THE SONGS OF A NIGHTINGAIL

  Okay, so this post is unabashedly, about me.  I’m La Nightingail, after all and yes, I know I’ve spelled it wrong, but then again, my name isn’t spelled Gale. J Anyway, singing is what I do and have always done – apparently, according to my mother, since I was 2 ½.  My first solo performance in front of a live audience occurred when I was 12 and sang “Put Another Nickel in the Nickelodeon” in front of my 6 th grade class.  That same year I also sang on stage in company with 11 other choral students chosen from other county schools, with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  That was a pretty exciting moment, and from then on I was hooked on singing in front of an audience anywhere, anytime, for any reason. I’ve sung our National Anthem for ballgames, I’ve sung and soloed with numerous choirs and choruses up and down the state.  I’ve sung in crazy variety shows and given my own concerts.  I sing around the house.  I just love to sing, perio...

  It was hard finding crying pictures to match the prompt.  Photos aren’t normally taken of people crying.  I had to resort, mostly, to a doll I once had, and pictures from plays and a TV series. I did find this photo of myself at age one. I wasn’t actually crying, but I was certainly unhappy or uneasy about something? This is a 3-faced Trudy doll.  Turn the knob on top of her head and she smiled, cried, or slept.  I had one of these when I was around 7 or 8. Trudy’s crying face. Two shady characters portraying sadness at the plight of a poor shanghaied fellow they helped be shanghaied in “Adrift in New York”. A sad lament for a beloved lost pet in “She Was Only a Farmer’s Daughter”. The heroine weeps as her guardian angel tells her in song “O Dry Those Tears” - reassuring all will be well in “Sheepless in Nevada”. And now we come to a TV series I’ve been watching on Netflix for the past few weeks called “Jane the Virgin”.  It ran for five years from 201...

  My Mom at a New Year’s Eve card party laughing at the antics of my father and her best friend, Janie. Babies are easy to catch laughing.  They have no inhibitions about laughing and giggling out loud about anything!  Look at me – I’m happy as a clam with an old rolled oats box. Twenty-seven years later I was shocked into laughter about something my new husband found rather humorous, evidently. I was married on my Dad’s birthday, so I had arranged for a birthday cake to be presented to him complete with a sparkler during our wedding reception and he laughed in surprise.  He had a great booming laugh when he was tickled. My cousin and her new husband at her wedding, laughing at everyone covering them with silly string. At my son’s graduation after two-plus years of night classes to gain his Electrician’s Journeyman’s license.  He had just opened his graduation gift from his sister which must have been a funny one as he’s laughing and pointing at her.  Actu...

  They  were  up, but now they're  down.  My husband (in white helmet) and another parachutist - late 1970s. My Dad took this picture looking down on our family & our good neighbors’ family on a picnic near Santa Cruz, CA.  We had been to the beach, but it was a cool foggy day and we needed a place to build a campfire and get warm!  I’m in the white swim cap, lower left; my Mom is kneeling down next to my youngest sister; our neighbor, Ralph, is standing next to Mom; the child standing next to Ralph is my middle sis; and the two boys in front of me are Ralph’s boys.  I don’t know where my brother & Ralph’s wife, Janie, are – probably somewhere in that cloud of smoke? Looking down on another picnic – this time at Stinson Beach, CA.  L-R: youngest sis, middle sis, & my brother.  And this time, I took the picture.   I took this whimsical shot looking down on my youngest sister on our backyard patio from my bedroom wind...