I’ve been up since 4 o’clock this morning. My husband, Ray, and I wanted to do some work at our orange grove up in Ojai, but we both needed to get back by mid-afternoon. So, off we went at 4:30 am for the 11/2 hour drive. Luckily, there was no traffic at that hour so we made it even a little faster.
On the way, we listened to the Ted Channel on satellite radio. If you have never tuned it to these talks – all around 20 minutes by leading experts in all sorts of fields – then you are missing a treat. Today, the speaker, Benjamin Zander, was discussing how he hopes all people can come to love classical music. He is a conductor and he went through a short piece of Chopin’s and helped the listeners to understand exactly what the composer had in mind when he wrote the music. It was a sad piece and he explained how the composer chose notes and chords to help convey his sadness. He then played the piece on the piano and asked everyone to think of someone they deeply loved, but who was no longer here. Listening while doing that – I thought of my beloved father – it was easy to get choked up. He said that was exactly what Chopin hoped the listener would feel. Benjamin Zander said that his goal is to help everyone understand how wonderful classical music is so that they can enjoy it as much as he does. This is his mission in life.
I just looked up the Ted Talks on Google. You can find them all simply through a simply search.
Here is the link for Benjamin Zander’s talk if you’d like to get a feel of what these are like: http://www.ted.com/playlists/79/maestros_if_you_please.html
Ray and I arrived just at sunrise in Ojai at around 6 am. I have included pictures of what you can see from the different directions around our orange grove. We climbed up on the roof of our trusty old Spartan trailer for many of these. Here they are:
Our View to the South
Our View to the Southeast
Sun Rising in the East
North
West
It was cool and quiet and lovely at the orange grove this morning. We worked until it started getting too hot to be in the direct sun, which was around 11:00, then we meandered home. A good way to get something accomplished in a short spurt and then have fun driving back. An extremely pleasant day!
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