My friend, Martha Ann

Sometimes people come into your life when you least expect it.

Susan and I were at a Mary Gauthier concert in Chattanooga, last year, and one reason that we went was because it was a free concert!!! Many, maybe even you, have not heard of Mary Gauthier.

Do yourself a favor and click on her link, within this blog.

Anyway, it was one of those free concerts, so that opened the door to families coming out to enjoy the music.

What is so ironic is that Mary Gauthier's music is very dark. It's not "Shiny Happy People," by any means. It's about alcoholism, death, prison, lost love, etc. Yeah, it's not Mary Gauthier and "Up with People" by any means.

She's been called the female Johnny Cash and that's a good comparison.

So, we were surrounded by these oh-so-cute-darlings running around, screaming, twirling like it was a Grateful Dead concert, and we had a whole family of them behind us.

It's really irritating when you go to see a singer/songwriter, and you actually want to listen to the words but you can't, because people are talking through the whole performance.

Let me just say it was bizarre to see these little 8-year-old girls dancing to Mary singing, "I Drink."

The rest of the story is interesting, but it would take up too much space here. So, check out my post on the Yahoo Mary Gauthier group, for the original story.

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/Mary_Gauthier/message/907

If you don't want to join the group, I'll just tell you that I thought my partner and I were going to duke it out with this "mommy" and her "sprogs" behind us.

Anyway, after the show, we stood in line to make fools out of ourselves in front of Mary, and I overheard a boy behind us, who was young, but he was so well behaved and really seemed very funny. I could tell immediately he was one of those kids who is born an "old soul" and can interact with adults very well, but still be a kid.

I turned around and laughed at something that he said, and his mother smiled and we all began to talk. We complimented her son, and briefly told her what had happened during the concert and she was amazed as well.

She told us that she was a singer/songwriter and she used to live in Atlanta. We so enjoyed chatting with her. She was great.

That's the end of it, I thought. But when I joined the Mary Gauthier Yahoo group, and I told the story about what happened, she responded and said she was the lady standing behind us at the concert!!

I told her to email and the rest is history.

We have communicated via email, phone, and she's become a really cool friend. She and her husband are fantastic people, and she is a really good songwriter. When I first put her demo cd into my player, I looked at Susan and said, "God, I hope this doesn't suck, because I don't want to have to lie to her and say it's good, if it isn't. I like her too much."

Let me tell you, it did not suck at all. Not every song was strong, but overall, I thought she had real talent, period.

Since that time, she's honed her craft even more, and I am really enjoying her music as much as her friendship.

As a woman, I admire her even more for continuing to plug away when most women her age would have given up on that dream to sing and tell stories. She inspires me more than she knows, since I struggle a lot with being 40 and still not hitting my stride in life.

I am so proud of her, though, because her song, "When Your Soldier Comes Back Home," has been voted number one, consecutively, on Neil Young's Web site. She's outshone such established giants like Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, in popularity on his site.

Last week, Neil's producer contacted her and asked her to write the story behind her song. That is amazing to me.

Read it here:
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html

She is one of the coolest women I've met in a long time, and it turns out that when I was a senior in high school, she was singing in nightclubs right down the street from me!! My friends and I used to sneak in--using fake IDs and charming the doormen--to both of the places where she used to sing.

How's that for serendipity, or Six Degrees of Separation? I bet I saw her and didn't even realize that years later we would meet and become friends.

She's about to enter the salon.com song contest! As soon as she does, I will give the link so you can vote for her song!!!

Here's to you, Martha Ann, or MAB as I call her!!!

Harry Potter and the Ignorant Shrew

I might be the very first person to break this news story.

There's one more installment to the Potter series:

Harry Potter and the Ignorant Shrew.

In this installment, Harry encounters one of the most frightening, yet comical creatures yet.

The bored Conservative Christian housefrau!!!

Read this:

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/2006/10/03/1004Potter.html

Now, I truly don't see what the big deal is. My niece has thoroughly enjoyed the Potter series. She's now 13, and let me just tell you, it didn't really have any long lasting effects.

Sure, she went through a phase where she turned a few neighborhood kids into frogs, but these were kids that nobody liked anyway, including their parents. What's the big deal? Kids will be kids.

And the levitation? Well, she stopped levitating about two years ago. Harder for her, though, was to stop playing Quidditch. After a few visits from Dobbins Air Station, she realized that it wasn't cool to interfere with Government airspace.

Miranda, my niece, is a very bright girl. She makes excellent marks in school, is in the gifted program, and after being allowed taking the SAT, last year, she scored a 1200. Her reading comprehension is very high, also.

She's pretty adept at knowing what is fiction and what is non-fiction, as most intelligent kids are, also. It's busy-body women like the one bringing this stupid case to fruition that actually threaten the fabric of free speech.

Just as the attorney for Gwinnett County said, this morning, if the school system started removing books from the library shelves, based on parents' personal beliefs, then there would be no books on the shelves at all.

I listened to Ms. Mallory's reasoning as to why she believes these books should be taken off of the shelves. She claims that it's making kids want to become witches, and that the books switch what is really evil, into something that is good.

Yeah, maybe it makes kids want to be witches like Samantha Stevens in Bewitched. Honestly, I cannot believe that with all of the serious issues that face the children in our country, this woman is so worried that some kid is going to be hiding a cauldron in their closet, along with an AK 47, after reading a Harry Potter novel.

I can tell you that reading the books made my niece interested in reading in general, and that she's not worshipping Satan, unless you consider Napoleon Dynamite to be Satan.

If your kid believes he/she can put on a black cape and make him/herself invisible, or if he/she believes they can fly on a broom, maybe therapy is in order, or there's more going on with your kid than reading Harry Potter books.

Just the other day, Miranda said she was seriously considering colleges for which she may want to attend. She's not into drugs (knock wood), has very good friends, and is a normal, typical teen.

She asked for my help because she wasn't sure where Hogwarts College was located, but she's sure she can get a scholarship there.

I believe she can, and she and her friends are calling on the name of Harry Potter, a fictional character, and asking the Ouji board for an answer as we speak.