I previously mentioned an article Jared and I read during Anne's marathon nap on Saturday. It was about the role of Israel in Old Testament prophecy. We read and discussed another piece, too, although it was way less academic. It's called "Charting My Course" by Rachel Starr Thomson, and you can read it here. I think I had read it a few years ago when she wrote it, but it came to my attention again, and this time it grabbed me. What I got from it was my responsibility as a Christians to plan and even dream for the future.
I am a live-in-the-moment kind of person most of the time, although when I have back-to-back trips with a toddler I can get ridiculously organized and think weeks and even months in advance. I also am a person who has a lot of "some day it would be nice to..."'s but not always someone who breaks that down into tangible action.
Ms. Thomson wrote some words which provoked my thinking. First of all, this sentence and a half caught my eye: ..."identify what matters most to you. Otherwise, you're liable to spend your whole life tied up in urgent trivialities." I tend to resist defining myself too strongly for a couple of reasons. One is that I like to keep my options open. The other is that I don't want to provoke conflict with others. And being something specific means that, by definition, I am not something else specific, and that will likely upset some people. And I don't like conflict. Approaching my mid-thirties has made me realize though, that I don't want to have spent my life tied up in urgent trivialities - or even let the good crowd out the wonderful. To quote one of my favorite violin philosophers, "Everyone has to make choices." I am realizing in a less academic and more real way that refusing to make a choice is a choice too. A crummy, default choice.
Along the same lines, Ms. Thomson wrote a few paragraphs later about defining your dreams based on your core values, and she said she divided her dreams into those for who she wants to be inwardly and those about "outward things like finances, housing, and activities." I was struck about that first category of dreams - who you want to be inwardly - because I usually have more outward, physical dreams when I do some dreaming: like what I would like my living space to look like or a certain career goals.
She followed this with a paragraph that spoke to me well:
"For a long time I resisted defining my dreams. I said I just wanted God to direct me, day-by-day, and I felt it was insulting His sovereignty to lay out ideas of my own. Two things have changed my perspective. One is the realization that dreams can and will change with maturity and as the callings of God become clearer in my life. The other is an understanding that God, who gave me the gift of choice, wants me to use it."
Often I don't make choices about things, because I am lazy, and I want someone else to make the choice for me. Sometimes that means I want Someone Else to make the choice so I don't have the do the hard work of deciding.
Anyway, sometime between Saturday and now, I opened a notebook and wrote a heading at the top of four pages:
1) Dreams, Goals, Plans: Violin
2) Dreams, Goals, Plans: Career
3) Dreams, Goals, Plans: Family
4) Dreams, Goals, Plans: Personal and Spiritual
When I started thinking and writing things down, it turned out I already had a pretty clear set of dreams for the violin page. And for the career page. And some of the things on the family page didn't require much thought. And a few things on the personal and spiritual page just flowed out of the pen. I apparently already have done a lot of thinking about it; I just hadn't taken the step of defining it on paper.
There were a few items which needed more thought. On the family page, I have been a little slower trying to write out what I want to be a part of Anne's childhood. Now I've come up with several goals I have as a mom. For example, I want to provide Anne with a lot of time in outdoors and in nature. I want to teach her how to do all of the household chores and enable her to contribute to the running of the household in that way. I want to read a Bible story to her every day. I want to teach her how to pray. I want to help her find at least one interest to which she would like to devote a lot of time and detail. I want to help her find ways she would enjoy serving others. I want to give her chances to be creative and to explore.
On the personal and spiritual page I wrote "I want to be a person who:" and then tried finishing the sentence. That's been the hardest part so far. I've finally come up with a few things: "consistently speaks well of others - no slander or gossip," "doesn't use the 'I told you so' line literally or figuratively, but lets bygones be just that," "encourages others," "isn't afraid to own my opinions, desires, and thoughts." That's a pretty hefty list already, and I have a feeling I'll find even more sentence-finishing dreams in the recesses. Then I'll have to make some sort of plan to become more of that person.
Still have a lot of thinking, praying, and planning to do.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
Conditional Promises
As we were leaving the park to stroll home yesterday, I promised Anne I would give her some ripe black berries when we passed them. As it turns out when we reached the vines in question, she was fast asleep in the stroller. As sleeping children don't generally eat black berries, I had some options.... Wake her up. (We all know how that would turn out.)... Wait by the vines until she woke up. (I know you wouldn't either.)... Pick some black berries for Jared and me instead. (That's what happened.)... Pick some black berries and transport them home for after her nap. (I didn't have a travel-safe way to carry them.)... Give her some blueberries from the fridge at home later. (Not a bad option.)... The point of the story is, although I had every intention of holding my promise to Anne, the fact that she was asleep when we passed the berry vines meant that I had to change my plan, and although I had several options, none of them were the exact thing I had promised her. And it wasn't because I had lied to her.
As you are probably aware by now, I've been studying my way through Zechariah. And I've been wondering what to make of some of the promises God made to Israel in both that book and in other Old Testament books which clearly weren't fulfilled in the past, but also don't quite square with the future symbolically and literally portrayed in the New Testament. I have been aware of the concept of conditional promises for some time, and I think that goes a long way toward explaining things like Zechariah 14:4-5.
The reason I mention this passage is that sometimes people apply these two verses to the Second Coming of Christ, an event I believe will come to pass, because Jesus believed in it and promised it. However, if you read this passage in its context, it surely doesn't sound much like some of the most clear and prominent passages in the New Testament which describe that Coming. I wonder if we're making a mistake by assuming this text is a literal description of something still future in our day. Perhaps it was a description of what was to be if God's people Israel had heeded God's warning and instruction given by the prophet Zechariah, but cannot now be, because the people were asleep like Anne was when we passed the berry bushes.
Saturday afternoon Anne took a three-hour nap. This enable Jared and me to read and discuss some things together like actual adults. One of the things we read was a long and interesting article from the multi-volume Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary called The Role of Israel in Old Testament Prophecy. I tried to see if there was a copy of it online anywhere, but my search was fruitless. However, if any of you are Bible nerds and would be interested in reading it, I'd be happy to photocopy it and send it to you.
The article lists five different schools of interpretation with regard to the role of Israel in Old Testament prophecy, and then goes on to explain the fifth in great detail, as the fifth is the Adventist view. I'll quote the introductory bit about those five schools:
I also want to share with you some simple rules laid out at the end of the article which can help us to safely interpret prophecy in the Old Testament.
There's a lot more gold in the article, so if your appetite has been whetted, I'll get a copy in the mail posthaste.
Returning to the story about Anne and the blackberries, it's not a perfect analogy. For example, God's foreknowledge is way better than mine. And what about the sovereignity of God? Well, every analogy eventually breaks down. One of our pastors has recently been preaching a series on the views of Classical Calvinism and Arminianism. Adventists fall squarely in the Arminian camp, having quite a bit of Methodist heritage. In fact, Adventists fall so squarely in the Arminian camp that many, many of them are completely unaware of Calvinism, which is why this series is a worthwhile topic. I'm not planning to exposit on Classical Calvinism, or the modified Calvinism I grew up with, or the Arminianism I see at church now. But I would like to close with a bit of a quote from yesterday's sermon on Double Predestination, which speaks to the beauty of God's character:
As you are probably aware by now, I've been studying my way through Zechariah. And I've been wondering what to make of some of the promises God made to Israel in both that book and in other Old Testament books which clearly weren't fulfilled in the past, but also don't quite square with the future symbolically and literally portrayed in the New Testament. I have been aware of the concept of conditional promises for some time, and I think that goes a long way toward explaining things like Zechariah 14:4-5.
On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a wide valley running from east to west. Half the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south. You will flee through this valley, for it will reach across to Azal. Yes, you will flee as you did from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the LORD my God will come, and all his holy ones with him.
The reason I mention this passage is that sometimes people apply these two verses to the Second Coming of Christ, an event I believe will come to pass, because Jesus believed in it and promised it. However, if you read this passage in its context, it surely doesn't sound much like some of the most clear and prominent passages in the New Testament which describe that Coming. I wonder if we're making a mistake by assuming this text is a literal description of something still future in our day. Perhaps it was a description of what was to be if God's people Israel had heeded God's warning and instruction given by the prophet Zechariah, but cannot now be, because the people were asleep like Anne was when we passed the berry bushes.
Saturday afternoon Anne took a three-hour nap. This enable Jared and me to read and discuss some things together like actual adults. One of the things we read was a long and interesting article from the multi-volume Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary called The Role of Israel in Old Testament Prophecy. I tried to see if there was a copy of it online anywhere, but my search was fruitless. However, if any of you are Bible nerds and would be interested in reading it, I'd be happy to photocopy it and send it to you.
The article lists five different schools of interpretation with regard to the role of Israel in Old Testament prophecy, and then goes on to explain the fifth in great detail, as the fifth is the Adventist view. I'll quote the introductory bit about those five schools:
1. The modernist school of interpretation denies the predictive element in prophecy altogether, arguing either that the "predictions" were written down after the events thus "foretold" took place or that such "predictions" reflected nothing more than the prophet's hopes for the future, or those of his people.
2. The futurist school of interpretation contends that the many promises of restoration and world leadership made to ancient Israel are yet to be fulfilled in connection with the re-establishment of the literal Jews in Palestine.
3. The British-Israel movement teaches that the Anglo-Saxon peoples are the literal descendants of the ten so-called "lost tribes" of the northern kingdom and that the promises will, in large measure, be fulfilled to their modern posterity.
4. A less-well-defined school of interpretation bases its approach to the prophetic portions of the Old Testament on the theory that the prophet, while bearing messages to the people of his day, also took occasional excursions into the distant future, with the result that many of his forecasts did not apply to literal Israel at all, but were intended exclusively for "Israel after the spirit," that is, for the church today. Following this line of interpretation, some have gone to the extreme of promoting a Christian migration to Palestine.
5. Seventh-day Adventists believe that, generally speaking, the promises and predictions given through the Old Testament prophets originally applied to literal Israel and were to have been fulfilled to them on the condition that they obey God and remain loyal to Him. But the Scriptures record the fact that they disobeyed God and proved disloyal to Him instead. Accordingly, what He purposed to do for the world through Israel of old He will finally accomplish through His church on earth today, and many of the promises originally made to Israel will be fulfilled to His remnant people at the close of time.
I also want to share with you some simple rules laid out at the end of the article which can help us to safely interpret prophecy in the Old Testament.
1. Examine the prophecy in its entirety. Note by whom it was spoken, to whom it was addressed, and the circumstances that called it forth. Remember that - generally speaking - it was originally given with respect to the historical circumstances that called it forth. It was ordained of God to meet the needs of the people at the time it was given and to remind them of the glorious destiny that awaited them as a nation, of the coming of the Messiah, and of the establishment to His eternal kingdom. Discover what the message meant to the people of that time. [...]
2. Observe the conditional aspect of the prediction and ascertain whether or not, or to what extent, the conditions were met.
3. Discover what application later inspired writers make of the prophecy, and on this basis determine its possible significance for God's people in this time.
4. Remember that the record of God's dealings with His people in ages past has been recorded for the benefit of all later generations to the end of time. Our study of messages originally proclaimed by holy men of old to the people of their day is not to become an end in itself, but a means of discovering the will of God for all who would render Him truehearted service now[...]
There's a lot more gold in the article, so if your appetite has been whetted, I'll get a copy in the mail posthaste.
Returning to the story about Anne and the blackberries, it's not a perfect analogy. For example, God's foreknowledge is way better than mine. And what about the sovereignity of God? Well, every analogy eventually breaks down. One of our pastors has recently been preaching a series on the views of Classical Calvinism and Arminianism. Adventists fall squarely in the Arminian camp, having quite a bit of Methodist heritage. In fact, Adventists fall so squarely in the Arminian camp that many, many of them are completely unaware of Calvinism, which is why this series is a worthwhile topic. I'm not planning to exposit on Classical Calvinism, or the modified Calvinism I grew up with, or the Arminianism I see at church now. But I would like to close with a bit of a quote from yesterday's sermon on Double Predestination, which speaks to the beauty of God's character:
Even though God foreknows our choices, it doesn't affect his love for us or how he relates to us. In the end it will be seen that he did everything possible for each of us, even if he knew that no matter what, we would reject him. That is an amazing God!
Monday, July 21, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
This, That, and Another Thing
I can now play the first thirteen measures of the Bartok Solo Sonata at half tempo from memory with the right notes IF I use audible guide fingers in the crazy shifts. That is progress and has been accomplished on 10-30 minutes a day since I last posted about it (on top of the 30-40 hours I've put in on it in the past). Thursday I didn't practice Bartok but practiced the first movement of the Bach A Minor Concerto instead, since I ended getting a call about doing a unexpected audition-prep lesson on it for later that day. I think my next step is to learn the next section at half tempo, and let the first section cook some more under tempo, rather than trying to speed it up.
This coming week is Workshops in Tacoma Week. Jared is teaching a Dalcroze class at a Suzuki piano workshop tomorrow morning. And he and I are teaching at a three-day Suzuki violin/cello workshop Wednesday through Friday. We had planned to drive down with Jared to Tacoma tomorrow morning and then continue on down to Oregon, because Jared's Aunt Glenda would be coming in Monday afternoon. Then we were going to stay overnight and catch Jared's sister Sara and her boyfriend Scott, who would be flying in Tuesday afternoon, before we needed to head back to go to bed before getting up early Wednesday to teach at the workshop.
Workshop plans are intact for the coming week, but there were some other changes.
We received an email on Wednesday evening or Thursday from Jared's mom saying that Jared's Grampa was dying. So we decided to head down to Oregon on Friday after we taught and stay through Tuesday with Jared popping up to Tacoma on Monday morning solo. We didn't visit Grampa as he was not really up to visits, and we knew that ahead of time. However, we knew that the family really appreciated having Jared and Anne around when Grandma passed away three weeks ago. Grampa died yesterday morning, and Jared's sister flew in yesterday afternoon. Aunt Julie invited everyone over for a little gathering on Saturday evening at her lovely home on Sauvie Island in the Columbia River. It was nice for three of Grandma's and Grampa's four kids to be together on another sad day, along with three of the eight grandchildren and the only great-grandchild.
Here's a picture of Jared and his brother Matthew with Grampa sometime in the early '80's:
Tomorrow is Jared's and my eighth wedding anniversary. It's a little crazy this week, but we wanted to have an actual date. We may leave Anne with the family for a while later today and head over to a state park nearby with a ferry and some interesting historical things. The heat wave has cooled off today and the highs are only in the 70s, so outdoors should be pleasant during the day.
In my outdoor meanderings with Miss Anne every morning, I've made it through seven chapters of A Tale of Two Cities, which I'm still enjoying immensely. One thing I appreciate is how Dickens brings such diverse characters to life without stereotyping them. And his wry humor tickles me quite a lot. My favorite quote so far is:
I've gotten back to my Zechariah study project, which I think I'm tackling much the same way I'm tackling the Bartok. I've been writing out one little section at a time and trying to notice what the point of it is. I'm occasionally using a concordance to see if it references any earlier Biblical material and sometimes looking at New Testament references to the Zechariah material. I've made it through eight chapters this way since May, but I got really sidetracked in June with all of the travels.
Anne has hit a new little vocabulary growth spurt starting Friday. I can't tell you how many new words I've heard her say. She'll often say a word once incredibly clearly and then afterwards translate it into Toddler-Speak, which only a very attentive parent can understand. For example there was "diaper" which then turned into "bapoo", and there was "Black Bean" which turned into "Baguh". Also we were outside and she saw a stick on the ground which she referred to as "bow" (only the second time I'd heard her use the word), so then I had to explain that it was actually a stick, which she turned into "doohkh". She also pointed to a world globe and said "ball" very clearly. There have been a ton of other words, too, but I can't catalogue them all.
This coming week is Workshops in Tacoma Week. Jared is teaching a Dalcroze class at a Suzuki piano workshop tomorrow morning. And he and I are teaching at a three-day Suzuki violin/cello workshop Wednesday through Friday. We had planned to drive down with Jared to Tacoma tomorrow morning and then continue on down to Oregon, because Jared's Aunt Glenda would be coming in Monday afternoon. Then we were going to stay overnight and catch Jared's sister Sara and her boyfriend Scott, who would be flying in Tuesday afternoon, before we needed to head back to go to bed before getting up early Wednesday to teach at the workshop.
Workshop plans are intact for the coming week, but there were some other changes.
We received an email on Wednesday evening or Thursday from Jared's mom saying that Jared's Grampa was dying. So we decided to head down to Oregon on Friday after we taught and stay through Tuesday with Jared popping up to Tacoma on Monday morning solo. We didn't visit Grampa as he was not really up to visits, and we knew that ahead of time. However, we knew that the family really appreciated having Jared and Anne around when Grandma passed away three weeks ago. Grampa died yesterday morning, and Jared's sister flew in yesterday afternoon. Aunt Julie invited everyone over for a little gathering on Saturday evening at her lovely home on Sauvie Island in the Columbia River. It was nice for three of Grandma's and Grampa's four kids to be together on another sad day, along with three of the eight grandchildren and the only great-grandchild.
Here's a picture of Jared and his brother Matthew with Grampa sometime in the early '80's:
Tomorrow is Jared's and my eighth wedding anniversary. It's a little crazy this week, but we wanted to have an actual date. We may leave Anne with the family for a while later today and head over to a state park nearby with a ferry and some interesting historical things. The heat wave has cooled off today and the highs are only in the 70s, so outdoors should be pleasant during the day.
In my outdoor meanderings with Miss Anne every morning, I've made it through seven chapters of A Tale of Two Cities, which I'm still enjoying immensely. One thing I appreciate is how Dickens brings such diverse characters to life without stereotyping them. And his wry humor tickles me quite a lot. My favorite quote so far is:
The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private lodging in Hangingsword Alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock and a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)
I've gotten back to my Zechariah study project, which I think I'm tackling much the same way I'm tackling the Bartok. I've been writing out one little section at a time and trying to notice what the point of it is. I'm occasionally using a concordance to see if it references any earlier Biblical material and sometimes looking at New Testament references to the Zechariah material. I've made it through eight chapters this way since May, but I got really sidetracked in June with all of the travels.
Anne has hit a new little vocabulary growth spurt starting Friday. I can't tell you how many new words I've heard her say. She'll often say a word once incredibly clearly and then afterwards translate it into Toddler-Speak, which only a very attentive parent can understand. For example there was "diaper" which then turned into "bapoo", and there was "Black Bean" which turned into "Baguh". Also we were outside and she saw a stick on the ground which she referred to as "bow" (only the second time I'd heard her use the word), so then I had to explain that it was actually a stick, which she turned into "doohkh". She also pointed to a world globe and said "ball" very clearly. There have been a ton of other words, too, but I can't catalogue them all.
Monday, July 14, 2014
All's Well that Ends Well
The weekend was full of ups and downs.
Friday night was a down, and I don't really want to detail it here, but I'll just say that we're grateful to our neighbor Luis and my brother Jeff and his wife Linda. And all's well that ends well.
Saturday was my first time to play piano for Anne's Sabbath school class. She has a new teacher, and it was fantastic. What a joy to see this woman in action with a class of toddlers! They are doing a class themed on learning about Jesus at the seashore. There are lots of fun activities and songs about the waves and the sand and the animals in the ocean. Chantelle kept the program moving so well and engaged this whole pile of preschoolers, making moment by moment wise choices about when to engage little distractors and when to just ignore. I can't wait to be a regular attender at this class. I will learn some things myself, I think.
Frankly I had been getting burned out on church. There are a variety of reasons for it, some good and some not so good. But Anne's new Sabbath school class is giving the whole deal a new lease on life. All's well that ends well.
Sunday... I got up at 9:15 (sleeping in - yay!) and went in the living room. The screen door was open just about cat width, and Feathers and Nutmeg were lounging in the room paying no mind to the open door. I closed the glass slider and got out the cats' breakfast and served it, and Black Bean didn't appear. That was a REALLY bad sign. I got Jared and ran outside with more food to have a look around for him. It was very quickly apparent that he was quite gone.
I know my cats pretty well, so I was able to reconstruct the scene with a little info from Jared.
He'd gotten up around 6:15 and opened the slider to the screen level, and bailed it shut to the frame with some picture wire we have for the purpose. There is no latch on the screen, which has been an ongoing problem, and management doesn't have any screens with latches and was unwilling to get one for us when we asked. I told them we have a toddler and three cats who can open the screen if left unattended (and realize it's summer and there's no AC), and their response was to tell us to put up a baby gate. Well, we didn't, mainly because I'm positive that wouldn't have slowed any of our door openers for more than about five minutes. So...
Sometime between then when Jared went back to bed and when I came out, the three cats tag-teamed, as they do, and opened the screen to go outside to have a little look around in the morning sun. I don't blame them, of course. They probably spent a nice ten or fifteen minutes out there. And then something startled them. Maybe a person walk by. Or someone walking a dog. Or a feral cat. The two girls ran in the door to safety, and Black Bean panicked. He got down as low to the ground as he could muster and ran in zig-zags until he stuffed himself into whatever hiding place he could locate on short order. And he shoved himself way into the back of it and turned on his feline superpowers of being undetectable to any other creature. There he spent some time hyperventilating until he could calm down enough to rest.
Having this thought in my head, my first hope is that he was very close to home and maybe with some good looking, we could find him, drag him out of his hiding spot, and bring him inside. I started praying for him.
But I also had to prepare the thought that he had run rather far away and gotten rather lost. I prayed some more.
My second hope was based on my knowledge that in the night, his fear melts away, and he regains his feline superpowers of defending his home territory from other cats and his feline superpowers of navigation and food finding. I was thinking that he might be easier to find after dark. And I prayed some more.
Anyway, I was feeling pretty awful for him, because I knew he would be panicked and hungry, and I was hoping he hadn't hurt himself in his scramble for a hiding spot. And I was worried that we would never find him again. So I prayed some more.
Jared and I did some searching in a wide variety of locations around the block for about three hours and then finally ate some food ourselves. Then we made and posted about 200 flyers in our complex and other locations within about a 1/10 mile radius of our back door. Jared and Anne drove to the Home Depot in West Seattle which will rent out an infrared camera for 24 hours. I spent more hours searching through vines and bushes, talking to neighbors, and putting up more flyers. We did a little work with the infrared, although it was hot during the afternoon and hard to see. We decided to take a break. I emailed some people to see if anyone had a hunting dog. Jared did a little practicing, and I drove over to Auburn to pick up a live trap from Sherri. Anita called and prayed for Black Bean.
While we were eating dinner, my brother called and asked if they could come look. He and Linda showed up with headlamps and flashlights. We handed the infrared over to Jeff, and also had him set the trap for us. We all spent a couple more hours calling Beaner and searching everywhere. A neighbor on a bike kept telling us about various cats he was seeing around the complex (all false alarms.) Some of my Turkish preschool friends followed me around beating on bushes saying "kitty kot?" Various people offered tips and warnings. Finally after 10:00, Jeff and Linda decided they needed to go home, and I spent another fifteen or twenty minutes outside being very still and quiet, calling Beaner for dinner the way I usually do. Our neighbor Luis looked in the shrubs with a flashlight while he was out for his final cigarette of the evening. I forced myself to go inside, practice for ten minutes, take a shower, and go to bed. I set my alarm for 4:00. Beaner is usually up and quite active between 4:00 and 6:00 am, so I thought that if he was lost he might at least be up and on the prowl and I could go out and help him navigate home.
Around 2:00, Jared woke me up with a hand on my shoulder and an excited whisper that he'd been up to use the bathroom, and Black Bean was on the porch waiting to be let in. Jared put on some shoes and went out the front door and around to the back of the building to be on hand in case BB got spooked when I opened the door. Which he did. It startled him a bit, and he hopped off the porch. And it didn't help that Feathers and Nutmeg started growling inside, because they aren't used to us letting cats in from off the porch - never mind it was Brother. Anyway, it didn't take much more convincing before he came in. And we fed and brushed him a bit, and he was quite pleased to be home. Praise God!
I'm not sorry we did all the searching, because hearing our voices throughout the day may have helped calm him and given him a sense of where to find us when he was ready to give up his hiding place. All's well that ends well.
I'm pretty sore today, having gotten some different sorts of exercise than usual. I did about 100 squats with my head to the pavement looking under parked cars. I climbed a tree to inspect a between-fence area, and I hopped a number of fences between commercial buildings and our complex. Pretend it was a day of cross fit.
Friday night was a down, and I don't really want to detail it here, but I'll just say that we're grateful to our neighbor Luis and my brother Jeff and his wife Linda. And all's well that ends well.
Saturday was my first time to play piano for Anne's Sabbath school class. She has a new teacher, and it was fantastic. What a joy to see this woman in action with a class of toddlers! They are doing a class themed on learning about Jesus at the seashore. There are lots of fun activities and songs about the waves and the sand and the animals in the ocean. Chantelle kept the program moving so well and engaged this whole pile of preschoolers, making moment by moment wise choices about when to engage little distractors and when to just ignore. I can't wait to be a regular attender at this class. I will learn some things myself, I think.
Frankly I had been getting burned out on church. There are a variety of reasons for it, some good and some not so good. But Anne's new Sabbath school class is giving the whole deal a new lease on life. All's well that ends well.
Sunday... I got up at 9:15 (sleeping in - yay!) and went in the living room. The screen door was open just about cat width, and Feathers and Nutmeg were lounging in the room paying no mind to the open door. I closed the glass slider and got out the cats' breakfast and served it, and Black Bean didn't appear. That was a REALLY bad sign. I got Jared and ran outside with more food to have a look around for him. It was very quickly apparent that he was quite gone.
I know my cats pretty well, so I was able to reconstruct the scene with a little info from Jared.
He'd gotten up around 6:15 and opened the slider to the screen level, and bailed it shut to the frame with some picture wire we have for the purpose. There is no latch on the screen, which has been an ongoing problem, and management doesn't have any screens with latches and was unwilling to get one for us when we asked. I told them we have a toddler and three cats who can open the screen if left unattended (and realize it's summer and there's no AC), and their response was to tell us to put up a baby gate. Well, we didn't, mainly because I'm positive that wouldn't have slowed any of our door openers for more than about five minutes. So...
Sometime between then when Jared went back to bed and when I came out, the three cats tag-teamed, as they do, and opened the screen to go outside to have a little look around in the morning sun. I don't blame them, of course. They probably spent a nice ten or fifteen minutes out there. And then something startled them. Maybe a person walk by. Or someone walking a dog. Or a feral cat. The two girls ran in the door to safety, and Black Bean panicked. He got down as low to the ground as he could muster and ran in zig-zags until he stuffed himself into whatever hiding place he could locate on short order. And he shoved himself way into the back of it and turned on his feline superpowers of being undetectable to any other creature. There he spent some time hyperventilating until he could calm down enough to rest.
Having this thought in my head, my first hope is that he was very close to home and maybe with some good looking, we could find him, drag him out of his hiding spot, and bring him inside. I started praying for him.
But I also had to prepare the thought that he had run rather far away and gotten rather lost. I prayed some more.
My second hope was based on my knowledge that in the night, his fear melts away, and he regains his feline superpowers of defending his home territory from other cats and his feline superpowers of navigation and food finding. I was thinking that he might be easier to find after dark. And I prayed some more.
Anyway, I was feeling pretty awful for him, because I knew he would be panicked and hungry, and I was hoping he hadn't hurt himself in his scramble for a hiding spot. And I was worried that we would never find him again. So I prayed some more.
Jared and I did some searching in a wide variety of locations around the block for about three hours and then finally ate some food ourselves. Then we made and posted about 200 flyers in our complex and other locations within about a 1/10 mile radius of our back door. Jared and Anne drove to the Home Depot in West Seattle which will rent out an infrared camera for 24 hours. I spent more hours searching through vines and bushes, talking to neighbors, and putting up more flyers. We did a little work with the infrared, although it was hot during the afternoon and hard to see. We decided to take a break. I emailed some people to see if anyone had a hunting dog. Jared did a little practicing, and I drove over to Auburn to pick up a live trap from Sherri. Anita called and prayed for Black Bean.
While we were eating dinner, my brother called and asked if they could come look. He and Linda showed up with headlamps and flashlights. We handed the infrared over to Jeff, and also had him set the trap for us. We all spent a couple more hours calling Beaner and searching everywhere. A neighbor on a bike kept telling us about various cats he was seeing around the complex (all false alarms.) Some of my Turkish preschool friends followed me around beating on bushes saying "kitty kot?" Various people offered tips and warnings. Finally after 10:00, Jeff and Linda decided they needed to go home, and I spent another fifteen or twenty minutes outside being very still and quiet, calling Beaner for dinner the way I usually do. Our neighbor Luis looked in the shrubs with a flashlight while he was out for his final cigarette of the evening. I forced myself to go inside, practice for ten minutes, take a shower, and go to bed. I set my alarm for 4:00. Beaner is usually up and quite active between 4:00 and 6:00 am, so I thought that if he was lost he might at least be up and on the prowl and I could go out and help him navigate home.
Around 2:00, Jared woke me up with a hand on my shoulder and an excited whisper that he'd been up to use the bathroom, and Black Bean was on the porch waiting to be let in. Jared put on some shoes and went out the front door and around to the back of the building to be on hand in case BB got spooked when I opened the door. Which he did. It startled him a bit, and he hopped off the porch. And it didn't help that Feathers and Nutmeg started growling inside, because they aren't used to us letting cats in from off the porch - never mind it was Brother. Anyway, it didn't take much more convincing before he came in. And we fed and brushed him a bit, and he was quite pleased to be home. Praise God!
I'm not sorry we did all the searching, because hearing our voices throughout the day may have helped calm him and given him a sense of where to find us when he was ready to give up his hiding place. All's well that ends well.
I'm pretty sore today, having gotten some different sorts of exercise than usual. I did about 100 squats with my head to the pavement looking under parked cars. I climbed a tree to inspect a between-fence area, and I hopped a number of fences between commercial buildings and our complex. Pretend it was a day of cross fit.
Friday, July 11, 2014
Bartok Solo Sonata
First there was this piece. I fell in love with the harp introduction listening to a CD in high school. The summer I turned twenty-two I finally delved into learning the piece. Once I made it through the first movement, I played it every day I practiced for two years. I took it to a special lesson with a Bartok scholar. I entered it in three or four concerto competitions, none of which I won. If you absolutely refuse to listen to it, I'll just tell you it's Bartok Violin Concerto No. 2. It is the most challenging piece I've really learned well. I've tried out a few other hard ones - Ernst's Last Rose of Summer and his Erlking arrangement, Stravinsky's Violin Concerto, and all of the Paganini Caprices - for example. The difference with this piece is how your ears and fingers have to enter a whole new tonal realm AND how long it is. Stamina and flexibility required. I think it's still quite fair to say it's the most difficult piece I've really mastered, although it's not in my fingers at this moment.
Frank Huang, current concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, was assigned this concerto by his teacher Don Weilerstein when we were in school, and his roommate mentioned that Frank had gone upstairs to read through it in order to get started, but he came back down saying it was so hard he couldn't sight read it, even slowly - something he'd not experienced before.
My friend Edith, another student of Mr. Weilerstein, also learned and performed the Concerto No. 2. Then D.W. assigned her the Bartok Solo Sonata. She asked him how it compared in difficulty to the concerto. In his inimitable way, he responded that it was "substantially more difficult."
I view it as one of the Mt. Everests of violin playing.
Which leads to the first time I heard the Solo Sonata. We had a once-a-month joint studio class where top violinists from the school were selected to perform and have a bit of a masterclass with a whole panel of the violin teachers; a large percentage of the violin students sat in attendance. A student of Bill Preucil's, Jeff Thayer - who is now concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony - performed the complete Solo Sonata. I can't say I liked the piece. But I was in awe of how many excruciatingly difficult notes he had just flawlessly played, and from memory.
I'm still not sure I would say that I love the piece. It is not cheesy, so that is a plus for me. It is incredibly complex and stimulating, so that is a big plus for me. The rhythm is wonderful and accessible, so that is another big plus for me. But it is not easy listening, even for those who have listened to it many times. If you've not heard it yet, here's a recording for your first listening. If you're like me, you might have to hear it many times to appreciate it.
Several years ago I bought the sheet music in the lovely basement music store at CIM when we were visiting from Rochester. I have probably put in about thirty or forty hours of work on it in the few years it's been in my possession, which is not a very concerted effort where this piece goes. Most of that has been dedicated to the first page.
As I completed a year of practice yesterday and didn't feel like ending the practice streak just yet, I decided yesterday to start in on the Sonata in earnest, even if I only did ten minutes a day on it. For the record, I spent at least half an hour yesterday.
First I tried to read through some of the first movement under tempo. I got bogged down by the middle of the second page after an inordinate number of stumbles and gave up.
Then I decided to practice the first two notes. They were fine.
Then I decided to look for spots that would actually need concerted attention, knowing that there are an inordinate number of them. Still, I had to start somewhere. So I put the metronome on eighth-note = 50, which is exactly half the tempo Bartok marked. And I decided that the first place I had a fumble at this tempo would be the first practice spot. It turns out that was the two thirty-second note pick-ups to measure 6 and the measure 6 downbeat chord. I marked the spot.
Then I did a little analysis and determined that the chord wasn't working because I wasn't swinging my left elbow far enough to the right for the pinky playing the harmonic on the G string to clear the D string, AND my first finger playing Bb on the D string was being unduly influenced by the harmonic and not applying enough weight to the string to get a sound. So I practiced it a bunch of times correctly with a thinking space. Then I backed up a bit.
When I discovered that the six-note run into measure 5 was rather messy. I realized it was a string-crossing-in-rhythm issue. There are three notes on the D, then only one on the A, and then two on the E in preparation for a three-note chord, and my bow wasn't changing from the A to the E quickly enough. So I marked the crossings and practiced making smooth changes in rhythm several times.
Back to the half tempo metronome from the beginning. The two aforementioned spots were better but not yet solved at half tempo, but I kept going and then discovered that there is a shift in between beat one of measure 8 and beat two of measure 8 which was out of tune.
I realized I wasn't using a guide finger but was just hoping for the best. Not a good strategy. I marked the spot and figured out that the guide finger would be 2 on the D, shifting from from the pitch G to the pitch Bb. I also noted that there would be two possible fingerings of the D in the bass line - either the open string or 1 on the G in fourth position. I didn't make a decision about it. I did practice the four notes in question as well as the guide note.
Then I backed up to measure 6 to get a running start at it. And discovered that the last beat of measure 7, which had always been a little squirrel-y, was out of tune. After I played it a few times, I realized the F# that I play in that beat with finger 2 is the same F# I play in the downbeat of measure 8 with a 1. The fingering was good - I just didn't have shifting on the brain. So I marked in that the 1 replaces the 2. It was some better, but it was still in tune only 50% of the time. So then I realized that I needed to release my left thumb a little so that it could slip to a different spot on the violin's neck. This solved the problem. But only when I was paying attention. So that's another thing to practice.
I kept on making little discoveries of this nature. I made it all the way through fifteen measures solving problems in those 30 minutes and marking in new information. It's still going to take an inordinate number of repetitions to make the adjustments stick.
Time for Friday's practice!
Frank Huang, current concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, was assigned this concerto by his teacher Don Weilerstein when we were in school, and his roommate mentioned that Frank had gone upstairs to read through it in order to get started, but he came back down saying it was so hard he couldn't sight read it, even slowly - something he'd not experienced before.
My friend Edith, another student of Mr. Weilerstein, also learned and performed the Concerto No. 2. Then D.W. assigned her the Bartok Solo Sonata. She asked him how it compared in difficulty to the concerto. In his inimitable way, he responded that it was "substantially more difficult."
I view it as one of the Mt. Everests of violin playing.
Which leads to the first time I heard the Solo Sonata. We had a once-a-month joint studio class where top violinists from the school were selected to perform and have a bit of a masterclass with a whole panel of the violin teachers; a large percentage of the violin students sat in attendance. A student of Bill Preucil's, Jeff Thayer - who is now concertmaster of the San Diego Symphony - performed the complete Solo Sonata. I can't say I liked the piece. But I was in awe of how many excruciatingly difficult notes he had just flawlessly played, and from memory.
I'm still not sure I would say that I love the piece. It is not cheesy, so that is a plus for me. It is incredibly complex and stimulating, so that is a big plus for me. The rhythm is wonderful and accessible, so that is another big plus for me. But it is not easy listening, even for those who have listened to it many times. If you've not heard it yet, here's a recording for your first listening. If you're like me, you might have to hear it many times to appreciate it.
Several years ago I bought the sheet music in the lovely basement music store at CIM when we were visiting from Rochester. I have probably put in about thirty or forty hours of work on it in the few years it's been in my possession, which is not a very concerted effort where this piece goes. Most of that has been dedicated to the first page.
As I completed a year of practice yesterday and didn't feel like ending the practice streak just yet, I decided yesterday to start in on the Sonata in earnest, even if I only did ten minutes a day on it. For the record, I spent at least half an hour yesterday.
First I tried to read through some of the first movement under tempo. I got bogged down by the middle of the second page after an inordinate number of stumbles and gave up.
Then I decided to practice the first two notes. They were fine.
Then I decided to look for spots that would actually need concerted attention, knowing that there are an inordinate number of them. Still, I had to start somewhere. So I put the metronome on eighth-note = 50, which is exactly half the tempo Bartok marked. And I decided that the first place I had a fumble at this tempo would be the first practice spot. It turns out that was the two thirty-second note pick-ups to measure 6 and the measure 6 downbeat chord. I marked the spot.
Then I did a little analysis and determined that the chord wasn't working because I wasn't swinging my left elbow far enough to the right for the pinky playing the harmonic on the G string to clear the D string, AND my first finger playing Bb on the D string was being unduly influenced by the harmonic and not applying enough weight to the string to get a sound. So I practiced it a bunch of times correctly with a thinking space. Then I backed up a bit.
When I discovered that the six-note run into measure 5 was rather messy. I realized it was a string-crossing-in-rhythm issue. There are three notes on the D, then only one on the A, and then two on the E in preparation for a three-note chord, and my bow wasn't changing from the A to the E quickly enough. So I marked the crossings and practiced making smooth changes in rhythm several times.
Back to the half tempo metronome from the beginning. The two aforementioned spots were better but not yet solved at half tempo, but I kept going and then discovered that there is a shift in between beat one of measure 8 and beat two of measure 8 which was out of tune.
I realized I wasn't using a guide finger but was just hoping for the best. Not a good strategy. I marked the spot and figured out that the guide finger would be 2 on the D, shifting from from the pitch G to the pitch Bb. I also noted that there would be two possible fingerings of the D in the bass line - either the open string or 1 on the G in fourth position. I didn't make a decision about it. I did practice the four notes in question as well as the guide note.
Then I backed up to measure 6 to get a running start at it. And discovered that the last beat of measure 7, which had always been a little squirrel-y, was out of tune. After I played it a few times, I realized the F# that I play in that beat with finger 2 is the same F# I play in the downbeat of measure 8 with a 1. The fingering was good - I just didn't have shifting on the brain. So I marked in that the 1 replaces the 2. It was some better, but it was still in tune only 50% of the time. So then I realized that I needed to release my left thumb a little so that it could slip to a different spot on the violin's neck. This solved the problem. But only when I was paying attention. So that's another thing to practice.
I kept on making little discoveries of this nature. I made it all the way through fifteen measures solving problems in those 30 minutes and marking in new information. It's still going to take an inordinate number of repetitions to make the adjustments stick.
Time for Friday's practice!
Thursday, July 10, 2014
A very significant anniversary
Today, July 10th, is a very significant anniversary in my life. As of today, I have practiced every single day for a year - for at least ten minutes. I have never done this before in my almost-34 years.
I started violin lessons in the fall of 1988. Prior to Anne's birth, the longest I'd ever gone without touching a violin, since I first started practicing, had been two weeks.
Suzuki teachers have a thing about running 100-days-of-practice challenges for their students. The point is to encourage students to make some progress by regularly putting forth the effort it takes. I did my first 100-day challenge along with a handfull of my students back in 2008 in Rochester.
Last July I started another 100-day challenge strictly for myself, as my violin-playing had become rather more sporadic. Anne's birth triggered a rather forgivable three weeks of non-practicing, although I was back to teaching about nine days after her arrival. One can teach without practicing; however, one's teaching gets stale when the teacher neglects to literally practice what she preaches.
It was July 10th that I started my 100 days. Think of it as a couch-to-5k after a maternity leave. When I hit the 100th day, I suddenly sprouted the idea that I would keep the streak alive to see if I could make it to a year.
There have been a few challenges. I've had trips which involved traveling all day with a toddler, so I had to do my ten minutes very early or very late with a practice mute (not to mention hauling the violin along on the journey). There was also the middle day of a three-day camping trip last August. I couldn't bring my instrument because there was no safe/insured place to leave it. After some pondering, I ended up brining along Mr. Beep (that's my metronome), my Rhythmic Training book, and a practice bow. I did some bow exercises in the tent after Anne went to sleep by the light of a borrowed head lamp. (No selfie, sorry.)
Practicing and I have had a rather checkered relationship over the years.
People often don't like practicing, because they don't want all the work it takes to learn and improve skills. That's called laziness. It's one dragon I battle all the time here in my personal head.
Then there have been some times in my life when practice of many hours a day was my regular custom. During those times I loved it. When I have been submersed in environments filled with professional musicians and those well on their way, I have been inspired to learn and improve with the largest amount of effort I could muster.
Because of the intensity of those environments, I've long wanted to do a ten-hour practice once day to say I'd done it. I am married to someone who has put in not only a whole pile of ten hour days, but also a good number of twelve hour days.
My highest number ever was an eight-hour day. It was the day before I gave a recital with my friend Doleen in Rochester. I played the Ysaye Ballade (new to me the month before), the Brahms G Major Sonata (new to me the month before), Bach Partita No. 2 with the Chaconne, and the Bruch Viola Romanze (new to me the month before). That's a lot of non-review pieces to perform at once.
There were quite a lot of five-, six- or seven-hour practice days when I was in school, and that counted just my personal practice. I also did a lot of chamber and orchestral rehearsing on top of that. My usual practice time when school was in session was between three and five hours a day, six days a week.
As I look back on my previous life, my ten minutes a day seems pretty wimpy. It is. I practice things like snarky spots in the Vivaldi Concerto I'll be teaching later that day. Or I do some sight-reading out of an orchestral excerpts book. Or I work out some practice strategies for my teenage student on the showpiece she's learning. I usually practice out of a sense of duty, rather than out of joy. This is perfectly fine, in my estimation. I'm not at the top of my playing game. I'm not even keeping up. But when I next have an exciting performance opportunity show up, I'll add some hours to my minutes and perform at a level I am comfortable displaying in public.
I have not given up all of my performance dreams. I still plan to perform all the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas in one day. I still plan to record a CD of short pieces - some well known and some well unknown. (Anyone know a great pianist conveniently located in Pacific Northwest who is willing to risk this venture with me? Seriously, I'm in the market. The only problem is that I don't have a record label begging me to do this.) I still plan to learn the Bartok Solo Sonata. All those projects take hours a day of concerted violin time. And it is just not at the top of my list this year. My lists rotate.
I started violin lessons in the fall of 1988. Prior to Anne's birth, the longest I'd ever gone without touching a violin, since I first started practicing, had been two weeks.
Suzuki teachers have a thing about running 100-days-of-practice challenges for their students. The point is to encourage students to make some progress by regularly putting forth the effort it takes. I did my first 100-day challenge along with a handfull of my students back in 2008 in Rochester.
Last July I started another 100-day challenge strictly for myself, as my violin-playing had become rather more sporadic. Anne's birth triggered a rather forgivable three weeks of non-practicing, although I was back to teaching about nine days after her arrival. One can teach without practicing; however, one's teaching gets stale when the teacher neglects to literally practice what she preaches.
It was July 10th that I started my 100 days. Think of it as a couch-to-5k after a maternity leave. When I hit the 100th day, I suddenly sprouted the idea that I would keep the streak alive to see if I could make it to a year.
There have been a few challenges. I've had trips which involved traveling all day with a toddler, so I had to do my ten minutes very early or very late with a practice mute (not to mention hauling the violin along on the journey). There was also the middle day of a three-day camping trip last August. I couldn't bring my instrument because there was no safe/insured place to leave it. After some pondering, I ended up brining along Mr. Beep (that's my metronome), my Rhythmic Training book, and a practice bow. I did some bow exercises in the tent after Anne went to sleep by the light of a borrowed head lamp. (No selfie, sorry.)
There's always a way to include a cat picture, though: Here's BB sleeping in front of my Rhythmic Training book.
Practicing and I have had a rather checkered relationship over the years.
People often don't like practicing, because they don't want all the work it takes to learn and improve skills. That's called laziness. It's one dragon I battle all the time here in my personal head.
Then there have been some times in my life when practice of many hours a day was my regular custom. During those times I loved it. When I have been submersed in environments filled with professional musicians and those well on their way, I have been inspired to learn and improve with the largest amount of effort I could muster.
Because of the intensity of those environments, I've long wanted to do a ten-hour practice once day to say I'd done it. I am married to someone who has put in not only a whole pile of ten hour days, but also a good number of twelve hour days.
My highest number ever was an eight-hour day. It was the day before I gave a recital with my friend Doleen in Rochester. I played the Ysaye Ballade (new to me the month before), the Brahms G Major Sonata (new to me the month before), Bach Partita No. 2 with the Chaconne, and the Bruch Viola Romanze (new to me the month before). That's a lot of non-review pieces to perform at once.
There were quite a lot of five-, six- or seven-hour practice days when I was in school, and that counted just my personal practice. I also did a lot of chamber and orchestral rehearsing on top of that. My usual practice time when school was in session was between three and five hours a day, six days a week.
As I look back on my previous life, my ten minutes a day seems pretty wimpy. It is. I practice things like snarky spots in the Vivaldi Concerto I'll be teaching later that day. Or I do some sight-reading out of an orchestral excerpts book. Or I work out some practice strategies for my teenage student on the showpiece she's learning. I usually practice out of a sense of duty, rather than out of joy. This is perfectly fine, in my estimation. I'm not at the top of my playing game. I'm not even keeping up. But when I next have an exciting performance opportunity show up, I'll add some hours to my minutes and perform at a level I am comfortable displaying in public.
I have not given up all of my performance dreams. I still plan to perform all the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas in one day. I still plan to record a CD of short pieces - some well known and some well unknown. (Anyone know a great pianist conveniently located in Pacific Northwest who is willing to risk this venture with me? Seriously, I'm in the market. The only problem is that I don't have a record label begging me to do this.) I still plan to learn the Bartok Solo Sonata. All those projects take hours a day of concerted violin time. And it is just not at the top of my list this year. My lists rotate.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Interview with Jean
I met Jean Grod working in the church nursery on Thursday mornings at Bethel Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. We hit it off, and over time she and I sort of became family to each other. She lives in another Cleveland suburb now in a retirement center, and doesn't have much family left; a niece in the mid-West and a nephew in California constitute her only blood relatives. I told her I wanted to write down some of her stories, so you can read here what she came up with for our first interview. This is a picture of her posing with her Coke in a Cleveland restaurant about five years ago:
My mother was 4 ' 11, and my father was probably about 5' 9" or 5' 10". My mother did not drive, so she would walk to the grocery store every day - Heinen's - and everybody on the street just loved her. Everybody she ever met just loved her. My mother was the weak one in the home. My father was the dictator. But when my mother got sick and my father was taking care of her, then you could see that she actually ruled the roost. Everything that my mother did for him, my father did for her, which was amazing.
My best moment was when I went to my band and orchestra dinner at the end of the 12th grade, and since my father couldn't come to the dinner, my mother and my brother came, but just as they were giving me the award that I would be in the hall of fame, my father came in. He had tears in his eyes. For my father to be there, it was an especially wonderful moment.
One time my dad and I went on a date. We went to dinner and he took me to see Moulin Rouge, and it was probably something I'll never forget. It was just something to sit and talk with my father, a brilliant man, but it was a different situation from being with him at home and talking. It was a beautiful, beautiful time. That was one of the few times that we were ever together alone.
My brother - he started to play the clarinet when he was so young that his little fingers wouldn't go around it! The teacher's office was right across the street from my father's office on Euclid Avenue, and my father could see him over there. After a while I got to learn the clarinet. My brother was an absolutely excellent musician. When he got to junior high, the school band teacher knew my father, and he used knowing my father so much, it ruined my brother's interest in the clarinet. My brother gave it up and wouldn't play it ever again. This man used his relationship with my father to torment my brother. I learned that when you teach children, you don't use the relationship you have with their relative in interfacing with them to actually kill a person's interest in something they were really magnificent with. And I... I had to practice every night down in the basement so I would know the tunes for the marching band, but my brother would have just been able to them all, and he would have been in jazz band, too.
I'll tell you a funny that my brother did with a friends of his:
The music teacher that he had first - he would really focus on the orchestra and not look at anything else that was happening in the room. And my brother and his friend tied Mr. Wetlaufer's shoes together. My mother was so mortified. She couldn't believe that my brother could do that. I don't remember many people's names, but I'll remember Mr. Wetlaufer. I was four years behind my brother, and Mr. Wetlaufer retired when I came to high school.
My brother wrote a story in his English class, and it was so good that the teacher put it on the bulletin board for parents' night that night. My mother had to go alone, and she found his essay. And my brother had written that our dog was more important than the children in the family - that he sat at the table and ate his meals with us, and that he was the most important thing in the house. Well, my mother... mortified is the wrong word... I'll have to look up the right word in the dictionary... when she came home and told the story, all she could say was, "How could you?" The truth of it was, the dog was really important; he was part of the family, but Bob really embellished it. My mom was really beside herself. If I were to have done something like that she would have been really angry. There was some anger toward my brother but not the real hard kind of anger.
Bob got to learn how to swim because he was more brave than I was. I got out of swimming. He was a hard-working young man, and he saved up money for a car, and bought one when he was sixteen. It wasn't the greatest, but he learned how to drive. My father was always watching, watching. When Bob went to college, my dad sold Bob's car. We didn't have much money anyway, but my dad had a very, very old car, but my dad kept it like the latest model - there wasn't a scratch on it. In fact when he died in 1973, my mother gave me that 1949 Ford Falcon. All the gas stations I ever went to - it was only a few - the attendants called their manager about that car. It didn't have any windshield washers, of course it didn't have seat belts, and there was something else normal to a car that it didn't have - I can't remember what. It should have been in an automobile museum. I had a hard time learning to drive it, because it was a standard car, and the only car I knew how to drive was an automatic.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Fourth of July Weekend
It was America's three-day weekend, and we were in town for it.
Friday's project was cleaning out Jared's clothes closet. He did most of the cleaning out, and I provided the structure and positive support. Anne provided the entertainment by walking around wearing one of Daddy's ties and then later she modeled one of his T-shirts as an enormous ghost dress. The result of the brief hour and a half is that Jared can find clothes which fit and do not have holes in them in EVERY drawer of his closet. And two large trash bags are waiting in the trunk of the car to go to Goodwill tomorrow.
Friday evening we were serenaded for about three hours by the sounds of a firefight on all sides of us. However, the danger level to our lives was relatively low, since it was only thousands of dollars in fireworks going up, rather than ammunition. The cats didn't care for the subtleties of semantics on that and spent the night in closets. Jared and I participated in the all-American festivities by the making of potato salad and lentil burgers. Anne participated by wearing the clothing I assigned her for the day.
Yesterday we went to church (and were on time!!!!), went for another hike at Cougar Mountain, and had dinner with Jeffrey, Linda, and Linda's mom. It was fun.
Today's project (which is not done yet) is filing papers, an activity which I have not done since April 2012. It's a rather grumpifying project, but our horizontal surfaces around the apartment are emptier, for which the eyes are grateful. The recycling bin of shredded papers is much fuller, meaning we may need a trip soon to our drop-off point. It is gratifying to be able to toss so many papers about health insurance. In case you needed to know, in the twenty-three months we've lived in Washington, the three of us humans have been covered under eight separate health-insurance plans, which means we've had oodles of paperwork, phone calls, internet stuff, faxing, and annoyance to keep the coverage going. Also we had to fight with some of the insurance over bills they neglected to pay, so that was more hours out of our lives down the drain. Round and about November, Jared took over on the managing of our health insurance, so it's not my paperwork headache anymore. Anyway... Jared also volunteered to provide any needed psychoanalysis for me when I'm done slaving away on the paper swamp. Also, he took Anne out for a long walk this afternoon, and he's cooking dinner. I don't know what it is, but it smells delicious, as usual.
Friday's project was cleaning out Jared's clothes closet. He did most of the cleaning out, and I provided the structure and positive support. Anne provided the entertainment by walking around wearing one of Daddy's ties and then later she modeled one of his T-shirts as an enormous ghost dress. The result of the brief hour and a half is that Jared can find clothes which fit and do not have holes in them in EVERY drawer of his closet. And two large trash bags are waiting in the trunk of the car to go to Goodwill tomorrow.
Friday evening we were serenaded for about three hours by the sounds of a firefight on all sides of us. However, the danger level to our lives was relatively low, since it was only thousands of dollars in fireworks going up, rather than ammunition. The cats didn't care for the subtleties of semantics on that and spent the night in closets. Jared and I participated in the all-American festivities by the making of potato salad and lentil burgers. Anne participated by wearing the clothing I assigned her for the day.
Yesterday we went to church (and were on time!!!!), went for another hike at Cougar Mountain, and had dinner with Jeffrey, Linda, and Linda's mom. It was fun.
Today's project (which is not done yet) is filing papers, an activity which I have not done since April 2012. It's a rather grumpifying project, but our horizontal surfaces around the apartment are emptier, for which the eyes are grateful. The recycling bin of shredded papers is much fuller, meaning we may need a trip soon to our drop-off point. It is gratifying to be able to toss so many papers about health insurance. In case you needed to know, in the twenty-three months we've lived in Washington, the three of us humans have been covered under eight separate health-insurance plans, which means we've had oodles of paperwork, phone calls, internet stuff, faxing, and annoyance to keep the coverage going. Also we had to fight with some of the insurance over bills they neglected to pay, so that was more hours out of our lives down the drain. Round and about November, Jared took over on the managing of our health insurance, so it's not my paperwork headache anymore. Anyway... Jared also volunteered to provide any needed psychoanalysis for me when I'm done slaving away on the paper swamp. Also, he took Anne out for a long walk this afternoon, and he's cooking dinner. I don't know what it is, but it smells delicious, as usual.
Friday, July 4, 2014
Books!
I finished the next book off my shelf: Christmas in Plains by Jimmy Carter. When I was a kid, I thought the president had pretty much always been Ronald Reagan, but at some point in high school it dawned on me that Jimmy Carter was in office when I was born. (I guess that pretty well dates my birth to a four-year range!) So I got interested in him. I've read a couple of his books now as well as most of an amazing long biography. I was planning to go and listen to his Sunday school class at his church in Plains in October of 2012, but it turned out we had suddenly moved far, far away, and Plains is nowhere near Seattle. Two of the things I've appreciated about Mr. Carter are his integrity and his work to make the world a better place after his time in office.
Now that I've finished that book, I've started A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I had listened to the first part of it once on a road trip and was thoroughly amazed at how wonderful it was. I vowed to finish it one day, and was quite pleased to pick up a copy for 50c at a used book sale last year. I'm actually enjoying reading it on paper much more than hearing it read, because I have time to stop and figure out exactly what each sentence means. I realize most of you already know this, but Dickens is incredible in his use of language and his ability to weave a very complex story, revealing only what he wants to at each moment.
Happy reader over here!
Now that I've finished that book, I've started A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. I had listened to the first part of it once on a road trip and was thoroughly amazed at how wonderful it was. I vowed to finish it one day, and was quite pleased to pick up a copy for 50c at a used book sale last year. I'm actually enjoying reading it on paper much more than hearing it read, because I have time to stop and figure out exactly what each sentence means. I realize most of you already know this, but Dickens is incredible in his use of language and his ability to weave a very complex story, revealing only what he wants to at each moment.
Happy reader over here!
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Tacoma Narrows
On Tuesdays when I drive over to my Retreat Day... no, I mean Teach on Fox Island Day, I cross the Tacoma Narrows bridge. For those of you unfamiliar with Washington geography, Puget Sound pours south and a tiny bit east out of the Pacific Ocean at the very northwest corner of the state, separating the Olympic Peninsula from Seattle and Tacoma. Gig Harbor and Fox Island are on the Peninsula side, just across from Tacoma at the narrowest point of the Sound. And thankfully there is this wonderful bridge on WA-16 which saves a drive all the way south to Olympia and back around.
My mom somewhat recently pointed out, with an ominous tone, that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was famous for having broken and dumped cars into the water. Yeah, I couldn't sleep with that on the brain one night. Next day I did some research to see what to do if your car goes into the water.
Here are the recommended action steps in short order (and hey, if you do all of them, you may have as much as a 50% chance of survival!):
1. Brace for impact, making sure your hands are on the steering wheel below where the airbag deploys.
2. Unbuckle and get everyone in the backseat unbuckled as fast as possible.
3. Open the windows (break them if necessary) and get OUT as fast as possible.
4. If you're not sure which way is up, watch the bubbles rise and follow them.
5. Keep your head above water and don't panic.
I was rehearsing this in my mind with a toddler in a rear-facing car seat who can't swim. I've done several rehearsals now, and I am prepared to survive a car dump into the water if it's possible.
I mentioned this sleepless night to Jared, and he did a little research for me on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Here's what we learned:
It was first built in 1940, and they knew it had some structural problems while it was being built. It fell a few months later, still in 1940, during a storm. Cars went into the water, but the passengers had already evacuated. No one died except for a dog. Due to the War, the bridge was not rebuilt until 1950. The 1950 bridge is what I cross west-bound. The east-bound bridge was built in 2007, because traffic had increased to a level which necessitated more lanes. Also, the original collapse is an important study in bridge engineering in the hopes of not having a similar issue with another bridge in the future.
You can watch a video of the 1940 collapse here.
Here is what I cross weekly.
I don't think that one will keep me up again. But I'm sure I'll find something else.
My mom somewhat recently pointed out, with an ominous tone, that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was famous for having broken and dumped cars into the water. Yeah, I couldn't sleep with that on the brain one night. Next day I did some research to see what to do if your car goes into the water.
Here are the recommended action steps in short order (and hey, if you do all of them, you may have as much as a 50% chance of survival!):
1. Brace for impact, making sure your hands are on the steering wheel below where the airbag deploys.
2. Unbuckle and get everyone in the backseat unbuckled as fast as possible.
3. Open the windows (break them if necessary) and get OUT as fast as possible.
4. If you're not sure which way is up, watch the bubbles rise and follow them.
5. Keep your head above water and don't panic.
I was rehearsing this in my mind with a toddler in a rear-facing car seat who can't swim. I've done several rehearsals now, and I am prepared to survive a car dump into the water if it's possible.
I mentioned this sleepless night to Jared, and he did a little research for me on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Here's what we learned:
It was first built in 1940, and they knew it had some structural problems while it was being built. It fell a few months later, still in 1940, during a storm. Cars went into the water, but the passengers had already evacuated. No one died except for a dog. Due to the War, the bridge was not rebuilt until 1950. The 1950 bridge is what I cross west-bound. The east-bound bridge was built in 2007, because traffic had increased to a level which necessitated more lanes. Also, the original collapse is an important study in bridge engineering in the hopes of not having a similar issue with another bridge in the future.
You can watch a video of the 1940 collapse here.
Here is what I cross weekly.
I don't think that one will keep me up again. But I'm sure I'll find something else.
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