Old Time Instruction

If you are interested in the paranormal, a firepit can make an excellent addition to your stargazing sessions. Searching for UFOs is a blast. Although sitting outside as it gets cold isn’t that fun. Having a fire pit is great to help you stay warm as you keep your eyes scanning the skies. If you also travel to various places for your stargazing sessions, consider buying one of the various portable fire pits to take along with you at night. Even if you don’t think there are any real UFOs, it’s still a delight to watch the canopy of the night sky and stars with curiosity and an open mind. You might not see an unidentified flying object, but you will certainly see some beautiful constellations. You might even see a shooting star or two.

Always remember to use the proper precautions each time you are using your fire pit. You may very well spot a flying saucer, but the chances of them flying overhead and putting out the fire you start as you jump up in excitement are very slim. Never leave your fire unsupervised, even for a few minutes. Different areas have different laws and regualtions; check these out before lighting a single match. You always want to have a bucket of water or sand available nearby to make sure the fire is extinguished properly and completely. If children will be with you when you use the pit, make sure they are closely supervised at all times. Explain to them the fire safety rules so they have an idea of how to act and what to do should something go wrong. As long as you follow basic fire safety precautions, however, you should have a safe, fun time searching for aliens while sitting by a crackling fire.

If you could care less about aliens, then take the evening to tell really scary ghost stories while sitting around a fire pit. Both children and adults love stories of the paranormal. With kids present however you will have to keep the stories low key, you do not want to stop children sleeping for a week. It isn’t fun scaring a child and making their outdoor experience a terrifying time.

These unique and inexpensive activities can be terrific for date night too. Pack up a portable fire pit and take your loved one with you, it can be romantic under the stars with the warm glow of a fire pit next to you. You can speculate on what aliens look like, or tell your favorite ghost stories. An alien may not turn up, but the spark of love just might.

You might be prepared to face 2012, but think about whether you have already chosen among the places to survive 2012. It is in reality, one of the many considerations you need to consider if you really intend to survive the devastations that apocalypse 2012 brings.

First and foremost, to prepare for it, you should know all about the destruction that earth is going to face come 2012. The people knew about the Mayan calendar when it went open to the public and it was decoded to mean the end of the world on December 21, 2012. Aside from these, there are other conjectures that coincide with these such as those of the Chinese, Hindu, Egyptians and Sibyls and some wiped out civilizations like the Druids.

There are also scientific researches that point to 2012 as the year where many cosmic events are going to happen such as polar shifting, planetary alignments; as well as that of a planet or meteor colliding with the earth. These will cause several disasters all over the world such as escalating the sea level, extremely high intensity earthquakes, giant tidal waves and massive volcanic eruptions that will annihilate most of the population and the land.

What is more, polar reversal is said to divide the planet into a part where there is constant daylight and scorching temperature and another part, in total darkness.

This can lead to the conclusion of earth and sooner or later explosion of nuclear power plants. This is why it is very important that people start taking safety measures to fight the disastrous catastrophes by building shelters.

The stocking up of supplies such as food and clothing, medical supplies and tools are necessary and should be prepared as soon as possible so that when the Doomsday comes, all you need to do is proceed to the shelter and wait until the disasters are over. Another important thing is to organize yourself as a part of communities or survival groups so that all your needs can be met. Also, everybody must pull his or her own weight in order for the situation to go well and make the adjustments to this new condition easier for all.

Last of all, finding a place for sanctuary during disaster times is the crucial decision that survivors should plan. The place should be elevated and inland as much as possible. It should be as distant as possible from nuclear power plants and any place with nuclear elements in order to prevent being hit by radioactive wastes in cases of accidental fallouts. Most important of all, there should be an adjacent water supply that can sustain the people in the survival group; if the water is not fit for consumption, a water purifying system should be available with the tools and supplies.

Truly, survival books for the impending 2012 holocaust have a list of places to survive 2012 from which you can take your choice. Choose books that are reliable sources of information like 2012 Contact, which are highly recommended.

This isn’t exactly what I’d normally post here, but it is a very important subject: Our Food.

Has anyone seen this movie yet?  Let me know what you think of it.

Paderewski and Von Bülow Contrasted

Perhaps no better illustration of the relation of the personality to the interpretative art is to be found than that offered by Mr. Paderewski to whom I revert once more with pleasure.  At this moment when it seems altogether probable that he will not again appear as a pianist, but will devote his time, his intellect and his immense energy to his country, it should be especially interesting to consider how his interpretations are colored by his spiritual organization.   

Few know that Mr. Paderewski is a man of extraordinary intellect.  He might have succeeded in other fields than that of music.  He possesses a remarkably broad and comprehensive grasp of philosophies, of history and of world politics.  He displays in the discussions of the gravest topics of the time an insight which would do credit to a statesman.  But apart from the force and fineness of his intelligence the famous pianist has that intangible combination of spiritual sensibilities called temperament.  The predominant trait of this temperament is an exquisite sense of beauty.  To Mr. Paderewski the vital quality of music is sensuous beauty.  There is for him no music of the type described by James Huneker as “cerebral.”

When therefore some of his opponents charge him with playing Beethoven sentimentally they lose sight of the real truth which is that this man’s personality feels more acutely than do some others the melodic and harmonic beauty of Beethoven’s music and that he is more anxiously concerned about attaining a perfect publication of this than a searching analysis of the form or a pedagogic exposition of technical details.  Von Bülow on the other hand, was a pianist who interpretations of Beethoven attracted teachers and students in crowds because the first quality which they clearly set forth was their own authority.  Von Bülow’s great series of Beethoven recitals was like a lecture course on the correct manner of performing the works.  But assuredly no one ever felt the thrill of emotion while he was playing.

These are two examples of opposite types of personally and unquestionably each has its place and part in the world of musical performance.  The playing of Von Bülow was probably as nearly objective as any playing could be.  Paderewski’s is vitally subjective.  Both were sincere and each had its message for the hearer.

Personality Should Not Be Obtrusive.

The varying angles of view in the conception of an art work which is to be interpreted are the results, as I have intimated, of differences in the artistic organizations or temperaments as they are customarily called, of the performers.  The interpretation is part and parcel of he personality of the artist.  Owing to the insidious working of dark and sinister influences we too often get more of the artist than of the composer.  That, let us repeat, is an undesirable projection of personality.  On the other hand if no personality at all permeates the interpretation you may be certain that nothing of the emotion of the composer will appear either.  The artist cannot at the same instant be spiritually dead and artistically alive. 

The personalities of musical performers are always interesting establish to that vast number of persons who vaguely think there is some sort of miracle about the performance of music in any way at all.   The lamentable tendency of contemporaneous journalism is to cater to the public appetite for information about the personality.  This practice directs the attention of the reader to the private traits of the artist, not that part of them which gives character to his art.  It feeds itself to satiety upon such stuff as the old fable that floated all over the country that Mr. Paderewski while playing such or such a piece of Chopin was always thinking about his dead wife and consequently always in tears.  If such a combination could be effective as a stereotyped frame of mind and a mechanically started stream of tears as the accompaniments of a certain interpretation,  You may be sure that the interpretation itself would soon become as weak as the tears.   

That which is propelled into an auditorium across the footlights is all of a personality that an audience should know.  No one ever suffered from over advertised personality more than Mary Garden.  For any artistic shortcoming on her part her loyal admirers always pleased “But she has such an interesting personality.”  Miss Garden’s personality it seems never to have occurred to her adorers is not a thing apart from her art.  It is the foundation of an interpretative method which almost makes one forget that this incomparable woman is a singer who rarely sings.  Miss Garden is one of the most ingenious and resourceful actresses before the public.  She has an inexhaustible theatrical skill, a marvelous command of the pictorial lights and shadows of the stage, a profound grasp of the illuminating quality of the footlights. 

In the art of music there is no other department in which the power of personality can work such magic as in the opera.  Radical defects in technique, flagrant violations of good taste and astonishing ignorance of style are all obscured by the charm of a “magnetic” personality.  In the field of the song recital also the artist is often admired when the art should not be.  But obviously this is not the operation of personality which is meant by the inquirer as to whether it should dominate an interpretation by a performer of instrumental music.