(Glass Sculpture by Pascal)
Three weeks of posts to Midnight Oil
From November 16 to December 11, 2023
Red Clay / Freddie Hubbard
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John Fraim
The first post of this amazing month of post started with Pascal on November 16 and continued until the Chalk Hill post of December 11th. There is reason to believe my posts to Midnight Oil will continue but they might slow down as I might get engaged in some larger projects that require more than a blog post. Not sure yet.
But it seems important enough to simply capture this amazing month of just six posts from Midnight Oil. Done in the middle of other ongoing projects. Most all posts include images and music to go with the words of the post. Sometimes images and song are so much better at expressing things that words just cannot do.
I’ve organized the posts below so that the first one on Pascal (November 16) is on the top. They work down one under the other until the most recent post of December 11th at the bottom of the posts. I feel the posts do have a particular pull or theme to all of them.
Maybe the creative streak will continue. It is difficult to know but not something that worries me. It always comes and goes with me. You need to let natural cycles take their course of action sometimes. To let them move at their own pace. There really is no speeding up the movement of cycles. Sometimes they move fast and its hard to hold on like some roller coaster. Other times, they move like a slow lumbering old mule.
A Head in Downtown Walnut Creek
Some growth represented in the writing and it is wonderful to me that things are so related to the present world. It is almost like a journal of what is going on in my life in these 6 episodes of blogs between the above dates.
But I’m very proud with what I’ve accomplished via the below blogs to Midnight Oil in just the past three and a half weeks. There are 650 blogs to Midnight Oil from 2016. All available free on from our site. There are numerous other mixes to the incredible amount of content on our site. This one simply connecting up the last month at random. But on a feeling it ties together. You be the judge.
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The first piece of music that surrounds the post is about my mother’s artist friend Pascal. The piece is called “Essence of the Sun” by Nicola Conte and Spiritual Galaxy. The amazing music of Conte plays under a photo of Pascal looking at us. Perhaps sometime in her sixties or seventies. Who knows. Who cares. She looks to be appropriately honored by this powerful piece of music as well as by a photo I took of the gorgeous sculpture. She seems the first image to pass in a short little journey the entire episode takes one.
But, I’m simply including the last six post to Midnight Oil. Since 2016, there are over 650 posts. And at the end of the six posts is my most recent post on the winery I recently visited for the first time. One I have always wanted to go to. The post starts with a video of driving up an approach road to the winery. Driving up Chalk Hill Road to the winery on a bright, sunny afternoon in early December. The summer crowds are gone and the Tasting Room is open with minimal staff as one would expect.
We sit out on the Tasting Room patio overlooking on of the little valleys of the winery. A hill of vineyards with the vines planted the way of Chalk Hill – in vertical lines up the hills rather than horizontal lines across hills. There is another hill of vineyards facing us and another to our right. The three hills of vineyards we can see from our table on the patio of the tasting room. The two whites and two reds were fantastic and I bought a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
I think it’s very appropriate that the six posts below starts with an artist of glass sculpture and ends with an artist of winemaking. A short journey over almost a month of blogs.
Thanks to all our fans out there.
John
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Suzanne Pascal / March 19, 1914 – September 24, 2021 Essence of the Sun / Nicola Conte and Spiritual Galaxy ____________________________________________ A friend of my mother’s was the famous painter and glass sculptress Suzzane Pascal. She lived a few blocks from our home in Beverly Hills and her glass studio was in the garage behind […]
The Songs of Nick Drake I’m just beginning to become a fan of Nick Drake. After listening to a few amazing pieces, I downloaded his latest album The Endless Colored Ways. It is made up of various artists influenced by Drake and their own interpretations of one of his songs. What more of an endorsement […]
When I lived out in Santa Rosa from 1998 to 2002, the magnificent Annadel Park was right behind my home in the Valley of the Moon and I hiked every trail in the park. The music playing on my car radio when I first saw the Valley of the Moon was Seal’s Human Being. In […
Theme from Route 66 ____________________________ There are destination places like the Golden Lamb in Lebanon, Ohio. Or the Taj Mahal for that matter. And there are also those rare few destination products. Their presence alone attracts people to them with the charm and image of a southern politician.It’s not hard to understand how these might […]
Certainly one of the most beautiful and powerful songs ever written. But never presented better than by Chris McNulty on her Whispers the Heart album. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David in 1962 for Jerry Butler. But later made popular by the Walker Brothers and many others. It is the ultimate […]
Watch first the above short video. Then read the below. I think we all have the pilgrimages we need to make sometime in our life. Our so-called bucket list of things to do before we die. A place to visit for the first time. Or, an old place of memories to re-visit. It’s