The Saturday Post: Playing For Change edition

Just a few posts ago, I let the world know how much I hate forwards. Then I received a forward about an organization called Playing For Change, and it changed my attitude ... at least about that one specific forward. Instead of forwarding its content, though, I'm posting it here.

Playing for Change is, according to PlayingForChange.com, "a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race."

The organization's movement kicked into high gear several years ago, thanks to the video below. Since then, numerous similar videos have been produced, and musicians associated with the project often travel the world for concerts.

If you enjoyed that, there's also a beautiful one of John Lennon's Imagine (featuring a clip of Lennon and Yoko Ono) you won't want to miss. I debated which to feature here, but figured I'd go with the one that started it all.

Today's question:

What causes, organizations, movements, charities matter most to you?

Do the zoo

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, at 6,800 feet above sea level, is America's only mountain zoo. It has a 145-acre footprint, with 45 acres of that in active use for housing and displaying over 150 species — 30 of those species endgangered — and an animal count of more than 800.

I'm fortunate to have Cheyenne Mountain Zoo as my local zoo. I'm even more fortunate to have recently had the joy of visiting my favorite zoo with Bubby.

Today's question:

What zoo do you love to visit?

The tunes they are a-changing

I'm proud to say my family is musical. We dabble in playing — a guitar and piano here, a recorder and ukelele there — but it's in the listening to music that we really excel. As a whole, our hearts, minds and ears are open to myriad genres, everything from classical to Christian, country to show tunes, hard rock to soft rock and many that aren't really rock at all. We even have our family favorites in the rap genre. (I must admit, though, jazz and easy listening rarely pass notes in our homes, our cars, our iPods.)

Music plays a prodigious and powerful role in our family, which is why I'm happy to see the love of music continue with Bubby. Since he was an itsy-bitsy baby, music moved him. And like the rest of us, he's happy to sample and savor tunes from varied genres, with recent favorites ranging from "Twinkle, Twinkle" to "Baby" by Justin Bieber to "A New Hallelujah" by Michael W. Smith to "We Will Rock You" by Queen.

I'm thrilled Bubby finds such joy in music. Yet I'm saddened that many of my most-cherished memories of experiencing music — and watching my children experience music — are things he and the youngsters of today will never know, thanks to the ever-evolving face of music.

Music rituals kids of today will never experience

• The satisfaction of placing the needle in the exact desired spot on a record.

• Flipping through album, cassette, or CD bins at the music store.

• Staying up late to watch a favorite group on "The Midnight Special."

• Making and receiving the perfect mix tape.

• Waiting for hours to catch the beginning of a favorite video in order to hit "record" on the VCR in time so it can be replayed in full again and again.

• The horror of a record or CD being cracked, a cassette tape being eaten.

• The horror — and sometimes giggles — associated with scratches and subsequent skips in an album.

• Singing along with a record, perfectly including the skip without missing a beat.

• Weighing the arm of the record player with a penny to get past the skips.

• Searching for secret messages and meanings in backmasking.

• The thrill of finding a favorite song on an AM station while traveling by car, seemingly miles from civilization.

• Waiting by the radio with cassette recorder in hand to record a favorite tune when Casey Kasem announces it No. 1 for the week.

• Marveling at the artwork on an album sleeve.

• Holding the album lyrics in hand while singing along.

• Memorizing the order of an album to the point that when hearing one of the songs on its own, you automatically hum the bars to — and expect to hear — the next song on the album.

• American Bandstand.

Today's question:

What fading or long-gone musical rituals do you lament?

Truth be told: Grilled Grandma Kc

When asked what flavor of baby they're hoping for, most expectant moms and grandmas say something along the lines of, "Oh, it doesn't really matter to me if it's a girl or a boy, as long as it's healthy." Yes, we all want our babies and grandbabies born healthy, but c'mon, most of us have a preference in terms of gender.

Which is why it's refreshing to read the honest response of this week's Grilled Grandma, Kc, when she states her concerns upon first learning she's going to be a grandma. She says:

My other fear was – what if it’s a boy? I would have loved one but been completely clueless on what to do with him or even how to change him!

I totally relate. I had only girls, wanted only girls as my children. Mostly because I just knew I'd screw up a little boy as I had no healthy models for parenting boys. At least if I had girls, I reasoned, I'd know what they want and need, physically and emotionally. Boys were foreign little beings. Until I had my grandson. Now I'm thoroughly thrilled to have learned a thing or two about little males and look forward to the arrival of our second grandson come the end of spring.

Much to her delight, a little girl was bestowed upon Kc as her first grandchild, and she was dubbed Amara. Kc's love for Amara knows no bounds but I reckon it would have been exactly the same way even if her grandchild had been a boy — except she'd have quickly learned a thing or two about changing the diapers of the little guys, which as we all know (at least those of us who have done it), it's a wee bit different.

Read all about Kc's adventures as lovely Amara's grandma in Grilled Grandma: Kc. Further adventures of Kc and her special little gal can be found on Kc's blog, the link to which is included at the bottom of her grilling.

Today's question:

Do you get along better with males or females, of any age?

Bugging me

Megan's scorpion, heroically nabbed by Preston.My parents transplanted our family of nine from Minnesota to Colorado nearly 40 years ago. Three talking points I recall of their spiel trying to sell my siblings and me on the move were 1) "The people are so nice, even strangers on the street say 'hello';" 2) "Out west, everyone wears blue jeans;" and 3) "There are no bugs."

Nos. 1 and 2 registered slightly above a "meh" with me. No. 3 had my attention. As a child who was traumatized by had memorable run-ins with leeches, walking sticks, and woodticks that turned white and grew to the size of marbles when not removed from dogs or the hairline of a little girl who thought she might be feeling a tumor growing on the back of her scalp and was too scared to seal her fate by telling Mom about it, the idea of no bugs sounded pretty darn good. More than just good, in fact, it sounded worth the move. I was sold.

I've lived in Colorado the biggest chunk of my life now and I'm still sold. I'm sold on Colorado for myriad reasons, but after Megan's revelations the past week about the critters in her part of the world, I admit minimal bugs are still one of the greatest appeals. I've actually said such a thing to Jim in the past week, and he agreed. Yes, we'll stay put in Colorado. Likely 'til Kingdom comes.

The revelations from Megan that heebie-jeebied me so involved scorpions. Just days after their visit to fairly bug-free Colorado was over and she headed back with Bubby to their desert home, Megan spotted a scorpion in the corner of her living room ceiling. A vaulted living room ceiling that she couldn't reach on her own, not even with the tube of the vacuum cleaner stretched to the max to suck up the critter. In her third trimester of pregnancy, climbing a ladder to reach the scorpion wasn't an option. Especially because it might skitter away causing Megan to fall from the ladder in fright, threatening the well-being of not only herself, but her unborn Birdy and the surely freaked-out Bubby below. So she and Bubby kept tabs on its location until Preston could leave work early to get home and save his loved ones from the ceiling-bound scorpion.

Disaster averted, thanks to Preston, a vacuum tube, and duct tape. Except that they spotted another scorpion in the same room upon their return from a weekend trip to Sea World. The scorpion professionals were to be scheduled to rid their home of the critters. For this month, anyway. Apparently such pest control is ongoing, a monthly service required of residents of the desert. At least those who don't want their babies stung by the little cussers.

When I shared Megan's scorpion story with one of the tutors I oversee for the literacy center, a woman who has lived in various spots around the country in the past 50 years or so, she shrugged off the tale. She'd gotten used to such things while living in desert climes, she said. You shake out your shoes before putting them on, you shake out your clothes before dressing, you shake out your bed covers before jumping under them. She'd lived with worse, she said, including rattlesnakes coiled up in bushes she'd started to trim ... then slowly had to back away from to keep from being bit. Now that was scary, she said. But the fear of the rattlesnakes was balanced out by the harmless geckos that climbed the walls, she added. The little critters that were oh-so cute ... except when you forgot to shake out the toaster before pushing down the handle on your breakfast bread. Toasting up a crumb-savoring gecko is not a good way to start your day, she stressed.

Shaking toasters, shoes, and bushes or sucking up scorpions with the vacuum don't sound like good ways to spend any portion of a day, if you ask me. I honestly don't understand how folks live in such places.

I especially don't understand why Megan hires scorpion zappers to make floors and cribs and ceilings safe for my grandbabies instead of packing up the brood and heading to the hills. Specifically, heading to the hills of Colorado ... where she was raised ... and where she knows there are no bugs to threaten the lives of her — and my — loved ones.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know there are brown recluse spiders and spotted ticks and rattlesnakes and more in Colorado. But they're up in the high country for the most part, not in residential areas where we have to fear for our lives and the lives of our babies on a daily basis.

Today's question:

What memorable run-ins have you had with creepy-crawlies of any sort?