Our CD is finally finished.

Our CD is finally, completed. Above, is a pen drawing an artist friend of ours, named Sheila Mott did for us that we used for the cover. The actual drawing is a 1:1 ratio to the size of a CD. When you think of all those leaves drawn in that wee space . . .!

Today I pick up the Cd's from the company that mass produced them for us. Peggy, the fiddle player and I were talking last night about how long this CD has taken and the first song we recorded was just over a year ago. It doesn't seem that long but, we've been working on this project that long.

Here we are, and what a handsome lot we make! (for old people, that is) ;-)

I'm posing behind my harp, Bill Woods is holding his bodhrán, an Irish drum, and Peggy Nogle is holding her fiddle.

I thought I would throw some more pictures in this entry to add a bit more colour. I'm holding a guitar (obviously) and the two instruments on the right are a mandolin and an Irish bouzouki. Yes, that was taken at an out doors festival and I'm allergic to hay. What one will do for art's sake. ;-)

This picture was taken at an inside gig ( thank goodness ) and that is a mandolin I'm playing for all who may be "instrument challenged." ;-)

This picture was taken at the Gig Harbour "Blessing of the Fleet" event. It was out doors and a very cool day with intermittent rain. At one point the wind was blowing the rain sideways and we all had to move further under the canopy to stay dry. My Irish sweater and cap are made for this type of weather. I was glad I didn't bring my harp for this event. There were other performers on the program as well and I felt sorry for a young teenager who brought her concert sized harp to play with the small orchestra. I'm sure she was tuning it constantly throughout the performance. There's an old joke about Harper's that claims they spend fifty percent of the time tuning their instrument and the other fifty percent of the time playing out of tune!

There you have it!

Here are three tracks from the album.

Granmore Hare - Traditional Song

Hills of Grafton - Phillip Mooney

Suíl a Ruín - Traditional Song

Enjoy!

The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower

ADDENDUM: I went out after 9:00p and didn't see any of them so I decided to get up early and take another look. Between 3:30a - 4:00a, I saw seven "meteors shower the sky. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and inspite of all the yard lights, mine included, one could still see the beautiful effects. One of them was especially, brilliant in light as it shot across the sky for that brief second of light. It was well worth getting up to see the Perseid Meteor light show. - - - Butch




I copied this article from Space Daily - Your Portal to Space, word for word because they explain this Perseid Meteor shower much better than I trying to paraphrase it or even trying to rewrite it. So, in any event, enjoy the meteor showers this evening around 9:00p, your time zone.


The 2008 Perseid Meteor Shower
A Perseid meteor over Joshua Tree National Park in California, August 11, 2007. Credit: Joe Westerberg.by Dr. Tony PhillipsHuntsville AL (SPX) Jul 24, 2008Mark your calendar: The 2008 Perseid meteor shower peaks on August 12th and it should be a good show. "The time to look is during the dark hours before dawn on Tuesday, August 12th," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
"There should be plenty of meteors--perhaps one or two every minute."
The source of the shower is Comet Swift-Tuttle. Although the comet is far away, currently located beyond the orbit of Uranus, a trail of debris from the comet stretches all the way back to Earth. Crossing the trail in August, Earth will be pelted by specks of comet dust hitting the atmosphere at 132,000 mph.
At that speed, even a flimsy speck of dust makes a vivid streak of light when it disintegrates--a meteor! Because, Swift-Tuttle's meteors streak out of the constellation Perseus, they are called "Perseids."
(Note: In the narrative that follows, all times are local. For instance, 9:00 pm means 9:00 pm in your time zone, where you live. )
Serious meteor hunters will begin their watch early, on Monday evening, August 11th, around 9 pm when Perseus first rises in the northeast.
This is the time to look for Perseid Earthgrazers--meteors that approach from the horizon and skim the atmosphere overhead like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond.
"Earthgrazers are long, slow and colorful; they are among the most beautiful of meteors," says Cooke. He cautions that an hour of watching may net only a few of these at most, but seeing even one can make the whole night worthwhile.
A warm summer night. Bright meteors skipping overhead. And the peak is yet to come. What could be better?
The answer lies halfway up the southern sky: Jupiter and the gibbous Moon converge on August 11th and 12th for a close encounter in the constellation Sagittarius: sky map. It's a grand sight visible even from light-polluted cities.
For a while the beautiful Moon will interfere with the Perseids, lunar glare wiping out all but the brightest meteors. Yin-yang.
The situation reverses itself at 2 am on Tuesday morning, August 12th, when the Moon sets and leaves behind a dark sky for the Perseids. The shower will surge into the darkness, peppering the sky with dozens and perhaps hundreds of meteors until dawn.
For maximum effect, "get away from city lights," Cooke advises. The brightest Perseids can be seen from cities, he allows, but the greater flurry of faint, delicate meteors is visible only from the countryside. (Scouts, this is a good time to go camping.)
The Perseids are coming. Enjoy the show!
==================================================================

I agree, this should be quite a show tonight.

The Correct Way To Weigh Yourself

TO ALL MY DEAREST FRIENDS
I'M SO GLAD I FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS!
The correct way to weigh yourself

I can't believe I was doing it wrong all these years.
WE MUST SPREAD THE WORD.

The Saturday Afternoon Barbecue

Saturday, we had some friends over for a barbecue. It amazingly, is the first one we have had with friends this year. I started preparing the meat on Friday, which gave us time to go through the mad cleaning of the house. We really don't live like pigs but some things along the way, get missed when we go through the house every four days or once a week cleaning. With Steve faithfully, brushing the dog since he is in his shedding period, we still end up with dog hair from one end to the other.

We usually prepare all the food for these gathering at our home when we are hosting, but all insisted they bring something along to share, so it became a "pot-luck" meal. We started with appetizers, bar trail mix, smoked salmon with sprigs of dill in a sour cream sauce, a layered leavened bread with cream cheese, three different chopped peppers, chopped black olives, grated cheddar cheese. I don't know what it was called but it was delicious. Besides the typical beverages, the main dishes were "baby-back ribs", chicken thighs, both barbecued in a sauce, German potato salad, home made baked beans, Lima beans and chopped onions in sour cream for a bean salad, and for dessert, home made ginger cookies, chocolate chip cookies with home made mint ice-cream. I have one word to describe this: oink!

The weather turned out perfectly staying in the 70s with intermittent clouds and sun breaks and a pleasant breeze blowing. One can thank the Zephyr's for supplying that so we sat on our wee patio outside our solarium and ate at a picnic table on our shaded deck. The company, food, conversation and the craic were perfect and one couldn't ask for a more pleasant day. Even Seán, our dog got more than enough attention from everyone. Steve and one of our friends used to fence, so they got a chance to see if they could still compete with each other. I know, the next morning, Steve was lamenting about how sore he was. I think he stirred a few muscle groups up that he doesn't usually use during a normal day.

Unfortunately, in all the excitement and fun, no one thought to bring a camera to snap a few pictures and this entry sadly will not have any pictures to help with the story.

The Annual Scottish Highland Games in Enumclaw, Wa.

Welcome to the Scottish Highland Games of Enumclaw, Washington.

Kindly, click on the pictures to enlarge them.

In the picture above is my friend Josh, who owns a utility kilt business and is the hub for much of the Celtic happenings in the southern part of the State of Washington. He is a huge man and when he saw that I was going to take a picture of him, he asked for me to wait so he could suck in his stomach! ;-) I laughed and tapped my own as I prepared to take his picture. He's the fellow in the tent.

This is Steve and our good friend Hugh, who got away from his own clan tent to walk about with us through the fair grounds.

Here's a picture of "himself" with Steve, my partner.

Sorry, I couldn't remove the fence that was separating the athletes from the fans. If you look closely, you can see a caber being readied to be tossed. It is not unlike tossing a telephone pole only these weigh between 100 - 180 lbs. The person unfortunate enough to have to pick one of these things up, runs (or walks fast) with it and then, tosses it so it will land first, on the opposite end of the caber and fall over. How far one can toss it decides the winner.

Here is another picture of the caber being tossed.

North Channel Kilts was one of the many vendors at the fair grounds. They made the tartan I am wearing in a previous picture. Since there aren't many Irish tartans in stock, they had to look up my tartan and count how many threads go a certain direction and on and on until they have the pattern of the tartan. They follow the pattern and weave the material and the kilt is made from that. To have the correct pattern go around you, the kilt is pleated continuing the correct tartan pattern. Some of these kilts can be nine yards long if they were unpleated. I joked with the man taking my measurements when I had that one made and I said there was going to be a herd of sheep that were going to be really cold for awhile. ;-) I have two kilts, the one pictured is the O'Farrell Tartan, on my mother's side and the Tara tartan from on my father's side. ( not shown here )

This is our friend, Clain who was the person to have answer questions regarding the Buchanan Clan. You can see the clan tartan he is wearing.

During the Highland Games, there are other competitions happening in other areas of the fair grounds. We missed the harp competition, and the dancing competition, but were able to watch a bit of the pipe & drum band competitions. Here is a band marching up the way preparing to march on to the field for their try in the competition.

Here is another picture of them turning on to the competition field. There is nothing wrong with your eye sight, I have been trying to capture the proper colours of the tartans and the sky seems to be changing throughout the day. When taking a picture of a person who happens to be in one of those tents, the pictures come out too dark without a flash, so I have been tinkering with them. Your eyes are just fine. ;-)

Here we are with Hugh in the picture and he was the person to see if you wanted to know anything about the Gunn Clan. Their clan tent is in the background. There were many food vendors, some of them producing traditional Scottish and Irish dishes, from Haggis to Bangers, and all different types of spuds. There were many Celtic bands that played from the Tempest's to the Wicked Tinkers and the day stayed mostly cloudy with a temperature around 75 degrees F. ( approximately 25 degrees C. for my Canadian friends. ) with a light breeze. A beautiful day to meet with the different clans and enjoy the fun.

Time to Pick Up the Pieces and Move Onward.

Our circle is a wee bit smaller this week due to a most unfortunate scandal that Nicky Cooper never was a real person. ( at least the one we thought we knew ) We loved him for being that kind, single young gay father with two adopted boys, wise for his age, a wonderful outlook on life, nature, and the woods he used to take us to on his tramps in many of his entries. His wonderful prose was inspiring and would bring delight to most of us with every entry.

We know now that it was Kate who penned the beautiful prose from her own heart and much of her writing was about her own son, one of a twin, who died a short while after birth named Liam. Her writing was one way of making sense to what happened in her life and she was dealing with it through her writings. Unfortunately, the woman behind the character, "Nicky" plagiarized much of Kate's material as well as some of Kate's own pictures of her husband pulling their son through the snow on a sled. Just these no-no's would bring into question a person's untrustworthy behavior. Furthermore, was the issue that Nicky, as we knew him, was fictional. What was slowly unraveling started to spin revealing one layer after another of lies, and deception. It was bound to happen as the stories changed and more lies had to be told to maintain that deception.

As it turned out, the person who created the characters of Nicky and Joel, had been reaching out for friendship, compassion, to fit into the company of gays and befriend them and other things to compensate for a personality that had been looked down upon and discouraged. This person is a female but has always felt she is a male creating Nicky at the age of six years old. This info comes third hand through Father Tony's site who has substantiated this person's identity and that what she has said on his site is true at least as much as we can try and believe it. Many thanks to Father Tony for his part in trying to get to the bottom of this debacle as well as some comments from Joe of JMG, Al of Blue Alto for his informative thoughts on this and Greg of the Midnight Garden for starting the ball rolling in our blog circle.

As I mentioned on Al's site, what may have caused this problem to manifest was her struggle with transgender issues, being raised in an area of B.C. where she came to believe "s/he" was unique, and the only one like himself, suffering greatly carrying this burthen alone. With no other outlet, I can see inventing this persona of "Nicky" saved him throughout his growing years. Nicky had mentioned he had an invisible friend whilst he was very young and perhaps, Nicky was that friend. But, it was interesting that "Nicky" was going to remain the age 26 for the rest of his life and the iteration of a similar character named Joel, as it was pointed out in another person's comments. Joe also was 26 years old. Joel was dying of leukemia and was another manifestation of hers crying out for sympathy, love and compassion. After this person was found to be a fake, that site closed down and eventually, Cooper's Corridor became the focus and Nicky became her outlet, in my opinion. I, like many, were drawn to his magnetic, and kind personality. How was one not to like Nicky?

This need of hers may be explained as a variation of Munchhausen's syndrome. We have a fictional character taking care of two boys, one, healthy and the other, sickly, and in the familiar definition of this syndrome the mother or parent makes the child sick in order to get sympathy from others for that parent's sacrifices made to make the child well again. Many times a child needs to be brought in to the hospital where they become well amazingly fast under the care of professionals. In Nicky's case, one doesn't know if the children were ever sick or were ever made sick on purpose, but the basic premise is the same. "Look at all the sacrificing I am doing to take care of my sick child."

As well as others, I too, noticed fuzzy parts in his emails and entries and parts that he would change the next time around. I recall once, he had a dog named Molly and in an email I had asked what happened to her since I had never seen any pictures of her with the boys. I eventually, received an answer that Matteo had allergies that were caused by Molly and Nicky had to leave the dog with his best friend, the one who grew up with him. I accepted that answer until there was an entry mentioning the recent addition to the family named "Bud", the dog with Dario holding him in the picture. I wondered if Nicky had forgotten the first story he told about Molly. Another was Matteo's pneumonia and all that transpired, only to read a little later Nicky taking them out in the snow or pulling a sled with him in it. ( The infamous lifted picture of Kate's husband pulling their little boy on a sled) from Kate's site that was removed along with the visiting blogger's story at another blogger's site was an example of the pictures that were lifted. ) And still another of taking a grandmotherly type babysitter with him to take care of the boys in the Yukon whilst he worked. The last time his friend Michael and his wife took care of the boys. The stories were stretched to the point of unbelievability. There were quite a few more, but I, like many, wanted to believe in him and I ignored my own defense systems. When I was practicing medicine, I used to do H & Ps ( History & Physicals ) on every new patient I would see and one usually, can see when a patient is not telling the truth by asking a lot of questions especially in different ways. One would think I should have known better to be able to spot when there was a lie. I was duped along with many others by the shy charm and well articulated prose that would come out of his blog. Kate deserves the kudos for her material, her life and all that was lifted to make the Cooper blog what it was. I will continue to drop by her blog and would encourage anyone who reads my blog to visit hers. You have already read what her writing is like and it seems sensible to read it from the source.

I thought I knew Nicky and we emailed enough that I considered him a close blogging friend. I am corresponding with her presently, to have some questions answered so I can bring about some closure in my life to this unfortunate calamity. I am not angry, I am disappointed and I feel duped, and embarrassed that I could be taken in so easily. One thing I can say, that other's have said, is I have met some very nice and decent bloggers from reading Nicky's two sites and I hope we can all continue to trust each other and not reach the point where it hampers one's blogging bringing it all to a stop through fear. I do not want to feel that way, and if it happens again, I hope I am better prepared. Perhaps, trusting too much is the problem but I would rather continue trusting until proven otherwise. Nicky has apologized to me for deceiving me and I will take it that she really means it.

May the character "Nicky Cooper" rest in peace. He was truly loved and may his creator receive the counseling she truly needs, and the compassion and peace that hopefully, follows. It's time for me to close this chapter. Thank you all for your own comments on your own sites and on others, it has helped bring this into focus for me knowing that others are feeling the same way and only want what's best for all the party's closely involved in this.

Since, Patrick has come forward to write about something painfully personal, I want you to know you have my utmost respect and there is no need for humiliation, you were led on and duped into believing in this person as we were. Never forget, you do have friends, whether they are blogger friends you've never seen before or the ones you have found to be real. You are always welcome here at Butch's Banter, always my friend.

Thanks to all of you as well. Now, on with the blogs.

I didn't know this until yesterday and the answer, today.

An addendum to this mystery has been brought to you by two bloggers, Greg, from Midnight Garden and Anonymous who commented that it was all an hoax. Anonymous kindly produced the answer to this puzzle as to how it was accomplished. Please pardon the Cascade commercial before the information. Thanks, Greg and Anonymous for your input.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/07/09/carroll.cellphone.popcorn.cnn

These cell phones turn out not to be more dangerous than we thought. Take a look at this video first to see what fooled me and an host of others.

Popcorn

Kindly, click on hypertext below.

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/portable/video/x5odhh_pop-corn-telephone-portable-microon_news