New Year's Resolutions for 2007

New Year's Resolutions:

1) Take singing lessons
2) Learn more stories for my target audiences
3) Attend Holy Days of Obligation
4) Help Lucia potty-train without losing heart (is she going to be in college before she gives up diapers??)
5) Eat fresh vegetables

Sing Along with Bud and Don

Bud Luckey and Don Hadley were one of my favorite song-writing duos* from my single-digit years.** Hadley wrote the lyrics, and Luckey wrote the music and animated a number of classic songs from Sesame Street, including Alligator King, Ladybugs' Picnic, and Ten Tiny Turtles. I've been playing "Ladybugs' Picnic" in the style of Elizabeth Mitchell and practicing basic Travis picking at the same time (A, E7, D).

Music Videos:
Alligator King
Ladybugs' Picnic
Ten Tiny Turtles (Sorry about the furry red guy who appears at the beginning.)

*The Lennon/McCartney songwriters were particular favorites, too.
**No, I did not know who Luckey and Hadley actually were back then.

Coventry Carol

Giotto's Flight into Egypt

Robert Croo receives attribution for the lyrics to "The Coventry Carol," written in 1534. The song was performed in Coventry, England, as part of a play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod the Great orders his soldiers to kill all male children under two years of age born in Bethlehem. This is why Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with their newborn son, Jesus. Herod's executive order to kill the prophesised rival to the title "King of the Jews" is evocative of the passages in Exodus in which Pharoah orders the deaths of all baby boys born to Israelite families, and then later, when the Angel of Death takes the firstborn child of each Egyptian family.

December 28 marks the martyrs’ feast day of the Holy Innocents, also known as Childermas. This day is a reminder to me that all children are holy innocents, no matter where or when they were born.

Coventry Carol

Am                     G       E7
Lullay, Thou little  tiny  Child,
Am             Dm       Am
By,   by, lul-ly,  lul-lay.

Am               G        E7
O sisters too, how may we do,
Am          Dm        Am*
For to preserve this day.
       G                         E7
This poor youngling for whom we sing
Am           Dm         Am
By, by, lul-ly,    lul-lay.

Am                 G      E7
Herod the king, in his raging,
Am          Dm        Am
Charged he hath this day.
    G                           E7
His men of might, in his own sight,
Am                 Dm       Am
All young children to slay.

Am                    G         E7
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
Am        Dm       Am
And every morn and day,
     G                            E7
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Am            Dm     Am
By, by, lul-ly, lul-lay.

*According to the MIDI sound samples I've heard, this chord is actually a major chord. However, Loreena McKennitt sings it as a minor chord on her album, A Winter Garden, and that's the version I play on my guitar. You may find the MIDI link here and McKennitt's version here.

Mid-Production

I had hoped to have a completed project to present today. While I'm done with principal photography, there is a lot of editing work still to do. This has been the most difficult project to date: we've run over budget, two of the main actors threatened to walk off the set after the goat got into the costume-bin, and initial test audiences have complained that there's not enough violence or humor in the main action sequences. One early reviewer said, "It's quite possible that "One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes" will be the film-strip version of Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Is this really a House of Glee production? Try 'house of glum.'"

Brutal!

I may need to return to light-hearted comedy and leave the serious film-making to Wim Wenders.

Welcome to the Dollhouse (expansion)

The dollhouse mansion itself is a present from Lucia's grandma bestowed last summer. The big Christmas present for Lucia tomorrow is the addition of a floor (two rooms!) plus three staircases, courtesy of Lucia's great-aunt Brigit. Perhaps this is wish-fulfilment on all our parts, as the best term for the house of the House of Glee is "wee." Also, the House of Glee does not have internal stairs. When we want to access the basement, we have to go outside to do so. Most of the time, this arrangement suits us just fine. I'd rather go outside to the basement to do laundry than to have to drive or walk up the hill to the laundromat. We can store chemicals and pokey items in the basement without worrying that Lucia will get ahold of them. Still, there are times when we'd appreciate another room or two in the house, plus a flight of stairs. We'd talked about chopping a hole in the floor to set up a flight of stairs, but then we'd have to forgo our bathroom.

In lieu of a spacious house, Lucia gets to play with a roomy dollhouse. Bede set up the extra floor not too long ago, and I arranged for the little dollies to be festive. You'll notice Cleopatra and Princess Saffront hanging out with some of the children. Down on the first floor, Beethoven plays air piano:




While much of the fun seems innocuous enough, it looks as if Simon the Wizard has placed some sort of enchantment on Mr. Frumble:



Maybe Simon the Wizard made Marie the mermaid's bathtub disappear:



Who knows for sure? By tomorrow morning, Lucia will have new arrangements for her dollies.

(By the way, Playmobil, I don't want to sound tokenistic, but I do wish that the company would produce more dollies who aren't Caucasian. That's my one quibble with the company. Think about it, especially for your princess line.)

Ah, if only it were this easy to add an addition onto our bungalow.

Jam

I have not forgotten about the word bank that is funding my latest puppet-show. I keep adding your words to the list. They're just lovely. More, more, more (please).

In the meantime, here is a photo taken of my performance at this past Fall's Coffee Shop Jam:



The Coffee Shop Jam took place right before Halloween. Bede and Lucia were the only audience members who knew I was actually wearing a costume. I was Lucy Cousins' Maisy mouse.

The Blogging Year in Review: a Meme

"We're space guys. We know what we are doing."
--Daniel Pinkwater, Guys from Space
Photo by Clara Todd

Cloudscome of A Wrung Sponge asked readers to participate in a blogger's "year in review" exercise by which we share the first sentence of the first post of each month in the past year. This practice reminds me of the way I kept track of the books I read during my Children's Literature classes: in addition to the bibliographic information and other notes on my index cards, I wrote down the first sentence of each book. I often didn't count prologues, just because the prologues often didn't have snappy first sentences. Some people say that the author should encompass the entire theme of the book in that one first sentence. My college poetry professor said that the last line of each poem we wrote should do the same. I'll give a little leeway for other people's writings, but in my own stories, I attempt to the first sentence to contain the mood of the story. Let's see how I did with my blog-posts. I included a second sentence when the first sentence was a generic greeting.


January: Update glasses prescription. [Context: New Year's resolutions for fairy-tale characters. This resolution was for Red Riding Hood.]

February: I have lots of notes and background material for stories.

March: I have not forgotten about the aliens.

April: Bede's Mom had a procedure done yesterday to drain the gall bladder.

May: Many little girls in my part of the world have a fascination with princesses.

June: Greetings! The House of Glee is in New York City for a few days.

July: "Which book are you?" personality quiz. [Watership Down]

August: It is said that if you could randomly teleport to any part of the universe, then 99 % of the time you would find yourself in empty space, devoid of stars.

September: I've started a blog for my storytelling gigs to have in place for the time when I am ready to be more than semi-professional.

October: Lucia's preschool teacher eats a raw foods diet and offers fresh fruits and vegetables to the children during snacktime. [This sentence is actually the 2nd post of the month. The first post was the poem "Ars Poetica" by Archbald MacLeish.]

November: Happy All Saints' Day! Celebrate the day with saints action figures.

December: Seattle schools closed last Tuesday and Wednesday because of the icy conditions after the snowfall, and I spent both days inside the house with Lucia.

Puppet-Show Pre-production notes

The newest puppet-show from the House of Glee is in pre-production state. It's based on the Grimms' fairy tale, "One Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes." Expect its official release next Tuesday, December 26, on Boxing Day. Boxing Day is also the Feast of St. Stephen, so it's totally appropriate for you to sing "Good King Wenceslas". To fund this production, I'm going to ask for your help. In lieu of money, I want words. Please place one of your favorite words in the comments section. Fifty-cent words are quite welcome, but if you feel so inspired, one or two 10 dollar words will really put us into the black. Maybe we'll even have a special effect or two!

So far, we have a good showing. Here are the offerings for the Word Fund:

incandescence
meretricious
gobsmacked
shenanigans
"hilarity ensues"
bumpkin
marauding
gopher (plenty of options here)
nacreous
quibble
sartorial
obnubilate
hoarfrost
ineffable

Keep them coming, please.

Totally "eh"

I found this review of my blog entry where Bede had to borrow my power cord:

Moocher Ruins Blog

To be fair, Dan (the author) had posted earlier in my comments section that the blog entry had been reviewed on Totally Choice. I thought it was spam, so I didn't even follow the link. However, I wish I had, because I am still chuckling. This is so classic. In the end, it doesn't matter how many good blog posts I've written before. My blog is only as good as the last blog post. It's harsh, but that's the way things work.

However, I like this quote by Joseph Heller: "When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'"

Update at noon: I just received the new power cord. So there you go.

Storm

Around town: Floods, landslides, winds, downed trees

A couple of days ago, we had a big windstorm combined with heavy rains and flooding. We were fortunate. Our electical power went off for 24 hours from early Friday to early Saturday morning (taking the gas heat with it, as the gas is linked to the electric), but we got to spend the day with friends who still had electical power. Last night, we all slept in a pile like walruses.*



This morning, Lucia has a low fever. Many homes are still without power, four people died,including a woman who got trapped in the utility closet in her basement when flood waters rushed in not too far away from where we live. In North Seattle, a woman brought her coughing 1 year old daughter into the main bedroom. Five minutes later, a tree crashed through the house and into the crib where the daughter had lain.


*Ever since I read See You Around, Sam! by Lois Lowry, I've hung onto this image.

Memo

Bede had to borrow my power cord, so I'll be offline for much of the day.

Lucia bread

My plan to bake Lucia bread turned out well. It had been awhile since I'd baked bread, and I had to improvise on a few points. I used spelt, white and whole wheat flours in order to complete the 6 cups of flour quota. The recipe originally said to put in 11 tablespoons of butter, and I read it as one tablespoon. I think that was a good idea, anyway. I baked the bread for 5 minutes longer than the recipe said, too. There is quite a variety of recipes out there.

For those attempting to bake bread for the first time, here are some tips that often don't appear in the directions:

1) To make the yeast active, place the yeast in a 1/2 cup warm water and "feed" it with a pinch of sugar. After 10 minutes, if the mixture bubbles up and smells like yeast, you know the yeast will actually make your bread rise.

2) Sift your flour(s), especially if they're the weighter flours like whole wheat and spelt. It'll help your bread gain a light, fluffy texture even if you are using healthy flour.

3) If you're in a drafty place, the bread dough may take longer to rise. Sometimes I'll put the bowl of dough in a larger bowl of warm water, and change it regularly so that the dough gets heat.


Bread dough before baking:



Baked Lucia bread:


Here is my modified recipe:

Lucia Bread

1 tablespoon butter
6 cups flour
2/3 cups sugar
3 packages dry yeast or 1 2/3 oz. fresh yeast
2 cups milk
1 gram saffron -OR- 1/2 teaspoon cardamom, 15 drops yellow food color
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins or dried currants
1 egg

Grind saffron with a little sugar in a mortar and pestle. Melt butter, add milk and heat to 130° (too hot to keep your finger in), add salt and saffron. Mix dry ingredients and gradually add the hot milk mixture. Knead the dough. Place in a greased bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let rise 30 minutes. Knead again. Divide the dough into 30 parts. Roll into traditional shapes,* add raisin decoration and place on a greased sheet. Let rise 30 minutes. Brush with beaten egg. Bake 10 minutes at 450° F.

Note: Add 1/2 c. raisins/currants to the dough if you like lots of dried fruit.

In addition to my other raw ingredients, I used up all the saffron. Saffron isn't cheap, but this bread is worth it. In my life, I have never had too many little boxes or bottles of saffron. Hint, hint. Anyway, the bread is delicious. With my next batch, maybeI'll make a Lucia wreath and put candles in it.

*Here are the traditional shapes:



Thanks to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for the link.

Santa Lucia 2006

Today is the Feast Day of St. Lucy, or Santa Lucia. As you may remember, I gave my daughter the pseudonym of "Lucia" becase my daughter is blind in one eye, and St. Lucy is the patron saint of people with sight-issues.


In this close-up of my daughter's eyes, you'll see that her left eye reflects white. The white is the band of tissue across the back of her eye that obscures her vision. She also has a folded retina. Lucia's particular eye condition is called PHPV.

Like many a saint before her, Lucy's earthly demise was not pleasant: she was stabbed in the throat after having her eyes torn out. Legend says that her eyesight was restored before death, so it wasn't all bad. However, it gets better. Today, the second graders in Lucia's school will carry candles and sweetened* breads as they visit the different classrooms. In the old Gregorian calendar, December 13th was the shortest day of the year. Santa Lucia's day marked the first inkling of the change in season to welcome longer sunlit days. The Swedish festival of Santa Lucia also celebrates the saint's reputation of hospitality to other people, and on this day, Swedish children bring sweetbreads and hot coffee to their parents. (My own Lucia is off the hook as far as the coffee goes. She is too young to handle mugs of hot beverages.)



I shall attempt to make Lucia bread today. Also, I found a link with some photos of a St. Lucia festival through the blog Norway Needles. Check it out!

*I changed "sweetbreads" to "sweetened breads" after Nonny reminded me that sweetbreads are made from animal parts.

Nine-thirty am update: I just got back from dropping off Lucia at school. A little after 9 am, a procession of children walked down the hall singing "Santa Lucia." The oldest girl wore a white robe, and her green garland held 4 lit candles. The children behind her wore simple silk robes dyed individual colors. The girl with the candle-garland set down a basket of sweet rolls and the line of singers filed out.

Sometimes I have physical reactions to music. I am not sure whether the reactions relate to certain combination of notes or certain keys, but some music will make me spontaneously start to cry. To my chagrin, this morning was one of those times. It's not that I'm ashamed of crying, but I prefer to do it in private so that I don't get other people soggy. I reassured Lucia that I was crying because I was happy, but she still needed special hugs from her teacher as I left the room.

Before I left, I peeked into the basket of sweet rolls. I saw hot cross buns in lieu of Lucia bread. Ah well! I'll attempt to make the bread today.

"Santa Lucia" song:
Lyrics
Tune (MIDI)

Another good link: Santa Lucia, the Queen of Lights

Social Music

Dan Zanes with his daughter Anna
Photo by Anna Williams
Pomegranate Arts Project gallery

Back in October, Dan Zanes recorded a "Nodcast Podcast." It's a free download, and is under 20 minutes long. After listening to the interview and music, I'm convinced even more that Lucia needs a ukulele.

If that isn't enough for you, here's a National Public Radio interview from 2003:

Christian Bordal on Music: 'House Party' from Dan Zanes. You'll need Windows Media or RealPlayer to listen to the interview.

I was already taking guitar lessons when I first heard Dan Zanes. However, it was Dan Zanes who inspired me to work on playing the guitar in local social settings. In college, I attended lots of musical coffee-houses on campus, and wished that I could be one of the performers myself. Instead, I wrote a radio-play version of Daniel M. Pinkwater's Guys From Space* and had friends act it out.

I plan to take voice lessons starting in 2007. I plan to be comfortable with the guitar in front of other people by this time next year. Rather, I am comfortable in front of other people now when playing guitar, but I hope actually to hit the right notes most of the time!

*My motto is from the book is, "We are space-guys. We know what we are doing."

Juggling to the Beatles

Click here for the juggling video

Performer Chris Bliss juggles to the Beatles' "Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End" off of Abbey Road. Thanks to Rob Hampton, my guitar teacher, for the link.


Playmobil Beatles photo by Svencentral

Three Planets

Photo-illustration from Siennasoft.com

From the Associated Press:

Planetary triple play this weekend

Stargazers will get a rare triple planetary treat this weekend with Jupiter, Mercury and Mars appearing to nestle together in the predawn skies.

About 45 minutes before dawn on Sunday those three planets will be so close that the average person's thumb can obscure all three from view.

They will be almost as close together on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday they will be within one degree of each other in the sky. Three planets haven't been that close since 1925, said Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer.

And it won't happen again until 2053, he said.

"Jupiter will be very bright and it will look like it has two bright lights next to it, and they won't twinkle because they're planets," said Horkheimer, host of the television show "Star Gazer. "This is the kind of an event that turns young children into Carl Sagans."


Where to look.
Use binoculars, but be aware that the sun will rise soon. Please take care of your eyes.

Also, the Geminid meteor shower is coming up and will be in full-force around December 14. This is one of the times when I wish I lived out in the country.

Tags

I just switched this blog over to the beta format. What finally swayed me was the keyword tag option in order to group related blog posts. I went overboard on the labels because I originally thought they would actually help with web page searching. They don't. Still, I'm glad that I took a couple of hours over the past few days to attach tags all of my archived posts. (Who suspected I had so many posts about outer-space, sewing, and doll-houses?) While I'm tempted to winnow the tags I created, it's probable that no one else is going to care that I've labeled both my library gigs and writing samples as "storytelling." Still, even though a tag like "folklore" brings up thirty hits, I'm glad that some posts are grouped together. If you suddenly have an overwhelming desire to read everything I've ever posted about puppets, then this beta version is for you.

Speaking of puppets, I've got a puppet-show to plan. In the meantime, check out the Three Minute Nutcracker. Oh, what fun and torment I would inflict if I had a video camera of my own...

Three Wishes and One Too Many Shaggy Dogs

Most of the improvisational stories I tell Lucia have simple plots. I learned early on that Lucia was less concerned with what the characters did than what their names were and what they wore. Originally, I distracted a howling Lucia in the bathtub by telling her about her dolly Pepper’s eleven brothers and sisters. I gave them all flower names, i.e. Hyacinth, Carnation, Lily-of-the-Valley, et al, and Lucia supplied them with differently colored capes. When Pepper’s numerous siblings go swimming, they all have to have water-wings, flippers, snorkeling gear and spectacular bathing suits. These shaggy-dog tales I tell have made bath-time much more endurable.

Bedtime is a different story, literally. As much as Lucia would like for me to tell long, sprawling anecdotes about Pepper, Queen Cleopatra, Princess Saffron (Pepper’s auntie and mother of Salt) and Simon the Wizard, I want to move the bedtime ritual along so that I have the evening for my grown-up time. Again, they are not big on plot, but they serve the purpose for which I intend. Here is a story I often tell Lucia:

One day, Cleopatra decided to go fishing on her barge. She dropping the fishing line over the side of the barge and waited for a fish to bite. Very soon, she felt a tug on the line. “That must be a fish!” Cleopatra said. She pulled up the line, but instead of a fish, there was a bottle attached to the end of the line.

Cleopatra opened the bottle. Out popped a fairy. “Thank you for freeing me, Cleopatra!” the fairy said. “In thanks, I will grant you three wishes. What is your first wish?”
[Lucia replies: “A mermaid dolly!”]
“You shall have your mermaid dolly,” the fairy said. “What is your second wish?”
[Lucia: A hat!”]
“Here is your hat,” the fairy said, and gave Cleopatra a purple hat with a red feather. “What is your third wish?”
[Lucia: “Two scepters!”]
“Here you are,” the fairy said, presenting Cleopatra with one gold scepter and one silver scepter.

“Now that I have granted you three wishes, I shall fly about the world to see what I’ve missed,” the fairy said. Cleopatra sailed her barge home, then played with her mermaid dolly, wore her hat, and waved around her two scepters. She told her friends all about the fairy and the three wishes, and they thought that maybe they too would find a fairy trapped in a bottle. However, when they went out fishing in the Nile River, all they ever found in the water was fish.

The End




Left to right: Cleopatra the Queen, Simon the Wizard, Marie the Mermaid, Lucia the Girl

Afterword
Yesterday, Lucia found a Playmobil mermaid dolly in the shoe she had placed by the fireplace for St. Nicholas’s visit. Throughout the day, she looked affectionately at the dolly, newly named Marie, and said, “It’s on your wish-list!” When Lucia gets older, she'll learn those folktales about the fallacies of wishing for too much, a la "Fisherman and His Wife," and all its derivatives. For now, her wishes are tangible and reasonable.

I'd Say "Yes" to Freshly-Baked Cookies

This headline caught my attention today, and it was too good to pass up:

San Francisco says "No" to cookie aroma at bus stops

"What was billed as a pleasing alternative to exhaust fumes at San Francisco bus stops ended after officials Tuesday ordered the removal of advertisements that gave off the scent of baked cookies.

The fragrant billboards, posted at five bus shelters on Monday in an effort by dairy producers to make passengers thirsty for milk, had to come down because the shelters' maintenance contractor had not informed San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency officials, said an agency spokeswoman."

And now, back to our regularly scheduled theme-blog. Don't think I've forgotten the puppet-show. Please, keep those ideas coming! I hope to have a basic outline by the weekend, and then give you a date for the grand unveiling. The alternative is to have a Boxing Day Grudge Match rematch a la Brad the Gorilla, but you want something with plot, don't you?

Puppet Show Wishlist

It's been ages since I've cobbled together a puppet show for the blog. In preparation for my next production, I am open to input. Please write your puppet-show wishes in the comments section. I'll see what I come up with after reading the results. Take a look at a couple of previous puppet shows, if you need a jump-start for ideas. I know I do.

Bogg & Salty in Bellevue

Captain Bogg & Salty, the non pareil of pirate rock and roll bands,* are sailing the Pollywogg North from Oregon again. They'll be playing a 400 seat theatre space at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, on January 7th, 2007. For more information, click here.

Remember to eat plenty of limes before you attend the concert. There'll be no episodes of scurvy on Captain Bogg & Salty's watch. If any out-of-towners** on my blogroll actually show up for this event, you can be sure there'll be a bottle of rum just for you.




*I've not heard any other pirate rock and roll bands, but I'm sure Bogg & Salty are cutlass and pegleg above the rest.
**"Out of town" actually means "outside of the Puget Sound area. "

Advent Notes

After Lucia set up the felt Kyrgyz Nativity set, she brought visitors in addition to the Magi. And no, she hadn't read Susan Fletcher's The Alphabet of Dreams.


Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Lucia has already opened the first two doors of her Advent calendar. While she wants to open all the doors at once, she is starting to grasp the idea of the progression of days. If you'd like your own online Advent calendar, here is a link to this year's edition of The Cat Who Laughed. (You may find previous years' calendars here.

St. Nicholas' Day is coming up on December 6th. Ever since I was a little girl, I put out my shoe the night before with hopes of finding good things the next morning. I did indeed get a lump of coal one year, but I knew that St. Nicholas was not the person who left the coal in my shoe. I lived in coal country, after all. I was pretty lucky: St. Nicholas left gifts for me on both the 6th and the 25th. For stories about the saint as well as ways people around the world celebrate the feast day, click here.

"Where'd you get that cold, cold heart?"

Seattle schools closed last Tuesday and Wednesday because of the icy conditions after the snowfall, and I spent both days inside the house with Lucia. I had a lot of time to practice the guitar while Lucia played highlights from the “Nutcracker” non-stop. At some point without my noticing the exact transition, my fingers finally stopped hurting when I practiced guitar. For a good while, I’ve had proper fingertip callouses that provide extra padding when I accidentally jab myself with sewing needles. Still, the pain was ever-present until this week. Cheers to snow-days.

Here’s what I’ve been working on:

1) On the second side of the “White Album” by the Beatles, right after the ending of “Helter Skelter” when John Lennon yells, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” the song “Long, Long, Long” by George Harrison slinks quietly into my speakers. If I want to hear the nuances of the song, I have to turn up the volume on my music player, and remember to turn it down again quickly before “Revolution 1” starts. I’ve simplified and tweaked the chords I found online: A, G, E minor, and D. (Do I really need to struggle with the F sharp minor chord? No, I do not.)

2) Another “White Album” song, “I Will,” written by Paul McCartney, follows “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” (which John Lennon sarcastically claimed was McCartney’s best song ever). “I Will” is one of my favorite acoustic Beatles songs, and I often sing it to Lucia as a lullaby. My personal interpretation of the song is that of a person who’s looked forward to her future baby for a good part of his or her life.

3) I didn’t really believe that a lot of rock and roll only needed three chords until I started tentatively plucking out some of the songs. “When it Comes to You” by Dire Straits only needs a G, a C and a D minor chord at the minimum.* “When it Comes to You” is a good “You’ve done me wrong too many times and there’s nothing else we can do to salvage this relationship, so just let it go already” song. If strumming sad songs puts me in a good mood, “When it Comes to You” makes me jubilant.**

*I throw in a G7 chord too, but that’s extra. If you think of the chords as colors, then the number after the chord indicates a slightly different shade of that color. For example, “G” would be your basic orange in a simple seven color drawing of a rainbow, but “G7” would be that stunning hue of red-orange that you find in roses or sunsets.
**My guitar teacher says my chords are all wrong. Crivens! I'd argue, but I'm the one paying him to turn me into a folk-rock rhythm guitar hero.