A Day of Music - Claremont Folk Festival

Ya know, I love chocolate cake. But eating an entire cake in one sitting would be too much. Yesterday I almost had too much music. Not quite, but almost. The Claremont Folk Festival, for its 31st year, treated young and old to a day filled with music. You can see more about this festival from my last year's post. The biggest difference, for me, this year is that more of my friends went, so I decided to stay all day.

Then I realized that the Claremont Youth Symphony was having their concert down at Little Bridges, so I took a break at 3:00 from the Folk Festival and went into the nice air-conditioning to hear a handful of my students perform. At the end of the concert, I was pretty tired, so I went home for an hour to relax, eat and put my feet up before heading back to the Festival. (More chocolate cake!)

The highlight of the day was Ben Harper's band performing with his mom, Ellen. It was pretty dark by the time they started, but we had managed to eek out a little space next to a palm tree and made ourselves comfortable on the ground with towels and the tree for leaning upon.

The sweet part of Ben's performance was when he picked up a young boy, maybe 4 or 5 years old, and together they sang Neil Young's Heart of Gold. I caught a little of it on video. Here it is.

Here is Lucas Critchfield conducting the CYSO

Here are a few of the performers at the Festival - Angela Lloyd, Peter Harper and Rick Shea

Montclair Golden Girls

When our oldest daughter was in high school, she played softball for a few years with the Montclair Golden Girls. Over three summers we bonded with this group of sports fans, going to tournaments from Glendora to Big Bear to Norco. This organization ran like clockwork due to the hard work and love from a core group of parents. Some of the girls in the league had started there when they were just wee ones and grew up surrounded by lots of laughter and love. We were happy to have found them, if only for a few years.

Because of social media, I found out that one of the coaches had died from cancer a few weeks ago and that there would be a memorial service held on the softball field. I had not seen most of these people in about 9 years, and I knew I had to go. I was not the only one. I'm guessing there were about 300 people there with many more who would have come if they could. What a tribute to a man who really gave of himself to countless girls.

I was so glad that I went and reconnected with many of our Golden Girls friends. 

Here are just some of the girls that Rick coached over the years.

Here is a photo of two of the All-Star teams from 2005. Coach Rick is the man in the middle with his baseball hat on sideways.

Karma?

In conversation recently, I heard the adage, "It happened for a reason." I have said that before. You know, when something bad happens, but something good comes along that might not have happened if that bad thing had not occurred. 

This implies that some force (God, karma, etc.) controls destiny. I know that many people believe that. It is hard for me to believe that the Divinity controls events on earth. Why would God allow all these terrible things to happen, or worse yet, make them happen? Even for a reason?

The idea that works for my mind is this: events happen, and if we seek whatever internal/external guidance that is available to us (e.g. listening to that voice, channeling the Divine, whatever way you want to think of it) we can move forward in whatever direction works.

That made me think of a quote. A quote from me. I have never written a quote before. Here it is:

"I don’t think that things happen for a reason. I think that we make reason out of things that happen."

Memorial Day Weekend with the Folks

Last year on Memorial Day weekend, I was with my family of origin (my folks and my sister) on our pilgrimage to Pawnee Rock, Kansas. This year my parents came to Claremont from Colorado for the holiday weekend. 

We enjoyed a variety of activities from touring the new building at HMC, eating some of C and B's excellent food, wandering the Farmer's Market, as well as the folks seeing some of their friends who live here.

We had thought about going to the LA County Arboretum on Monday, but with temps in the 90s, we opted for the air-conditioning of the Laemmle. We chose the movie Chef, and I thought it was a great movie for just fun. It's the story of Roy Choi, the guy who owns the Kogi BBQ trucks (of which I have blogged on numerous occasions). So, for me, it had lots to recommend it. I like stories which feature something I know about firsthand. I like movies with good music. And the food looked great and made me hungry.

So after the movie we had to go out to eat. Of course. We tried to go to Cafe Allegro in La Verne, but it was closed, so we called Pasta Cucina Rustica on Foothill and they were open. Not only were they open, we were the only people there for a long time. Perhaps we were the only people who did not grill out on Memorial Day.

I had some penne pasta from the Over 60 menu. That meant a smaller portion. I thought the sauce was very good. H thought his eggplant not as good as the Thai eggplant from Saturday's lunch at Thai Family. We may or may not go back sometime. 

Week Round-Up in Photos

As I was out and about last week, I took photos for the blog, but didn't come up with any posts for them, so now I clump them all together. 

Book club members now live in the hills above San Bernardino. Here is the view from their 4 acres.

A walk through the Pomona farm showed us this statue. Presumably the goddess Pomona.

Streamers have been up at CMC since Alumni weekend. I like the reflection in the water.

The new arts building going up at Pomona College

Thai Family

On my friend Kevin's recommendation, we tried out the Thai Family restaurant in Upland for lunch today. It's in the strip mall just north of the Home Depot on Mountain. It's next to Fresh & Easy and the Dollar Tree. We took our food to go and even out of the styrofoam containers, it was delicious. I had the vegetable curry. H had the spicy eggplant. The lunch special includes a little (very small) salad, two fried wontons plus your choice of entrees, including rice.       We will be back.

Vista Track Meet

I stopped by Vista's Track Meet this morning (I don't remember it ever being at the end of May before), and I took some photos in sports mode. I was flipping through the pictures on the back of my camera to show one of the 2nd graders who was watching the meet and she told me that it reminded her of a flip book. She didn't know the term flip book, but she told me that in the olden days people would draw very slowly on paper and then flip the pages to make it go fast. Yup. 

City Banners

Now that the college students have gone home for the summer, can the 4th of July be far behind? The city banners for the mid-summer holiday are up, here in May.

But Enough About You

This book was the outer Russian Nesting Doll of my May book reading. Huh? I started Christopher Buckley's essay collection in early May, then interrupted it to read the book club book which I interrupted to read the Swiss Life book. Back to the book club book, and finally, back to finishing But Enough About You. I'm sure you don't care how I read my books, but usually it's one at a time, so that was enough for me to at least mention it.

So, this book has some very interesting essays (a few that pop to mind are some of his travel essays - to Machu Picchu and France, his introduction to Moby Dick and reflections on Catch-22), a few that I just skipped after the first paragraph (none pop to mind here), and some in-between that I enjoyed reading at the time, but don't specifically remember now. 

I'm still on the lookout for a good novel.

Zurich - 1980

During my junior year in college, I spent fall term in Graz, Austria studying German. I kept a diary of my adventure, and a few years ago I transcribed it into a Word doc. Yesterday I thought I would read what I had written about Zurich. Along with 3 other women on the same program, I flew from Chicago to Amsterdam and then we traveled around a bit (London, Brussels, Strasbourg, and Zurich) before chugging into Graz.

I took no pictures in Zurich (why not? I ask myself), but I wrote these two paragraphs about the day and a half we were there.

Thursday Sept. 25 (Strasbourg - Zurich)

     We got up and ate our own breakfast - much better than the hostel stuff.  By 10:00 we check out and caught a bus.  Unfortunately it didn't go to the Bahnhof, so we went to the end of the line and took the same bus back to where we could transfer.  It only took about 1 1/2 hours.  Then I bought a ticket from Basel-Zurich.  Then we left and transfered trains in Basel.  Switzerland is not on Daylight Savings, so we gained an hour.  It was somewhat comforting to see German - not French, but it is a Swiss-German - and it's virtually non-understandable for me.  We found the youth hostel with another couple - from Washington D.C., and then went to buy some food.  We've been talking to people in our room from Ireland, Canada and New Zealand.  My eyes are being opened wider every day.  This hostel is by far the cleanest, but most strict.  For the first time since London, I had a shower.  The water is hot here!

Friday Sept. 26 (Zurich)

     Got up early for breakfast.  First time to have hot chocolate (shockolade).  We left the hostel and got to the train station and checked our luggage.  Then we got my train ticket from Zurich - Graz at a travel agency.  To the Zurich Zoo which was wonderful, and wonderful animals.  Back to station to get food for lunch.  Wandered around.  Window shopped, saw several cathedrals (one closed for renovation).  From the other (with the Chagal stained glass), there was some sort of West Point-like graduation service.  What chaos - what fun!  Then we wandered down to the Zurich See and just relaxed.  Swans, fishing, sailboats, ahhh.  Back to the station for the rest of our good - and collecting our luggage.  We caught an 8:11 train for Graz.  Some 12 hr. ride!  Switzerland is beautiful and classy and expensive.  Want to go back sometime.

I guess I can look forward to hot water, beautiful scenery, being classy and spending lots of money. Apparently I got my wish and I am going back!