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Name: Ruth Ann
Country: United States
State: Tennessee
Metro: Memphis
Gender: Female
Interests: All things flute, particularly teaching; classical music; the Anglican Tradition; Conservative, Libertarian-ish Politics; Macintosh computers; my family; most kinds of pets; travel and good food (not necessarily in that order!).
Expertise: Most things related to flute, particularly teaching and playing; former orchestral player; member of flute and harp duo; web design (some!); cooking.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
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AIM:  deltaflute
Member Since:
8/3/2005
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| John McMurtery Flute MasterclassMonday, June 22, 20091:00 p.m.Grace-St. Luke’s Episcopal Church1720 Peabody Avenue • Memphis, TN 38104    John McMurtery is section flutist of the New York City Opera Orchestra. He has appeared as soloist
with the New York Symphonic Ensemble, the Artemis Chamber Ensemble, the Manhattan Chamber
Orchestra, and at the 2005 Lincoln Center Festival. In recent seasons, McMurtery toured extensively
throughout Europe and Asia, performing in France, Germany , Austria , Italy , the Czech Republic,
Japan , and Taiwan. Adding to his discography, he recorded for the NAXOS label as principal flutist
on a collaborative disc of world premieres by award-winning composer Sean Hickey. During the
2006-07 school year, McMurtery was appointed Visiting Professor of Flute at the University of
Nevada-Las Vegas, and has also taught at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton , NJ . He graduated
in 2005 from The Juilliard School with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree, where he studied with Jeanne
Baxtresser, Julius Baker, and Robert Langevin. Previous teachers include Bart Feller at Rutgers University
and Dr. Hal Ott at Central Washington University .
Name:________________________________________________Age______________
Address:_______________________________________City, ST__________________
Flute Instructor:__________________________________________________________
Piece to be performed_____________________________________________________
_____I am interested in performing in the masterclass.
(If students require a pianist they must provide their own.)
_____I want to attend as an auditor/observer/non-performer. (but bring your flute)
Mail application with check for $25 made out to Luna Nova Music to:Luna Nova Music1794 Carr AvenueMemphis, TN 38104Deadline: June 10(Limited number of spaces available.)Special Guest FlutistJohn McMurterySee www.belvederefestival.org for complete Festival informationClick comments below to add to your favorite network.
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| Excellent, again, from Rich Carroll.
Take heed, conservatives, and all of my right-wing extremist friends!
by Rich Carroll http://www.patriotscreed.com/
May 10, 2009
Boil-down the results of the 2008 election and here’s what you have: Americans rejected an all-American born girl with a tremendous record of achievement as a state governor, and chose a non-American with zero experience and close ties to communists, terrorists, and Muslims. The same voters rejected a conservative Mormon because of his religion, and elected a Marxist Muslim. How hard will it be to sell mom, apple pie and the flag to 2010 voters who either do not know about mom, apple pie and the flag, or simply don’t care? Such is the paradigm shift of our culture, and conservative hopefuls need to fully grasp they cannot sell achievement, history, facts or patriotism. Today’s majority voter is woefully uneducated, poorly schooled in America’s history, and emotionally driven by celebrity attraction. Future elected officials will need the whitest teeth, glitzy decorations and best rock bands to attract the “yay“ ballot from a culture ranked 25th in the world in intelligence. Lengthy, historical speech’s are out; vague promises are in. Tell people what they want to hear. Society Americana is really into buying the best lies. Conservative political planners need to realize John Wayne is out; Brad Pitt is in, and drugs are the biggest cash crop in our agronomy nation. Avoid the white, well educated, successful male combat veteran. Female voters will perceive this candidate as a “bully,” probably intolerant of humans having sex with animals, and more likely to go to war (the dreaded campaign killer) than a metro sexual momma’s boy who has avoided any kind of fight his entire life. Voters would prefer a piano playing nice weak guy over a steadfast, principled hard liner. The ideal candidate will embrace ignorance, exuberantly making up for his paucity of knowledge with stridency and absurdity of his opinions. Pick a candidate with a few individual quirks. Public relations can make any quirk “cute.” Voters will focus on these and ignore the hard, complex, maddening substance of policy and any wild-eyed conviction the candidate may actually have.
We also know that American voters are not bothered at all with a candidate who expresses a sneering condescension towards all those bible-thumpin, shot gun-pumpin “white hillbillies” and that proclaiming our sins and apologies to the world is a “good thing.” During the last election the candidate who portrayed a clear contemptible hatred for the United States and our founding documents proved quite popular. More than likely because those who enter the voting booth know less and less about our founding documents. The conservative challenge to regain control and secure our future will be determined by how we pick and frame our candidate so that he or she appeals to people who crave “cool” and celebrity. If this means sending text messages about upcoming appearances so be it. If this means posting NCAA basketball picks online; do it. Frame superficial over true depth and conviction. We need to only tailor the messenger, not the message. Individual and group identity politics is in. Conservatives will need someone who can artificially appeal to every stray dog minority and grievance monger residing in America. Perhaps a single Vietnamese mother with a black child;? A great example of yet another “victim of white society.” We might get some of the left vote if we ran a Muslim Imam for President…find one; preferably one with radical ties. Six hundred million “Washington’s” were needed to purchase the last Presidential election. Given inflation, it will take nearly a billion dollars to bail out our Constitution and Declaration of Independence and buy our way back into the White House. To regain our sovereignty will take more, but then it always has.
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| http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5445/courage-and-the-absence-of-courage
Arlen Specter would never have made it into Profiles in Courage. Unlike the senators described in John F. Kennedy's book -- men who remained true to their principles, even when it meant paying a steep political price -- Specter has never been celebrated for his backbone.
Forty-odd years ago, Specter abandoned the Democratic Party in order to win election to Congress as a Republican; five days ago, he abandoned the Republican Party in order to win re-election as a Democrat. As he announced his defection, Specter all but admitted that he was acting out of naked political expediency. "I have . . . surveyed the sentiments of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania and public opinion polls," he told reporters, "and have found that the prospects for winning a Republican primary are bleak." According to a poll that had been released a few days earlier, only 30 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans were supporting Specter's re-nomination, while 51 percent favored his conservative rival.
Continue reading here..........
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| Got this from a friend, and it did bring back memories, fond memories of growing up. While we did have street lights and paved streets, at least many of them, we did entertain ourselves with our own creativity rather than expensive toys, etc.
##### Every one of these I remember very well, because my kids and grand kids did them… I’m too old to have done these things. Street lights in Mansfield, Arkansas did not exist when I was growing up, so we did not wait on light to know when to get home. If you wanted light, bring your own coal oil lantern..
We did not have roller skates. There was no pavement to use them on and they don’t work very well on dirt roads.
But, we had fun. My brother and I gleaned 2 cultivator wheels from dad’s junk pile and made a cart, something like an Irish Lorry. We hooked a mule to it and went about the countryside giving our friends rides.
One Saturday, we borrowed my dad’s farm wagon, loaded it with loose hay, fresh cut that morning, put a rope across and got half the youngsters from the church to go on a night ride and song singing.. A pretty red-headed girl sat beside me while I drove the two big horses of dad’s. We put a 2X4 out the back and hung a coal oil lantern there so that if a car came along, it could see us. We didn’t see a car all night, but we saw hoot owls, fireflies, bats and a big horned owl…
As a smaller child, we did not have many “store-bought” toys, so we made them. A clothes pin (the kind with a spring) and a piece of wood, carved out just right would shoot rings cut from an old inner tube. We played “Cowboys and Indians.” Strange, both cow boys and Indians had the same kind of gun.
A 2 inch strip of shingle with a long string tied to it and swung around your head would make a terrible roaring noise.
A gallon syrup bucket with a small hole in the center of the bottom and a shoe string tied through the hole, soaked in coal oil (or floor wax) and then dragged through your fingers would make a loud noise.. We called it a “Moke Call.”
A good Barlo pocket knife and a piece of wood could soon be made into a windmill. Put a nail through and fasten it to a stick and hold it up in to the air. If you did a good job, it would spin fast.
Don’t forget the bird houses. They were all over the place. If we saw a Bee Martin looking for a nesting place, there would very soon be a house for it. They ate houseflies, so we loved them.
Washers. That was a portable game that anyone could play. Large flat washers were easy to come by at my dad’s junk pile beside his shop. Pace off a line about 20 feet long and dig a small hole at both ends. Stand at one hole and flip a washer at the other. A washer in the hole was 5 points. Hanging over the edge of the hole was 2 points. The one with the nearest washer, not in the hole, got one point. Believe it or not, the girls was better at this game than us boys, so we would not play with them…
A small tree limb, cut a few feet long, became a horse. Don’t forget to carry your rubber gun, in case you met up with an Indian.
A piece of soft 2X4, and a thin, flat board could be made into a fine Ford Tri-Motor airplane, just like the China Clipper. (Good Ship Lollypop) It didn’t take a week to cross our ocean like the China Clipper. Our ocean was the cow pasture. We seldom flew in the rain…
There was nothing greater than sitting on a creek bank with dad alongside and a cane pole with a fish hook, hoping for a frying size perch. We usually got enough for a meal, too. Fried up with a mess of fresh fried okra, and it was heaven. Best was when dad would tell mom that we caught that meal….
I think one of the greatest toys we ever had was a toe-sack swing. My brother and I found a tall red oak tree that bent off way up high to the north. We gleaned an old mining cable from an abandoned coal mine and fixed it around the tree, about 25 feet up. To the bottom, we fastened a hemp feed sack, filled with corn shucks. There was a smaller bush at just the right place for a scaffold. With a saw and a few pieces of scrap lumber, we trimmed that little bush and made a platform. We would pull the swing up to the platform and jump on with our legs wrapped tightly around that sack of shucks. Since the top of the swing was so high up. The arc took a long time to make. Great fun, and girls just could not use that toe-sack swing!
And then, before we knew what happened, we became too old for such stuff. Our head turned toward getting a job or growing a crop to sell. We discovered the value of having a few pennies in our pocket. With a quarter, I could get that pretty read headed girl to go to the movie with me to see “Nyoka, Queen of the Jungle.” That is, if she could walk about 4 miles home after the show… Well, sometimes I had a horse, but she didn’t like riding that horse.
I felt sorry for my kids that they did not have the toys we did when I was growing up. Our grand kids had even worse. Now, my great grand daughter treasures her battery driven scooter. What is this world coming to? The kids of today have no interesting toys at all!!!
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Since I am now a radical, right wing extremist, and proud of it, wanted to post the latest from Rich Carroll.
The Unvoiced Assumption of us Conservative Honky Extremists
by Rich Carroll
April 23, 2009
According to the convoluted dip wads on the left, we are responsible for everything “bad” from colonialism to AIDS. Even worse, one screeching liberal claims it was a conservative white guy who stole Dorothy’s ruby slippers! Okay, that did it! And all this time we assumed we were doing it right.
In America’s conservative history, we got off our ass and built America from a wilderness to the world’s most industrialized nation. Shame on us for having to kill some Indians and whack-down (gasp) a few million trees on our way to the prosperity liberals seem to fully enjoy. Being a history buff, I don’t recall one book discussing a liberal special interest group outraged that “the Indians were here first,” from their cabin along the Wabash River or chaining themselves to trees. Of course not. The building of this great nation required too much hard work for a liberal. They began arriving when all the work was done; a trait which carried-over to their children’s schools when volunteers were needed.
My writing germinates from a to-the-marrow hatred of liberals. They say things like “illegals aren’t illegal,” (?) “soldiers are extremists,” and “I’m moving to a foreign country.” They never do move, damnit, but then again never expect a liberal’s commitment to exceed the size of their mouth. Singly, you can ignore a liberal. In a group, their noisy desperate cackling and whining claws at the chalkboard in my mind. When I have captured the correct phrase or the correct adjective to describe a liberal, there is something very happy-making about it, and I’d hate to give up that kind of happiness. I find a spiritual health in trying to express reality about liberals.
Liberals like to repackage crap in a new wrapper. Socialism is disguised as “economic recovery plan,” discrimination is “affirmative action,“ and wanting to censor conservative talk radio is somehow “fairness.” Should you hold to a biblical understanding of marriage, you are a “homophobe.” Try talking to the “free speech” nuts; they’ll shout-you-down in an eye blink. “Racist” is their favorite word. It covers everything from the flavor of your ice cream cone to insisting you have a doctor who speaks English.
The world’s first liberals were discovered in 64 C.E. As Visigoths were incinerating Rome, a small group of liberals banged on Nero’s door to bitch about the affects of second-hand smoke. Since that time, liberals have blamed the rest of us for killing, mangling, torturing, and covering mother Earth with cement. We are the one’s who cut-down Oak trees to put up institutions for liberals driven insane by people cutting-down Oak trees. Barbara Streisand might be the quintessential liberal representative; giving a news conference from her 6 fireplace Malibu home to bitch about President Bush’s lack of environmental concern. They master the word “hypocrite.” Nut ball liberals have never grasp the concept that a civilization is built on what is required of them, not on that which is provided for them.
There were no liberals in America during our first few hundred years after America’s discovery. We had no social welfare programs to support them; no communist organizations for them to join. You worked or didn’t survive. We didn’t have foes for liberals to cultivate back then; we killed our foes, and courted our friends. America didn’t have bath houses or gay bars. Our Continental Army wasn’t picked by a bunch of Code Pink whores. We worked, prayed in a Christian church on Sunday, and fought fiercely for our independent sovereignty. Study the culture of liberals and you will quickly grasp the world would be a much better place without them: Your children would receive an academic education to prepare them for the job market instead of social engineering instruction about “Billy‘s Two Moms.” The ACLU wouldn’t exist, nor would illegal aliens, STD, AIDS, street gangs or sex on television. We would endure far fewer Hollywood self-aggrandizement shows selling us the idea that acting in films is on the conscience level with discovering a cure for cancer. We wouldn’t have Katie Curic’s constant striving to dig-up some dirt to degrade our military personnel to the world. Americans certainly wouldn’t be paying for someone’s “choice” to have unprotected sex and demand an abortion.
Middle Eastern Muslims would be denied entry into the United States for the simple fact they are responsible for slaughtering people around the globe. Liberals never heard Aesop’s snake fable; conservatives live by it.
Liberals have two words for people like me: I am a “radical extremist” for wanting to protect my country, and Silence. Anyone who disagrees with their blueprint to destroy America with an anti-faith, anti-family vision. The Christian Cross has the same affect on liberals as it does on Dracula. Just keep reminding yourself these people are losers. They were the quixotic quitters in sports; the ones never asked to dances and parties; the outsiders when we were kids; the ones we laughed-at for wearing nose rings or Goth clothing. They had nothing important then; they have less importance now.
Liberals have never stood at the gates of sorrow’s kitchen licking out all the pots of battle with a sword in their hand. They would prefer the alternative of surrender because it takes less effort and is temporarily less bloody. After all, giving up one’s character is a small price to pay for giving up one’s life. Liberalism is a mental disorder characterized by uncontrolled emotional responses to reality and fact. Symptoms include inability to assume responsibility for their own actions, lack of ability to have logical thought process, and a requirement for government control over their miserable lives. It is highly contagious among the weak, the immature, and those still requiring the use of dad’s Beamer on Saturday night.
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