The Duchy of Jerald

Bio
Someone posted her video on Facebook.
Enchanted, I read her bio, a survivor and recovering from a crash that left her vocal chords
paralyzed. Paralysis is something I know a bit about, after having a stroke. Work hard, get better.
Recover.
Her parents taught her to read music by the time she was 3. I could read books by the time I
was 4. Self taught. My father died when I was 2, she had parents who did all they could to get
her instruments. I longed for a piano or a guitar, the welfare brought paint by number sets and no
turps to clean the brushes, so that wasn’t sustainable either. My music education was Looney
Tunes, Disney felt he should use classical music in animation and I am forever grateful, I loved
cartoons, learned to love the classics.
My mother was absent as well as my father; she was lost in depression, anxiety and narcissism.
Felt she was entitled to it, her lifelong grief. I joined the choir at church, but no one taught me
anything, they were just there to signify with their singing, their virtue, so I just sang along. Love
to sing, my life long music therapy. Managed to study opera with a singing teacher for a couple
of years, who didn’t insist on reading music, she trained my ear instead.
When I was 7, I read ‘Cannery Row', by John Steinbeck and learned how people survived
poverty, so I did, armed for life to live without money or comforts. I read ‘Naked Came I’, a
bestselling 1963 novel by David Weiss based on the life of sculptor Auguste Rodin, showing me
what was possible with art and hard work combined. I loved the library and learned to love art as
an achievable goal.
Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov taught me to think scientifically through their contributions
to the new exciting genre of science fiction. I love computers and robotics after growing up with
them in fantasy and living to see it become reality, and an art creation tool.
And continue too…