STS-51L

January 28th, 1986. I was 8 years old and in Mrs. Monahan's second grade class. For as long as I could read - which is as long as I can remember - I'd been fascinated by the stars and the space program. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up (I even had a distant uncle who worked for NASA in the 1960s). This was still at a time when being an astronaut was something really to aspire to.

We were watching that day, as I suspect many of you were, too, in our classroom. It was the first time a civilian had gone into space. An elementary school teacher.

I'd watched a lot of shuttle launches as a kid. They were among my very favorite things. I read voraciously anything I could get my hands about space.This one seemed special, different. There was someone who represented the "everyday person" on board.

I remember watching the takeoff like so many before. Then, 73 seconds into its mission, there was a ball of, well, it wasn't fire - at first. At first it looked like a cloud. Then the solid rocket boosters continued flying on and crossed each other in midair. I think I knew immediately what had happened. It made me sick. Like, for real sick and I remember having to go home.

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years but this was the first "Where were you when?" moment of my life.

Gregory Jarvis
Christa McAuliffe
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Judith Resnik
Dick Scobee

Michael J Smith

Living Inside The Music

There are just certain pieces of music that stay with you. They work their way under your skin. You live with them and, for better or worse, they become a part of you. There's a lot of music I love and I'm not trying to create a "desert island" list.

I bought John Adams' Naive and Sentimental Music when it was first released on CD in 2002. I bought it on a whim and was immediately taken with it. I had been enamored of Adams' music for quite some time and I'd been buying a lot of it for some time. I liked the piece a lot for a time but I don't think I really "got" it and more-or-less kind of shelved it, listening to it every once in a while.

Then - in 2006 I think - I bought the score. I've been reading it for over four years now and it's slowly revealing itself. Yes, it's a "desert island" piece but for me it's so much more than that. It's a piece that I could just crawl into and live inside for a while. I dare say that this piece might have changed my life. It never gets old, never grows tired. In a way it nurtures me. (It's a little disheartening to know that I'll probably never hear it in my hometown unless it's being played by a touring group.)

There are a handful of other pieces like this but Naive and Sentimental Music is probably the piece that means the most to me in this way.

What do you think? What pieces go beyond being "desert island pieces" for you? What works are a part of you?

Bloggity Blog

I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has killed our ability to blog. Most of the readers here are Facebook friends (if not friends in real life) and The Warrior Bard and Reed seem to be the only ones blogging with any frequency (and that's nowhere near as much as all of us used to). The Bard has just recently mused on the fact that "life" takes over. This is true, but I'm also nowhere near as angry as I used to be. Well, not angry enough to find the time to post about it. Hell, I'm not even sure that anyone reads this anymore (Though there is movement based on site traffic info. People seem to be interested in the film music posts).

I don't really have much to offer today. I just wanted to post. Life has been bumpy for the last year (year-and-a-half, really) and it doesn't show much in the way of improvement. But I have a beautiful family for which I'm truly grateful and we're not homeless, so I guess that's saying something. But I'm beginning to reach the point where something professional is going to have to go my way. Yes, I had two performances this past year and I'll hopefully have at least one more this year, but that's dangerously close to living on bread and water.

As with last year I plan to write more about music - specifically film music - more. I think I started out doing a better job last year but then the blog started to get away from me again (I have a tendency to overrefine). I still like the medium. There are things here that can't be conveyed through a Facebook post (Or even a Note on FB for that matter because of its length restrictions) and I like the fact that if we get going on a good topic we can have a good conversation.

For those of you that read but never weigh in, now's the time, right?

Happy New Year.