Welcome to the site. I'll start this thing off with a disclaimer: I'm about as good with computers as George W. Bush was with foreign policy, so if there are errors, typos, etc in this blog, you have my advance apologies! At least, unlike the latter case, there will be no casualties if something goes wrong here.
My name is Jake, and as the title of this blog implies, I've got three interests on which I'll write about, hopefully in an interesting enough manner. First off, my "sport" (and I can call it that, since it's been an Olympic event for some time now) involves using a 12-gauge shotgun to blast moving clay targets to pieces. Trap and Skeet, the two principal divisions of clay target shooting, both use a small orange clay "bird" thrown out of a house at high speed; the competitor's objective is simple: break the target. It sounds pretty easy, I'll admit, but as we'll understand later, it's anything but. Kreighoff wouldn't be able to sell their K-80 clay target shotguns for $20,000 and upwards if Skeet were easy to the point of boredom.
German Lieder, or art songs, are another passion of mine which I explored quite rigorously during my college years. Although I specialize in Lieder, I'm interested in all kinds of classical music, and plan to discuss certain pieces of music, upcoming performances of note, recordings, and my own adventures in the musical world. Music-related posts could cover any of these topics and more; it all depends on how things evolve.
Finally, we have our "fine feathered friends", better known as birds (or to New Yorkers, "rats with wings". Unfortunately, unless you're in Central Park, the most bird life you can expect in NYC is the Rock Dove, AKA Pigeon, Flying Bag of S---, etc etc). I've been a birder all my life and have always enjoyed a bit of amateur ornithology, except perhaps that one time when I was chased out of a marsh by a very angry Canada Goose. Lesson learned. More to the point, I've always enjoyed introducing other people to this life-long hobby, and am happy to answer questions about this and anything else I write about.
Apart from these three topics, I don't plan to restrict this blog's content to anything in particular. Stuff like philosophy, world events, and the good old-fashioned rant-n-rave is always fair game. If you would like me to write on something in particular, have bird questions or otherwise, let me know!
So who am I exacttly? Nobody of particular note. If you happened to navigate here expecting this to be the blog of someone in "People" Magazine or some other celebrity, you may very well be disappointed. My story's pretty simple...I did my undergraduate work at Bowdoin College in Maine, where I studied Spanish and philosophy. I also received the bulk of my voice training there. I'm a lifelong birder, music enthusiast, and clay target shooter (and contrary to the gun-owner stereotype, I'm also a democrat!) who simply decided to catalog a few of his adventures. Will this come back to bite me in the ass? Probably, but what the hell. :)
In my next installment, I'll explain a little bit about the clay target sports and the kind of equipment used to compete in them. Pages such as "about me" and "contact" will surface as I figure this system out--my computer seems to be jet set against fuctioning properly, which makes things difficult to say the least.
Finally, I will mention that the posts on this blog should be generally inoffensive and are not designed to incite anyone or anything, but that being said, what I write is my personal opinion and will not be censored for political correctness, pandering, appeasement, or (worst of all) kissing anyone's tuchus. If you disagree with anything written here, I welcome your comments and civil, academic debate. Argument is terrific, but keep it clean.
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