Show Me The Music

This year we are going to be traveling for most of the summer so I thought that I might not get to do as much singing out at Tanglewood as I had hoped. Was I ever wrong! I was assigned to 4 concerts, two of which I had to opt out because we will be in Spain visiting Juan Carlos’ family. However, there will be no shortage of music memorizing this summer! I have until August 20th to memorize the following:

Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (Thank heavens I did this last year so it will be just brush up work!)

Poulenc: Gloria

Bach: Jesu, Meine Freude

Holst: The Planets

When I first got the music I was not feeling too happy because I opened up and saw Jesu, Meine Freude, and the German made me have a few moments of panic…not again!!!!!

 

Well, I learned my lesson with the Mendelssohn earlier this year—I need to start memorizing and start memorizing NOW.

Next, the Poulenc Gloria. Now isn’t this beautiful?

Ah, Latin. Lovely, simply pronounced, intelligible Latin. How do I love thee? So very much! It’s about 60 pages long, but what is 60 pages of Latin after 200 pages of German?

And THEN………….

Holst: The Planets

   

Your eyes do not deceive you! There are NO WORDS!!! Now this  is my kind of piece! Plus we only sing about five minute’s worth of music, so I am feeling considerably better.

But still, I have 28 pages of German to memorize. And 28 pages of German is 28 pages of German!!!

Here we go again…

Things I Don't Blog About

This blog is primarily a journal keeping tactic for me. I have always been awful about keeping journals. I just can't think of anything interesting to write about. That must mean that my life is very boring! Anyway, it all started with the first journal that my mom bought me, where I wrote some of the most inane things ever to cross a human's mind. When you get older you think you remember what it was like to be a kid and how you felt about things. Well based on my journal that is a total delusion. It is enough sometimes to make me wonder if that was really me. I kept a journal very sporadically throughout my youth, (i.e., hardly at all) so there is not much for me to look back over and remember about myself. And I have come to the following conclusion:
I am glad I didn't write much down.

I read it all now and my primary thoughts are either about what a brat I was or how embarrassed I am because obviously I have always been a total moron. This always makes me feel like I must still be a total moron, because it is still me, right? Some examples:

• I wrote detailed explanations of daily events when I was little, including all of my siblings bodily functions.
• I wrote about the bugs that I found in the garden and in the window wells. There is even a picture of one insect that I attempted to draw, although I am not sure anyone living could identify it as such.
• I wrote quite a lot about boys. I accept that this is normal, but what a waste of a lot of time, paper and ink. Now there were some very nice boys, don't get me wrong. But there were a lot who simply weren't.
• I wrote about how much my mom hated me, and how much I hated my older sister. (whom I do not hate one bit, actually)
• I wrote a lot about singing--singing with friends, with school groups, with church groups, problems with singing...hm, could I have been a bigger nerd?

There was only one time where I kept a journal reliably, and that was while I was a missionary for my church in France. I was 21 and pretty clueless about things, I have to say. I met a lot of very different people and I wrote about my reactions to them and about living in a place so extremely different from the one I where I grew up. I also had some angry journal entries. I don't get angry very often, but I got pretty angry in those journal pages and it makes me sad to think about it now. I got angry over stupid things.

None of this inspires me to be a better journal keeper; in fact, I never want ANYONE reading what I wrote in those journals. But since blogging has been as close as I have come, I am trying to keep it up. But some things are off limits.

• Bodily functions-nobody needs to know, and I don't want to remember. I departed from this one a couple of months ago with my sister's foot injury. What can I say, the morbid fascination was too much for me. Sorry.
• Complicated family relationships. They are private and no one needs to know about it but me and them.
• Our childless state. Trust me, it gets talked about all the time, I certainly don't want to write about it.
• Anger. Anger just does not work for me, and it's never worth the embarrassment you feel when you go back and read what you wrote when you were angry. (Although anger does get teenagers to move their backpacks out of the walkway very quickly.)
• My body shape and size. I am what I am. Nobody needs to hear about it; not even I want to hear about it most of the time.
• Work frustrations. Everyone has work frustrations. But they are almost always temporary and it's better to remember that you yourself may be someone's work frustration, so don't write about it for anyone else to read about. Would you want to be written about that way? Besides, it's hard for me to be happy if I am knowingly causing discomfort to someone else. (The exception being giving homework and tests. Discomfort? Yes. Cruelty? No.)

Some people have argued with me that it's good to see where you came from so that you can measure your growth. Maybe one day I will be able to look at it like that. That's probably a much healthier angle. So maybe. But not yet!

School Colors

Every year I make a graduation card for my seniors. Since I teach AP Spanish I almost always have at least one class of seniors, so for the last four years I have kept up the tradition. I don’t have  a lot of graduation paraphernalia, so they almost always look something like this:

Our school colors are purple and gold, and while it’s very festive, it has never been a favorite combination of mine. In the past I have used a paler yellow and hoped everyone would just imagine that it was gold. However, this year I ran out of the pale yellow and the only thing I had was, incidentally, the actual gold that is one of our school colors. So that’s how it went down, although I have to say I am not a fan of how they turned out this year.

School colors are fascinating to me. In junior high and high school my school colors were maroon and gold. Very unattractive--and if you ever saw us in PE class with our gold shirts and maroon shorts you would understand why. I hope you never did. Maroon and gold tend to be very popular with schools. Why, I ask you?

Some schools manage to get school colors right. BYU had the classic combination of blue and white. Now blue and white is nice. It is classic. Blue and white does not cause retinal damage when you look at it. The first school I taught at also had school colors of blue and white. And I might add that any shade of blue goes well with white and looks very nice.

The two Catholic schools where I taught both had school colors of green and gold. I also got my master’s degree from a school whose colors were green and gold. Okay, not fabulous, but at least a combination that you do see in nature, and again, very traditional colors. And green and gold makes a very nice graduation card!

So, I conclude:

1. It it is fun to dress up and even paint your face in purple and gold, and since I am on the purple team, cheer for the purple team in all school events.
2. I like blue and white.
3. For crafty items (and for my optical health) I believe I will be going back to pale yellow. Sorry, gold!

Fun Stuff

I am really bemoaning a good lens these days, since there are so many fun things to take pictures of. And the things always seem to be so far away!!! Why must this be?!?!

On our walk today we noticed that the swans are starting to congregate on Central Pond again:

We have actually seen some swan-on-goose fights over nesting areas. Usually there are tons more geese than swans, but not in the springtime. And swans are mean. I kid you not.

We also saw a turtle party on our walk today. I am sorry the picture is not that great but we thought it was too funny to pass up!

Hope spring is bringing fun stuff to your neck of the woods!

Can You Do This?

Sorry they are a bit blurry, I was quite far away. I was still amazed, though.

I know I sure can’t! In fact, I don’t believe I ever could in my whole life, having always had disproportionately long legs. I was always jealous of flexible people. And guess what?  I still am. But at least I get to take him home with me.

Dogtown

We like dogs in our house. Well, condo, really. And we like big dogs. Really big dogs. Big dogs come with big requirements, though, and we have learned that the hard way. It was pretty overwhelming for us when we got Luna,  and realized that we can’t just go gallivanting off whenever we feel like it. Fortunately we have wonderful friends who also have a big dog and who really like Luna, and they take care of her for us when we have to go away. Luna is big, but these guys make her look petite.

It can be a source of stress, trying to figure out what you are going to do with your dog. All this notwithstanding, we would really love to have another dog. Not realistic while living in a condo, but we can dream, right? Sometimes we do look at each other and remind ourselves what the first year with Luna was like and then we are happy to wait a little bit more. However, opportunities do come along for additional reflection.

Enter Scout:

Scout belongs to a friend of mine from the chorus who had planned a trip to China and at the last minute the person who was going to keep Scout backed out. So she put out an APB for someone who could keep her for them. It wasn’t very nice of me, but I said we would keep her and then promptly left on a four-day school trip and left my husband alone to deal with two dogs. It’s a good thing he is amazing. Scout is a nice little thing (little=40 lbs.—it’s all relative) and we have enjoyed getting to know her.  She has enjoyed going for walks:

 

Riding in the car: (we think it’s hilarious that she can actually fit on one seat)

 

And snuggling with the girls in bed. (Scout is not as picky as I am about where she rests her head!)

Some things we have noticed about having two dogs around:

1. Twice the dogs means twice the poop, hair, barking, and attention seeking behaviors.

2. An extra dog in the house throws a wrench into the dynamic. Everyone needs to be in their place and I always have to be top dog! This is hard.

3. We are having a great time. Two tails wagging is better than one---it’s a lot of happiness.

So hopefully one day we will be a two-dog family. But in the meantime, we’ll take visitors!

Dank Sei Dir Gott

A few months ago I posted that I would be memorizing 204 pages of German fabulousness in three months. I have to say, this has got to be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. 3rd quarter is generally the time that I am the most out of my mind during the school year, and whenever I did have free time, do you think I wanted to spend it memorizing German? Definitely not. Fortunately in February we had a run through rehearsal so that we could hear what the thing sounded like in person and not on a CD. Helpful, but still, one run through? Puuuuhhhhllleeeaaase.
So the middle of March rolled around and I only had about 1/2 the thing memorized. Amidst major panic I started asking around and sure enough the rest of the chorus was feeling overwhelmed, as well. As one person said, “no problem! I will have it memorized for sure by April 6th!” April 6th, of course, was the day AFTER our last performance. I always feel like this, that if I just had one more concert it would for sure be perfect. On the day of the first performance we were not at all solid, and John Oliver (our director) mentioned that we might just use our scores, and we all cheered. We had absolutely forgotten it was April 1st. In the next breath John said “April Fools!”
John’s jokes usually go over well, but I think our silence expressed how unfunny we thought it was.
Anyway, once you don’t have your score and your cheat sheet (this is only one side)…


…it’s surprising how much you do have memorized. That is not to say that the first night was that great. Well, it was, but there were definite scary moments and one awful moment where I came in on a major entrance with the tenors. I did it again the second night! The third night and at Carnegie Hall I finally got my act together.
Since I was in New York less than twenty four hours, I don’t have many impressions of it, other than that there are lots of tall buildings and an excess of taxis. What did strike me as crazy was going through the flooded out portion of Rhode Island on the train. Sometimes the water was actually on the tracks and we had to slow way down. These are not the best pictures, but I was, after all, on a moving train.


The concert at Carnegie was great, what a gorgeous place! While there were a few scary moments due to the really loud organ right behind us that we weren’t expecting, it was a very cool experience. Some people were starting to get sick but there was no way they were skipping the concert after all that memorizing. But after four days in a row we are all pretty vocally exhausted, so perhaps it’s just as well that it was our last performance.  I mentioned that we couldn’t possibly do anything more difficult than this in the chorus, and some of the other ladies just patted me on the back and told me to go on thinking that.
Our New York Times Review (can you find me in the photo?) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/arts/music/07elijah.html

Joe Kohen for The New York Times

It was a marvelous experience, but I am not sorry the memorization is at an end. Now I can actually concentrate on something else, like my day job!!!!
Pages Memorized: 204
Pages to go: 0
Dank, sei dir Gott!

OK, You Got Me

I love singing choral music. I loved it in my elementary school chorus, I loved it in junior high, I loved it in high school, I loved it in college, while I was doing graduate work, etc. It’s just so wonderful to make great music with other people. There is really and truly a physical high that you get when it goes really well. My feeling was who needs drugs when you have choral music? I have been pretty lucky in my choral experience, starting way back in junior high with Mr. Blackburn, who was a stickler for discipline but an absolute genius for teaching not only music but musicality and technique. In high school I worked with a director who taught me what great choral music sounds like and it was in his classes that my addiction for the “good stuff’ in choral works began. Sometimes this nerdy passion of mine did get a little over the top, like scheduling all my classes in college so that they wouldn’t interfere with choir, even though normal classes only  met three times a week and I had to go to choir every single day.

I am not a great singer and I never will be. But I am good enough for choirs and I am grateful for that because I never get tired of choral singing and it always makes me happy (even if temporarily I have breakdowns because of memorization pitfalls). This past year has been a great year musically. I joined the Tanglewood Festival Chorus last summer and have done a few concerts with them and with the Boston Symphony. From the first time I sang with them (Beethoven’s 9th) out at Tanglewood, I could barely contain my joy. The music is just so incredible, and every time I hear the Boston Symphony play I am astounded  by their skill and I do a yay dance inside (and sometimes outside, too, it’s just what it does to me).
Many people know I have not been extremely thrilled about living in the Northeast. My first few years here were pretty hard. If it hadn't been for my husband and a truly wonderful place to work it would have been a lot harder. A couple of weeks ago I was talking with some friends who just got a teaching job at BYU and so are moving back to Utah. I admit that for a couple of minutes I was a little bit jealous, not because of Utah per se, although I do love Utah, but because family is there and there is a lot of opportunity for great music-making.

Then the following thought popped into my head:
“Wait. If I leave this area it means no more singing with the Boston Symphony.”  And then I thought “There is NO WAY I am leaving this area!”

So it wasn’t the allure of the East Coast that has made this home. It certainly isn’t the best place to live economically speaking. The community where I live has taken some getting used to. I will say that Rhode Islanders are very nice once you get to know them. There are lots of reasons why I have felt that this was a temporary exile for a few years, which I won’t go into here.
But now it IS home, because my husband, my dog, my great job, and my music are here. Never underestimate the music.


boston.com
(of course I am on the back row so I am not in the photo, but two of the most amazing female vocalists I have EVER heard are and so is Rafael Frubeck de Burgos, whom I adore. Christine Brewer, soprano and Stephanie Blythe, mezzo)
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/04/02/mendelssohns_elijah_makes_rare_showing_at_symphony_hall/

How was YOUR Spring Break?

One fun part of mine was spending the day at CCRI with my school’s Academic Decathlon team. We were there last week for an all-day competition that involves a bunch of kids taking 7 different objective tests centered around the main topic of the French Revolution and also competing in Speech, Interview and Impromptu competitions. It does take a special kind of kid to think this is fun, but it really is. Next year we will be studying the Great Depression. An interesting topic, considering the times, wouldn’t you say?

Newport and An Operation

My sister Sue came for a visit this week, and yesterday we went to Newport and walked a big section of the Cliffwalk. The day was beautiful and sunny, which made us very happy because it has been raining non-stop for about a week. It was still windy enough for a jacket, though.

Now, aren’t these in-laws cute?

 

 

 

 

No seashell top and no fins, but Sue definitely wishes she could be part of this world (and has better hair than Ariel, too!)

  

Of course, what is a post without a sexy Spaniard pose?

 

Hm, less sexy, but definitely more romantic!!!

 

DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU HAVE JUST EATEN OR ARE ABOUT TO EAT. OR IF YOU DON’T LIKE GRUESOME SIGHTS.

Some of you know that Sue smashed her toe with the leaf of her table last week. It has been terribly painful for her and when she arrived she had to wear a special boot because it hurt to wear shoes. It was really bothering her, so Juan Carlos, with all his practical medical knowledge, told her she needed to stick herself and let all the blood that was built up under the nail get out and she would feel better. So she did that and some came out and it felt much better!!!!! Unfortunately, she REALLY smashed her toe and there was part of it that she couldn’t get to under the toenail. So JC said he knew how to take care of that. What you do is you heat up a needle or a pin and then burn through the nail and make a hole and then the blood can get out. I was writhing in horror just thinking about this, but apparently not letting it out is super painful so Sue was willing to give it a try. So here is the procedure!

Heating the pin:

Sue had to look away, but she said it really just felt like when you get pricked for a blood test, so not that bad. Luna was very interested in the whole thing. Once the hole was made all the stuff that shouldn’t have been in there came on out and her toe felt better. And she got to wear shoes on both feet today! Juan Carlos is definitely a handy guy to have around, but you can  bet I am going to be careful what I drop on my feet!

Sue went home today and I am sorry to see her go but I am sure her kids, husband and relatives can’t wait for her to get back!!!! Anyone else up for a trip to Rhode Island? I can’t guarantee an operation by Juan Carlos, but I promise it would still be fun.

GARI: Blackstone River Bikeway Day 3

Today it was 50 degrees outside. Definite cause for joy and jubilation. So of course we got out into it! Today we finished the northernmost section of the Blackstone River Bikeway up into Woonsocket, RI (about 9 miles round trip). For those of you to whom that means nothing, here is the general area:

It was a super gorgeous day, so we weren’t the only ones out enjoying the sunshine!

This part of the trail goes through Cumberland and Woonsocket, and there are a couple of dams along the river. This is the Manville Dam:

 

All that water is pretty impressive! You can see that spring has not gotten a firm foothold here yet, but it is on it’s way.  There is a little bit of green starting to show!

We got to this marker and we knew that the trail ended at 17 miles but there was a bit more pavement further along—we just kept on going until we reached the end of the road.

On our way back we stopped at a local park and had our lunch. It was nice to sit a while in the sunshine and eat JC’s killer chicken salad (although it must be said that anything JC makes is generally killer):

   

Replenished and refreshed, we made our way back down to Cumberland and headed home. It was a beautiful day and we can’t wait to finish up this bikeway! The only stretch we have left is from Lincoln down to the end, which, incidentally, is in downtown Pawtucket, where we live. So we don’t even have to drive anywhere for that one, we can just hike up and then right back to our house. How cool is that?

Till next time!!!

Rehearsal Partner

Now wouldn’t this be helpful to anyone slogging through a bunch of German?

She also lets me know when the caterwauling gets to be too much! Better get back to it.

Truly Pathetic

This morning I was in a panic because I knew I needed to be at work by 7:30am. I knew it was terribly important, but I could not for the life of me remember why. I knew I had to return the field trip bag from the day before so I did that when I first got in, but I was convinced there was something vital that I was forgetting. I thought maybe I had set up a review for a quiz I was giving that day, or maybe a meeting with a student or an advisee. So I got to school and went to the office to pick up some forms for  my AP class and the dean of students came out of the principal’s office and said “ Hey! Glad you could make it!, We’ve just gotten started!” I arrived just in time for  a major appointment with school administration. Was it on my calendar? Yes. For some reason, though, it didn’t show up on my Outlook when I checked it in the morning.  How could I not remember that? I had been thinking about it all week! What on earth is the matter with me?!?!!?

It continues…

For the last two days I have been searching for my work keys. I have a filing cabinet I can’t get into unless I have them.  I have gone through every pocket that I have. I have torn apart my desk. I have gone through every drawer and closet in the house. It looked like I was going to have to send out a memo to the whole school asking if anyone had seen my keys.

Well, after this crazy week we came home to take care of some much needed catch-up chores. We were working in the kitchen and JC was putting some dishes in the dishwasher and all of a sudden he said “Guess where your work keys are?”

Here is where they were (no judging, please!):

Now I am going to sleep for 12 hours and then see if I can put myself back together.

Use Your Imagination

It has not been a good couple of weeks for me physically. Normally February is crazy and this year is no exception. There is so much to get done that I sometimes get into task completion mode and don’t pay attention to what I am doing. That is a bad thing for my body. Here are the top 3 maimings of the last two weeks: (I do have pictures of all of this but will spare you—just imagine what it looks like)
#1. One of my students left a backpack in the doorway of my classroom. Of course I came through the door at top speed and said “¡Buenos días!” like I do every day, promptly tripped over the backpack and fell flat on my face after throwing my computer across the room. I now have green and purple knees and a cracked computer casing. But for once my Spanish 2 class was speechless! You probably would have been, too.
#2. One thing we dream about is having a house with enough closet space. We keep a lot of stuff in the closet, so it gets complicated when we have to dig under some things to get at other things. Our closets have textured plaster walls. I was after something last week and was in a hurry as usual, and as I pulled what I needed out from the bottom of the closet I lost my balance. I didn’t let go of the box I had grabbed (it took me too long to find it!)  but it did scrape along the textured wall and so did the knuckles of my right hand, hard enough to leave some of my hand behind on the wall. Owwwwwwwww.
#3. Pedro went back to Spain last Sunday, and I rushed home from church to get lunch ready so he and JC could eat before they headed out to the airport. I was cutting bread with vim and vigor, not paying enough attention, and managed to cut the middle finger of my left hand with the serrated bread knife. And of course there was not a Band-Aid to be found in the house, since we don’t even have time to go to the store, so we were trying to bandage it with tape and toilet paper. (We did eventually find a Band-Aid in the first aid kit in the car)
Honorable Mentions:
Playing with Luna and getting smacked in the face by her occipital bone. Tripping over Luna on the stairs and twisting my ankle. Burning myself on the steam from the casserole dish in the oven.

4 more days of February to get through. Hopefully I will live to post again.

Boys in Boston

Yesterday we went to Boston to see the sights and go to the New England Aquarium. We drove to Forest Hills and took the subway in, just because when we drive in trauma usually ensues. Besides, riding the subway is fun. Most of the time. Here you can see Pedro and Juan Carlos at the wharf in Boston Harbor, just outside the aquarium, and also by the Custom House clock tower.
 
We had to wait in a really long line to get into the aquarium and the place was packed. I guess we weren’t the only ones that thought the aquarium was a good idea! Here are some pics of the beautiful animal life at the aquarium. The first couple of pictures are of the Leafy Seadragon, which we were suprised to learn was not a piece of floating seaweed. Unbelieveably cool.


Of course they were obsessed with the piranhas—boys will be boys! (Although I did also find them quite fascinating myself) The seahorses are in the next picture, Can you find them? They camouflage very well!

These Rockhopper penguins were feeling a little warm so they were standing (or sleeping) in front of a fan. In February. Well, I guess if you are a penguin it makes sense.

Here we are outside the Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall. We went to see the Great Hall but it was closed for maintenance! Wouldn’t you know!

And of course Pedro couldn’t go home without the obligatory photo with Norm!

It was great to have Pedro visit and great for JC to spend some time with one of his oldest friends. It also got us through another week of February. Only one left! We are actually feeling much better because the sun is out until about 5:30 now and we can walk and run outside again. It makes a difference, but we are going to be glad to see March arrive.
Next time I will be posting about all the ways I have maimed myself in the past week. Yes, maimed. Just in case you think I am too negative about February.
Till next time!