Listening to Barry Manilow is Like the Chicken Soup for your Soul

I didn't buy a lot of music when I was a kid or a teenager, or any time in my life really. I am satisfied by turning on the radio or letting the television babble on or I like silence. The absence of all but the hum of the refrigerator and other essentials.

However, Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits was the first album I ever bought. Mine was a cassette tape because my Mother had given me a cassette tape player for Christmas. Also, my Mom was the person who started me listening to Barry Manilow. She had several albums which we would put on while we worked together sewing, making bread or pies or folding laundry and so on.

Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits was the First Full Album I Ever Bought for Myself

I bought Barry Manilow because I wanted to hear him. Not just occasionally on the radio, randomly. I wanted to play his songs over and over and hear him sing all those words to an audience of just me. I was lonely and Barry Manilow always made me feel like someone else was out there and heard me, would care and understand what I was feeling.

Of course, I never met him and doubt I ever will. I don't need to meet him. Too often the illusion is spoiled by the reality anyway.

I don't still have that original cassette. I don't have the cassette player any more either. Most of the time if I think of a song I want to hear these days I just find it on YouTube and let it play. Sometimes I play the same one a couple of times. Sometimes I share the YouTube link on Facebook.

Sometimes I will send the song to my nephew, Zack for his younger perspective on my older music. Zack sings with the choir and has performed at school, in front of a paid audience in high school too. So Zack knows music more than I do. He doesn't think much of most of the music I love. Not because it's old or seems dated. He says most of them can't really sing very well. I never hear the difference myself. I just like the song.

I haven't tested Zack with a Barry Manilow song yet. Today could be the day. Hard to choose which one to send. No doubt I will find lots of them on YouTube.

Green Living History is something I invented when I wanted to pin myself down. I have a lot of interests and it does seem at some point they all relate to each other. Green Living History is that point. This started out as an ordered list but became a mess. Several of these are interests which fit into my other sites.

• Solitary Atheist Green Earth Witch - Pagan
• Vintage Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Futurism and Retro Futurism
• Apocalyptic Fiction and Non-Fiction
• Words and Writing Style
• Obsolete Technology
• Tea Sets
• Coffee (Latte art)
• Home Office Ideas
• Dragons
• Sharks
• Garden Gnomes
• Science Fiction and Fantasy Culture
• Gargoyles and Grotesques
• Green Living
• Books (Print Books)
• Healthy Living and Being BBW
• Road Trips, Travel and Transportation
• Tiny Houses and Minimal Living
• Tiny People as an Art Form
• Vintage and Old Buildings
• Print Publishing
• Ghost Signs
• Old Cemeteries
• Ancient and Prehistory
• Canadian History
• Women in History
• Women's Issues and Feminism
• Paranormal, the Unexplained, the Supernatural and Mysterious Things
• Streaming Internet TV
• WordPress
• Linux and other Alternative Operating Systems
• Pixel Art
• Digital Photography
• Arts and Crafts and Odd Art Forms
• Dolls and Doll Making
• Paper and Ephemera Art
• Rocks in General and as Art
• Home and Garden Style
• Fashion and Costumes
• Sculpture and Carving
• Drawing and Illustration
• Holidays Celebrations and Events
• ASCII Art
• Urban and Rural Exploration
• Creative Writing and Publishing
• Web Writing and Publishing

I have wanted to build an archive of ASCII art for years. I have masses of text files with ASCII art collected in files, some of it I even began trying to sort out. However, it is a much bigger and messier project than I expected. To start with, how do you sort it all out so people can find it? By original artist would be nice but – it is hard to be sure who the original artist is in many cases and I don’t think many people would be searching by artist since most have no idea who they were anyway.

Anyway, I create my own ASCII art. I began in 1998 with the newsgroups which are now a part of Google. Thank you to Google for preserving those old newsgroups – they even kept them current so you can continue making posts as if nothing has changed. But, the newsgroups changed and most people moved on when the spam over loaded the content.

I knew Joan Stark, Llizard, Veronika, Hayley and many others from those newsgroup days of alt.ascii-art (I may not have that exactly right, it’s been a long time). Joan Stark became a mystery, she just disappeared one day. I have tried to track her down but no luck. Llizard and Hayley I did find and have sent notes the odd time.

But, the old days of ASCII art are gone. It isn’t used in email signatures now. Email became HTML and stuck with that. I protested at the time. It was doomed by marketing – people wanted to use HTML to spam email better. So they did, still do. But, I still have my email set to text only just to spite them all. Small and meaningless revenge makes me feel a tiny bit better.

ASCII art is not completely dead. It is sadly not always what I would call ASCII art. I will never think of mechanically produced text art pictures as true ASCII art. If you did not pick and choose each letter, number and character to create your picture then you don’t have ASCII art. Anyone can scan a picture into text – that doesn’t make it art just a copy of the original. You rely on the software to do all the work and software can’t replace a human who is less than perfect but can see things with emotion and use their intelligence to make unique choices. Machines lack that feature, so far.

Why am I putting up this site after all this blabbing about ASCII art…? I want to show my own work and I want to promote ASCII art as a whole. I don’t want ASCII art to fall off the sidelines into history as some dorky, geeky fad that time forgot. I don’t like to see people mock it (that includes the computer produced art versus the human produced art). I want to see the ASCII artists remembered along with the art they created.

Is that too much to ask? Probably not. But, it is a pretty big project to take on. Wish me luck!

You can read more about me and my other posts for the WordPress Blogging 101 challenge and my other sites.

I can't think of anything more summer for me than watermelons.

Buying those massive watermelons at the farmer's market, hauling them home. Of course, remembering the time one dropped on the driveway and went splat! They were heavy and my sister was still little then, but she wanted to carry in the watermelon. Luckily, we had bought 3 of them. I came from a family of 4 kids who all loved watermelon on a hot day.

All 4 of us could sit right on the front steps and have watermelon seed spitting contests. I never won. I think my brother and the other sister won the most often because they had longer tongues (and they were the most competitive).

We seldom ate the watermelon in the house, they were just too messy. All that juice running down your arms and face would drip on the floor too and leave it a sticky mess. No one wanted to be stuck inside the house cleaning up a floor with hot water on a hot summer day.

The Colours of Watermelon

I still love the colours of a watermelon, that shade of pink and darkish green are summer colours to me. Of course there are the shades of yellow, orange and red which we think of as the warm summer colours, but really... can you see the summer when you think only in shades of red? Nope. For me it's the watermelon and the colours of that fruit which give me the summer feeling.

Still like watermelon 40 years later

Here I am, long grown up, moved far and then farther from my old town and the house I grew up in. But each summer I always make a point of buying watermelon. Even if I have to sit on the front steps and eat it all myself. Often, I wait until someone is visiting. We still have to have the seed spitting contests after all. It's not about who wins as much as who ends up the messiest by the end of it all. I'm never the messiest and yet I still find sticky spots on my arms, clothes and other strange places hours later.

Did you know about watermelon cake?

Tomato cages are the best thing I can think of for the garden. Sure there are other garden tools but what else can you leave out there season after season, rain, sun or even the occasional late or early snow? Tomato cages!

Of course, tomato cages aren't just for tomatoes.

In our garden tomatoes aren't even the first plant we put the tomato cages on. Anything which tends to grow tall and then fall over gets it's own cage. Not for the plants which fall over as they finish their season but those which will bloom all summer. You don't want the plant to need the tomato cage. Plants should be able to battle the wind and still stand upright (unless heavy with fruit or vegetables).

Tomato cages work great for daisies of all kinds. The flowers tend to make the plant top heavy and then you don't see them even though they can bloom all summer.

Climbing plants can grow up a tomato cage but this is best for annual climbers because you want your perennials to grow up something permanent like a garden fence, a shed, a gazebo, the wall of your house, or a trellis of whatever kind you choose.

Tomato cages can train your shrubs and bushes.

We used to rope the Rose of Sharon bushes up to the fence every year. But, over winter the ropes we used (to be fair we just used what was around, even birthday party ribbons more than once) the ropes broke and the plants tend to overlap them in between seasons as we prune branches and new branches grow out. So, we started using tomato cages while the plants were still small to a medium tall in size. Once they grew too big we went back to the usual staking them up with rope, ribbon, etc. However, the plants grew pretty straight while the cage trained them so most don't need help now. Just the occasional branch which grows too far over the driveway and might scratch the vehicles.

Just for fun... decorate your tomato cages.

Add some sparkly things, twine some ribbon through the bars and whatever other great idea you get. People use tomato cages to make Christmas trees but they are so over looked as a great, cheap and fun way to decorate your garden.

Sadly, I did not see hot pink tomato cages on Amazon. I would have loved that colour in the garden. You can find yellow, red, green, blue and Earth tone colours via Amazon.

But, don't settle for less than the colour you want. Spray paint the tomato cage any colour you choose.