Starry Night

http://www.space.com/12973-skywatching-find-tatooine-alien-solar-system-kepler-16.html

Well, after months of trying, my boyfriend and I were finally able to go stargazing through the Roanoke County Parks & Rec's free nighttime astromony program.  Once a month around the new mooon, Frank from the Roanoke Valley Astronomical Society will unload his giant telescope on the Blue Ridge Parkway by an overlook area and point out whatever the night sky has to offer.

The last few months that I've registered, the program has been cancelled each time due to cloud cover and haze.  Yesterday, it was a bit cloudy but clear enough that the program could go on.  Yay!

There were about ten of us and Frank showed us a globular cluster in the Hercules constellation's keystone area using his telescope.  It looked like a cotton ball.  We also checked out a binary star that only looks like one star when you are looking at it without a telescope because the two stars are so close together.  It's Cygnus the Swan's beak - Albireo (see pic above from Space.com).  What's neat is that when you look at the two stars in the telescope one is clearly white and the other is blue.  It's really pretty awesome!

Frank also pointed out lots of different summer constellations using a green laser pointer: The Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, part of Ursa, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Hercules, Cygnus...  He also showed us the Northern Cross and some other neat things.  I liked how Frank would say: "That star is 25,000 light years away and that light started traveling here before agriculture even existed."  Mind blowing...

On the way there and back, we encountered fog, raccoons, and deer ~ plus nice mountain views.  I can only imagine how pretty the parkway is in the autumn!

Today, will be Roller Derby.  Hopefully!  Have a great weekend ~

Get Me to the Greek (food)!

This weekend is Roanoke's annual Greek festival which is held right off of Williamson Road (Rte 11) at a Greek Orthodox Church.  Last year, the festival drew over 20,000 visitors and they expect even more this year with the awesome weather we are having.  Let me tell you: they do a great job.  The hours are long (open until 10PM) and they don't close up at 8PM like every place else in Roanoke seems to do.

The best boyfriend ever and I went tonight and waited in a very long line, which is unusual for Roanoke, to select some Greek yummies from a buffet line.  Sooooo worth the wait!  He had chicken souvlaki, rice, green beans, and a Greek salad.  I had moussaka, spanikopita, and some sort of flan-like, custard dessert.  I think it was spelled something like "Galaktoburrito" but that's totally not it and I'm butchering the name.  Anyway, the food was amazing and we got to sit outside under a gigantic tent listening to live traditional Greek music.  It was in the mid 70's and just perfect outside...  So nice to be enjoying an outdoor food festival with several thousand happy people after a long work week.

There were about a dozen kids of various dressed up in traditional costumes dancing and that was pretty adorable to watch.  Especially the boy who liked his tassled hat and kept playing with it.  No smashing plates, though.

Desserts for the parents to nibble on

 

Why Do All the Great Alt Rock Stations Die?

Four years ago, something very exciting happened in New York.  My favorite alternative rock radio station of all time was born.  I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it was.  [Notice I'm writing in past tense here?]  Not only were the on-air personalities fabulous and so connected to their fans but the music selection was amazing.  101.9 WRXP played great music and also introduced me to so many new artists and songs ~ it was always a candy store for the ears:

Soundgarden, Linkin Park, M83, Death Cab for Cutie, Alice In Chains, 30 Seconds to Mars, The Cult, Muse, Shinedown, Spacehog, AWOLNATION, Foo Fighters, Arcade Fire, Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Mumford & Sons, Audioslave, Jane's Addiction, Radiohead, Broken Bells, Beastie Boys, U2, Oasis, The Church, Foster the People, Kaiser Chiefs, Kings of Leon, Matt & Kim, Florence + the Machine, The Naked and Famous, Neon Trees, Phoenix, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Psychedelic Furs, Regina Spektor, Trevor Hall, Two Door Cinema Club, Young the Giant...

Matt Pinfield, a former beloved MTV VJ, became their morning radio host and I loved listening to his stories and deep voice and laugh.  Leslie Fram, the program director through most of the RXP run, was his cohost and she apparently knows everyone in the business and she impressed me as being the most positive and upbeat music host.  The two of them were fantastic together and it made my hour-long ride into work in the mornings enjoyable ~ which was significant considering the traffic hell I was dealing with.  As soon as I got to work, I'd listen to them on the internet.

Steve Craig came on at lunchtime and would play some Ramones and punk from his "punk trunk".  I'm not a big fan of punk but it was an education and one I appreciated.  I used to e-mail him all the time to play Oasis songs during the lunchtime request hour.  I'm sure he got sick of me but he was always so generous with his replys and took his listeners seriously and always put us first.  :-)  Brian Phillips handled the ride home and had me laughing all the way out East.  Paul Cavalconte hosted when I was driving around on the weekends and he had the smoothest and gentlest voice of them all.  He always sounded like such a gentleman with a deep love for music.

When I moved to Virginia I was happy to be able to listen to RXP on the internet when I was at work.  I missed it in the car and on the weekends but it was something, anyway.

Previously, 101.9 WRXP had been CD 101.9, a smooth jazz station.  It was really good too and I'm sure the listeners who loved it were totally outraged when it died and was replaced by an alt rock format.  As outraged as I was when WRXP died last year.  Actually, it was murdered.  Due to 'low ratings' which I think is total b.s.  All these fantastic d.j.'s lost their jobs and scattered across the country at the whim of a corporation.  A year later, 101.9 is back with alternative rock but without the original team so it's not the same.  Very sad.

Last year, after I lost RXP and was so sad about it, I started looking around for a different alt rock radion station that also broadcast on the internet so I could listen to it at work.  I found 99X in Atlanta.  They seemed to mostly just play music and there didn't seem to be a lot of DJ interaction like there was on RXP but the music was really good!  Guess what happened last week?  Dead.  Same cause of death: alt rock isn't appreciated by the corporate giants that decide on formats for their radion stations.  I'm depressed.

I honestly have no idea where to turn now.  Part of the enjoyment of listening to radio is having a connection with the DJs.  That's why I avoid Pandora.  Well, where to next?

Roanoke on PBS

We made the news scene. Nice views of local businesses and downtown farmer's market area.

Apparently, my video feed has disappeared...

50 Shades of...

This December, if you hear thousands of women screaming and hollering from this direction it's because the Las Vegas Chippendale's dancers will be in town.  Of course, I use the term 'dancers' loosely - no pun intended.  Loose.  Get it?  (hee hee)

Twyla Tharp Meets the Crooked Road

I like to try new things.  Living far away from a large city means that I need to try new things on a regular basis to keep from getting bored.  When I moved here from New York, I read a lot about SW Virginia to get an idea about what made this region special.  I thought, "I'll figure out what this area has that NY doesn't and I'll give it a try!"  People wrote a lot about all the great hiking and kayaking and river-y things to do which made me nervous.  I knew I was not going to become some hiker because I'm too wimpy for that.  Plus, I don't swim.  So, now what?

One of the natural resources that Southwest Virginia has in abundance is good bluegrass music, apparently.  'The Crooked Road' is an area in SW VA that people call our state's "heritage music trail".  Basically, it's the part of the state where you focus your attention if you want to hear good, live bluegrass.  There's even a PBS series that's filmed in SW VA that showcases professional bluegrass musicians so you can get a concert on your couch.  I saw some episodes and I thought I'd like to give a live music experience a try!

I've read about The Crooked Trail in various magazines and newspaper articles, especially in the last few years.  Hipsters love rediscovering old timey pursuits like farming and beekeeping (Did you read about the guy in Queens who had 30+ beehives housing millions of bees and it was shut down? Thanks to his real estate agent who knew she couldn't sell his house with swarms of bees.  Crazyyyyy) and playing banjos and things like that.  I think that's why there is a resurgence in interest in bluegrass by young people.  Most of these young people are hipsters.  This is just a theory but I think it's true.  In case you are wondering, I'm not a hipster.  "Not that there's anything wrong with that".

Anyway, two weekends ago my boyfriend took me to see a bluegrass jam at the Salem Farmer's Market on a Friday night.  There were three pods of people in different corners of the quiet farmer's market next to Roanoke College.  Most of the musicians were AARP members and they obviously don't have arthritis issues because they were able to strum their guitars and banjos FAST FAST FAST.  I saw a bass, a harmonica or two, and some other instruments that I didn't know exactly what they were.  In any case, the music was good!  We didn't stay long - maybe 15 minutes total before we went on to our next adventure.

So, last weekend we went to see the Roanoke Fiddle & Banjo Club do their thing at a local high school.  They were pretty good.  It was hard to get a full appreciation of the music because someone's little girl ~ about 8 years old ~ was an attention whore and was doing interpretive dance a la Twyla Tharp on the side of the stage for no good reason.  WTF?!  There were a lot of off-key leg lifts, hops, and convulsive actions going on.  I wanted to smack that kid off the stage and tell her to find her rhythm.  It was obviously missing.

What made the whole scene more annoying was that you could tell the kid was loving it.  Not the dancing part, the fact that people's eyes kept drifting towards her.  She couldn't see the horror in their eyes, I don't think.  Maybe she is jealous of Honey Boo Boo Kitty Child and wants to be her.  Ugh.

Wandering Around NYC

I'll be visiting NY for a few days in the next few weeks and I'm looking forward to wandering around in the cooler, crisper weather.  I'll try to find time to check out the newest section of The Highline while I'm there.  The Highline was such a big deal in the local news when it opened up a few years ago.  An old, abandoned section of elevated train track was repurposed into a walking garden/park instead of being torn down and it's really pretty.  You get good views of the Empire State Building and the surrounding neighborhoods while you walk around ~ here's a pic I took the last time I was up there:

Looking towards 10th Avenue