Quick Hitters

I. This is the first and last year I do a cantata. I expected that it would be sort of like doing a simplified oratorio. You know, show up in a suit, conduct 30 minutes of music, polite applause at the end. Actually it's the sacred equivalent of a community musical. There are costumes, staging concerns, hurt feelings, and multiple emails per day. Still, if you'd like to hear the cantata, come to my church next Sunday. I hired some good musicians...here's hoping it comes off okay.

II. I missed the best Bills game of the year because I was playing Holiday Pops in Oswego. J watched the whole thing and texted me updates. When I got back she came the closest yet to confessing that she's become a Bills fan. "I would still root for the Steelers if they met in the playoffs," she said "but I know so much about the team, and they're on every week...and it's hard not to root for you guys."

III. I'm teaching a nine year old boy how to play the flute. That's wrong on a bunch of different levels. He forgets his instrument a lot, and he has trouble remembering the notes. Two months in, he still puts his fingers in the wrong spot and can only consistently remember how to play a D. Plus, he blows as hard/fast as he can whenever he tries to get a sound. "Alex," I said "you need to blow a lot slower air if you're going to play the flute." He answered "Well, I was born fast, so it's kind of hard for me to go slower." "Hmm. Alex, I'm wondering...because you were born fast, you know, and you like to blow fast...maybe you would enjoy playing the trombone? Because, you need to blow really fast to play the trombone. But flute, you know, that's more of a slow air instrument. What do you think?" "No, I don't think so." Then he leaned in and whispered "I tried the trombone once and the moving thingy came back and hit me, so I am a little scared of the trombone.'

IV. James isn't quite sure what to make of J nursing Owen. The first time he really noticed it (and it went on under his nose for quite some time before he looked up from whatever George was doing) he looked at them both with a puzzled expression and said "Mommy, what's Owen doing?" "Owen's hungry. He needs to eat." James then shouted at his younger brother. "Owen, stop eating Mommy's tummy! That's not food!" Apparently today, however, J asked whether Owen would like to get a cookie and a piece of cheese from Wegmans. James said that no, he not. He just wants to eat Mommy's tummy.

Hot September Day

I.
We sure are thankful for our air conditioning. We don't have a great unit--it's mounted in the wall and doesn't really cool anything down except for the living room, but it is SO nice to have a cool room when you're up on the second floor on a 90 degree day. We never had air conditioning on Washington Street except in James' room.

This morning we've been camped out directly beneath the unit except for our hour of errand running, at which point we were all very thankful to have two cars with functional air conditioning. We had to go sign more papers at the mortgage broker's, and James met a 15 month old bulldog named Albert who was deeply curious of George. James and George still both smell like Albert. We dropped off books at the library, visited the bank, and then were back home in front of the a/c again before too long. It's a good day to read Go Dog Go and build train tracks while sipping fruit smoothies. (Or beer.)

II.
Currently reading The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. (Susan is an editor for Books and Culture) It's always encouraging to find a book at the library, thumb to the bibliography, and see a list of books and articles that match exactly your opinion of the best sources of a subject. This book is a guide to homeschooling using a classical education curriculum. The book so far has passed the litmus tests of technology (no) and the purpose of Latin instruction (the grammar, not spoken fluency) with flying colors and is laying out a useful structure for the trivium. I think we'll probably end up buying our own copy of this book. (Not to mention lots of the resources listed inside...yikes, that could be expensive.)

Also working on Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. I'm trying to stitch together some coherent narrative in the history of finance while keeping a dictionary of terms laid open on the end table. Currently reading about the Rothschild family. (I've only ever known the name as the butt of obscure jokes.)

III.
The Christ-hymn in Philippians 2 is on the lectionary for the end of the month, and I can't find any good choral anthems on the text. (Recommendations, anyone?) I think what I'm going to do is steal the 1st verse of the hymn May the Mind of Christ My Savior and then paraphrase the rest of the text into four verses. Here's what I have so far

1. May the mind of Christ my Savior
Live in me from day to day
By his love and power controlling
All I do and say

2. He in form divine considered
Pow'r not seizing, but obeyed,
And a servant, self he emptied
And was humble made

3. God him now has high exalted
Name above all names is giv'n
Every knee will bow before him
in God's world and heav'n

4. All the Lord will then confess him
To the father glory give
May we share Christ's mind together
As we serve and live

UPDATE
Apparently reading a pessimistic account of international finance which assumes your already too small personal worth is probably in serious danger while simultaneously reading about an imminent thirteen year-long project for which you've made no preparations which will likely take up massive amounts of your time and money causes you to walk around all day grinding your teeth and looking gloomy. Apologies to all parties involved. Probably some of it is the heat.

On Running Late

I'm a hypocrite.

When it's time for me to leave for a gig, I'm always ready to walk out the door at least 15 minutes before I actually need to walk out the door, and that's including a 10 minute traffic buffer...so that I can arrive 20 minutes early. Being late is a mortal sin in the orchestra world. You can get away with a lot in the back few rows of the orchestra, but you must be on time. Everyone has a horror story about the one time they were late for a rehearsal. One friend was riding a train that broke down. Another wrote down the wrong start time and thought that the rehearsal started a half-hour later than it actually did. I was late once because I drove to the wrong rehearsal space. I've never actually known anyone who was late to a concert, but sometimes you hear the faint echo of a ghostly scream coming from the subterranean corridors below the concert hall, and I think that the wraiths of old conductors must be torturing a violist who was late for a pops concert. (Although, admittedly, it would be difficult to distinguish the sound of a violist being tormented from the sound a violist practicing.)

Otto Karl Shdenkenheim was music director from 1962-1968. Now a wandering spirit, he is best remembered for the extraordinary slumber he produced by programming every Haydn symphony during his tenure with the orchestra.

So this is why I always make sure that NO MATTER WHAT I will be on time to my rehearsals and concerts. And I'm a horrible hypocrite, because when J needs to get to a rehearsal, I show all the foresight and haste of a elderly yak. Sunday morning was just such an occasion. I'd had a concert the previous night and made a deliberate effort to procure the two grocery items I'd need for the following morning--coffee and shaving cream.

I was out of both, so between my rehearsal and show I wandered up and down Elmwood St. in Buffalo. I found shaving cream in a discount grocery store, but they didn't carry anything except plebian coffee. (I passed the plastic tubs of pre-ground Folgers and made a face for the benefit of the empty aisle that conveyed both superiority and disgust, as if even the smell of cheap coffee was turning my highly sophisticated stomach.) I did find shaving cream, and thereby gave occasion to awkwardly explain to a clerk in each of the next two stores that I visited (neither of which had coffee) that although I had just purchased my shaving cream elsewhere, I hadn't the faintest idea where my receipt was or if I'd even been offered one, but I would be leaving their store without buying anything because they didn't carry any coffee products that met my lofty standards.

And this was why I woke up at 7:30 on Sunday morning and didn't have any coffee. We agreed to stop at a Tim Horton's on the way to church (and a Wegmans on the way back, thank goodness there was still some remnant of civilization left in the world) in order to caffeinate, which J reminded me again was an expensive habit.

I limped my way downstairs to the kitchen table, and opened my Greek New Testament. The whole world seemed to be in black and white. I put my head in my hands, and started to pick up the translation I was making from St. Mark. J sat next to me and worked on her cereal, occasionally making pleasant remarks to which I grunted acknowledgement. Sometimes in movies with loud explosions (these are the types of movies which make up the majority of my high-brow fancy-coffee-drinking film diet) an explosion will occur particularly close to the main character, and the director will convey his disorientation by cutting out all sound except a high pitched ringing, and scanning the camera around unsteadily. This is what its like to be without coffee, except you also have a headache. Yes, it is actually worse than surviving a nearby explosion.

We needed to be on the road by 8:00, and J was ready to go by 7:50. I was nowhere near ready to go, and I was also profoundly unhelpful with the hardest part of going anywhere as a family--getting James ready. I didn't particularly want to go to church anyway. Her church is far away, and it is a contemporary music church. I don't hate contemporary music, but I also don't make any effort to listen to it unless there are special circumstances. It's sort of like listening to Spohr. If Spohr comes on the radio, I change to a different channel unless the performer is truly exceptional. When Spohr is on a concert program, I avoid the concert unless a close personal friend is part of the performance.

Spohr's name even sounds uninteresting. It's a cross between "boring" and "snore." Sopor is Latin for deep sleep, so it's no surprise that Spohr is soporific. If Louis Spohr were a campfire treat, he'd be a lukewarm tofu between two unsalted wafer crackers. We'd call them S'pohrs.

This guys music is Spohrrible.

So that's why we were running late on Sunday. I was uncaffeinated, unhelpful with James, and dragging my feet to go listen to Spohr with drumset.

"I think it's going to be a good day." said Julie

I looked over at her, and she was neatly done up in a short black skirt, a snazzy brand new top, with cute black shoes and sunglasses atop her head.

And it was a good day.