circling the world/giveaway

back cover of "No Turning Back" designed by Gary and Sky

Here is the final song to share with you from Gary's new album.  This song, "Circling the World" is described by Gary as "about our inner search to find faith in love."

My interpretation -- This could be romantic love, or Divine love.  I like to think of it as both.

The first line is, "Every mind, circles a world, tries to find the sun it left behind."

That has been my task in the last year since I began my daily meditation.  A beautiful challenge, one that I have to recommit to daily.  It's easy to leave the sun behind.  But it's always there.  We just sometimes forget.

A giveaway of the CD "No Turning Back" is happening this week on Facebook. Click here and like Gary's page to play along!

gifts from the earth

Gifts from our garden.  One of the joys of life.  Right now I am harvesting tulsi too.  I have about fifteen huge plants and they are in desperate need of pruning.  If I get my act together I will have some friends here to help me pluck the leaves.  It is time consuming, but once they are dried I send them to an organization that bags them, sells them as tea, and this money goes to charity.

Has anyone heard of, or had tulsi tea?  Tulsi has many medicinal properties...it is an incredible herb.  Read more about it here.  Hmmm, maybe I should do a tulsi tea giveaway!  I have some dried, am getting ready to ship it off.  I could save a bag for my blog friends.  Would anyone be interested? :)   

and the winners are...

Susanna, Rosa Maria, Jane, Dani and Mlle Paradis...

corner view~traditions

As a girl I witnessed my grandfather making wreaths out of Pennsylvania ground pine that he picked by hand in the lush woods that surrounded his home.  Even a couple of days before Christmas we would go with him to help pick the pine, because inevitably he would have given all of the wreaths away that he had made, (usually 25 or more) and want to make just a few more.  We walked to the end of his street where the paved road became a dirt road, a few hundred yards until we came to a clearing on the left.  We would wade through the snow and brush it away before we picked the pine, stuffing it into large plastic bags.

Then we went back to the house where grandma would have hot chocolate for us, and we went to work.  Grandpa taught us all how to make the wreaths.  I remember him showing us how to make them really full, and tie the pine tight so it wouldn't fall off.  It was important to him that the wreaths were beautiful from both sides, in case people wanted to hang them in windows.  It seemed like he thought making a wreath with only one side was kind of cheating.

The kids' wreaths were always a little lopsided, but he would always tell us how great they were.  His were perfectly round.  He showed us the value of working with nature to make something beautiful.  I can still picture his agile hands working, and the smile on his face.  As the years passed someone convinced him to charge for the wreaths, as he was spending so much time filling so many orders.  He never charged over $5 a wreath, all his life he kept his price that low. 
 
Thanks to Cherry B for this idea.  Next week's theme is "the December holidays."

In the holiday spirit, we are doing a giveaway this week!  Please stop by my previous post and leave a comment there if you wish to partake in the giveaway of my husband's music.   

Have a beautiful week, my friends.

holiday giveaway: gary marks cds

This is my super cool husband.  In case you don't know, he is a songwriter.  Before we met I was a fan of his music.  Good thing I liked it, or I would never have wanted to meet him!

For the past eight months we have been working together.  We have created YouTube videos of several of his songs.  I know many of you Europeans have YouTube blocked in your country, but I still want to provide links.  Sorry if you can't view them, but you can still win.  Here's the game:

We are giving away 5 CDs.
To enter once leave a comment here.
To enter twice tell us your favorite song or video.
To enter thrice comment on YouTube.

Here are the videos!
A Whisper Can Change the World 
Father's Day 
Forget to Remember
New York Journal
Sunrise Blinding Way
Sky High 
19
Here is his website if you really get into it and want to hear all of his songs (8 total albums):
http://garymarksmusic.com/ (or can't view YouTube)

Giveaway ends Friday the 17th.  Good luck and thanks for playing!

Ta ta for now...

happy thanksgiving

Hope you enjoy your day.  Here we will appreciate "God's painting in the sky." (to quote one of my daughter's songs).  I am so grateful for all of my blessings, near and far.

Also please check out Gary's newest YouTube video, here -- sure to put a smile on your face.  The song is called, "Sunrise Blinding Way." 

I will be doing a giveaway of his new CD this holiday season, so be sure to check back. 

corner view~school

I pretty much liked school all the way through the educational process - from grammar school through graduate school.  Most of my teachers made positive impressions.  I just wrote a note last week to my sixth grade teacher.

On the other hand, my husband hated school.  Poor G.  He was bored, he was unchallenged, he was harassed.  My two girls have been to formal school and now home school.  They love home schooling.  But my son loves his public school!

What is the magic ingredient?  It's not the school, I believe.  Not the university, or the philosophy, and not really the subject matter, as much as it is the individual teacher.

When the teacher and the student get to a place of respect and joy where a true exchange of ideas is going on, then learning is taking place. When the student is inspired then that is real success. What I've learned from my children is that school is defined by the student's relationship to the teacher, nothing more, nothing less.

This is what we look for when we choose our girls' home school teachers, or when we enroll our kids in classes, and in our public school system -- we look for mentors -- truly gifted ones who know how to do more than just put information before them.  I believe this is the standard we all must set if we want to be inspired, and truly learn.

By the way, to any of my blog friends who are fans of Gary, my husband's music, there is a giveaway of his newest CD on facebook here.

And happy September to all of you.  I am back from a long trip, happy to be back into a routine, into blogging, into visiting you all!

To see more corner views hop over to the sidebar here.

giveaway: from here cd

Ladies and gentlemen!
We are doing a different kind of giveaway of Gary's new CD, "From Here."

1.  All you have to do is post a comment on YouTube about this song (you need a Youtube account to do that)...and give a thumbs up if you like!  By doing this everyone will get a free CD!

2.  If you also mention this giveaway on your blog we will send you two CDs - "From Here" and "A Whisper Can Change the World."

The CD has a combination of original rock songs, ballads, even a bluesey tune.  There is a surprise at the end.  Sky did the graphics, with a tad bit of input from us.

 Hope everyone has a great weekend.

and the "walking with the wind" winner is...

Suzy of Hip Mountain Mama!  Suzy has all sorts of "green" things to share with and teach us all, so pay her a visit if you haven't seen her wonderful blog yet.

Thanks everyone for participating in the giveaway and for being my corner view buddies.  We will be doing more music giveaways, so stay tuned.

BTW, here is Sky's newest Youtube piece -- she recorded this on GarageBand a week ago.  She did all of the harmonies, including a three part harmony that is pretty cool.  And she wrote this on her blog about the inspiration for the above mentioned song.

Music is pretty much what it's about lately.  I'm loving it.

corner view~one year anniversary/giveaway

I have been involved in the blog group "corner view," created by Jane of Spain Daily, for eight months now.  I enjoy the experience of sharing and connecting with people around the world, and getting a glimpse into our widely varied lives.  But what strikes me most is how similar we all are, in so many ways, regardless of culture, language, climate, age, etc.

Since my involvement in corner view we have written about everything from food and coffee, to our dreams, our holidays, and our cherished elderly loved ones.  But no matter where we are we all have regular life to attend to.  We all have to do the laundry.

Even in Italy.

Yep.  I think it's the down to earth quality I love most about the people involved in corner view.

If I had to pick a couple of favorite CVs, I'd pick my favorite hang out and the post we wrote about love.

P.S. to show my love to all my CV friends I will also do a giveaway of another one of my daughter, Skylar's CDs.  I was going to wait awhile, but actually I like the wonderful artist Pien's idea of having a group giveaway on our one year anniversary of corner view.  And Sky is getting ready to record another CD, so I better give this one away because soon we will have another to share.  This is one of my favorite songs from this CD: Tradewind. 

To see more people's reflections of a year of viewing, go to the sidebar here:

Phew.  That's a lot of links.  Did you get lost?

and the winner is...

Miss Van Ham

Missvanham said...
Great music!! Love to win this giveaway. Happy days greets Susan

Congrats Susan!

giveaway~gary marks cd

I am blessed to have a wonderful and talented husband.  He is also very funny, and a great father, and cute -- important qualities in my book.

Gary is a songwriter -- here is his music website.  Before I met him, I was a fan. You see, I met Gary through his music.  I was working in a psychiatric hospital in Washington, DC, and one of my colleagues made me a tape of one of his albums, (back in the days before CDs).  I loved it.  So my friend made me more copies of more of his albums.  By the time I visited California and met him, I knew all the words to many of his songs.  Gary likes to say that he married a groupie.
 
I am offering a giveaway of one of Gary's albums, titled, "A Whisper Can Change the World."  It is considered pop rock.  He wrote, sang, played several instruments, and arranged all of the songs.  He co-produced this album, which was finished in 2007.  Click here to hear one of the songs. 

Here is a little blurb from Gary's music website: For a songwriter with such a distinct sound and style, Gary Marks has been able to succeed in many different musical genres throughout his 35 year career.  In the '70's Marks enjoyed success as both a folk and jazz artist. In the '80's and '90's he became known as one of the most unique and sophisticated rock songwriters in the San Francisco Bay Area.   Marks has released more than a dozen critically acclaimed recordings, as well as having published ten books on varying subjects.    Here are some quotes over the years about Gary by music reviewers:

Bay Area music reviewer, Derk Richardson, wrote this in Bay Area Music Magazine: ". . . Superb song craft. . . keen arrangements. If familiar reference points are Steve Winwood and Bruce Hornsby, Marks demonstrates as much care to the architecture of a song as those two certified platinum stars did on their most recent outings. Each song is intelligent, exceptional . . ."

When the San Francisco Bay Guardian published it's 18th annual "Best of San Francisco" edition in 1996, Marks' songwriting career was highlighted: "Marks is a meticulous craftsman, injecting his modern rock sound with interesting harmonic subtleties and powerful lyrics. . . [His] lyrics poetically address how we treat each other and our planet." Larry Kelp of the Oakland Tribune wrote this about Gary's sixth recording, "Past the Nightwatch." "Marks shows a knack for combining a catchy and memorable song with mature and often brilliant lyrics about love, relationships, and finding a place in the world. . .always a rare thing in the world of commercial music.”

There's a great story about how Gary found his very first band.  You know how I love to tell stories.  But I will leave that for the post where I give away a CD of his earlier jazz songs.

Leave a comment to be considered for the giveaway.  I will announce the winner on April 8th.  Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great weekend.

and the winner is...

nicola@which name? said...
what a beautiful girl, inside and out. and what an amazing, personal, and special give-away. i feel lucky to have just clicked through on your most recent comment to my blog and happened upon this post!
how did the switch to homeschool go? genuinely interested...
nicola
http://whichname.blogspot.com

Hey that was really fun!  Thanks for playing.  We have many more CDs in this family to give away.  We'll do more.  My husband has more than I can keep track of and Skylar is getting ready to record #4.

giveaway: running home cd

I would like to offer a giveaway of my daughter Skylar's CD, called "Running Home," a nine song album recorded when she was ten years old.  She started writing songs when she was seven, recording her first CD at age eight.  She writes the songs, plays all of the instruments (guitar, piano, harmonica), and sings.  She is now thirteen, and currently working on her fourth CD. 

Recently she has made a Youtube video, including photos she and I took.  Click here to see the title track of "Running Home," one of my all time favorite songs of hers. 

Sky is home schooled.  We started that last year.  It seems the most natural way to allow her time for her creative expression.  Her songs are about nature, people she loves, God, the universe.  Her voice is gentle and melodic; her songs peaceful and sweet.  To view her webpage, and listen to all of her songs go here.

Leave a comment if you would like to be considered.  Tell me how music is a part of your family life!  If you post a link to the giveaway on your blog I will put your name in the hat twice.  If I can figure out how to pick the winner the technical way, I will.  I will announce the winner one week from today, February 25th.  Thanks for playing!

Lyrics for title track song:
Running Home
Skylar Marks 2007

While gazing up at the stars one night,
I was thinking how small we must be.
And the earth and the trees and our galaxy,
and the smallest of all, is me.

While I laid right there
and the wind was in the air
I thought if there's no time,
maybe we are all a lie.
Maybe we are all a dream,
we're not real.

Running home to you, running home,
going back to where I belong.
When I wake up will I see you?
Or will I fall back to this earth?

Walking through the fields of peace,
I can feel the breeze.
Will I just sit down and cry,
Or will I begin to fly?

CH

above two photos are Sky at the age the CD was recorded

Skylar, now

homemade pizza and giveaway

This is what we have been treated to recently by our oldest child, no doubt inspired after our time in Italy this summer.  The pizza includes fresh basil from the garden, of course.  More and more plants and vegetables  are getting planted in our garden everyday.  It will be interesting to see what this inspires in our daughter's choice of cooking this winter. 

Meanwhile here is a memory of Italia...

And please check out this fun giveaway at my friend Nicole's beautiful blog, here. This giveaway is especially for moms with little girls who love dress up! I miss it when my girls were at that stage, but I do have a little niece...

p.s. Added later.  See my daughter's post for today on her blog Skywriting.  Guess we're on the same wavelength.