1. It's not enough, I guess, that Colleen Wheelahan hosts a six hour classical music program on SiriusXM from M-F. Out here in the west, that show comes on at 3 a.m. I try to catch snippets of it between stretches of sleep every morning and am often awake for its last hour or two.
And it's not enough that she then hosts another classical music radio program at WUOL at 3 p.m. PST for three hours and is back on WUOL on Saturday mornings.
It would seem that having two radio programs isn't quite enough for her either. For Jane Austen's 250th birthday, on SiriusXM's Symphony Hall channel, she produced and hosted "A Jane Austen Musicale" with two guests, great interviews with them, and took us into both the music and social history of Jane Austen's times.
Today, on WUOL, Colleen Wheelahan produced and hosted a second Jane Austen program. It's titled "A Jane Austen Christmas Musicale" and for an hour Wheelahan presented passages from Austen's novels and letters, explored the Christmas music Austen most likely heard performed (some of which she might have played on the pianoforte herself), and imagined what a Christmas Day was likely like for Austen and her family and neighbors. It was, as she promised, an immersive experience.
And that's not all. At least once a week, Colleen Wheelahan writes an essay and publishes it on her Substack account entitled "Classically Colleen". Her essays are insightful, sometimes whimsical, and often include either playlists of classical music that she makes available on Spotify, or she posts a series of individual songs, also linked to Spotify, that are either subjects of her writing or that help substantiate a point she is making. She's a clear, intelligent writer, a good story teller, and has a wide-ranging knowledge of music, literature, other arts, and, as it turns out, football.
I discovered Colleen Wheelahan when I decided to listen to classical music on SiriusXM when I was making medical trips to Coeur d'Alene and Spokane earlier in the year. Her voice on the radio and her introductions to the selections she played impressed me so much that I began listening to her programming at home and before long discovered that she works for two radio stations and keeps an active Substack account. I can't always listen closely, but from Monday to Firday, her shows play for nine hours a day in our house.
Satellite radio. Streaming radio. Writers on Substack. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers o kittens, these are a few of my favorite things in our wireless world.
2. So on my Facebook page, I get quite a few Reels.
I enjoy watching the people who make a ton of money making videos of themselves spinning reels in casinos and I enjoy watching clips of poker tournaments.
Lately, another source of fun, another favorite thing has popped up.
I get videos of a woman interviewing AI generated cats in an alley in NYC.
There's Donny Meatball, Big Tuna, Carmine Whiskeretti, Mittens Malone, Frankie Two Paws, and a host of other cats along with a racoon an occasional dog, and lots of stories about catnip, milk, dumpsters, epic battles, love affairs, and other sagas from the world of the cats' alley.
Here's an example THE TALES OF TONY AND THE NYC ALLEY CATS 🐈⬛
What the heck -- here's another The Alley Turns on Big Tuna 🔥
3. I know that this post solstice time of year with the promise of ever growing light on its way is a time of celebration. I know that Christmas Day is day of celebrating light coming into a dark world.
For some reason, as I've aged, Christmas has become an increasingly solemn time. It night be that as I age, I feel the seriousness of the darkness more all the time.
I'm grateful for the promise of light and I feel that, too.
Today, I was glad to be alone all day, glad I never left the house.
These two classical music stations I have on all day long right now play seasonal music I'm familiar with and they introduce me to a lot of winter music that is new to me.
What makes the artistry of so much of this music impressive to me is that the dark and the light are both present in the music.
Being alone, with no one talking or being busy with things, I can listen to this music with the only distractions being the furnace coming on or Gibbs wanting to go outside or come back in.
I don't always listen closely -- I read, work puzzles, straighten up the house, prepare food, but the music is always there and I experience the solemnity and beauty of what's dark simultaneously with the promise and joy of emerging light.
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