Wednesday, we three took off on our week-long Cello-moon adventure. The point of the adventure is that three or four years ago, Jared ordered a new cello from a cello maker, henceforth "CD", and this was when the cello was completed and ready for pick up. At the time of order, we lived in Huntsville, and CD lived in Idaho. CD now lives in Colorado, and obviously we are no longer in Alabama. There was a lot of bank savings that went into making this cello a possibility, and we know it is the cello of a lifetime.
So Wednesday we drove ten hours to Boise. We went up over Snoqualmie Pass and there was something on the order of ten feet of snow up there. It was SO beautiful that I immediately wanted to move to a cabin up there and spend a lot of time skiing. I had to keep reminding myself that we have to earn a living. This picture does not do it justice:
In general, road trips in the West are amazing, because there is such stunning variety of landscapes, and all of them are dramatic. Here's another shot from eastern Washington:
Anne was a champ in the car, sleeping about six of the ten hours in three separate naps. Here are two pictures of her on a rest stop:
Discovering Daddy's shaver
Getting her first shave with Daddy
We finally made it to my friend Jen's house in Boise after 10:00 pm.
Thursday was The Big Cello Day. A performing artist, henceforth "ZB", was in town. In the morning he gave a master class, which Jared attended. Then after a lunch break, CD was there with several of his instruments to give a talk about making cellos. Jared's new cello was one of the items on display, so it was the first time he got to see it and hear it. This constellation of people had to do with the fact that ZB was thinking of asking CD to make him an instrument (he already plays on a Gofriller!), and he wanted to see CD's newest cello (that would be Jared's) to figure out if he wanted to go ahead with the plan. Anyway, ZB was quite impressed with the cello and told Jared what an amazing instrument he was getting, which is lovely since Jared probably needed some confirmation having just dropped his life savings on the thing. After all that, Jared spent a couple of hours playing on the cello to break it in, and then went to hear the Boise Phil dress rehearsal in which ZB was playing the concerto.
Anne and I did not participate in The Big Cello Day. Instead, we went on a walk with Jen and her friend in the morning and then hung around with Jen until she had to go teach. Anne's favorite part of the morning was when we went in the back yard and Jen tossed a frisbee off the porch to her dog Cameron, and Cameron would leap into the air and catch it. This caused cascades of giggles. Anne also demonstrated her favorite humor by fake coughing every time I coughed (I ended up with a cold.) After Jen left for work, Anne and I loaded into Jen's 15-passenger van, used for transporting kids to Idaho Viola Camp, and drove out to see a family I taught last year who had moved to Boise. I've never driven a van like this before, and I developed sudden respect for the driving skills of mothers of large families. I made a mental note that I don't want to have so many children that I am forced to drive one of these things on a regular basis. It was lovely to see my student and her mom and brother and dog (Anne loves dogs, did I mention?). Sarah played three pieces for me that she had just played at her lesson earlier that day, and it was great to hear how her playing has grown since I last taught her in July. Also lovely to chat with her mom. After that we went back to Jen's, and Anne took a nap. We hung out and I tried to not feel to miserable from the stupid cold until Jen and Jared returned home around 10:15 and then it was Late Dinner Time for Ballance's.
Friday we drove eight and a half hours to Jared's parents' home in Oregon. Here's a little view I shot with the zoom out their kitchen window one morning:
Anyway, this time in the greater Portland area was still part of the Cello-moon. Jared spent as much time as possible playing on the new instrument to help break it in. Monday afternoon we met up with CD a his friend's home in Portland. (On the way to this meeting, the freeway was shut down on the other side from us for the funeral parade of a young service member killed in Afghanistan.) The friend, henceforth "KF" owns two of CD's cellos, and another woman we've met in Seattle who owns a CD cello, was also there. This was an adjusting session.
Showing off three CD cellos (all of his larger Gofriller-inspired model)
Reading a little chamber music and blasting the place out with their huge sound
Cello nerds chatting!
CD, Jared, Cello #106
Other than that, we just hung around Grandma and Grampa's neighborhood and took way too many pictures of the cute baby.
She can make the chair rock on her own by doing her trick called "kerbunka".
Visiting alpacas
Touching a horse's nose - this kid LOVES animals!
Calling people from Daddy's cell phone while Grandma holds her
Helping Grampa load the dishwasher
Checking out some home-canned goods
When we got home yesterday, she squealed in delight to see the cats and got busy finding all her favorite things around the apartment - the drawer of outgrown diapers she likes to unload, the CD's she likes to pull off the shelf, the electronic Valentine's Day card Grandmother and Grandaddy sent her...
For entertainment (other than the scenery and Anne's obnoxious Learning Lantern) on the drive, we listened to a set of lectures Jared got from the library on the making of the New Testament canon. It was interesting, and I learned a lot, but I was also annoyed at how the lecturer felt the need to paint everything in black and white. As in, you either believe that God dictated the book of Matthew word for word to the apostle Matthew OR you realize that most of Jesus' followers were illiterate peasants and therefore could not possibly have written the books attributed to them and so they must have been collected later from oral tradition. I wasn't there at the writing, so I don't know who wrote the Gospel of Matthew or what year it was written, but I did have a couple of shades-of-gray thoughts: 1) Matthew was a tax collector, and he may actually have been literate. So maybe he did write the Gospel which bears his name. 2) Maybe Matthew wasn't literate but there was someone he knew in one of the churches who was and he went to this person and asked him to help him write a Gospel and translate it into Greek, because maybe he only spoke Aramaic... Anyway, I thought the speaker was way too excited about contrasting uneducated Christian fundamentalism with educated agnostic skepticism and not acknowledging that there might be other possibilities in between. So there you have it.
No comments:
Post a Comment