IKF Violin Concert

Cello, Piano Concert

Thursday, August 5, 2021 3:00pm – Concert: Cellist Ismael Geurerro and Pianist Allison Freeman (Cultural Arts Center) The program will include Adagio and Allegro by Robert Schumann, Cello Concerto in C major (1st movement) by Joseph Haydn, Le Grand Tango by Astor Piazzolla, and Cinema Paradiso by Ennio Morriocone. Audience Q & A will follow. Presented by the cultural Arts Council

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Live Performance at IKF

Friday, June 4 3:00pm - Maschera Piano Quintet (Cultural Arts Center & LIVE on Channel 976) The performers, all outstanding high school musicians, met as participants of the NSO Youth Fellowship Program, a prestigious scholarship program for talented musicians. In this, their first public performance, they will be performing works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Amy Beach, and Antonin Dvorak for piano and string quartet. Members of the quintet are Kayleigh Kim and Will Joseloff, violins; Ray Wang, viola; Romain-Olivier Gray, cello; Alex Suh, piano. Their coach is Ms. Wanzhen Li, a member of the National Symphony Orchestra. Following the performance there will be time for questions from the audience.

Landing on Mars

7 Minutes to Mars

Charlie Coyote

http://www.dailycoyote.net/?p=12722

When Charlie stopped eating completely, a magpie started showing up and I swear to god, it was Eli. Magpies are common in Wyoming but I’ve never, in fifteen years, seen magpies here around the house. This magpie flew in every day and hung out on Charlie’s fence. It flicked its tail around the exact same way that Eli flicked his tail. When it first appeared, the magpie made me furious and scared because of that old rhyme – “one for sorrow, two for mirth, three’s a wedding, four a birth” – that rhyme is about magpies. When I realized the magpie was Eli, I knew I had to prepare myself, and in my sorrow, I was glad Eli had come back to guide Charlie. That’s what big brothers do.

Our last full day together was one of the best days of the year. Charlie and I spent the entire day outside, and the day was warm and mild. The magpie was on the fence flicking its tail and chattering to us. Charlie rested and I sat beside him with my knitting. He was so relaxed, smiling in his sleep, so totally at peace, the soft dome of his head a halo of sunlight. We lounged and talked and gazed at each other and nothing else existed for the whole day. In the evening, Charlie decided we should go on a little walk. He set the pace and direction, and I walked beside him until he was ready to go inside, where he stretched out on his down-covered bed. I stayed up late, just watching him.

The next morning, Charlie slept in. He went outside at 8:08 am. I know this because I checked the clock to give him ten minutes to come back inside before I went out to be with him. When I joined him, he was curled up on the sunny eastern-facing hillside, nestled under a big rabbit brush. I sat down near him, watched him and talked to him. And then, just before 9, he was gone, as light and quick as a dandelion seed lifting off on the breeze.

Charlie died of kidney failure. I can’t know this for sure, of course, but based on the speed of this whole thing, his eventual refusal to eat, and the anemia that was apparent from his tongue (it got progressively pale and was nearly white by the end), my vet said all signs pointed to kidney failure, too advanced by the time he showed symptoms to have done anything about. Charlie seemed to be improving for a couple of weeks which is why I thought it was arthritis and which, frankly, was the only reason I was capable of sharing that first update – and I’m so glad I did. Having you all looped in has helped me more than I ever could have imagined. We buried Charlie under his favorite tree.

There are so many ways this could have played out worse – for Charlie and for me (a long illness with low quality of life, a level of pain that required euthanasia, losing him suddenly to a poacher, Mike and me dying first). The only way it could have been easier is for both of us to die simultaneously in a gas leak explosion. Dying together in a gas leak explosion is literally the best case scenario when it comes to loving someone…. and we know this…. and still we choose love. This is something to be proud of.

I always knew my time with Charlie was fleeting. I always knew it was a once in a lifetime experience, and I didn’t take one moment for granted. Every single time he howled, I stopped what I was doing and reveled in the song – even if I was on the phone, even if Mike and I were in the middle of a conversation, even if I was in the middle of writing a sentence. Every day was a special day because it was a day with Charlie. Every night, I didn’t fall asleep until Charlie came in and curled up next to me. Every time I saw him, I smiled. Every photograph was a gift. This is not hyperbole – this is why I started taking pictures with him on our very first day together, and this never changed, not as days became weeks and weeks became months and months became years and the years went well beyond a decade. I never took one day, one smile, one song for granted. Every single one was a treasure. And I got to be with Charlie for nearly fourteen years, longer than I ever dreamed.

I’m doing OK considering the circumstances, and mention this because I know some of you are worried about me. If you’ve read The Daily Coyote: Ten Years in Photographs or Meditations with Cows, you’ve read variations of my essay on grief. Writing that piece was so hard, just unbelievably painful. I was sobbing with every word, every edit. But I’m so glad I wrote it, because doing so helped me immensely in processing my past, present, and future grief. It is the reason I am not off a cliff right now.

Chloe has been pretty neglected for the last month and she is thrilled to be my therapy dog. She’s glued to me and just so gentle and sweet. Friends have come through with an array of controlled substances so that I may self-medicate as needed. Mike and I reminisce about Charlie’s life and antics and laugh and cry. I continue to read your heartfelt emails.

The void is excruciating and I look for him a hundred times a day – we all do. But when I call out to his spirit, I find myself unable to utter any of my sadness. Because when I connect with him (which I do so vividly it can only be described as a psychedelic experience) the sadness disappears. I tell him I love him, and I say thank you, thank you for all the time we had. My gratitude for what we had together is like the brightest sunlight burning away the shadows. Feelings of thanks and feelings of love are the feelings I’m left with.

One of the threads that runs through Meditations with Cows is a scrutiny of entitlement and greed. I thought a lot about entitlement and greed while writing that book, on many levels – personal, interpersonal, societal; the ways we are conditioned to accept and even glorify greed; and the ways this conditioning (and my efforts to unlearn it) have affected me as an individual. All that work has helped me cope in the most unexpected way. Instead of drowning in thoughts of ‘I want more, why can’t I have more?’, I’ve been cocooned in gratitude for all that I got. All the time I got with Charlie, all the laughs, all the lessons, all the love. I got to have so much. And I’ll never not have it. I am so thankful.

The day after Charlie died, it struck me for the first time just how huge Charlie was in the world. I never thought much about that – intellectually, I understood it but it never fully registered; I never really felt it. And it just hit me for the first time – Charlie, this individual little coyote, was in People Magazine and Vanity Fair and newspapers around the globe! I was so baked (for the first time in years) and laughing hysterically and sobbing hysterically at the same time (which is really hard to do) at the magic of Charlie, and the reach of his magic. His story, his life, has been translated into multiple languages around THE WORLD. Charlie! Charlie was in all those homes and phones and offices and schools through the internet. Charlie was a superstar! God, what fun for him. He got to just live and run and dance and play and eat like a king and sleep in a bed – he got to be himself, oblivious to all that… but I know he felt it, the way I finally felt it for the first time. He felt that all the time, I know.

Saturn

Butter Chews - Maggie Schewel

SHORTBREAD
3/4 cup butter, cut in small pieces
1 1/2 cups flour
3 tablespoons sugar
TOPPING
3 eggs, separated
2 1/4 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup coconut
1 cup nuts, chopped

Cut butter into flour & sugar until crumbly - small pebble sizes. Press mixture into 7"x 11" pan.  Bake for 15 minutes at 375F until brown on top. Cool Slightly.

Mix egg yolks, sugar, coconut & nuts.  In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff.  Fold into sugar mixture.  Pour over shortbread & bake for 30-35 minutes.  Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Libbys Pumpkin Pie

Libbys Pumpkin Pie
1 (9 inch) unbaked deep dish pie crust
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 eggs
1 (15 ounce) can LIBBY'S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
1 (12 fluid ounce) can NESTLE® CARNATION® Evaporated Milk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Combine sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger and cloves in small bowl. Beat eggs lightly in large bowl. Stir in pumpkin and sugar-spice mixture. Gradually stir in evaporated milk. Pour into pie shell.
Bake for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees F.; bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 2 hours. Serve immediately or refrigerate. (Do not freeze as this will cause the crust to separate from the filling.)

Moose Lake

Kathy
"We hiked to this small lake up behind where Otto and Margaret Walter used to live and Gene got this great picture of a moose."

Symphony of the Potomac