Senryu : stocking

stockings filled with love
presents opened; ooohs and ahhs
warm hearth, hugs and nog

senryu by M. Nakazato LaFreniere

Merry Christmas everybody!

And here is a gift for you.  Carpe Diem Haiku Kai put together Christmas Stockings, an ebook of holiday poems using Japanese poetry forms.  And guess what!  One of my poems is in the book.  You can download it for free here — it’s in the right-hand column. What are you waiting for?  Go, go, go!  (laughing)

For fun, xmas music

Lindsey Stirling is one of my favorites and she lives in Arizona! (or so says Wiki and we all know Wiki never lies, chortles).  In 2012 when she was given thumbs down on America’s got Talent (AGT), the judge Pier’s Morgan told her “You’re not untalented, but you’re not good enough, I don’t think, to get away with flying through the air and trying to play the violin at the same time.” Sharon Osborne followed up, “What you’re doing is not enough to fill a theater in Vegas” saying she needed to be part of a group.  Lindsey said on a talk show, “That last week on the show was pretty heartwrenching for me. .. It hurt really bad when Pier Morgan gave me that feedback … It was absolutely humiliating at the time…” but later she thought, “No, I can either let this tear me down  or I can prove a point.” It became a “make or break moment” and she decided to keep her dream.

After the show, You-tube filmaker Devin Graham contacted her and suggesting making a video youtube.  They were both going to Brigham Young University and he had a sports Youtube channel.  Up until then her songs on I-Tunes were not selling and after AGT for six months she was back to scrambling for gigs, playing outside college cafeterias at noon.  After they posted that first video, her songs on I-Tunes started selling.  Lindsey said, ““But we did the video (“Spontaneous Me”) and I was amazed. As soon as he put it up on his channel, my music, which was just sitting around on iTunes, suddenly started to sell. People were requesting more of my songs and they were loving and sharing them.”(Krewen, 2014).

She and Devin continued to create videos.  She said the first videos were basically free because they were in filmmaking classes so she would help classmates on their projects and they helped her on hers. She and Devin filmed their first videos outdoors in Utah. The videos becoming increasingly popular on You-tube and sponsors noticed, paying them to go to Kenya and New Zealand to make videos in exchange for a small ad placed at the end.

Lindsey said, “It’s kind of funny that when I was starting out and trying to make it, I went to all the labels and I was turned away,” Stirling recalls. “Nobody was interested. Now that I’m doing it and I’ve been able to prove that it works, they’re all knocking down my door….I stumbled upon YouTube because I didn’t know what else to do, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”(Krewen, 2014)

2015 she made the Forbe‘s list of 30 under 30 in music celebrities. That same day, Billboard announced she had the best-selling dance-electronic album in 2014. She recently gave TV reality another go in September 2017 on Dancing with Stars, coming in 2nd despite a rib injury in October.

and finally some fun gifs of the fireplace at Winter’s and my “ranch”

carolling mice
carolling mice and puppy says hello

presentsopened presents

look out, the cat’s heading for the pudding!

gifs taken with gyazo.com  (they can also be converted into mpg  — now if only I could drop sound into it!)

 

References:

second life photo/gifs by M. LaFreniere, avatar Kayla Woodrunner

Christmas Stockings, an ebook of holiday poems in Japanese poetry forms
Carpe Diem Haiku Kai (right-hand column)

Lindsey Sterling, Wikipedia

Lindsey Stirling Injured, Future on ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Unclear
by Matt Fernandez, Variety, October 30, 2017

Violinist Lindsey Stirling credits YouTube with meteoric rise
By Nick Krewen, Toronto Star, June 13, 2014

“30 Under 30 In Music: The Class Of 2015” (2015). Forbes. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved December 25, 2017>.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdr7xN-wC7Q Lindsey Stirling “The Dancing Violinist” Talks New Album and Piers Morgan! In Studio Interview 2013, Clevver Music