Hi Cheryl! Thank you so much for your kind words about my birthday and my first WA commission earnings! Your kind words are very much appreciated by me!

Sincerely,
Jeff

Hi Liz! Thank you for the very kind words. Actually the party will come in two days, Thursday when my sister treats me to what assuredly will be for her a very expensive dinner at the best Italian restaurant where I live down here in NC. I already know what I'll be ordering as the restaurant makes the finest home-baked lasagna that I've ever had on a few previous visits in my life.

Hi MyraBeth! Thank you so much for your kind words. As I wrote earlier in response to another comment posted by another WA member, until I heard that song on the commercial last week it had probably been decades since I last heard it.

Time does fly by! Yes, I still consider myself young. Well, sort of! I've ridden bicycles as part of workout regimens for well over 30+ years now. No longer can I ride as fast during a long 15 - 20 mile journey, or as recklessly go down hills at 40 mph or higher on a bicycle.

Thank you again for your thoughts, MyraBeth!
Jeff

I rode my bicycle across Canada when I was 19 years old, the summer of the Montreal Olympics. (You should be able to figure out my age, with a little math and Olympic history.) We were a group of about 75 people from around the world, ranging in age from 14 to 78 years. Yep, that 78 year old man offered early morning exercise and strength drills, (he had served in the military and always kept fit) before we took off for the day to bike 6-8 hours.

If we young ones didn't show up bright and early, he would catch up with us on the road and remind us how important it is to exercise before bicycling a long distance. And had a way of letting us know, (I think he was a drill sergeant) that if he can get up bright and early, so could we young folks. So, even at our age, Jeff, we are not too old to keep on going.

Hi Myra! Let's see since the Montreal Olympics were in 1976, and you were 19 years old that summer. . . Wait, this means that you were born the same year as I was, lol!

That is a very interesting story that you told about your experiences riding your bicycle across Canada. It seemed as if the 78 year old man was the most energetic of all of the riders!

That summer of 1976 it was my first spent at a new camp, this one devoted to music up in Maine. It was just past my freshmen year at school, (UConn). I remember that initially I did not want to work at this camp as a counselor. I had a serious relationship then with a girl who I had been dating with for over a year dating back to my senior year in high school. My father who knew the camp owners well and in his way helped "grease" my application into easily being accepted said, "No Jeff! You're going to the camp"! End of discussion!

At first as my then girlfriend also played the french horn as I did, she wanted to go to the camp as well, practically begging her parents to allow her to go and be with me the entire summer. Of course this would have also meant her parents paying the steep tuition at the camp since it was either a 1 or 2 month stay for her. Really she wanted to be near me although if she had been allowed to go it would have been rather awkward and difficult for us.

You see there was a strict rule against camper/counselors being boyfriend/girlfriend. She was 2 years younger than I was, but nevertheless as I was in college I was a counselor while she, still in high school would have been a camper. The camp age went from age 9 all the way up to kids just graduating high school and as much as 18 years old.

So anyway as my girlfriend really was never serious about her french horn playing, (and in high school I actually gave her a few lessons over at her house) plus her parents not willing to shell out a lot of $$, she did not go. We ended up writing to each other practically every other day as it was, however.

I remember watching on a small television in the counselors' meeting cabin that summer's Olympics. I remember the two American track & field sprinters missing their heats all because their coaches could not read a schedule properly. To do all that training and miss out on possibly running in the finals because of the inability to read a schedule right must have been devastating as they both were disqualified because they were not at the stadium on time.

I remember the success of the American boxers led by Sugar Ray Leonard. I remember Nadia Comaneci the Romanian gymnast who scored her perfect scores of "10" in various competitions.

Most of all I remember just what a great time I ended up having working at that camp during the entire summer in 1976.

I would go back to that camp in 1977 and 78. And no unfortunately I got zero bicycle riding done those summers, although I did do it plenty of times in the 6 week period after my spring semester at college ended and before I had to actually report up to this camp.

Jeff

Hi Gina! Thank you for your very thoughtful comments. Congrats on you turning 50 recently! They say that age is but a number anyway. Turning 59 today does not bother me. However as I said originally when I hit 60 on this day next year. . .

Hi Joanne! Thank you very much for your very wonderful comments. Yes, I hope that it is the first of many WA commissions in my future as I plan on really stepping up my promoting this wonderful opportunity that we have here at WA at my 2nd website!
Jeff

Hi Mike! Thank you very much for your kind words, sir!

Sincerely,
Jeff

Thank you Jude for your kind words. My hearing that John Denver song, probably about 10 days ago, might have been the first time I had heard it in decades! I first thought that it came out in the late 1970s. However through simple research I found out it came out in the early summer of 1974.

Here is another interesting thing about that song. John Denver wrote it out in a manner of a few hours. He then gave it to a musical friend to gauge his interests. I used to play and study the french horn from elementary school all the way through college.

What Denver accidentally did and noticed by his friend was that he borrowed the opening melody from what is perhaps the most famous orchestral french horn solo first written by Tchaikovsky in the 2nd movement of his 5th symphony. While in college I learned that solo and had to practice and perfect it as part of my repetoire as assigned to me by my private teacher in college.

Until I read last week of how Denver wrote out the melody for Annie's song I never put together that it so closely resembles the beginning of that french horn solo heard in the Tchaikovsky symphony. According to the research that I found in research Denver's song, (only trying to find out when it came out back then) his friend told John that the beginning of the song as originally composed sounded exactly like the solo in the Tchaikovsky symphony. And unless Denver wanted to have accusations of plagerism coming his way, then he'd have to change up the melody to his song just a little - which in fact Denver did!

Now only the first 5 notes of Denver's "Annie's song" (which does repeat a number of times throughout its length) are in fact the exact melodic structure of the Tchaikovsky masterpiece. Denver went on and changed a lot of the rest of what he intended to be the melody in his song.

Still the song is a classic and so representative of the style of music heard on radio back then. I know that I sound like the typical "old guy" when I say that music back in that time period: 60s - 80's, is so much better than the junk heard nowadays by the Justin Bieber's and others of his ilk today!

Thank you Andrew for your very nice comments. I must ask you: Is the "74" part of your screen name signify the year that you were born?

Jeff

Yes, born in 1974!

Thank you Deb!
Jeff

Thank you Eddy! In fact I was going to send you a pm which I'll get to right now!

Jeff

Sounds good Jeff