Lets get a written record of this song! Frankie, our daughter, wanted us to sing it over and over yesterday! I learned it in 4th grade music class way back in 1977-78. My sisters and i LOVED that song! I still do!

Orion is arising

Orion is arising
You can see his stars ablazing
Way out here in the middle of a deep blue country sky.
And still what is amazing
You can see his stars ablazing
Way out here where nothing hides it from my eyes.

And sleeping outside in a bag as a kid
It seems like the best thing that I ever did
And chasing the shadows
and the tracks in the snow
Don’t you know?

The world is getting older
and I really start to wonder
why we’re clouding all the country skys to gray
The world is getting colder
I can hear it in the thunder
and the rain may come and chase us all away!

And sleeping outside in a bag as a kid
It seems like the best thing that I ever did
And chasing the shadows
and the tracks in the snow
Don’t you know?

The moon is on the wane
And it looks like it might rain
Or maybe snow.

And how are we to stay here
When there’s no room left to play here
Or to grow
Don’t you know?
Don’t you know?

Speedracer adds: Google helped me find the back-story, along with reminiscences of a lot of Gen Xers.

Update: Here’s a blog post with a performance by the songwriter.

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Koompa is 14 years old today… I say we start the year long celebration of our centurian doggie!!! Here is an oldie but a goodie. And if I get the chance tonight I will can in a couple from way back when!!

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Bee’s ballet class is going great. She just loves it and her teachers tell me she is so animated during class. Today, I picked up frankie from school early and we went to watch Bee’s class. I forgot the camera so I took a few pics with my camera phone. the light and resolution arent great, but I hope you can see her happy smile. She was the best at the front and back twirls!! She worked hard on her skip! And, during “free dance” she started everyone running around the room. that’s my bee!

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our neighbor’s kid was over playing and he was pretending to be a dog. I happened to have the camera in hand when he was trying to lick bee “just like Koompa”.

In other news, its pouring out this morning. while I appreciate the cooler temps this morning, I realized in the middle of the night that I left my office window open at school. With western exposure, Im thinking I need to come in with few towels. I hope it didnt get too many papers and books wet. ugh.

Cho cho and Balla have up and moved to kalamazoo. Im hoping they like their new digs. Miss ya crabbies!!!!!!!!

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OK, the answer is sloppy discs. I only partly get it. sloppy – floppy. but Im still stuck on what discs have to do with pigs. someones gottta help me on that! In other news, Bee is doing the library’s preschool reading program. She had to do seven activities this week. here are a few she did: read to someone younger than you for 20 minutes (that was easy, she does that anyway!), read a ghost story (we decided pale green pants worked well enough for that), read a nonfiction book about science (fun!!), and draw a picture about a book you just read. So this afternoon we will head over to the library and get her prize. Franks is a bit jealous too because she isnt old enough for the program, although she did read her maisy book to her doll yesterday. it was so cute! OK, a couple of pics from the playground!

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the girls were eating popsicles last night and they have the kind that has a joke on one of the popsicle stick and the answer is on the other end (covered up by the popsicle). so, you have to eat the popsicle to read the answer. Frankie’s popsicle stick said, “what did the pig put inside the computer?” Honestly I was racking my brain to come up with that answer. Pork, pickled pigs feet. none of these sound like discs. what else? memory? pigs dont have good memory do they? So Im talking to my mom on the phone and she saying maybe bacon? But frankie didnt want the rest of her popsicle. How could I not find out what the pigs put in the computer??? anyhow, franks was too busy playing in the pool to care about the answer to the pig joke!

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Bee starts ballet class tomorrow and here she and frankie are practicing! Frankie is ready for modern jazz I think! On other fronts our garden is doing pretty well. Our tomatoes have tons of flowers and our eggplants are about a foot tall (not the eggplant itself, just the plant!). I think a rabbit is eating our basil, but the oregano is going strong, and same with the chives. (I will admit our neighbor gave us the chives and oregano and all I had to do was transplant them!). Its our italian garden.

Just as an aside, I learned today (from my mom) that for a girl, if you double the height at 2 years old you get the approximate adult height. Frankie measured in at 32.5 inches, which would make her 5’5″ as an adult. that is exactly my height! weird! I just looked up Bee’s height at 2 years and she was 35 inches… so i dunno that makes her 5’10″….. that would be from the barton side I would guess!!

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Happy Birthday Frankie!!! Scott and I keep saying I cant believe Frankie is already two at the same time we keep saying, she feels like she has been 2 for about 6 months now! Go Frankie! Frankie had a really nice birthday! We gave her a choice of pizza or fishies and frenchfries for supper and she picked the fishies and frenchfries. After we went out for that we took a family ride to owasso and stopped at the “king kone” for icecream, and then came home for cake! We made this cake from scratch, but because I only wanted to make a small cake, we used our camping bowls for cake pans, so the layers are a little thin!

>frankie’s been vomiting with explosive diarrhea
bee’s hangnail got infected
markie crapped on the floor (again)
scott left for nyc for work for a few days

Calgon take me away…

But seriously, since I was home from work today, Bee and I made peanutbutter cookies with bittersweet dark chocolate chunks and they turned awesome.

On other news, the crabbies are loving their new sand and conch shell, and the flowers Frankie and I planted are growing like crazy – just call her green thumb! Im gonna take (or give) markie a summer buzz cut (pictures promised!), and after literally 10 loads of laundry we are caught up!! (no one can change their clothes now for a week!).

And now, our sweetie bee. She handed me the camera and asked me to take a picture of her. this is how she posed!

>they are renovating the 3rd floor of erickson hall (where my office is), and Im sitting here trying to get some work done and all i can here are the middle age men banging things and talking really loud. Then all of the sudden one of them broke out in the Sound of Music “The Hills are Alive with the sound of music…”. I have to say that was pretty funny!