The 2007 Groton Community Christmas Chorus

Today, on the last day of November... present — to me, at least — are two traditional hallmarks of the season:

On the right: my nightime/tripod attempt to capture our Christmas lighting — the garden archway we've had for years + Lynn's pop-up Christmas Tree spiral. And for the first time, this year, I also dressed up the metalic snowman that is usually in the garden / on the wall outside my sauna shed.

On the left: some of the signage I put up to remind the Community that their 33rd-Annual Groton Community Christmas Chorus is just around the corner. See my personal GCCC 2007 multi-media invitation (featuring the Dylan invite), or for a quick link, go directly to the program.

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Cantate Domino For a multi-media taste of the GCCC, click on the Play icon in the middle of the YouTube control on the left to activate the player. And then click on the Play icon at the bottom of the YouTube player to listen to the GCCC women singing Cantate Domino at a rehearsal for the 2006 GCCC last December. Alas, the video in this clip is not very high quality, but IMHO the sound of the chorus is fabulous. I didn't do this on purpose... but as it turns out, I was standing over on the Alto side of the Church when I recorded this, so what you hear has an unusually "off balance" version of the women singing the lower parts of the harmony — most unusual. Or, Go direct:    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixrl1kwVvJ8

The Pammett 2007 Cut-Your-Own-Christmas-Tree Outing

A joyous family outing for the Pammett family — our annual pre-Christmas tradition!

This year we got smart... we decided to do our annual outing to track down the live tree that's perfect for us... sooner, rather than later — because other years we've wrestled with minimal choices because we left it too close to Christmas when there's not as good a selection of live trees left.

With JgP living at Northeastern this year, the only way we could do that was right after Thanksgiving. So last Sunday the four of us got to spend a most joyful late New England Fall afternoon: heading off thru the woods, saw in hand... searching down the perfect Christmas tree to have in our family room this year. And not only did we find a great new tree place (1 Kemp St, Dunstable), but we also discovered a new kind of tree — a Concolor Fir or White Fir — which is "half way" between a long-needled White Pine and the more-traditional Spruce trees with shorter needles but where all the branches bunch up together so that there's no room for decorations. Narrowed down from five or six choices, we unanimously selected the one shown here. You can see more of the tree itself in our "O Christmas Tree" celebration on YouTube.

With help from Photoshop, I was able to fabricate the picture that you see here with the four of us; can you tell which of the two faces are from other snapshots? See this Flickr set for the rest of the pictures.

Rock Climbing "The Gunks" — Hartigan, Pammett and Marcotte

With Thanksgiving behind us, today I finally have a bit of "extra time" to do something I've been wanting to find enough time for about 2 months now: write this story to share my pictures from my first-ever rock climbing experience — with two of my men friends, both of whom just happen to be expert rock climbers. Camping out under the stars, and with 2 full days of rock climbing... we had an absolutely fabulous time!

Pictured below is a marvelous place in Up State New York, called "The Gunks" by those who frequent the place for some of the best rock climbing in the North Eastern United States. The cliff you see here averages 200' of open rock face — above the tree line which we hiked up to in order to begin the ascent!

Actually called "The Shawangunks" after its Indian name, this fabulous place near New Paltz, N.Y. is better detailed in this Wikipedia article which tells you why "The Gunks" are the place for accomplished rock climbers.

The story about the three days I spent there — with Hartigan and Marcotte, at the peak of the Fall Foliage during the SMW weekend in October of 2007 — is probably best told by this Flickr album which I pared down from the 420 snapshots I took into the "more manageable" (but still too many, I know) set shown in this collection. The link goes to the thumbnails from which you can click thru to the ones you want, or if you have time for the whole show click on the "View as slide show" link at the top right on the thumbnail page. As I process the many panoramas I took, I will post them to this collection. See also this YouTube clip where Hartigan demonstrates the proper way to wind up the climbing ropes.

The first snow fall (in Groton) — Thanksgiving 2007

Today, at long last, we had our first snow fall of the season. So I immediately thought that it was past the time that I could get my "final Fall 2007 picture" of the panorama of trees in my back yard that I've been capturing this Fall — the follow-on to the one shown here. Below I'm showing the non-cropped version of the panorama so that you can see the contribution to the picture made by each of the 11 snapshots. You can see this in the "rounded" edges which are a result of the stretch and projections made by Autostitch. Click here for the cropped version.

This panorama, composed by Autostitch from the 11 shapshots that I took mid afternoon today, had the unusual characteristic that some of the pictures were much darker than the others, but nevertheless Autostitch seemed to be able to make the necessary adjustments to put it all together correctly. Amazing.

Hard Work and Persistence Pays Off

This morning when I came down to the kitchen my wife was plastering the fridge with blown up snippets from the letter that we just received from the MCAS scholarship rewards program — my youngest daughter (who prefers to remain nameless in cyberspace), currently a high school senior — has been awarded a full 4-year tuition scholarship at any state college or university in Massachusetts. Yahoo !!!

The snippets on the fridge came from this collage:
Of course, my soon-to-be-18-years-old daughter is and always has been brilliant — we've known this ever since she was born. And, of course, I'm pretty obviously the proudest Dad that you ever wanna run into! But be that as it may, it's still the case that my daughter has worked very hard for this, that the road has not been easy, and that her brilliance pales in comparison to the hard work and persistence that she has demonstrated... culminating in her finding herself within the top 4% state-wide in English, and at the 94^th percentile in Mathematics !!! These "Abigail Adams Scholarships" are awarded only to those who are high-achievers simultaneously in all of the categories that Massachusetts has! ... And did I mention how proud I am of my Beans !?

Read the press release — Adams Scholarships Awarded to Class of 2008 — for further details.

Nanci's "Hooked On Glass" Passion

My sister, Nanci Phelan, already talks about her stained glass passion in her blog, but I just discovered her Business Card and thought it was so neet that I wanted to include it, here.


I have a number of Nanci's stained glass creations hanging all over my house, and know that she's made similar masterpieces for dozens and dozens of people — have a look at some in Nanci's portfolio. Notice the quality and creativity of Nanci's art. Her techniques have been honed for decades; the creative part in design and colour choice speaks for itself; the finished products just continue to get better and better. Nanci has also done commissioned works for people to give to their loved ones, and without exception they are cherished as the Gifts of Love that they obviously are. And though the logistics of it might be a barrier — because Nanci lives in Canada — if you are interested in such a project, give Nanci a call.

Yes, this article is a shameless plug for my sister who would rather make her living by teaching bridge and making stained glass creations... than go back to work "in an office". Can you blame her?

Helping Nanci create her first blog

Today I spent a while on-line with my sister, Nanci Phelan, helping her create her very own blog. She, of course, did this from Canada while I was on the phone with her from Groton, Ma. While she was trying out various things, I made this posting to help her do "the same" stuff as I was showing it to her.

Speaking of Nanci... this is a picture of her when she and her hubby went to Cuba a few years ago. Living in Canada, they get to do stuff like that! For lots more pictures, see Nanci's Hooked On Glass WebShots album where she features the years of work she's put into becoming a renouned stained glass craftsperson.

As an example of another hyperlink... this points to the home page (under construction) at my newly-acquired www.Pammett.net domain. I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with this new site; for now it's just a place to play with GooGle Apps.