted's amazing music.



While this musical surprise was cooking up in Chicagoland, Philo and I hung out in the air-conditioning, working on our latest music video here in Austin. We've had a love affair with ponds for decades ..... maybe it began when we were college students? We saw beautiful ponds while on cheap dates at the zoos, museums, parks and conservatories in Chicago and the surrounding area. Most of them were public ponds back then, but in the 1990's ponds popped up in gardens that we knew... Cher's garden in Lombard, Ellen's in Villa Park, Trudi Temple's in Hinsdale. They were wonderful but still rather rare. Pond construction and care is difficult in a place where the ground freezes deep and the water becomes a block of ice.

Then our move to Austin in 1999 revealed a great big world of man-made ponds and streams behind the fences and walls. There are cold days and freezes in Central Texas, but they're not so deep, and a pond is a year-round feature here. We started going on the annual tours hosted by The Austin Pond Society and I've written posts about them ever since this blog began.

Now it's time to share the love by using years of images of ponds from all over the Austin area to back music from the play - we put "The Pond Song" up last night on Annie and Philo's YouTube Station.
Please spend a soothing, cool three minutes with us in the middle of this long hot summer.



If you're interested in seeing how the songs fit together and reading about the various characters who would be singing these songs if it ever became a reality, please check out the new blog about the play, Roots In Austin.



Edited August 17...Austin blogger Michael Ziegler has taken some lovely photos of some stops on the 2008 pond tour. Actually he takes lovely photos of all sorts of things - thanks for leaving a comment at my 2007 pond post, Michael!