Jennifer Leonhardt: bloggie

go here.

yeah, baby



;)

clouds.

period. serious.





well so anyway.

last year was one of those years you think should maybe not happen altogether in an entire lifetime, never mind a year. ( italics for emphasis, that's what mrs. penna in 6th grade at highland view elementary used to say.) but seriously, and ive seen some things. (too much? italics, i mean?)

i am one of those people who have wild shit happen to them. you know? like those people who just have that crazy shit go on. i dont mean to, you realize, it just finds me. now, i am also someone who finds drama in general tedious and frankly embarrassing, so any overt weirdness is already too much for me. by weirdness, i am not referring to originality, perversity, audaciousness or spunk. no, i'm talking about being a magnet for every little metal filing of crunk'd up idontknowwhat when you'd rather just get on with things.

so anyway, last year was one of those years, and ive been in a kind of coming back from it for awhile. so getting a concussion this summer while attempting to complete a yoga certification (dont ask if you dont know, i am totally about spirit, dude)-- not actually doing the yoga, mind you. no that would have been nearly in the realm of normal in this case. nope, i managed to get a concussion while more or less minding my own business.

i think the problem is, ive been trying to be normal again. its confusing, you see, because im in texas, and texas by any other name is england. and in england, absolutely nothing is quite as important as normal. (ok, even i admit, enough already with the italics.)





(montreal graffiti artist ashbal gabriel vIau, "les productions je t'aime")

but i dont know, when youre in england, and you not english, even if you were born there but moved away as a baby? you cant help staring at the natives like, hm. normal, hunh? hm. yeah, cool.

its just me trying to suddenly develop stripes in the zebra pack all over again when i just have to relax and be a fucking leopard already.

no kidding, that was the title of a piece of spam mail this am. and yesterday was no better: paris hilton's vagina bites mailman.

huh?

even spam has evolved.

oh well, at least the heat broke and now its a modest 92 or something. i have brain melt from that stretch. what happened??

on the other hand, derek sivers the founder of the cd baby site sent a message yesterday that included a great quote by abraham maslow:

"life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of
fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and
growth): make the growth choice a dozen times a day."

here's me doing let's do the time warp again, in rehearsals for the new and improved rocky horror.

ok, deal with this:

first, a cup of jet fuel with half and half (ie, coffee, to you non-austin coffee drinkers-the independence coffee co here in tx)

followed by a melon with strawberries and orange wedges in a fine ceramic bowl.

then a salad. endive and romaine. handmade dressing.

later, much, a plate centered with couscous au whatnot (garlic, wasabi, secret things) covered by a wine and cream mushroom sauce--make that, slathered-- too many mushrooms by far.

followed by? a handmade, messup-UP, totally APPLE'd strudel... but havent had that yet.

all's i can tell ya is,

;)


it's my birthday.

all that and the sounds of the happy sunday ghetto: rooster, dogs, screaming children, gawdawful ice cream trucks, and 80s powerpop raging next door. [sigh] all in all, a great birthday.

except for the fact of course that i have an insane concussion.

but at least we made delicious food at home in our pajamas today. that was rad. and we sang. and we talked and hung out. and so on. you make what you can out of what you have. that's called stone soup. look up the book.

a very good birthday, nonetheless. this year i plan to include more full-spectrum truth.

rose and morris cooper, my paternal great grandparents. apparently nothing was spoken of morris by his daughter sylvia, according to her son, my dad: she never said anything. he died when she was nine.

i know that sylvia, my paternal grandmother was then raised by a mother she was very very close to, pictures of them on the cape in the sun as a girl, in a striped swimsuit and curly hair. rose was her roommate in a cold water flat up the road from radcliff college in 19 hundred something, when girls only went to radcliff, and they couldnt afford any other lodging. radcliff was the female harvard, and my aunt judy went there as well.

my dad went to UT back when there was still undergrad housing at the corner of guadeloupe and 28th? maybe, and he and brad blanton met, and jon noetzel. they were of course bad boys of a sort, and hugely scathingly intellectual, pot-smoking fellas. look 'em up.

but rose? she saw her daughter through the four years and into a library science degree---do you know what degrees were offered back then for girlies? sylvia was a genuis, like all the women and men in my family. they were just very very clever folk. dont know what happened to me.

artist to be found here stephanie did the artwork that will be the cover of the next record, minstrel's daughter. you can see the painting over on the "stuff" page and on myspace. collect her while you still can ;)

Prior to the arrival of settlers from the United States, the area that later became Austin was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes, including the Tonkawa tribe, the Comanches, and the Lipan Apaches.

Edward Burleson laid out the town of Waterloo in the mid-1830s. In 1838 Mirabeau Lamar, vice-president of the Republic of Texas, visited Waterloo, where he stayed with one of the earliest settlers, Jacob Harrell. Lamar was elected president shortly thereafter. When the Texas Congress formed a commission to seek a site for a new capital to be named Austin, Lamar advised the commissioners to investigate Waterloo, which was then indeed chosen. In May 1839 Lamar's designated government agent Edwin Waller organized and led a workforce of about 200 men from Houston to Waterloo to construct the new city.

At first, the new capital thrived. By the early 1840s the population stood at about 850 people. But when Lamar's political enemy Sam Houston regained the presidency in 1841, he used two Mexican army incursions to San Antonio as an excuse to move the government to Washington (now known as Washington-on-the-Brazos). Within months Austin's population had shrunk to about 200, and many Texans assumed that the city would die. Remaining Austin residents responded to the threat by forcibly keeping the national archives in their city in defiance of President Houston's attempts to bring them to Washington.





Anson Jones became president in 1844. The following year he called a convention in Austin to discuss annexation to the United States as well as to consider a new constitution. Once annexation became official, delegates wrote a new state constitution in which Austin was again named the seat of government.

The Texas State Capitol was completed in 1888 advertised as the 7th largest building in the world. Funded by the famous XIT Ranch, the building still remains part of the Austin skyline. The state capitol is smaller than the United States Capitol in total gross square footage, but is actually 15 feet taller than its Washington D.C. counterpart.

In September 1881, Austin public schools held their first classes. The same year, Huston-Tillotson College opened its doors. The University of Texas at Austin held its first classes in 1883.



In the 1950s, Austin's first research labs and think tanks were built. As Austin's economy prospered, several movie theaters, public pools, and a local library system were opened.

The Austin music scene began attracting national attention in the 1970s with artists such as Willie Nelson and venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters.

Today, Austin is known as much for its cultural life as its high-tech innovations. The same success that has gained the city a national reputation has brought with it many difficult choices.


(info totally ripped from wiki-ville and over at the perseid meteor shower page over on facebook. laugh if you will.)

;)

so anyway. blah blah blah. the perseids. tomorrow night. be there.

bernie mac died. isaac hayes has passed.

here's a link to a memorium for isaac.



i was totally on set with this dude in culver city and in hollywood, and he was a complete pistole, seriously. all the way. nothing in the least held him back, except maybe racism--he didnt want to talk to the white folks on the floor but hey, i've felt the same way about helping women so there. check it, he was a funny, funny guy and very loved by the ones who loved him. and also, remember utah?

"little did he know...'

[dot dot dot]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hip2i9yHZ38

hmmhmnh.

;)

here sumthin:

From “Metropolitan Diary” in the New York Times (28Jul08):



Dear Diary:



One morning in Brooklyn on the Jay Street subway platform, I stood waiting for the train and watching families returning from church in their Sunday best.



Through the crowd came a very tall woman in a big yellow hat. She was holding the hand of a man who appeared to be her son. She looked to be in her 60s and he in his 30s. The man appeared to be developmentally disabled, and they walked slowly.



Suddenly, the man began to have an attack of some kind. He was convulsing and yelling. People began to stare and step away.



With not a moment’s pause, the woman calmly took in a long, deep breath and, pulling her son’s head to her chest, began to sing the most beautiful gospel song. As she swayed back and forth, her son was comforted and became quiet.



The crowd gathered until she was done, and applause broke out at the end. I will never forget the moment, her incredible voice and the inspiring way to turn an upsetting moment completely around.


by Rebekah Brooks


normal's good. what's your def?

"we will either find a way, or make one."





that's hannibal. i found it in a book of Lovely Quotes on the waiting room table at a doctors office this week. (not a regular doctor, of course. i dont frequent those. she does subtle work, dig.)

crazy amazing movie from french new wave daze, wilhelmina wiggins fernandez was so wicked. i think the costume designer won a cesar that year for the look of the thing. it was called diva. that and subway were the killer-illers of the harvard square theatre four-movie lineup days, with anything else by luc besson and maybe something with patrick deweare in it. here's this craaaaaaaaaaazy thing:

diva 1

and

diva 2

and here's a suite juliet can knock out of the park so far there's no park left. she studied with a student of rampal in ny for some time...:

baroque and blue









i have a spectacular concussion at present, and we did this show with me searching for the synapse which would send a little information to my fingertips and make the chords go round and the pick stay put. man. dont try this at home.

having always been a little cagey, i wonder if: i am choozing the wright thing, and whether or not i am a sirius sort of person or not, and if i reely love what i love. knowhatimean?

hurricane dolly came by town yesterday, what was left of the rain anyway. it was yummy, and heavy-fallin for awhile, and for us, thats just fantastic. its so dry i havent had a green blade of grass in my yard for 2 months, since there are rules about watering lawns and anyway after so many years of cali conservation and desert-type foliage and growing things, i just dont feel it for keeping lawns green. even tho i sure do miss the color and the luxe of it. i used to go up to the getty museum up off sepulveda at mulholland just to get me some green in the summers in LA when all the hills were burning. or over to the observatory, which horribly they closed for "renovations" several years ago and still hadnt "completed" last time i was in town. btw, if youre in LA this weekend, go check out ainjel emme over at the mint. i'll be missin it but you dont have to.




another green drive was sunset all the way down to the water, you could be sure of green through brentwood and the palisades and then it didnt matter because it was just all blue once you got west. before venice was a maze of highrise lofts and studios, it was a mess of burned out warehouses and corner lot coke deals and i lived in a little craftsman house with a bunch of guys about four blocks from the boardwalk. i would keep carrots and hummus in the fridge, which was what i lived on at the time, and listen to my roommate's mix tape (read: cassette) of tangerine dream, phil collins, george benson and james taylor. i never thought it was a strange mix. we used to play pinball on the front porch--the guy who owned the place had one of those old pinball machines standing out there. i got pretty good at one-arm pinball in my underwear eating carrots sticks and blasting "on broadway" on tom's stereo. it was a house full of calarts grads or dropouts, all huddled up in venice working on film or video or music. the front gate was hard to open because there was a trumpet vine so overgrown on it that it rested on top and essentially ate the latch.



been messing around with a new rhythm thing-- have to say, the drums have it.





these are photos by anke voss, which i stole clean off her post-site: here

Hadijatou Mani takes matters into her own hands

its a matter of pride for someone born a leo to be very very good at things. just is. so being humble, which is important as a human being but for a large feline as well because it has to do with understanding and compassion, is also big. as in, 'portant.

early morning, just got back to town from some travels, which included as many imaginary miles as real. so it was far. ;) but esp, its good to be back and also: omg, how many miles to go!!!!! ("before i sleep")

this week i saw blue herons over a green lake. one morning, a heron was strutting very slowly and deliberately, the way i imagine one of the wigged gentlemen of the law in england might still do, around the dock of our neighbor's boat pad. he'd a big fish in his beak, and it was still. prob hoping to go unnoticed--sure understand that! but no, the grey (not blue) gentleman had a clearer notion and the thing got dropped to the deck, where it lay helplessly flopping about in the oxygen-heavy air while the heron slowly stood and then stepped and then stood and then stepped. and then struck. quickly, and accurately, through the chest cavity, if fish have those. and there was less flapping, but some, and then-another strike. it sort of recoiled and then with huge forward motion sent it's beak right through the head of the fish ending it absolutely. it was a merciful killing, as i dont like to think what its like to feel lungs filling with water instead of air. must be terrible. but now the fish was dead. and the heron stood over it quite distinctly, and made a point of moving about the cabin importantly, gently victorious. i imagine it was hungry. there's not much time for anything but eating when you're hungry. and sure enough, in minutes, the thing had the entire fish, something easily nearly the weight of its own slender silly self, engulfed in its beak and swallowing without any chewing. it ended badly because before it had completely ingested the thing, we had run forward with cameras and thought to take a picture over the fence, three of us, and startled the poor thing as if it couldnt see us, into flying out over the water and losing the fish into the waves. such is the self important ignorance of the recently-fed sapien!

anyway, great time--the moon got bigger, apparently mars aspected something, venus?? dont know, and things got heavy, but i was oblivious. (ok, im never absolutely oblivious. ever)) what i mean is: i thought on the greens of the lake, the hillside on the other side of it, the gentle curve of the hillside which looked a lot like the small of a waist of a woman lying on her side, and trees filling the whole body, and the fish lept, and the birds variously called, and my heart sank and rose like a metronome, and hope was dashed and then revived, and so: it was your average week and plus some days.

listened to a gigantic amount of house music and christmas songs kept coming to mind. do you have that problem? i sing for christmas, in july, every year, just getting ready.

ps i got to the lake and my camera was full of these urban images, which i hadnt yet saved to disc, so instead of peacefule nature, here's is urbannoia:

photography by anna kariel, whose work is amazing and hangs in my house. keep an eye out for her.

(photos by juliet tondowski and devan mulvaney)

the willie dixon birthday bash organized by harry bodine and spencer thomas was actually a fundraiser for music for literacy project started by issa medrano, a librarian at an eastside elementary school, in memory of omar dykes' late wife lyn. theyre looking to get a lot of books into the hands of young folks without the means and access so hook em up if youve got some spare reading material.

finally some rain fell last night. i didnt see it coming but leaving after rehearsal the sky was mixing up a gray brew. it was such a relief after so much "dry gold grass". you can see some of the raindrops on the lens on the first shot below.





fortunately for us the rain was only in earnest after loading in so we were only slightly soggy at the start. there's no telling when the next rain'll be, after last summer where the sky was always falling. i dont call that global warming. i call it: last year was wet, this year its dry. next year, who knows?







johnny konya (drums)



carley wolf (bass/vox)



devan mulvaney (guitar)





(photos by juliet, who is 1) my favorite person on earth to sing with, and 2) would be in these shots on stage except that she was taking them.)

happy birthday, dad.