The title I WISH YOU KNEW EACH OTHER is something I said aloud recently to my cat (born 2007) and the photo by my bedside of my late husband (died 2004).

The subtitle is something I wrote a couple of years ago: "I have two sweethearts. One of them is dead, and the other is my cat."

In solos, the bassoon plays the cat and the bass clarinet plays my husband. So in the music they do meet and play together.

In 2001 a former boyfriend and I were fortunate to re-meet and get married. We were very happy. But in April 2004 he got liver cancer. He was in great pain and died that September.

He was a jazz musician and collage artist. The website in his memory is www.joel-bishop-obrien.com

Love, grief, and longing run and mingle throughout the piece.

In 2 movements 1. Snow and First Crocuses 2. Tulips

My mother planted bulbs along the narrow strip of earth between our house and the driveway. As a child I was fascinated by the crocuses that would poke up through the snow and bloom, and keep blooming even when fresh snow fell on them. I was also fascinated by the pure colors, perfect shape, and velvet feel of the tulips that flowered later in the spring. I love remembering my mother gardening. I love remembering my mother, period.

Only albinos have white skin.
They have no melanin.

In parentheses:
people with white splotches have Vitiligo disease.

Drumroll please.

The rest of us have varying amounts of pigmentation,
produced by thousands of years of human migration
through varying amounts of ultra-violet radiation.

Put us all in a row, arranged by skin tone—we form a spectrum.
Races don't exist in nature. Racism invented them.

Make-up companies nowadays
Feature the spectrum in their displays.
L'Oreal: porcelain to nut brown.
Maybelline: espresso back to porcelain.

It didn't used to be that way.
Fashion Fair Cosmetics— Black Radiance today–
introduced make-up for deeper skin in 1973.
Major companies followed swiftly,
Selling deeper skin tone lines —BUT separately.
The inclusivity spectrum has only been marketed recently.

Footnote:
There's another spectrum of skin colors too.
Bruises give ROY-G-VB.
Thank you.

Words and music © 2019 by Harriet Katz

Our species leaves a lot, a lot, a lot to be desired We like to think that we were good guys at the start. We had groups, not troops. We were hunting, gathering, talk talk talk talk talking, Making jewelry and music and art. But because of the recent discovery of a 10,000-year-old massacre That view is coming apart. Farming's also to blame. People with lots of crops could store and hoard Others had less while they had more Et voila! War! Forever On and on and on and on and on.

And war-- along with its companion rape-- Functions as an evolutionary tool To diversify and thereby strengthen the human gene pool. Today, still more of the same, the same, the same. Plus, since the Industrial Revolution, Pollution! New York puts its garbage on barges. Plastic's wreaking havoc with the ocean. "Nature's Balance" now is just a brand name. Our species leaves so much, so much to be desired, We should be fired!

Our species
leaves a lot, a lot, a lot to be desired

We like to think that we were good guys at the start.
We had groups, not troops.

We were hunting, gathering, talk talk talk talk talking,
Making jewelry and music and art.

But because of the recent discovery of a 10,000-year- old massacre
That view is coming apart.

Farming's also to blame.
People with lots of crops could store and hoard
Others had less while they had more
Et voila! War! Forever
On and on and on and on and on..

And war-- along with its companion rape--
Functions as an evolutionary tool
To diversify and thereby strengthen the human gene pool.

Today, still more of the same, the same, the same.
Plus, since the Industrial Revolution, Pollution!

New York puts its garbage on barges.
Plastic's wreaking havoc with the ocean.

"Nature's Balance" now is just a brand name.

Our species leaves so much, so much to be desired,
We should be fired!

"Our Species" words and music © 2016 by Harriet Katz

You know my namesake's story.
It has no glory.
It's even gory,
this tale told way back when
by men.

Eve gets all the blame.
They say she started shame.

They claim
because she didn't heed what the man at the top said,
and shared a piece of fruit instead,
that she unleashed the peril:
our knowledge of good and evil.

I'd like to make a point
about the myth they coined.
Evil would still exist
even if Eve did desist.

It's all around us,
it's deep within us.

The worst thing about humanity--
the fact that we kill each other--
is blamed on our supposedly first family,
especially the mother.

I'd like to make a point about my family.
Our lives are not a hell.
I raised my sons well!
Cain is a landscape architect
and Abel a veterinarian.
Some sibling rivalry when they were very young,
but now they're decent, caring men.
Fratricide? No way!

Fratricide, sororicide,
matricide, patricide, infanticide,
homicide, genocide!

Eve didn't start this.
Let's hope we can end it.

I'd like to make just one more little point.
I'm sure my namesake's story's made of fibs.
But just in case, here's my advice:
Don't order spareribs.

words and music © 2011, 2016 by Harriet Katz