“Hi Jay,kennst du den Wolfgangsee?”

with a photo of her bei der See on facebook.

My reply was.

“Nur in Filmen.

The Wolfgangsee seen in Gasthaus “Weißes Rössl” at St. Wolfgang

mit Peter Alexander.

I went through Salzberg on the train only stopping to take a couple of photos of the River. Very polluted at the time.

Once I had to chase a train on foot with Br. Beavin aboard it. The faster one runs the more tired they get and the slower they go but the faster the train goes so I didn’t want to get to far from the train and have it happen again.

Jay”

You can Watch the 1960 film on You Tube at:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9eY5NXfags

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Talking about  the theft of taxes and making sense of any of it.

It doesn’t make sense to tax producers for those who don’t produce, namely government.

And then the tax laws get stupider with each passing day.

It doesn’t make any sense. So instead of fretting over the mess let’s take a humorous look at it with a video clip from the movie “My Blue Heaven”(1950).

It’s Deductible

Betty Grable and Dan Dailey sing about deductions and how crazy it all is. 

They said it all.

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A man named Jeff Berwick was quoted in the James Cook Market Update newsletter in late April 2013 in a condensed article called ” The Government Budget Plan”.

“Wealthy taxpayers can currently accumulate many millions of dollars…substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement savings… The job of government is of course to “level the playing field” by stealing from and putting up obstacles for those with “too much.” “

What is “too much” ?  Who determines that?

“$3 million”?

“So according to them, $205,000 per year is sufficient and people should not be allowed to have more that that in retirement savings. ”  But that figure can go “down to around $100,000 after theft..or tax as they call it.”

Then after inflation “That $205,000 …will only be equivalent to $90,000 in ten years time.”

“The central planners in the U.S. and most Western governments have and will decide how much is “enough” for you to have and if you manage to still have significant assets after that, they’ll continue to whittle them away via taxation and Inflation.”

Thanks Jeff well put. 

You can read more from Jeff and James Cook and others by contacting:

Investment Rarities Incorporated                                                                                                 7850 Metro Parkway                                                                                                                   Minneapolis, Minnesota 55425                                                                                                     Or at www.investmentrarities.com                                                                                             Or  call 1-952-853-0700

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After having trouble with the password as ever, I was able to log into Family Search this evening and was pleasantly surprised to find fan charts of my pedigree as an option now.

That is a really nice feature.

You ought to go there now and set up an account and get to exploring your heritage.

https://www.familysearch.org/register/ 

This is some fun stuff.

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Some of the questions that struck me a few years ago have now past their relevance but a few of these questions will go on unanswered for ever.

? 1- Why do scientists who deny the existence of God, still refer to the time before Christ as BC Before Christ? And he being the only begotten son of God in the flesh?  ( From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia BC : Before Christ, an epoch used in dating years prior to the estimated birth of Jesus)

?2- Why do murderers have rights to life but unborn babies do not?

?3- Why is it when I owe for something, it must be paid immediately but when something is owed me, haste is not important?

?4- Why does the world pay the players of children’s games with great amounts of money but the people who provide the necessities of life are  paid so very little?

?5- Why are laws of conduct only applicable  to citizens of a government, but the government entity itself and the employees of said government are exempt from those same laws?

?6-Why do people use the term “State of the Art” to describe that something is the best and not what real condition it is in?

?7- Why is this called a blog?

Well enough of this junk today.

Need to get on to something more fun.

Bye until next time. 

More.

? Before daylight Savings Time Evening events started at 7 pm or 8 pm or 9 pm. Why is it that now with the clock pushed ahead, these same events start at 6, 7. or 7:30 pm? Long before the sun sets?

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There is a post about having fun when one practiced singing on this new singing page.

 http://singingasong.net/?p=67

Go now and read and leave your relevant comments.

Thanks,

Jay Beacham

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Breathing is essential to life whether we are sleeping,working, resting talking or singing.  Some folks huff and puff to get air even when not exerting themselves.  That can be due to ill health or overweight.  But assuming one is in good health and is at the proper weight and is not exercising or working or running, breathing should as natural for an adult as for a baby.  And should be easy and not strained while speaking or while singing.

I made a video about this very topic so let’s go there and watch it right now before we so on with this.  It’s about 8 minutes long.

Five Steps For Better Speaking                     http://www.youtube.com/watchv=VMA2TGrq2_E

The video gives some good exercises for improving your speaking and singing.  And microphones pick up everything even the clicking of a fan in my computer behind my speaking. Hope it doesn’t annoy you too much.

Then I have another video that tells about getting air for speaking and singing.  It’s about 4 minutes long.

Breath right to speak and sing right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pVXp3WMKW0

 Two examples of unstrained singing are Deanna Durbin of movie fame in the 30s and 40s and Andrea Bocelli of today. Let’s go look at them do some of that.   The Lady first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inV3RlOTOXM

And now Andrea Bocelli as introduced by David Foster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAFj2-u2cGQ

See what i mean?   Remember to breath right and remember singing is just sustained speaking.

Was any of this worth any thing to you? Let me know. I added someone else’s thoughts in a longer post you can read at:   http://singingasong.net/?p=51

Catch you next time.

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 When I was growing up I heard my mother singing around the house and as she worked and she taught her children many songs that way and a love for singing. All four of us love to sing and two of us have been paid to sing. When she was young, she’d write the words to songs she liked in a notebook as there was no money for sheet music. Her younger brother and sisters were able to get some sheet music and even one brother, Jerome, had a one man band. I’ll talk more about him another time. Her mother played the organ and she had a professional cowboy singer cousin. But she said she couldn’t sing. However, last year shortly before she died at age 96, she would sing the songs she remembered to the nurses and all who visited her home.  Once I couldn’t remember the third or fourth line of a 1940s song so I asked her. “Get me started” she said and after I sang the first line she continued the song to the end for me thus helping me to learn the words.  There were times she’d sing me songs I’d never heard before that she remembered from her childhood.

Now my father used to whistle and sing while he worked and while he milked the cows. They were very calm and gentle listening to his voice. That didn’t work for me.

And the town I grew up in was a very musical bunch of people back to Swiss immigrant days when there was the Staheli Brass Band.  We sang in school, the principle teaching us songs, and each grade teacher too, but he said,  “What one lacks in quality, they can compensate for with gusto and volume.”  Many in my town played different instruments or sang. And in church, every age group would sing in groups or choirs.  Several young men even produced a LP record.

As a boy in the age group I was in , I sang soprano of course then. Once we sang “My Mother’s Prayer”.  My voice was golden and all around me said so.  Later after my voice changed, my first solo was “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.”  Then I went to high school and in English, the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades were combined and studied a different aspect of English in a different room each quarter. In my 11th grade, the last quarter was about poetry and verse, lyric poems and the like.  When we came to the section on writing ballads, the group I was assigned to wrote our ballad and had to sing it.  The guy who knew how to play the guitar was a senior and he suggested we sing it to the music of the Beetles song “Yellow Submarine”.  I’d never heard the song before, even though I worked at a radio station, so I didn’t sing with the group to well and with the pitch being so much higher than my bass voice, I sounded bad.  One of the guys listening said, “Beacham, you can’t sing.”

So when I enrolled at the junior college (Dixie) a year later, I signed up for voice lessons from one of the teachers, a lady named Roene DiFoire. She taught music theory and a fun class called Program Bureau. The Program Bureau went to schools and civic events to do programs and to high schools in several states as a recruiting tool for interesting future students in Dixie.  Mrs.D., as she was affectionately called, found talent and cultivated it among all the students she came in contact with. She loved the element of surprise and had me do my first solo for the group at a performance at a local elementary school.  She had me sing “Asleep in the Deep”. It is a deep bass song that her father used to sing. Another one was the “Big Bass Viol”. When I had my first big sing, it was for the “Utah State Fireman’s Association” convention at the Dixie High School Auditorium before a packed crowd. I was an instant hit.  You know, I don’t know if that boy from high school who’d said I couldn’t sing, ever heard me or not. But I guess that doesn’t matter much.  I just opened an email from someone wanting to buy one of my singing cds.  Mrs. D. died a few years back and now there is a center for the arts called the DiFiore Center named in her honor.

I also sang with the Acappella Choir at that college.

When at Brigham Young University, I sang in the Oakland Temple Pageant Chorus in Salt Lake City, duets with a fellow male student, in musical plays, and in the Opera Workshop, singing in two casts of Madame Butterfly and as a king in Amahl and the Night Visitors, and solos.

Have sung for years in church choirs.

Have sung at county fairs and the National Anthem at boxing matches.

I sang with my wife. I sang lead and she sang harmony. It sounded super.  I never got a recording of it.

Then I sang in a men’s chorus for 16 years after my wife died. One of the members, though now dead too, always said, “It hard to be sad when you are singing.”

Even Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue” expresses this thought.

Have sung with a singer song writer and in chorus of musical plays.

Sung as a shepherd in Amahl and The Night Visitors in a community theater and in regional choirs and with other choirs and barbershop groups and quartets.

And have sung solo gigs around town.

And at reunions, family, college, singing groups.

The article talks about Karaoke and it’s value to cultivating a singing voice.  Amen. That’s right. I’ve done online Karaoke  for 6 or so years and have seen improvement in me and many others because its singing in a safe environment. And it’s fun.

I bought a singing course once called “Anyone Can Sing”. i haven’t looked at the book in years but may incorporate it in a course i might do someday.

A friend who used to sing Opera and with the Mormon Tabernacle Chior, said I perhaps ought to take more voice lessons. I can’t afford to. But I don’t think one really needs those to learn to sing well. More on that at a later date.

Well, my arms are tired from typing so I’m done for tonight. I’ll catch you another day.

(I was commenting on an article about voice instruction when I told my story here.  To read the article go to:  http://singingasong.net/?p=47

2 Comments »

My new site about singing “SingingASong.net is now live at:

 http://singingasong.net/

You really need to investigate it.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy what you’ll find:

What is singing;  Where to learn from books from my Amazon store, online courses;

Where to find some fine online Karaoke sites;   and much more is or will soon be available there.

Visit it and leave your comments and observations about singing there.

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I did a recording of  Chim Chim Cher-ee on the Sing Snap Online Karaoke Site. It’s the chimney sweep song from the movie “Mary Poppins”.

When listened to it sung by Les Thompson, he commented on it.

How amazing Dick van Dyke was back then, Jay.

And you brought back some great movie moments with this choice.

Fabulous performance!

Les  (of Australia and Europe)

Then I answered and related how I had a connection to Dick Van Dyke through a common ancestor.

” Les,

Thanks for the stop by and comment.
Dick Van Dyke is a distant cousin of mine as is Kris Kristofferson.
To bad their success didn’t rub off on me.
Have a great day.
Jay”

His reply was:

That’s amazing, Jay…I knew about Kris…but Dick van Dyke as well?…talent’s in the blood!

No wonder you do those show tunes so well!!

Cheers to that!

Les.

Mine back:  “Maybe But I am amazed at how many of extended family have interest in acting and singing. There are so many and so I wonder how many of my SS friends are somehow related closer than I know.”

” Actor Dick Van Dyke

Francis Cooke > Hester Cooke > Esther Wright > Isaac Tinkham > Nathan Tinkham > Isaiah Tinkham > Susannah Tinkman > David Lorenzo Child > Susan Child > Charles McCord > Hazel McCord > Dick VanDyke
Can’t trace mine tonight must be off to bed. But I tie in at Ester Wright To the Cooks of Mayflower fame.”

The next day Gregory Brown of NC commented on the recording: “I was young enough to see this movie in the theater during its first run. I always loved this song and you bring out the magic in it.  I may have to start calling you BroadJay Van Dike”

I found my way back to Ester Wright.

Francis & Hester Cook>Ester (Richard)> to Adam(Sarah)Wright>Mary Wright (Jeremy)Gifford>Peleg(Abigail Shephard)Gifford>Noah(Mary Bowerman)Gifford>

Alpheus(Anna Nash)Gifford>Samuel Kendell(Lora Anne DeMille)Gifford>Oliver

DeMille(Alice virginia Allred)Gifford>John Jones(Fanny Crawford)Gifford>Ellen Gifford

(Donald Joseph Watson Beacham)Beacham>Albert Jay Beacham(Virginia Marie Stannard).

Francis and Hester Cook were Mayflower pilgrims as were George & Mary Beckett(Bucket) Soule.

George & Mary Beckett Soule>Benjamin Soule>Sarah Soule Wright mother of Mary Wright.

Lots of folks descend from the original Mayflower immigrants.

I also go back to William Brewster.

Lots of famous descendants of those people.

Well maybe someday I’ll be famous  too.

But until then it’s fun to learn about.

Are you a descendant of those folks of the first Mayflower voyage?

One chart shows I go to the famous John Howland.

Today I meet Richard Knupfer of Ivins. He came to my house to visit.

He says his 13th removed cousin is his wife, she goes back to Francis Cook also.

He ties back into my line somewhere before  Charlemagne who I tie to.

It’s amazing how everyone is related and not so far back in some cases.

Tennessee Ernie Ford  was right to call everyone “Cous” caus’ we are.

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