Category: Uncategorized

By Stephanie Martin
www.almostfifty.com

Steph and the Gals (our temporary name) performed our first gig last night and we have lined up two more.

As a musician and music teacher, this has been a journey of friendship, fun and music.

Because I have been performing live for years and working as a musician, it seems completely attainable to me to play live but it’s not for everyone. However, to some music students with some great talent, we proved last night that we can do whatever we want to do.

Dreams are great at all ages and when people ask me if they are too old to learn guitar or play music, I say, “No.”

I think it may even be more important later in life than it is earlier because we need to keep rejuvenating ourselves with fresh, fun things in our lives. Age is just a number. Our souls are always young, always seeking.

Life has enough stress and responsibilities without denying ourselves potentially enriching activities. Real and deeply enriching activities. Things that we may desire and yet they take us out of our comfort zone, and when we actually do them, we are elated. High on life.

Everyone’s dreams are different and unique to them, but there is never a time to stop reaching for them. One hour a week committed to something enriching can fuel our gas tanks for a whole week and fill us with anticipation for the next enriching hour.

This latest project I have worked on with my students has been nothing short of a blast. So many laughs and newly formed friendships and some amazing music.

At our first performance for a great cause, we actually received a standing ovation, which was unexpected. We did not have an encore song chosen. So I pulled my end-of-my-evening song from my repertoire, which is a feel-good, sing-a-long song and we all performed our encore song.

What a great night for this group. What a great example of following our dreams and desires and challenging ourselves to do new things.

I remember around 18 years ago getting on my first coffeehouse stage playing my original music. I had performed before but this was new and I always had the jitters. Bands had a security to them but this was a completely new creature. It was both exhilarating and terrifying and I loved it.

Since I was young I have performed many venues from big audiences with full bands to solo gigs in pubs (my favourite) and still await a stadium or the largest bank of speakers I can imagine. But I still remember that magical moment of my first coffeehouse performance, the magical stopping of time and the great feeling I had.

I know how awesome that is to share with someone else, even though this has become my work, it is still a passion. Like writing.

So my blog is my new challenge and once again I am finding exhilaration in the experience.

We are never too old to enjoy life, to stretch ourselves, to put ourselves “out there” or whatever it may be we wish to do. Let’s follow our hearts, not follow the tribe (it moves too slowly for this lifetime) and let ourselves sing.

By Jim Hagarty

We live in an old part of town.

We have sidewalks on both sides of the street. Spare me a one-sidewalk street. There are streets in my town with no sidewalks. Yuk.

The population is mixed. Old to very young. Well off to just getting by. Working men and women, retired. Unemployed. There is a drug dealer down the street. I’m glad. Lots of cops driving by slowly.

But the best thing is, we live in one gigantic dog kennel. More dogs than people.

In other words, heaven.

There is a gated community nearby. No pets. No kids. No clotheslines. No lawnmowers on Sundays. I have seen livelier cemeteries.

Double yuk!

By Jim Hagarty
Another great track from Bad Daughter, all original songs recorded in Nashville by the McCullough Girls, Deborah and Callie. Not yet available in the Corner Store.

I Had a Father by the McCullough Girls

By Jim Hagarty

A friend asked me the other day
If I was always odd this way.
What happened to me, friend inquired,
To make my circuits strangely wired?

Did a great big tree fall on my head?
Did I spend years sick in my bed?
Did I have an operation on my brain
Which left an indelible stain?

Did I fall out of a moving car?
Did I drink a can of roofing tar?
Was I dangled by my feet
Or run over three times in the street?

I answered slowly, like I do,
“I’m not as near as strange as you.
“The difference is I do not hide
“All my thoughts deep down inside.”

But as he left, he shook his head.
He hadn’t heard a word I said.
So I went back to being weird.
Just the very thing he feared.

But in this life we have a choice.
Sit like a stump or make some noise.
And on my tomb I want it scratched
“Often copied, never matched.”

Somehow, I have made it to the advanced age of 50 years without ever having held a garage sale.

This makes me, I guess, the Britney Spears of consumerism, as the bespangled pop singer and I are still waiting for our first time.

The fact that I’ve been saving myself all these years for just the right garage-sale moment has not come about because I have never owned a garage. I’ve been proud owner of one for years now. And it isn’t because I have not had much of anything to sell. The rafters in the attic above that garage, as I write, are groaning from the weight of the dozens of dusty artifacts of a life spent in what is popularly known as conspicuous consumption. Sharing space with the cobwebs up there are books, typewriters, hockey shin pads, stereo speaker stands, old record turntables, etc. The kind of stuff I imagine garage-sale junkies lie awake dreaming about on Friday night before Saturday morning’s sales.

I have no philosophical differences with those involved in the garage-sale subculture. In fact, I have been known to take in one now and then and some of the very items which at this moment are being crawled on by spiders in the upper regions of my home were picked up at such events. Above my desk at work is a painting I scored for $5 in somebody’s driveway one morning of a blacksmith shoeing a horse while a little boy and two old farmers look on. I treasure it.

As far as I can tell, my aversion to becoming a sidewalk salesman to rid myself of my clutter has a very simple explanation. I’ve just been too darned scared to invite the world to rummage through my stuff and carry it all off in their trunks, trailers and hatchbacks. What if I didn’t ask enough for it? What if I suddenly missed it all as I watched it being carted off down the street? What if nobody bought any of it? Or tried to haggle with me over the price?

But, as Britney has confessed to a bit of heavy petting, I now have my own dark secret to tell. And if fooling around leads to sex, then the cheap thrill I derived from the following encounter can only mean one thing: some Saturday morning soon, I’m going to go for it.

For months, in a back room off the tiny office I rent, an old black leather armchair sat mocking me with its uselessness and reminding daily of my inability to send it packing. Its wide, square seat, at some point re-covered amateurishly with black cloth in the basement of its then-owner’s home, sagged from the weight of the many boxes, bags and papers I’d tossed onto it, no doubt in some subconscious effort to hide it from my sight. But no matter how I camouflaged it, I always knew it was there, taking up space in my cramped workplace and my life.

I had inherited this albatross when I took over the office. The previous occupant of the small quarters, though he cleaned out everything else he owned, refused to have anything more to do with his chair and his face looked pained every time the subject was raised.

“I don’t care what you do with it,” he said, like a father disowning an errant child. “I just do not want it back again.”

A rather harsh judgment, I thought at first, and so I pulled the chair out from time to time, to see if I could make any use of it. Each time I did, it didn’t take me long to realize why it had become so unwanted. The ample seat of the high-backed affair was attached to the standard chrome swivel apparatus designed to make it super-functional. But too many years of overuse had made it hazardous instead. Sitting in it was not unlike trying to stay on one of those freaky bucking machines so popular in country music bars in the ’70s.

So, it had to go, or I risked whiplash. But how? It wasn’t worth an ad in the paper. No one I knew had any interest in it. Even the local dump didn’t want it and to prove it, they proposed to charge me $10 to leave it there.

“Aw, just put a sign on it and leave it at the road in front of the office,” said the former chair owner, contacted again for his reluctant advice.

So, pulling out a large piece of paper and heavy black marker, I printed “Take Me!” on the sheet and taped it to the chair, hoping the exclamation mark I added as an afterthought would seal the deal. I asked my landlord if I could park it at the street every day for a week, after which time I promised to junk it. He agreed.

So, I wheeled the chair to the road and scampered back to my desk to begin a furtive vigil through the mini-blinds in the window. An hour passed, with no activity, and I expected many more to do the same. And then, while I was describing my daring move to a friend on the phone, I suddenly became excited.

“Omigosh!” I screamed. “Some guy’s stopped at the chair.” I gave a running commentary as the shopper carefully checked out the prize with all the deliberation of a modern consumer trying to decide on a major acquisition.

“Don’t sit in it! Don’t sit in it!” I called out from the safety of my office.

And thankfully, he didn’t. Opening his trunk, he tossed the black beauty in and drove away with a smile on his face that showed him to be the happiest man in Canada.

But he wasn’t.

The happiest man in Canada was already sweeping up the spot once occupied by the treasure which at that moment was weighing down the other man’s car. And his mind was awhir with wondering, if that small victory felt that good, what it might be like to go all the way.

The same sort of thoughts, I imagine, that must occupy Britney’s mind from time to time.

©2001 Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I am friends with a bee named Barney
Who appears to have no plans to harm me.
I sit in my chair.
He buzzes my hair.
He seems to want only to charm me.

By Jim Hagarty
Southbound 803 is the final song on the 12 self-penned offerings by singer-songwriter Jim Ryan on his 2014 CD Snippets of Truth, available for purchase in the Corner Store. Jim is a devotee of the “Bakersfield Sound” of Buck Owens and others. This is as close to bluegrass as Jim gets on this recording.

Southbound 803 by Jim Ryan