The company I work for ships most of its products to the United States, meaning if the 25% tariffs are put in full force on February 1st the repercussions could be disastrous. Am I worried? You bet! I could stand to lose my job or at the very least see my salary and/or my hours cuts drastically in a bid for the company to recoup their losses. The company itself won’t have to flip the bill for the tariffs themselves but the way I see it, if the US customers decide they don’t want to absorb the extra cost then they may force our company to cut their price or they may decide to go to one of competitors. If this happens I could see a possibility of the company doing massive layoffs, if not outright putting the key in the door. It may not happen but it is a possibility and so I’m left with the ‘what if…’ Well, if that were to happen as I see it I’m in a comfortable enough position 4 years from retirement to finish my working life in a lower-paying job, perhaps even a retail job part-time, maybe in a hardware store or some kind of electronics shop, who knows. Just something to carry me until my pension kicks in and I can start slowly trickling my retirement fund and enjoying life at my own slow pace. In fact, I’m really not too worried. Would it be tough finding work? Maybe, but I have many many marketable skills, I’m good with people, technology, I’m a quick study and a great troubleshooter and solution finder. I think I have many good qualities to offer a company. So, you see, given the right opportunity, I think I could shine for another 4 years at a company and maybe beyond if I found the right place. So for now I sit and wait and continue to work and not think about it too much.
Wow, 2025! I don’t know about you but that number looks very sci-fi doesn’t it? It’s already seven days into 2025 and so far so good 🙂 In years past, in fact for most of my adolescent and adult life I’ve always taken January as a month of reflection to look at and plan my upcoming year, take hold of the year that passed and work towards resolutions, blah blah blah 🙂 Not this year, at least not in the same way. I’ve decided that this year will be a year of action. No more planning things to death but simply having a todo list and knocking things off of it. What exactly? Well for starters I had the installation of a new dishwasher, which was done two days ago. It didn’t go smoothly as our kitchen was built in place and isn’t standard at all. So at the moment, although the dishwasher is installed and works fine, it’s skewed forward so that it looks like it’s open all the time but in fact it’s closed. I will revisit it this coming weekend where I will cut away a portion of the top of the cabinet so that it will sit flush and at least look a little better. It’s kind of a moot point as one of the todos on my list is to redo the kitchen entirely. More on this in later posts.
I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year 2025, may you all have Heatlh, Happiness and Peace as we embark on what might become a very divisive year with American politics very much in the forefront and our own Canadian politics in upheaval. We’ll have to hang tight and ride out all the storms and hopefully we’ll all be OK in the end.
I had a major catastrophe with my little webserver several weeks ago and basically had to change machines and also restart my blog. Originally I had several blogs dedicated to different topics, but over the years it proved to be too cumbersome to maintain, so I’ve decided to simplify things and only have one blog from now on – Stefano’s Place. Well, that’s what it’s called for now, I’m not sure if I’ll keep the name, but I needed something up there 🙂
I’m really not sure what this blog will contain, for the short-term I do plan on bringing over some articles from my original two blogs as I’ve kept back ups of many of them. In time I hope to update the blog with articles on diverse topics and in varied forms, be it written word, audio recordings, podcast-like or video. I can’t promise how often I’ll post or if you’ll necessarily like the subject, but I do promise to try and keep it lively and interesting, so stay tuned.
OH MY GOD! That’s all I could keep saying to myself as my ears stumbled over my mouse, tripped over the keyboard and into Lucy Thomas’ Youtube channel. It all started with a conversation that my wife and I were having about a rendition of Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself”, a song made famous by Celine Dion, even though I COULD NOT STAND her version, my apologies to all the Dionists out there, but I just found her rendition screechy to the Nth degree. The rendition my wife was listening to had the same effect on me and I told her so. In fact, I told her that I had never heard a version of the song that didn’t have me cringing as that fateful crescendo makes it appearance and the singer has to reach into their upper registers and often end up screeching yelling those final notes; up until this evening that is. In fact, as I type this and think about the rendition I just listened to by Lucy Thomas, the hair on my arms is still standing on end, that’s the extent to which her voice reached deep down inside of me. You must realize, I have not had a singer do this to me in a very long time and here tonight, on an unassuming Saturday evening, unbeknownst to me, I found a singer who has single-handedly restored my fate in that song, and I left a comment on her Youtube channel to that effect. Here is the cover of “All by Myself” by Lucy Thomas for your enjoyment. Please stop whatever you’re doing and just sit and listen to this song and tell me shivers don’t go up your spine.
Incredible rendition of “All by Myself” by Lucy Thomas
Wasn’t that something? When was the last time you heard such a wonderful, breathy, controlled and silky rendition of that song. I just loved how she used the entire range of her voice to add such wonderful depth and emotion. Even in the higher registers she shows such self-control and vocal delivery, truly masterful. There is a such a limpidity in her voice, such a smoothness whether she’s going down into the lower registers or reaching those crescendos, it’s truly so easy on the ears, like liquid, auditory silk, if such a thing could exist. I may have to reconsider buying better speakers for the old Hi-Fi system in the corner of my office. I think that’s one of the hallmarks of a truly beautiful voice is if you can listen to it effortlessly and so far I’ve listened to dozen’s of her videos and her voice is so delicate, yet powerful at the same time that it just naturally sits in the mix of the song, but is also able to capture the listener’s ears, again flowing with ease.
Even the piano solo in the middle had me waiting in anticipation for her voice to return, this ladies and gentlemen hasn’t happened in a long long time.
I certainly hope the world discovers Ms. Thomas and as her voice and singing technique further matures in the years to come she may very well become a household name and could end up with the great female singers in history, bravo Lucy bravo!
Last night was pure magic for me, let me explain. I had not seen a live music concert since November of 2019 and last night, three years minus a few weeks, I attended my first concert and what a concert.
For many years now I’ve have been a regular listener to Saturday Night Jazz on the CBC music radio channel here in Canada. I knew the host, Liali Biali, was a Jazz singer/songwriter and had seen many of her Youtube videos and listened to some of her music on Spotify and the like. One day in early August I was going over the offerings at a local music venue, which is a 15 minute walk from my house. Lo and behold don’t I see that Laila Biali would be playing in my little town, just down the street, obviously I couldn’t resist. I bought the ticket, sitting me at a table right up near the stage, I didn’t realize at the time that I would literally be about less than 3 meter from Laila herself sitting at her piano. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so I printed out the ticket and clipped it on my bulletin board in my office and waited for the faithful evening.
Well, yesterday was it, I got spiffed-up, well as much as one can get spiffed up with the post Pandemic wardrobe that I have left in my closet, and made my way to the venue. I got there early and waited with all the other audience members until we were let in. I was kindly escorted to my chair by a nice usher and sat down to the view below:
Laila, her husband Ben Wittman and Alex Bellegarde on upright bass took the stage and almost instantly the magic began. First of all, I had only ever really heard Laila on the radio and, as mentioned, on Youtube, etc… but to see her sing, smile with that twinkle in her eyes, was such a treat and she plays a really mean piano. I’ve been a big fan of Diana Krall for years and always loved her piano playing abilities, but what I saw that evening with Laila’s hand flying across those 88 keys just astounded me and took my breathe away, I kept straining to see her fingers on the keyboard.
She played a variety of songs from her new album, some Jazz standards such as Autumn Leaves, which was very apropos since I had walked over crunchin’ some Autumn leaves of my own, some covers of the Canadian songbook from the likes of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, and a fantastic energetic cover of Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” that had me practically up and dancing, but not quite, guess I was a tad bit shy. In fact as I tried to casually glance around with my peripheral vision it felt to me like I was the only audience member boppin’ in the joint. I’m sure I wasn’t, but to me it felt like it was just me and those three amazing musicians up on stage.
At the end Laila mentioned that she’d be having a meet and greet in the lobby and signing CDs and I was thrilled as I wanted to let her know how much her radio show has meant to me over the years and how much I was looking forward to hearing her play. We shared a nice short chat as there were others who wished to meet her as well and we said our mutual good-byes and how nice it was to meet each other. I then grabbed my coat at the coat-check and made my way back home with two of her CDs in tow and a definite bounce in my step. Since it was Saturday night at just after 10 PM when I got home I was able to listen to the last two hours of her radio show and it felt even more welcoming as I heard her dulcet toned voice and thought how it was a night of live music that I will surely remember for a very long time topped by the thrill of meeting Laila Biali.
