Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another.
Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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THIS IS AN OPEN THREADNothing is Off the Table
But play nice.
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#Movie Music MondayIt wasn’t until (as in many things in life) my youngest sister brought the issue of music composers who work in film to my attention, I never gave it a moment’s thought.
Today, I know that John Williams is perhaps the most proflict and most well known-to-the-ear composer of orchestral/theme music of many people today.
From IMDB.com his mini-biography:
As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 41 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (18 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema.
You’ll see his name in the credits of these films & television progams and many, many more:
Movies:
Jurassic Park III Harry Potter and the Order of the PhoenixTV programs:
The Time Tunnel Lost in SpaceJack and BobbyStar Wars: The Clone WarsMusic like this…
x xYouTube VideoThe songs in that video —
10. "Hymn To The Fallen," Saving Private Ryan 00:00-06:08 09. "Anakin's Theme," Star Wars: Episode 1 (gulp!) 06:09-09:16 08. "Saying Goodbye," E.T. 09:17-16:02 07. "Yoda's Theme," Empire Strikes Back 16:03-19:31 06. "Mom Returns," Home Alone 19:32-23:50 05. "Toy Planes, Home, and Hearth," Empire Of The Sun 23:51-28:25 04. "Reunion Of Friends," Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets 28:26-33:33 03. "You Are The Pan," Hook 33:34-37:32 02. "Schindler's Theme," Schindler's List 37:33-42:00 01. "A Tree For My Bed," Jurassic Park 42:01-44:21 What I did over the weekendI spent most of the weekend either on the phone or in a car with one or two of my sisters, after learning late on Thursday that our father had been sent to a skilled nursing facility by our stepmonster three weeks earlier. Without informing any of us, of course. She’s been obstructing contact with him for a couple of years. Early in 2016, the three of us and my youngest daughter drove to their house in California, from our homes in Clark County, Washington, because we’d learned that he had had another extended cardiac hospitalization four months after the fact. She met us at the door and wouldn’t allow us in or to speak with him.
My sister spent the next 16 hours on the phone and internet looking for a way to get some assistance from local authorities, so that we could at least have someone from the local police or social services to do a Well Senior check on the household. We spent two days there and got nowhere. Six months went by before my sister was finally able to get an agreement with the stepmonster to stop interferring with phone contact. So for a few months, we were able to call and speak with him.
But early Saturday, at about 3 am, he passed away. So we spent Sunday at the beach. A long soothing drive and rambling conversation with my youngest sister. Lunch with my other sister and my brother-in-law at Astoria was lovely. We ate at the Bouy Bar right on the docks, where a 6’ x ’6 set of 4 glass panels shows the sea lions piled up under the building on the old pilings and concrete of an earlier era, and where the food is tasty and the service was very nice. Floor to ceiling glass walls on the Columbia River mouth side gave us views of ocean-ready cargo vessels lined up awaiting the tide change; sea lions and seals and possibly one otter made an appearance and then eventually dove beneath the small, surface tidal waves showing the tide still coming in, pushing the river water back up the Columbia.
I’m not grieving, my father left our lives over 30 years ago and never looked back. He saw my oldest child once, when she was 4 months old. He never saw my youngest or my two grandchildren, either. The irony is he spent over 40 years as a long haul truck driver and went down I-5 or I-205, less than a mile from my home to either one, for all of those years. He just couldn’t be bothered to ever make contact and visit.
But I’m no longer angry about that behavior, either. I spent all of that rage many long years ago.
I am a bit at odds though, with another reminder that for me now, there are more days behind than ahead of me. It’s driving me to be more aware of what is happening around me, to take the chance to make a difference where I can, knowing that someday in the (now) not so distance future that that will all come to an end.
It puts me in mind of the music of John Williams, so many of these orchestral pieces are vivid reminders of the feelings so many of the films he composed for gave me — wonder, and a glimpse of the great things to come…
How was YOUR weekend?