Here’s a movement from a Bach partita for solo violin. But what is a partita? It is simply a suite for solo instrument or voices, usually in several movements. Hey, why should everything have a complex definition?
This particular movement, the third from Bach’s Partita No. 3 for solo violin, is pretty well known, and it could be even more well-known across the universe as the centuries pass: this movement is one of the selections on the Voyager record. Cool, huh?
Continuing our ongoing exploration of classical music inspired by water in some way, we have this short and lovely piece by Maurice Ravel.
It took me longer than I suppose it should have to “discover” Ravel, because my introduction to him was Bolero, and that’s just bad news for anybody. Ravel’s work is so much more wonderfully colorful and pictorial than the dreary Bolero, and that is certainly true of today’s piece, Jeux d’eau.
This is an early work by Ravel, and it’s sometimes considered one of the very first Impressionist works for solo piano. The title doesn’t translate well to English; literally it’s “Water Games”, but I’m not sure that works. In any event, while I generally try to ascribe specific pictorial descriptive power to music, it’s very hard to listen to Jeux d’eau and not “hear” the light shimmering on the surface of a fountain’s pool or maybe dancing on the splashes of a brook.
Ravel wrote the piece for solo piano, but it did eventually get orchestrated (multiple times, if my brief Googling is to be believed), and so I present both. The piece is only about six minutes long, you’ve got time!
1. Tell us about a time when your family got a newfangled invention (your first air conditioner, color TV, VCR, microwave, computer, etc.).
Ooooh, which one to choose! I remember our first microwave, and our first computer (a Commodore VIC-20), and even our first crockpot (which is still around, in the things that belonged to my mother).
Let’s go with the VCR. We got it in, I think, 1985. I don’t remember the brand, but it loaded through the front (many initial VCRs had the tape going into a carriage that popped up from the top of the machine). The machine had a bank of manual channel buttons running across the front where we selected the channel when we were watching through the VCR, and there was a programming process we had to go through to do it. (I don’t recall if our VCR came before we got cable down our road, or after.) It was a VHS machine; this was when people were still choosing between VHS and Beta. (For those who don’t know what this is about, with the rise of home VCRs, there were two major formats that were duking it out for market share. VHS became the standard, and Beta faded.) The first thing we recorded was an episode of Riptide, an NBC private-eye procedural show. The first movie we rented was Raiders of the Lost Ark. This was even before movie rental stores were much of a thing; that rental was from a local stereo and teevee equipment seller, and to rent a movie you had to leave a deposit of 50 bucks that you got back when you returned the tape. Later on, our town’s first actual video store opened…and they made no effort at all to classify or organize the movies in any way! You literally had to wander the entire store in hopes of seeing the movie you wanted, if you were there for a specific title. Those were fun times. I’m not particularly nostalgic for them, but I remember them with some fondness. There was a time when watching movies on clunky videotapes, forced into a 4:3 aspect ratio on low-resolution teevees (think YouTube twenty years ago), was a technological marvel. Wow.
2. Is there a particular song that sparks a childhood memory?
I’m not usually one to lock music in my mind to specific moments in time that I remember, but I will never not hear any rendition of “San Antonio Rose” and not think of my father. He loved that song and it was often on his lips.
3. What is something an older family member taught you to do?
Back in my college days, the local Hy-Vee store in Waverly would run a drawing for free turkeys every year for a few weeks before Thanksgiving, something like “Get a ticket for the drawing for every ten bucks you spend”, and one year I actually won a turkey. It was just a small 10-12 pounder, but still, hey, free turkey! My roommate had actually won one the week before and donated it, but this one I decided to actually roast up for our friends and The Girlfriend (now The Wife). But I had no idea how to do it, so I called Mom at home and got her detailed instructions as to how to make a turkey dinner. It turned out pretty good, too!
4. Back in the day, what name brands would we have found in your family’s kitchen?
Ooooh, that’s kind of tough. Campbell’s, obviously. We always had cheap Ramen on hand, but I don’t recall the brand. My parents shopped generics and store labels pretty religiously…and by generics, I mean exactly that. Rice Krispies were in a white box with black lettering that said “Crisp Rice Cereal”. There’s a brand called Shur-Fine that was in a lot of stores, if I recall correctly. The best frozen pizzas back then were by Totino’s. (I have a feeling that if I were to revisit those, I’d be grossed out big-time!) My mother always had coffee on hand; it was a staple for her while Dad hated coffee, but I don’t know what brand she used. For a while it was likely generic.
And then there was beer. My father loved beer and drank…well, in retrospect, there might have been something going on there, but some closets are best left unopened, right? I will note that even in times when money was tight, there was always money for beer. Make of that what you will…but it wasn’t like Dad was drinking the expensive stuff all the time, and this was the 80s, when the “expensive beer” was (a) harder to find out in the sticks like we were, and (b) still well in advance of the craft beer craze. Brands I remember were Stroh’s, Utica Club (this stuff came in little squat bottles), and Genny Light. I also recall a time when Dad somehow got wind that the Park-and-Shop store (this was a local chain of small grocery stores, larger than convenience stores, smaller than supermarkets) in Portville, NY had got in a shipment of Yuengling beer. (Yuengling is much more well-known and widely distributed now, but back then it was a local Eastern PA thing, and for it to show up in WNY was pretty rare). Now, I’ve just looked it up on Google Maps, and to drive from home to that store in Portville was about 25 miles, round-trip. And we did it, a few times, so Dad could buy up as much as he could get. And it was somehow my job to unload all this from the truck and stack it in the garage.
5. As a child, did you collect anything (rocks, shells, stickers, etc.)?
I had a stamp collection! I wonder if it’s still knocking around somewhere. Stamps were an interesting way to learn about history. Also comic books; I still have those someplace. For a short while, for some reason that baffles me now, I gathered up travel pamphlets. We road-tripped a lot and we also moved a lot, which meant lots of opportunity to grab a pile of pamphlets from someplace. That phase didn’t last long, but it was kind of fun. I also had a small rock collection for a bit, but that kind of fell by the wayside too.
No, I didn’t collect overalls at the time. Never even occurred to me. I did have a pair that I only wore in my room with the door shut because I was embarrassed by it (why? How the hell do I know? I was 8.). I did take notice of overalls brands as I saw them out in the wild, noting differences and whatnot…and there was even one time I saw someone wearing a specific outfit involving overalls that I have since replicated…but more on that another time!
And now, reading all this, I’m suddenly thinking that I had a kind of strange childhood….
Yes, this is the end…of scattershot posting all over the place, including this site.
As part of my upcoming focus on content creation, I’ve decided…well, let me back up. I’ve been “focusing” on content creation for a couple of years now, actually, but I haven’t actually managed to get any real traction, have I? So, I’ve decided to take a more structured approach. See, I want to write and I want to do photography and I also want to make video content about those things and other things too and if I keep taking my former “scattershot” approach to all this, it’s hard to see how I’ll get any of it done in a way that really satisfies me. And that means…
…[audience waits with nervous tension]…
…a posting schedule.
…[audible gasps from the audience]…
I know, I know. I did some kicking around of ideas recently, and I think I’ve come up with at least an initial schedule that will have me posting somewhat consistently on most of my platforms. (The wild-card will be YouTube, because that’s a whole other kettle-o-fish that I need to figure out…recording times and such.)
This site will remain my main location online. That won’t change. But I won’t be pushing myself to post each and every day (with one exception: the Christmas season, because the Daily Dose of Christmas has to be, you know, daily). Regular posting days here will be as listed above, though as always I will reserve the right to pop in on days when I’d normally not be posting.
As always, posting here will be a grab bag of whatever I’m thinking about at any given time. I might crank out a lengthy essay about some important political issue, or an even longer essay about some pop culture thing that I think is important but nobody else does, or I might still just put up a pretty photo of a flower or a dog or a cat or my snowy backyard. I might even still stick a quick piece of light classical music up for lack of anything better. You never
Dispatches from the Forgotten Stars: First and third Thursday of every month, and maybe the fifth if there is one.
The newsletter really fell by the wayside last year, which I don’t want to have happen again.
Photography sites: Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
This refers to my main “photography showcase” sites and apps: Vero, Foto, and the Forgotten Stars Photography account on Instagram. I need to start using those sites and services regularly.
(By the way, my “regular” Instagram, @jaquandor, will continue to be what-I-want, when-I-want, and generally won’t be a major focus of my “quality” work. It’s more for daily snapshots and whatnot.)
Tiktok: Every day, though I don’t beat myself up if I miss one.
Tiktok is fun and all, and I’ll be posting there fairly regularly. (I already have been, really.) I will also try to echo content from there to my personal Instagram, though I won’t always do this. Quite a bit of Tiktok content is a word prompt superimposed atop a very short video clip that may even be soundless; sharing that short of thing to IG doesn’t always seem worthwhile.
YouTube: Ummmm….
Yeah, I gotta figure out YouTube. First is figuring out my recording setup. More to come there.
All right, moving on! Let’s go! There’s so much time and so little to do!
What’s it like when the music and the visuals of a film meld together perfectly? Well, here’s one such example, which is simply the greatest opening credits sequence history ever. Yes, I said it.
Continuing with our exploration of music with a water theme or inspired by water, we look at the early days of American classical music.
America didn’t really “come of age” musically until the 20th century, with the arrival of jazz and the passing of Romanticism; those two events allowed America’s voice to finally develop into something that went beyond the standard Germanic style of music that most American composers of the 19th century produced. But to note the limited nature of that whole century of American music isn’t to downplay it or suggest it’s not worth hearing, because a lot of it is. Such is the case with this work (which I happened to catch on the radio when I left for work one morning).
John Knowles Paine was the first American composer chiefly noted for his large-scale orchestral music. His sound is typically dark and European, and so are his forms and his inspirations. Poseidon and Amphitrite: An Ocean Fantasy is a typical tone poem in the European style, with dense scoring that recalls Liszt. The inspiration is, of course, the Greek God of the Sea and his wife, who spurned his advances at first and fled before being convinced by a dolphin to return. Paine’s work is moody and evocative and at times thrilling; as with many such works, it doesn’t merit a spot in the standard repertoire…but neither does it merit its obscurity, either.
Somehow I didn’t realize that Soupy Sales was born 100 years ago the other day. You’d think that I, with my dedication to the pie in the face, would have had the date marked, but…alas, I didn’t. I don’t know if it can ever be established what human has received the most pies in their face, but Soupy Sales would have to be in the mix. Now, he did mostly use shaving cream, but I don’t judge here. We’re talking about a guy who was so well-liked and so well-known for his pies that he actually had Frank Sinatra agreeing to appear on his show on the condition that he get pied.
Here is Soupy Sales on the delivering end. Joan Rivers was a good sport here.
OK, this is it! The last of my Photography favorites for 2025. As I’ve noted before, all of my photography ends up on Flickr, where I really try to organize things into albums for convenience. (I also use Flickr for image hosting on this site, so there’s a lot of stuff there scattered throughout that isn’t mine. These are always noted in the image descriptions.) In terms of photographic gear, all photos are currently taken either on my Lumix FZ1000ii (“Miranda”), or my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (“Ophelia”). Now, the photos…and at the end, my six favorite self-portraits from 2025.
Well, here we go: it’s time for my annual look back at the year that has just ended. On a personal level, I didn’t have that bad a year at all. Which is nice, because I don’t just exist on a personal level, now do I?
Let’s get right to it:
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I have entered every year for the last, oh, ten or so with the intent to get better at planning and structuring my life. This has always been a struggle, and I can report that I am, in fact, getting better at this. Late in every year I buy a new planner for the year to come, and every new year I start using that planner, only to peter out at some point and then come back to it and peter out again. But, over the last several years, the “peter out” phases of this cycle have become (a) shorter, and (b) less frequent! So I am getting better. Maybe 2026 is the year I actually “put it all together”! We’ll see.
When it comes to resolutions, I’m not really a fan of those. I’m more about setting goals, and maybe (or maybe not) achieving them. So, goals this year include:
A bit of weight loss (not much, we’ll get back to this below)
Trying a bunch of new recipes
Eating vegetarian/pescatarian for a whole day, at least once per week
Stop allowing the chairs and the desk in my library to become collecting points for stuff
Starting The Song of Forgotten Stars, book six
Get my damnable sweet tooth under control (this is the struggle of my life…I have a wicked sweet tooth and a brain that refuses to take a sensible approach to serving sizes, so this will be a thing)
Relaunching my newsletter (likely on a different platform because Substack has issues)
Take 10,000 photos (Why 10,000? I dunno, it’s a nice big round number. I don’t know if this one’s really going to be doable, but we’ll see. The main thing is I will be shooting a lot, even more in 2026 than I did in 2025, and I shot a lot in 2025.)
Focus my reading life on books I already own (and as I write this, it’s the day after I went to the library and checked out nine books, so, yeah)
Reading: 52 books, 200 poems.
Creating content, including more video. (I’ll have more to say about my new approach to social media in an upcoming post!)
Selling photography prints
That sounds like a lot, and you might think, “Wow, maybe you should do one thing at a time.” Well, as characters often say in Aaron Sorkin scripts, “I don’t have time to do one thing at a time!”
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, unless we count a number of people I follow on social media. It’s funny: I’ve seen several instances lately of a reliable content creator going dark for a bit, and then resurfacing with a video in which they say something like “Hi everyone, I’m so sorry for disappearing, but now I think it’s time to come back and tell you what’s been going on….” And then they stand up and turn to the side, revealing their “baby bump”. That’s always nice.
Did anyone close to you die?
No, thankfully.
What countries did you visit?
We went to Canada last April and we hope to go again this spring!
What would you like to have this year that you lacked last year?
I wouldn’t characterize it as a “lack”, but I’m strongly considering making a big upgrade this year in terms of my camera gear. I feel like I’m achieving consistency with Miranda that indicates that I have, in fact, leveled up a bit. I’m excited by this prospect.
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It turns out that 2025 wasn’t really a year of “big achievements” for me. It was more a year of moving the needle slowly toward where I want to be. And that’s not nothing!
What was your biggest failure?
I endured something of a “crisis of confidence” in terms of my writing life, to the point that I was wondering if I was still a writer at all. More recently, I’ve come to the new-ish realization, alluded to above, that what’s at work here isn’t a lack of confidence in writing, or a loss of desire, but a lack of clarity about how to fit writing into a creative life that just three years ago at this time I didn’t see expanding the way it has. And that’s where the “structure” mentioned above comes into play. I will likely have more to say about this, moving forward.
What was the best thing you bought?
I don’t think I’ve written about them yet! Weird…I need to get on that. I even have the content in mind, but I’ve done it a few times on video and not shared it yet. Anyway, there’s a specific pair of vintage overalls that I bought back in April that make me really happy. Also, a pair of white overalls by the Hisea brand that I got this year. And some new shirts. It wasn’t a big year for buying stuff. Oh, I did get a new shoulder-sling bag that I like a lot. It’s not specifically designed for cameras, but I may be able to make it work as such when I upgrade my camera kit, which I’m hoping to do in 2026.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Americans who continue to resist and oppose what often feels like the relentless march toward an end of democracy and the dawn of authoritarianism in America.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The people who are marching in lockstep with the administration.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, drink, new overalls and shirts, and gifts and stuff along the way.
What did you get really excited about?
Going to Toronto in April was an absolute thrill. If I were guaranteed a decent living in a city outside of America and I had to go there and never return, Toronto would be my choice.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I don’t mean to be wishy-washy here, but…both. And I’m not joking! Seriously, it’s both. Aspects of life are getting better, and other aspects are getting worse. I imagine that balancing act isn’t sustainable for life, but, as the Zen master said, “We’ll see.”
Thinner or fatter?
You know what, this one’s kind of funny: based on my official weight last time I visited my doctor (just a month or so ago), the answer is, neither! My weight has stayed basically the same, literally within no more than a pound or two, for over a year now.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, I suppose, but not by much.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography, reading, listening to music, going places with The Wife, hanging with The Kid, and any pie-throwing at all would have been nice!
What do you wish you’d done less of?
You know, a day’s gonna come when I actually don’t have to think about Donald Goddamned Trump at all. I keep hoping for that day to come.
How did you spend Christmas?
Quietly, with family. Basically the way we do every year. Sometimes I envy people with large families and relations close by…but mostly, I don’t.
As James Bond once noted, “That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers.”
What was your favorite TV program?
Shoresy and Resident Alien are ruling the roost right now.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
If there is, they’re probably a Republican of whom I was unaware a year ago.
What was the best book you read?
Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel, Written on the Dark.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
No one specific artist or composer, really…but I’ve been listening to a few playlists of music that was heard on the show Shoresy of late, and it’s a lot of Canadian rap and techno and dance music. Some of it goes right through one ear and out the other, but some of it…really does hit. It “slaps”, as the kids say. (Are they still saying that? How the hell do I know?)
What did you want and get?
The Kansas City Chiefs faceplanting in the Super Bowl, and then having a crappy season this year. Also, I got a lot more experience with the camera and I got a lot of shots that make me very happy.
What did you want and not get?
Any conclusive sign that America is shifting toward sanity, a Super Bowl championship for the Bills, a new owner for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and a pie in the face.
What were your favorite films of this year?
We didn’t watch it until 2026, but Wake Up Dead Man, the new Benoit Blanc mystery movie, made us happy.
It occurs to me that in 2026 I need to do a lot better job recording what we actually watched, because as I write this, I’m drawing a blank and I’m kinda too lazy to go look up the “watch history” on Netflix….
What did you do on your birthday?
We always celebrate my birthday by traveling to Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region for the Apple Harvest Festival and some wine tasting and other fun, which we did this year as well…but this is the first time those events actually coincided with my birthday! We set out for our three-day-weekend right on my birthday, which was nice.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?
Overalls Conquers The World. Or, when I wear my favorite white poofy shirt under a pair of hickory-striped overalls, “Bridgerton Plus Trains”.
What kept you sane?
Good lord, I have no idea. I’m not sure anything did. Creative pursuits, maybe. Walking around a lot with a camera in my hand or hanging around my shoulder.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’ll go a little off-kilter here: I’ve been following Luke of the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel for a few years, and I’ve liked his no-nonsense and enthusiastic approach to exploring his nook of the world and his pursuit of his passions and his explanations for why and how he does what he does. At the end of one of his videos, about how to dig a snow cave for yourself and survive in the wilderness in a deep freeze, he says that you should do your homework and your research: “I’m just a guy on the Internet who has managed to not kill himself yet. What do I know?” Luke pretty much ended his own channel in 2026, mainly due to burnout and the physically draining nature of the content he made for years, and I salute his work.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Climate change, the loss of democracy, trans rights, human rights of all sorts, racism, sexism, the strife in Gaza and the inescapable twinge of anti-Semitism, and who should be mayor of Buffalo.
Who did you miss?
Mom and Dad. Always. (Dad isn’t gone yet, but I haven’t written about him yet…so I’ll just note that I’m not sure there’s anything sadder than dementia.)
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned last year:
There’s usually a big block of stuff I paste in here every year, but 2025 was different (and as I write this, 2026 is not off to a promising start). This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lord of the Rings movies, and this speech by Samwise Gamgee at the end of The Two Towers is a great one. I just wish it wasn’t so constantly applicable.
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
You know what? I was just about to call this answer done and actually publish the post, but I just remembered something. There’s a brilliant creator named Amanda Nelson who posts a lot on various social media platforms. I believe she’s a historian by training, but I’m not sure on that point. She is always thoughtful and measured in her content, and what I strongly appreciate about her is how even-keeled she is; Ms. Nelson will point out that yes, we’re in a really bad spot, but she’s still not particularly given to the kind of “We’re doomed” rhetoric that often dominates my side of the aisle. At one point this year, and I cannot for the life of me remember in which video she said this and she makes so much content that I have no intention of taking the time to find it, she said something that I have thought myself in various ways, but never put so succinctly. This really hit me between the eyes:
“America is not a thing that happens to us.”
Think about that.
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
I’m going to relocate these to the concluding 2025 Photography Recap post, which will appear tomorrow. I’m doing this for one very important reason: WordPress’s “block” format gets a bit unwieldy with long posts like this, and I don’t feel like struggling with it anymore this morning! Harumph.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
This one has been tripping me up for a while, but I think I got it. You see, finding a song to sum up 2025 is tough, because 2025 was a year of serious absurdity, in which some of the most consequential things of my lifetime, events and policies that will define life for decades to come, are being imposed and enforced by complete idiots. Seriously: we are being governed by people who, without exception, think and believe things that are simply false, objectively untrue, and therefore utterly stupid. I keep coming back to this moment from the movie Glass Onion:
So, what kind of song could possibly align to times like these? It wasn’t a good year at all, but to note that it wasn’t a good year isn’t enough; the year was made un-good by people who aren’t serious, who aren’t smart, and who have never had any kind of genuine human feeling (other than hate) or any kind of genuine human thought. Everything about this time in which we’re disastrously living is just dumb and absurd and just…pedestrian. That’s what irritates me the most about these times: our villains are pedestrian dullards.
Thus, I needed a song that’s kind of pedestrian and somehow absurd. And that’s where my train of thought stopped.
And then, as Ray Romano once noted, “Sometimes, material presents itself.”
First, the song. There was a one-hit wonder in the mid-2000s that you may remember. This song was everywhere. For a while you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it at least once, someplace, and American Idol used it for its “Goodbye” segment every week when someone was eliminated. The song was, of course, Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”.
Yup, that’s where I’m going, because in 2025, America had a “bad day”.
But where’s the absurd part, the fact that our collective bad day was brought upon us by a giant collection of nitwits and nincompoops?
Enter a content creator I’ve been following for quite a while now, first on Instagram and now on Tiktok. She goes by “Capture Calliope”, and the other day I saw this recent video of hers:
So, there it is. What song lyric and song makes me think of 2025? Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”, as performed by Alvin and the Goddamned Chipmunks. That’s the kind of freaking year 2025 was.
“Because you had a bad day, you’re taking one down You sing a sad song just to turn it around You say you don’t know, you tell me, don’t lie You work at a smile and you go for a ride You had a bad day, the camera don’t lie You’re coming back down and you really don’t mind You had a bad day You had a bad day….”
Yeah. Tell us about it.
Anyway, here we go, into 2026. As I write this we’re ten days in and ICE has already murdered someone and the usual suspects are telling us that she had it coming. Another year in America.
But remember:
America is not a thing that happens to us.
America is what we choose it to be.
Share This Post
ForgottenStars.net
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
