Everything/Anything and…Chess…"Despite the documented evidence by chess historian HJR Murray, I've always thought that chess was invented by a goddess"–George Koltanowski: from the foreword to:"Women in chess, players of the Modern Age"
It was National Poetry Day today in the ukay and I want to share this song by Steve Hofmeyr to celebrate poetry, not just in the ukay, but everywhere. Do listen to the words of this song – beautiful! Poetry, love and music…touching the strings of my heart.[and of course…chess!]
If you like this song, click here to listen to more songs from a variety of artists and to read a few love poems in English as well as in Afrikaans.
[Sorry, I’ve removed the song due to another site getting people to download it from my site..that is illegal]
It’s Saturday night…that time of the weekend and guess what…no, you can look at this entry and I don’t have to ask you to guess! Classical music and all the other ingredients!… how romantic to have a game of chess with your “knight” and the music is playing, chocolates nearby, glass of South African red wine…hmm… I always say chess, chocolates and classical music go together, but don’t forget the red rose too! I was given Pinotage Cinsault as a present a few weeks ago and it’s quite nice red wine!
Have you tried to play chess with classical music on your ears and you have your partner opposite you staring in your eyes..hmmm… I forgot! It’s Saturday (k)night…wonder if the moon is out there, suddenly I have to go!
James Last: Elizabethan Serenade
James Last: Lara’s theme from Dr Zhivago
Sweet People: Barcarolle
Image:www.redwine.co.uk
SA red wine
Red wine increases the female sex drive
March 24, 2009
Lucy Shaw
Red wine increases the female libido, research has found. According to a study carried out by the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital in Florence, drinking one to two glasses of red wine a day increases female sexual desire.
The study investigated 789 Italian women aged between 18 and 50. Drinking red wine not only helps to release inhibitions, but also has a direct effect on sexual activity.
Women who drink one to two glasses of wine a day were found to be more sexually active than those who abstain. Dark chocolate, which is rich in antioxidants, has a similarly positive effect on the female libido.
Whoops! I found this article link on douglasgreen.wordpress.com’s blog
These chess graphics are from games I finished quite awhile ago. Sometimes I save a certain chess position with the intention to blog about the game, but for the past 8 months my time was very little to blog chess games in detail. If you’re a chess player, I’m quite certain you will be able to “read” these graphics. The last image is from a tourney I finished in April. I played white in the game and thought it was a good win. Actually, in all the games, I played the colour nearest to you when you look at the games.
I got this cd of Jim Brickman from an American chess player-friend about a year ago. I’ve rediscovered the music and want to share a few tracks (some tasters) with you. The music is beautiful, relaxing, soothing…. Enjoy!
Amazing Grace
You never know
All I ever wanted
Please click hereto visit his site…the link will open in a new window.
“In you I see the beauty of nature and the love of God” …beauty is in your heart and not in the mirror.
Tracks on the cd: 1. If you believe
2. Journey
3. Amazing Grace
4. All I ever wanted
5. Crossroads
6. You never know
7. By Chance
8. Angel Eyes
9. Bittersweet
10. Dream come true
11. Joyful
12. Picture this
13. By heart
14. Shades of white
15. Another Tuesday morning
16. Devotion
17. Glory (Duet with David Benoit)
18. We exalt Thee
Thousands of years ago the Celtic ancestors placed great value on spiritual friendships. The Gaelic word for this was…Anam Cara. The link will open in a new window.
Anam Cara Blessing
May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth in your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May your soul calm, console, and renew you.
DUKE ORSINO:
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Swallows in Durban – see the news article in this entry from ENS news
Enjoy “Village Swallows” by Mantovaniand his orchestra. It is a composition by Josef Strauss, one of the Strauss-brothers.
hmmm…just what I need…flowers and chocolates!! and on this video…the music of Strauss…”Roses from the South”
Swallow Flocks and World Cup Airport Try Coexistence
DURBAN, South Africa, November 12, 2007 (ENS) – This year, as five million barn swallows migrate from across Europe to roost in South Africa’s Mt. Moreland Reedbed, they will be greeted by air traffic controllers. The controllers will be waiting to warn pilots of the swallow flocks coming in to land so that bird-plane collisions can be avoided.
The plan to protect the birds was announced Monday at a ceremony at the reedbed, attended by the nonprofit conservation group BirdLife South Africa.
The decision to protect the swallows was made in response to global outcry last November, when BirdLife outlined its concern about the expansion of La Mercy Airport at Durban, in preparation for South Africa’s hosting of World Cup 2010.
The airport is being expanded to handle traffic expected for the soccer event and the KwaZulu Natal government wants to see the project completed by 2009.
The Airports Company of South Africa, which administers the existing Durban International Airport, owns the La Mercy land where the $8 billion King Shaka International Airport is under construction, 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Durban.
The new airport is expected to replace Durban International, which will be decommissioned. But for the swallows at the Mt. Moreland Reedbed, without special planning and accomodation, the airport would have been deadly.
Both the reed bed and Mount Moreland are situated South West of the proposed development are aligned exactly with the proposed runway and so are in the flight patch of aircraft leaving or arriving the airport.
The controllers at La Mercy Airport have been among those watching the millions of birds come in this year from all over eastern and western Europe. They will leave again at the onset of winter. The threat that planes at an expanded La Mercy Airport would pose to the swallows roosting at the reedbed, among Africa’s largest roosts, was put across by conservationists and BirdLife partner organizations throughout Europe.The barn swallow, Hirundo rustica, undertakes one of the world’s most remarkable migrations. The birds fly thousands of miles from southern Africa in spring to breed in Europe and then repeat the feat in reverse in the autumn, to winter back in Africa.
“This has been a fantastic result, and we’re delighted to report on this outcome after a year of negotiations and meetings. The support of so many people via letters and petitions has played an important part.” said Neil Smith, conservation manager at BirdLife South Africa, which led the campaign.
The Airports Company of South Africa has been supportive of making accommodations for the birds.
“Since our campaign started, the Airports Company of South Africa has really come on board, quickly realizing the importance of this site as a reedbed of international significance,” said Smith.
Following BirdLife’s complaint, consultants were brought in to examine the roosting and flocking behavior of the swallows, using advanced radar imagery. They confirmed that constant monitoring of the swallow movements during take-off and landing of aircraft would be required.
The Airports Company of South Africa now says it will install in the airport control tower the same advanced radar technology that the consultants used to study the movement of the swallows.
This will mean that planes can take the option of circling or approaching from another angle when large flocks of swallows form over the reedbed site in the late evening.
Environmental management staff will be employed to make sure that suitable management of the reedbed continues, the airports company said.
Bird conservationists feel somewhat reassured about the swallows’ future. “Losing such a valuable site could have affected breeding swallow populations across Europe,” said Dr. Ian Burfield, Birdlife’s European research and database manager.
“Conserving migratory birds is about more than ensuring one site is protected or well managed,” said Burfield. “It takes global effort: at breeding sites, at stopover sites during migration, and at important non-breeding sites like this, where large numbers of birds roost.
Image: http://www.hbf.lv/index.php?&366&view=concert&concert_id=94 Please click hereto enjoy the music of Waldo de los Rios and his interpretation of the Toy Symphony! The link is on my blog and will open in a new window. You surely don’t want to miss out on his fantastic music! Wow! This entry took me really hours to put together! But I really enjoyed it…I never do anything that I don’t enjoy…. but if it’s something I have to do and it’s not enjoyable…well, that’s a different case…as I always tell children, some people have to do the boring work too and if it’s you then it needs to be done! That’s life. Back to my entry! I LOVE the Toy Symphony and as a child, I used to listen to a program on the radio, only for children, called “Jongspan Atteljee“…in English..”Children’s studio”… and the theme song for that program was….the Toy Symphony! — Meneutto— I sometimes turned the radio on for that program just to listen to it ..again… hehe… I spent literally hours on the Internet to find these audio files too! But lucky you, now you can listen to my favourite composition by….NOT Haydn…as I’ve thought too! but by Mozart’s dad! Leopold… and I’ve found websites where more people think the composer was Haydn.
As a child I had a few toys which I really liked or should I say …enjoyed. One was a doll, she almost looked like the one from the museum on the image, but I wasn’t really a dolly-person when I was a child…there was so much to do on the farm…..only later with the Barbies! but my favourite toys were the little toy cars! I grew up on a farm and we used to have these huge acorn trees near the house, they were really old… when I was little, my mum told us they were more than 70 years old! We had an open space near these trees which was a bit sandy and where we could “build” some “roads” for our cars! wow…that was really great and I can recall an orange tractor too…Massey Ferguson… I used to drive a tractor myself on the farm when I was about 15. My sister’s boyfriend loved to take me on the tractor and the combine harvester! I loved it too…although the combine harvester was a bit tricky to drive…guess what..I was 12 when I drove on the dusty farm roads like I was an expert on driving! It’s easy on those roads as the traffic inspectors don’t go there! ..back to music!
Little children need to be introduced to music at a very young age, as with books and art. There are many ways you can do that with music and one way is to get them to draw images or patterns if they listen to music. To compose their own music they can use a pattern structure. On one image you will see patterns drawn and coloured. That’s my Y5 children that listened to different types of music and they’ve decided which patterns and colours to use to express the mood/type of the music.
Toy Symphony:
The composition, originally called in German “Kinder Sinfonie” (“Children’s Symphony”), and known in America under the title “Toy Symphony” goes back to the 18thcentury. It was created to entertain everyone on the stage and in the audience. The score of this humoresque piece of music calls for two violins, bass, and a small battalion of toy instruments – cuckoo, nightingale, toy drum, toy trumpet, rattle, and triangle.
Please click HERE for the International music performance and educational project that empowers children and adults alike, giving realization of modes of musical creativity and expression through the use of new concepts and technologies.
Image: Sibeliusmusic.com
Mozart… image: Classicsonline.com
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)http://www.classicsonline.com/composerbio/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart/
Leopold Mozart …Image: classicsonline.com
Leopold Mozart (1719 – 1787)
The father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Leopold Mozart, distinguished as a violin teacher, sacrificed his own career as a composer to foster that of his son. He was a man of wide interests, the son of an Augsburg bookseller, and left university to join the musical establishment of the Archbishop of Salzburg, a prelate in whose service he rose to become court composer and deputy Kapellmeister, a position he maintained, without further advancement, until his death in 1787. See more of his music on this link: http://www.classicsonline.com/composerbio/Leopold_Mozart/
Art…different moods according to different types/pieces of music…
Image: Liverpool museum…
Together with the piano, I played the recorder too when I was at school, but would really love to play the violin and flute!
Little chidren can listen to music and draw images of what they “see” while listening to the music.
I’ve only ordered this morning this cd of Waldo de los Rios. His music is just fantastic and the Toy Symphony is on this cd and…Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 in D Major..”the Clock”…!! Click here to listen to the music of Waldo de los Rios on classicfm. This youtube video is the Symphony of Haydn, but not the same as being played by Waldo de los Rios!!
Youtube video: Toy Symphony: Allegro…Menuetto…and then the Finale…enjoy!
If you are interested in emailing/contacting Bruce Millar – see his message in the comments box. Here is also an email that was left by ‘Natasha Millar’ – assume it is his wife? – or relative – see the comments box. millar@vanilla.co.za
This song is one of my favourites on a Steve Hofmeyr CD…this song was sung by Bruce Millar first before Steve recorded it too. Bruce is a great artist and was born in Zimbabwe…you can read more about Bruceon this link. He’s now a radio presenter in South Africa. What I didn’t know and only discovered recently, was that his song is a translation of this Italian song, Inno, sung by Mia Martini. I could find the Italian song on youtube and you can follow the words in English. I’ve got the words in Italian too and if you understand Italian, you might want to tell me – when comparing the words to the English song – if it’s a true translation… thanks!
English words: I won’t give up
I won’t give up my dream
There’s a love for me
Somewhere in this world of loneliness
Someone who’s cup is filled with tears
And waiting like me
To share that sweet embrace
And chase away the saddened face
Of yesterday’s fears. I won’t give up the search
‘Till I find the one
Who’s kisses will awake my heart
And make it fly
I won’t give up
I’m gonna take my stand
Because I know
There’s someone in this world
That won’t give up
‘Till she’s holding my hand
Repeat song twice
Song in Italian!
Cantero’ – se vuoi – ma non credermi
Stelle nelle tasche piu’ non ho
E tu – non sai – volare piu’ – piu’ – piu’ in alto
Nel viso della sera che nasce
Sulla spiaggia coi falo’
Cantero’ – per noi – che non siamo piu’
piu’ forti – di quel po’ – di gioventu’
Che sta – bruciando dentro e poi – finira’
Nel viso della sera che nasce
Sulla spiaggia coi falo’
Dimmi che vuoi – che puoi – darmi felicita’
E sotto – la mia pelle nascera’
Per te un dolce fiume che – cantera’
La mia speranza d’esser donna
E la tua bocca poi lo berra’
Dimmi che il posto mio non sto per perderlo
Dentro la mia fiaccola tu sei
Ma se – non sai bruciare piu’ – resta ancora
Insieme canteremo e legnia
Porteremo al nostro falo’
Dimmi che vuoi – che puoi – darmi felicita’
Apri le tue braccia e se ne andra’
La mia tristezza finalmente sara’ un esplosione
Di stelle cadenti sopra i fuochi gia’ spenti dei falo’
Sole no! Non puoi – piu’ mandarci via
Rosso stai salendo sempre piu’
Lui sta dormendo il mare sa’ – quanto amore
Mi ha dato e mi dara’ rubando il viso di una sera
Spoken by great men:"Give me 20 divisions of American soldiers and I will breach Europe. Give me 15 consisting of Englishmen and I will advance to the borders of Berlin. Give me two divisions of those marvellous fighting Boers and I will remove Germany from the face of the earth." - Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery, Commander of the Allied Forces during WW2.
"The Americans fight for a free world, the English mostly for honour, glory and medals, the French and Canadians decide too late that they have to participate. The Italians are too scared to fight, the Russians have no choice. The Germans for their Fatherland. The Boers? Those sons of Bitches fight for the hell of it." American General, George 'Guts and Glory' Patton.
Chessalee 
