1. I once played my flute on Circular Quay in Sydney, Australia. (See the opera house behind me?)
2. I was once locked in a coffin. (It was for a play called “You Didn’t Say It Was Haunted.” That play was where I learned that an introvert can actually scream in front of a lot of people. It changed my life.)
3. When I was a kid I used to jump off hay bales for fun.
4. I sing the national anthem several times a year. Most recently, I decided to ask the crowd to sing along, which led to this:
5. The first time my parents and my parents-in-law met was at the Statue of Liberty. By accident.
6. I have learned perfect pitch. (Mostly I call it “imperfect pitch,” because once in a while I screw up.) I can hear colors in different keys.
7. I worked for two summers on the farm with my dad, and while I was doing hog chores I learned that if you sing Amazing Grace in a concrete hog facility, a) the acoustics are stunning and b) the hogs all shut up to listen. Hogs are much smarter than cattle.
8. Speaking of cattle, I used to have to chase cattle when they broke through their fences. Most memorably the night before I started high school. Pink checkered nightgown and curlers in my hair. (Fortunately, there is no visual to go along with that one!)
9. I actually know from first-hand experience what the phrase “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” means. Although fortunately I was never the one called upon to separate said chicken from its head. Only its feathers from its body.
10. I should have a tenth, but I’m coming up blank and I’m on magazine deadline, so this will have to do.
Kathleen M. Basi 
I love the plucking chickens photo:)
Mom
That’s a pretty cute kid, huh? 🙂
Loved reading this–especially learning the tidbit about singing to hogs. 😉 Will keep in mind if ever I need to know that 🙂
My inlaws have a few head of cattle and shortly after my father in law hurt his back, we got a call asking Mark and my dad to head out and help him get a cow out of a tree. 🙂
??????????????!!!! You can’t just stop with THAT! Do tell all!
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Kathleen M. Basi wrote:
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I’m a totally not musical person but I’ve read different times over the years that people think the national anthem should be changed because it is so hard to sing, and sure enough when they hire a professional to sing it, it sounds hard to sing. However, I think it sounds best when it is sung by a crowd, and I suspect if I hired an opera singer to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, and let him/her decide on the arrangment, we’d get a complicated song that was hard to sing.
It’s not just the opera singers…it’s the pop singers who just don’t “get” communal singing and thus feel they have to ornament it beyond recognition…which is usually when they accidentally change key…
On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 12:29 PM, Kathleen M. Basi wrote:
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