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Sad news today

Some very sad news today. Our friend sher of What Did You Eat? passed suddenly this morning.

Sher was one of the first people we met through Weekend Cat Blogging. She often left kind words on our site for Luna, whom she quite admired. And in turn we got to know her late cats Upsie and Sundance, and of course her little black kitten Laura.


We remember her sharing life with cats and squirrels. But she was also an accomplished food blogger, and we have tried several of the recipes she posted. Indeed, I was going to be making the Angel Hair Pasta With Sweet Red Pepper Pesto that she posted on Thursday, not knowing this would also be her final post.

Our thoughts are with Sher’s family and friends this evening.


Weekend Cat Blogging: Alone in a sea

Alone in a sea of cardboard:

Another example of Luna's natural geometry set against hard artificial lines.

Vast expanses of fun…on what is otherwise a dreary Saturday for us here at CatSynth. But the extended weekend is a good excuse to complete the major projects remaining at CatSynth HQ.

The rain is actually good news this weekend for our former hometown of Santa Cruz – there has been a major wildfire in the mountains to the east. It's actually near Loma Prieta, for which the 1989 earthquake was named. Sadly, many people have lost homes in the mountains. It's a sparsely populated area, where people specifically chose to live and make their homes. Animal rescue has been a major and so far successful component of the effort, with horses and other animals being brought to the county fairgrounds near Watsonville.

We are also sad to hear about the passing of one of our Weekend Cat Blogging friends, Bonnie Underfoot. Please visit them and offer your thoughts.

Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Kate and Puddy at A Byootaful Life. It looks like our favorite Luna look-a-like is having a birthday this weekend!

The Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos and Carnival of the Cats, hosted by the Catboys Realm and the M-Cats club, respectively, are both dedicated this weekend to Bonnie Underfoot.

And as always, the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #147

Luna and I welcome everyone to the Weekend Cat Blogging #147 Round Up!

We are dedicating WCB this weekend to our friend Upsie, who passed away this week. Upsie and Sher were among the first to welcome us to Weekend Cat Blogging, and she will be missed. Please visit What Did You Eat to offer them your thoughts.

Kashim, Othello and Astrid are also dedicating their WCB to Upsie and Sher, and have this wonderful graphic.

Artsy Catsy is having a 200th post contest. They are putting together some surprises for the kitty who comes closest to guessing the date and time (US Eastern Daylight Time). And, speaking of March 31, that's the last day of their March Madness Fundraisers for Moki, Project H.A.M. and Lilly Lu.

Bustopher and Harmon are waiting for spring, and someone (Bustopher) is often stir crazy??one day it?s warm, then it?s cold?.its warm again and then the mornings are cold and then it?s a warm afternoon and then. However, Harmon is taking it all??.well, like Harmon does. They are now at their new blog icanhaspnutbutr.

Some springtime activity at CorgiFeathers. Zandakitty is having a little trouble with her solo kickboxing. Welcome to WCB!

Our friend whaleshaman of JellyPizza reminds us that kitties love boxes. “Purrfect for little places to hide & feel sad & be happy at the same time, too, for having known Upsie.” And for having known Upsie, a tribute: “A Silence Fell”.

Mind of Mog has another shot of Bazel because he is just so cute.

Andrée at meeyauw has LOL Cat Bible: Lectionary Readings for the Second Sunday of Easter. “See where bad kittehs go, LOL Cat Bible is on Twitter, 60% of the LOL Cat Bible is translated now, and a papercraft that you can make at home!“

Spring is coming at Music and Cats, and a neighbor cat is out guarding his garden. Turns out he was quite a friendly cat (and handsome as well), happy to come over and greet passers by and purr, while still “standing his ground.”

A brief scare last week at Life from a Cat's Perspective when Samantha got out and was lost! Fortunately, she came home safely. Here we see her looking contrite after causing so much worry for her family and friends.

Save the environment…help a cat… Moki's family is holding a recycle-your-old-electronics drive to help raise money for Lilly Lu, Moki and other kitties in the cat blogosphere who need finanical assistance with their medical bills. Visit their site for more details, it's free to participate.

Fridolin is grief-stricken as he has just learnt about Upsie's sudden passing away. He shares his feelings, and a secret, at Rosa's Yummy Yums.

Kitikata-san also misses Upsie, “you were the coolest cat, and I am sad you are gone. Meows, purrs and headbutts to Sher. I am so sorry.“

Want see a real brat? Well, head over to the BengalBrats.com to read about SonnyBob's “nasty behavior.” This includes continued persecution of the resident Great Dane. SirWoody attempts negotiations (but fails) at Pet's Garden Blog. The Bengal Brats are also hosting Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos this Sunday.

Carnival of the Cats will be happening this Sunday at Nikita's Place. And next Sunday, it will be here at CatSynth!

We'll continue to post throughout the weekend (and into Monday morning), so if you want to participate, please leave a comment or contact us.

Weekend Cat Blogging and more

A busy weekend here, so we present a couple more photos from our cat sitter Ronni West:

Luna has this wonderful wide-eyed expression in many of these photos. You can see another example in this recent post. We'll miss our pet sitter when we move.

Weekend Cat Blogging #136 will be hosted this weekend at Chey's Place.

The Bad Kitty Cat Festival of Chaos will be happening at the House of the Mostly Black Cats.

Carnival of the Cats is coming to Life from a Cat's Perspective on Sunday.

And a special note for Carnival of the Cats founder Laurence Simon, who lost his feline companion Frisky this week. Are thoughts go out to Laurence, Gina and Nardo.

Finally, the Friday Ark #173 is at the modulator.

RIP Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)

Well, we have one more influential musician to remember before the year ends. The great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson passed away on December 23:

Called the “Maharajah of the keyboard” by Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson is considered to have been one of the greatest piano players in the history of jazz. He played to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years.

While Stockhausen (whom we remembered on his death two weeks ago) was an inspiration for his composition, electronic innovations, and ideas about music, Peterson was all about performance and technique, and joy of playing jazz at a high level. As a young jazz pianist, I used Oscar Peterson's piano solos as practice. In particular, I remember playing the minor bluesy Roundalay, which was my successful audition piece for All State Jazz in New York. Certainly, I could never even attempt to match the actual solos at full speed.

You can get a sense of the real thing from this video:

We close with these comments from the CBC:

Renowned for his speed and virtuosity as a pianist, Peterson ? who was born in Montreal and later made Toronto his home ? made hundreds of recordings in his career, even after a stroke in 1993 disabled his left hand…

…”The world has lost the world's greatest jazz player,” Hazel McCallion, mayor of Mississauga and Peterson's friend, told CBC News on Monday afternoon.

UPDATE: You can read his obituary from Mississauga.

RIP Karlheinz Stockhausen

We have lost another of our musical heroes this year:

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen has died at the age of 79.

Best known for his avant-garde electronic work, Stockhausen was an experimental musician who utilised tape recorders and mathematics to create innovative, ground-breaking pieces.

His Electronic Study, 1953, was the first musical piece composed from pure sine wave sounds.

Electronic Study II, produced a year later, was the first work of electronic music to be notated and published.

But the composer rejected the idea that he was making the music of the future, writing in 1966: “What is modern today will be tradition tomorrow.” [BBC]

In addition to being a strong influence on my own music, Stockhausen worked his way into my regular rotation of music. I can recall many Sunday mornings in Berkeley with coffee, fresh bagels, the New York Times and Stockhausen's Kontakte. This was a groundbreaking work of electronic music, but it was also one that I enjoyed just listening to, the way others might enjoy classical piano music on a weekend. And so, at least for me, Stockhausen's music did indeed pass into “tradition.”

You can sample some of Stockhausen's music here – I recall NPR using Kontakte in their obituary piece as well.

Here is a lecture on “sound” from YouTube:

In memoriam: Millie Poris (1916-2007)

As a rule, I don't talk about family on CatSynth (except for Luna). However, I am making an exception for my grandmother, Millie Poris, who passed away this weekend.

She was the “quintessential grandma”, very warm and full of life and doting on her grandchildren even into their 30s. As young kids, that included bring us treats, taking us out a lot, or letting us get away with things, that were otherwise forbidden.

Despite numerous health challenges, I have to think this last year was a happy one for her. A huge baseball fan, she was a VIP for her 90th birthday at a professional baseball game during a recent family reunion. And earlier this year, she celebrated a grandson's wedding:

Yes, it was in Texas, and she was enjoying the whole cowboy-hat thing with the rest of us from the New York contingent.

The wedding was also the last event where we were together.

I will be going to New York this week for the funeral and to be with family. This site will remain quiet for the next few days out of respect. We may get some guest posts at the end of the week, and of course Luna will be here next weekend.







New Podcast: Turandot (Puccini), Tribute to Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)

Click here to subscribe. You can also visit the CatSynth Channel page for more info or to listen live.

Tonight's podcast is a tribute to Luciano Pavarotti, who passed away on September 6, 2007. We feature selections from Act 1 and Act 3 of Puccini's Turandot. The selection from Act 3 is the aria “Nessun dorma,” which was one of Pavarotti's signature pieces. You have probably heard it before. Below is one of his last performances of this piece, at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin:

We will have another related video treat for our readers and listeners this Wednesday.

These recordings were released on the Internet Archive, as part of a Creative Commons release.

A technical note: classical recordings tend to suffer more from the artifacts of MP3 encoding, and these recordings have been through the MP3 machine at least twice if not more. Those who want to hear a cleaner version are encouraged to check out the source version, or an original recording on CD.

Although the “Nessun dorma” might be more famous, I am fond of the selection from Act 1. It has a dark sound (in keeping with the rather morbid story line), and a very “modal” sound. In particular, there is the minor pattern that concludes this section:

This pattern, and indeed the generally “modal” nature of the music in this act, is presumably to give the music an “eastern” flavor, in keeping with the story of Turandot. However, it fits perfectly in with my own interests in more mainstream music, including my current fascination with old R&B and rock-and-roll from the 1950s and 1960s. One could see the above pattern, performed by the low strings of the orchestra, done by a string bass in an old jazz or R&B recording .

It is inspiring to find these sorts of connections between often disparate forms of music, and perhaps that is in itself a small tribute. Listening to, and paying respect to, one of the great modern opera talents, and having that lead to inspiration elsewhere…