Monthly Archives: November 2013

Confidence

Artists often struggle with confidence. We create from the deepest region of our souls, laying bare thoughts and emotions that most people are never forced to expose. Not only do we expose our inner selves, but we then present that exposure as a commodity on the open market where others are free to pan, pick apart or simply ignore. Is it any wonder that our confidence, our belief in ourselves waxes and wanes? Where do we get confidence in the first place? Is it formed or destroyed in childhood by our parents? Our peers? And how does the psychic pain that drives many artists to create in the first place affect our confidence? Does it strengthen it or tear it down?

Over the course of my teaching career, I’ve seen students whose confidence levels bear little relationship to their artistry and achievement. Most of them err on the side of too little, needing support and coaxing to bring out their innate talent. Stop whispering, I urge. You’re hiding your voice; let it out. Don’t be afraid.

Then there are the others. People who have an inflated, yet rock-solid sense of themselves and their gifts, despite all evidence to the contrary. Where did they get that unwavering self-assurance? Is it born or made?

I envy these people.

Years ago, one such person walked into my teaching studio. In her late 20’s and completely untrained, she was convinced that a career on the stage was her birthright. Instead of asking for my feedback, she told me what her future held. Frumpy and unattractive, with a high-pitched nasally speaking voice and a strong Brooklyn accent, I found her confidence breathtaking. Perhaps she did indeed have a unique talent, a once in a lifetime gift. A diamond in the rough who just needed some training and direction to realize her dreams.

And then she sang. And it was bad. It was stupendously, awe-inspiringly bad. So bad that, for a moment, I wondered if it was performance art or I was being punked. She sang with no inflection, no resonance, no vibrato and rarely in tune. But she was loud and proud. Confident. And boy, did I envy her.

I record my lessons to give my vocal students something to practice with and the chance to hear themselves as others do. I never keep the recordings but this one I did. Not to mock her at parties but as a reminder – confidence is mutable and self-directed. No one can give us confidence but ourselves.

So, here she is, in all her self-assured, imperturbable glory. And if you think she sounds a little bit like Miss Piggy (another example of self-possessed aplomb), well, she kind of looked like her too.

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Ten Things I Hate About Mac

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Oh, Macintosh, you’re like a bad boyfriend. You’re fun, creative and sexy, but also flighty, undependable and, in the end, a heartbreak. You promise exciting adventures while you run up my credit card before disappearing for days, sometimes weeks. Then you’re back, offering a shiny brushed aluminum hand to lead me once again into your increasingly complicated world of useless widgets, treacherous upgrades and oversensitive platforms.

Why can’t I quit you? Here are 10 reasons why I should:

1. YOU PROMISE YOU’LL BEHAVE

My cute little 12-inch Powerbook was a petite slice of paradise. You opened me up to new worlds and encouraged my creative side. Sure, you were pricy and some of your features never worked right (iMovie – I’m looking at you). I was hurt when your dvd drive conked out after 6 months of very light use. And yes, I was leery after paying a king’s ransom for the return of my Imac’s data.

In your defense, I must admit your rival, Mr. PC, has been known to cause pain and suffering as well – HELPSONG

I learned my lesson – a girl needs a backup external hard drive like she needs a backup plan for a canceled Saturday night. I thought I was covered, protected. You made me feel safe and warm. Until your hard drive died ONE MONTH out of warranty and though it felt good to say, “Hey, I don’t need no stinkin’ data recovery”, I couldn’t live a single day without you so…

2. I REWARD YOU FOR YOUR INCOMPETENCE

Little G4, you were in surgery for so long that it looked like you were a goner. I visited you several times a week but your doctors were having trouble finding your replacement parts. ‘Why?’, I wondered. ‘You’re not even 2-years-old!’

So I bought your big brother, MacBook Pro. This time with the cold comfort of Apple Care.

Sure, I know I was rewarding your maker for selling me shoddy equipment by purchasing even more. But like all moody gigolos, you demand money just to stick around. And I pay. Gladly. For when you leave, the sun leaves with you.

3. YOU BARELY ACKNOWLEDGE ME ANYMORE

Some days are fine. We wake up together with a smile, eager to start our morning over coffee and the online papers. But you often grow distant, cold.

You ignore the deep connection that’s developed between us.

Why won’t you acknowledge me? Why do you punish me so? All I’ve ever done is love you.

4. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR KEYBOARD?

We haven’t been together 6 months, yet you grow irritable, deliberately picking fights. I keep you scrupulously clean, I never eat or drink around you. You don’t even have to leave the house! Still, your keyboard grows more stubborn and petulant by the day. And choosing the F key to stick the most, when you know my last name begins with it, is just cruel.

5. WHY DO YOU RANDOMLY LOSE COUNT OF MY EMAILS?

You scare me sometimes, for your own amusement.

29 messages? Really? Where did the other 50 go? Let’s try again:

Now 13?

Now you refuse to count them at all?

Oh, my love. Why do you toy with my emotions like this?

You know I have a nervous constitution.

6. YOU’VE FORCED ME INTO THE ARMS OF OTHER BROWSERS

Your endless talk of Safari had me dreaming of unfettered travel to exotic destinations. But you were so slow to deliver you made me distrustful of my server, and we argued because of you. Now I have no choice but to go outside the bundle, for Firefox gives me everything I could ever want; and in half the time.

7. WHEN YOU TRY TO IMPROVE, YOU JUST MAKE THINGS WORSE

It’s heartwarming when, out of the blue, your boyfriend heads into the kitchen after a long, messy dinner because he’s decided to help out. That is until you see the results of his thoughtful gesture. Mac, your software upgrade alerts are like that. It’s sweet that you’re thinking of me and I do want to trust your advice. But that plate you broke means I don’t have a full set of dishes, the water you spilled on the cookbook makes it UNREADABLE and my great-grandmother’s spoon that got mangled by the garbage disposal? That was the last piece from her wedding silver.

8. IPOD PEOPLE

I bought accessories for you -all the things you said you absolutely needed. One, an Ipod Classic, had a nervous breakdown 6 months later. Apple Store ‘Geniuses’ were stumped so they replaced it. But your oh so smart buddies only gave me a 3 month warranty on the replacement. Apparently Geniuses can’t add for not only was I gypped out of a month on the original warranty, I have only 120 days of security in case little I-boy decides to take a swan dive into the dark, roiling sea of insanity.

9. STOP TOUTING YOUR NEW FEATURES AND FIX THE ONES YOU HAVE

There’s nothing more depressing than seeing your old boyfriend on TV, smugly purring over new apps, widgets and upgrades. While you turn on the charm, tossing off ever more complicated versions of iPhones, iPods and iTunes to every hopeful heart who catches your eye, your real message is iDon’t Care. But remember, my love, your A.D.D. isn’t only hurting yourself; it’s hurting the ones you stick with the broken promises and flimsy interfaces of the apps you left behind and…

10. OH WAIT! I THINK YOU”RE SKYPING ME!!!!

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The Story of Farnsworth Printing

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Yankee ingenuity and the knack of picking a marketable specialty are traits which have distinguished the Farnsworth family of printers since 1886.

That was the year in which Theron A. Farnsworth settled in Camden and began a small job printing business in a barn behind his Minor Avenue residence.

That home is still in the family today and is still occupied by a T. A. Farnsworth, a grandson who has carried on the printing tradition and is today president of the Farnsworth Envelope Co.

Between these two men, 88 years of Farnsworth printing in the village of Camden are spanned.

The original “T.A.” specialized in printing of milk tickets. These were coupons bought from a dairy and used as a means of ordering and at the same time paying for home-delivered dairy products.

Known as the “Webb Press,” this business prospered first under the direction of T.A. and beginning in 1933 under the proprietorship of his grandson, Almon G. In 1938 it became a facet of the family’s major endeavor, the printing of church offering envelopes.

Back in 1896, T.A. had given his son, Almon M. Farnsworth, a small hand press, and while still in high school, A.M. launched a printing career, which was to spread the name of Camden, NY throughout the country.

Almon Farnsworth was canny and industrious and by 1906 he had established his own printing business in a new factory built by him at 17 Main St. This brick structure still houses a part of the Farnsworth operations.

The A.M. Farnsworth Co. first specialized in the printing of catalogues and advertising calendars. However, business soon came to be concentrated on printing boxed, annual sets of church offering envelopes. By 1916 his firm ranked as one of the nation’s leading suppliers of this unusual product.

The company continued to develop as a prominent church specialty printing house and in 1938 two sons, Almon G. and T. Albert, were taken into partnership and the A.M. Farnsworth & Sons Co. came into being.

A.M. Farnsworth died in 1947 and the partnership of his sons continued until 1957 when T. Albert formed a separate corporation to pursue a refinement of the envelope concept, the monthly mailing of individually addressed offering envelopes.

In 1959, Almon incorporated the parent company under the name “A.M. Farnsworth Sons” and took into the business his sons, David, who took charge of the growing commercial printing division. Almon retired in 1969 after 36 years of service to his business and this community.

Today, David is president of the company and has continued the manufacture of boxed envelopes, children’s envelopes, liturgical calendars and church specialties while building the commercial printing business into one of the finest job printing firms in Central New York.

Growth has been marked by numerous improvements to the original buildings and acquisition of the former Main St. Red and White Store and Grange building.

During the same time, the offshoot Farnsworth Envelope Co. has grown steadily under the direction of T. Albert Farnsworth. Three separate additions and extensive renovations including the erection of an attractive Main St. facade have been made over the past 17 years. Now Farnsworth Envelope puts nearly 4-1/2 million of mail through the Camden Post Office each year.

In 1969, T.A Farnsworth’s son, Jerry, entered the firm, joining David as the fourth generation of Farnsworths active in the vocation of printing and the avocation of building a better Camden.

REPRINTED from “The Advance-Journal” 100th Anniversary Edition

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The Christian Right Invades Venice Beach

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Just another easy breezy day at Venice Beach, California

If I wondered whether I was going to hell, I wonder no more. They’ve got me on a multi-count indictment:

Hmm… can you even be a street preacher online? Or is that too meta? Maybe if you set up your soapbox on Farnsworth Avenue – you’d be skipping down easy street.

Although the “I’m With Stupid” meme is only funny the first five times, you’ve gotta give it to this guy:

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Pity The Poor Single Woman

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There is nothing sadder than an unmarried woman. It breaks my heart to see her strolling through the shopping malls, miserably buying exactly what she likes. It’s an empty life – spending her money and her time as she chooses without worrying what anyone else thinks, needs or wants.

Single women are so wrapped up in themselves, you have to feel sorry for them. They don’t have to check with anyone if they decide to see a movie instead of coming home for dinner. They don’t fight with anyone over bills, the color of the living room carpet or at whose house they’ll spend the holidays. It’s a pretty pathetic picture.

Everyone should be married. No one should be allowed to escape the wonderful experience with its various adjustments: The realization that Prince Charming is not just ordinary – he’s downright strange. Think of the character built on the humiliation of hearing him tell the neighbors what you look like when you’re putting on your pantyhose.

But the fulfillment comes after several years when you realize your love and respect for him are about as thin as his hair – and likewise growing thinner day by day. The wonder of how a man with a master’s degree who commands a multimillion-dollar budget at work becomes a helpless child when he learns you have to work late and won’t be home to cook one evening. The peaceful smile of a guy who has the patience to sit in a boat for three days (catching nothing), but cannot wait 10 minutes in a store while you try on a dress that’s 50 percent off. Those warm conversations about why it’s reasonable for him to spend top dollar on tools he seldom uses, but it’s out of the question for you to buy good-quality cookware even though you use it daily.

Marriage is worth it all. Every night’s sleep disrupted by his snoring and every pair of dirty underwear fished out from under the bed pays off at the 25th wedding anniversary party: He didn’t mean to insult you; is it his fault you gained 20 pounds after bearing four children? (Remember how his belly shook and the seams of his pants strained when he bent over to slap his knee?) After all, aren’t you a better person for having stretch marks and sagging breasts – the products of your childbearing years?

Reflect upon that romantic night when he proposed, the devotion in his voice, the lustful gleam in his eyes. How were you to know that in a few short years only his boat would receive the same adoration? Could anything match the restraint of your father, who has never once said, “I told you so”?

You just have to look at the unmarried woman to see how unhappy she’s become. She knows where everything is in her kitchen; there’s always toilet paper in the bathroom; she’s wearing clothes no teenage daughter has ever touched. If she were married, she’d look like the rest of us – worn out, stressed out and stretched out.

Jenny Gholson

Reprinted from “Dear Abby”

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Bread & Circus At The 2006 Billboard Music Awards

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December 4, 2006

Spectacle trumped talent at the 2006 Billboard Music Awards when, during several of the early musical numbers, supersized confetti spewed from modified snowmaking machines. Giant candy canes planted around the stage led one to wonder which competitor would nail the slalom event.

Along the sides and upstage, a CGI fever dream pulsates from huge screens. Upstage, indeed. A psychedelic Candyland designed to delight, amuse and distract. Was the bamboozle supposed to blind us from the sadness? Over-produced flimflam by over-caffeinated set dressers to keep us awake and watching?

Here’s my theory – the lesser divas and divos of the pop music pantheon need a little help, a little cover from the pain of a live rendition of their Auto-tuned recordings.

Take Janet Jackson’s opening number. She begins her medley with a shout-out to one of her early hits, “The Pleasure Principal”, to school the youngsters in the audience that she, indeed, was at one time relevant. Jackson then proceeds to whisper her way through her new single as she clomps arthritically through an approximation of her tired twenty-year-old dance moves. And the confetti is flying with a vengeance.

In case a flurry of postcard-sized confetti wasn’t enough to distract us, her backup dancers leap and spin around the stage like meth-fueled Cirque Du Soleil acrobats.

Young legs execute supernatural street athletics, undeterred by the drifts of colored paper that are beginning to accumulate in drifts around the stage. Instead of distracting us from Jackson’s performance, the teenagers only highlighted her lame, geriatric performance. Seriously, she looks lame – like she’s pulled a hamstring.

Then there’s Fergie, rapping in that dated singsong manner like a female Will Smith as she minces around the stage almost in time to the music. Tired rap, forgettable lyrics, confetti explosion!

A pattern is emerging. The worse the performance, the harder the confetti falls. The lights pulse more insistently, hypnotizing us. Ignore the girl and bow to your sparkly, trance-inducing master!

Just as it seems the stage walls will come tumbling down in a frenzied representation of the end of western civilization, a giant Quincy Jones appears on the back screen like a pop music oracle. Down, ye walls of power! All is not lost!

Jones introduces a quartet of rappers who actually have talent. The walls calm to bathe each rapper in his own signature color. Hmm…no confetti. Or have supplies simply run out in the face of all that earlier suckitude?

Eager yodeler Gwen Stefani bounces around the stage, manically selling her harajuku rapping goatherd mash-up. No confetti, she must be talented. Well, she is actually singing and sort of dancing. No comment on the bewildered goat.

The guys who won digital album of the year – no confetti and no background movies. They must be really talented. Well, the lead singer is playing a piano, an actual musical instrument.

Mary J. Blige performs with only a subtle screen of vertical white stripes behind her – a subliminal reference to a now defunct minimalist rock duo or an homage to postwar Italian cinema? But she is indeed confetti-free. She’d better be, she won nine times!

Now comes Stevie Wonder to introduce Century award-winner Tony Bennett. Visually, the quietest screen of the evening, a cascade of calming electric blue. Two legends. No confetti.

As for the less gifted performers who appeared tonight, the message seemed clear. They’ve already got your bread, how about a little circus?

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