Demolition

A few blocks from us are several large parcels being redeveloped.  Our WWII-era branch library was completely rebuilt from the parking garage up in 2016.  It is on the outside of a large circle.  The center of the circle is being redeveloped into an amazing park, in various stages.  The  native plants and wetlands along with restrooms phase is complete, as is the playground phase.  Water feature and amphitheater phase are yet to go.  Around the outside of the circle, the land is being redeveloped into town houses, condos, and apartments.  Several adjacent parcels are going into a huge new development with 555 housing units including town houses, apartments, retail and commercial.  In order to put this particular development in, they have been taking stuff out.  That stuff includes a three-strip strip mall, a large restaurant,  a bank, and a freestanding furniture store, plus some currently vacant land and all the attendant parking lots and roadways.  Today they were demolishing the three freestanding buildings with giant excavators.  Lazarus and I walked over to watch this morning, and Laurel and I walked over to watch this afternoon.

Though fascinating, I find watching the demolition stressful.  For one thing, it is extraordinarily loud.  And for another, it is obviously dangerous.  They have some fences up, but its shocking how close you can get to to metal bars and A/C units and windows raining down.  Of course they are hosing it down to keep the dust at bay, but it was windy today, and when I walked past the furniture store demo, the excavator operator stopped until I had passed.  

There is more to it, though. Seeing an organized structure, even an ugly one, reduced to a pile of rubble is chaotic.  It's like watching large reptilian predators ripping into a a creature who had been outrunning them only moments before.  

Or watching an earthquake or tornado or tsunami unfold in slow motion. 

I saw a refrigerator picked up in a giant claw and crunched and shaken to pieces.  (Don't they recycle such things?) I saw a giant wooden beam, chopped in the 1960s out of a hundreds-of-years-old living tree in an old growth forest, bent and ripped, reduced to splinters in under a minute.  I saw an industrial shelf in perfect condition (people pay good money for those things!) twisted and flattened with one mash.  I saw 18-wheeler sized dumpsters being filled with mangled debris headed for the landfill and wondered how many lifetimes of careful trash reduction on my part could compare. I saw brick walls, made from mined clay, and carefully laid by skilled workmen over many days, knocked down and shattered with one impact of the giant metal bucket.  

The new development will be much nicer in the neighborhood.  It will increase our property values and being more wealth to our corner of the world.  It will be a happy home to hundreds of families.  It will feel safe and clean and make for a nice walking area when I fancy spending money in shops.

But I feel in my bones the sadness of our entire cultural mentality which sees the gifts of the universe as something to use up and throw out, rather than something to appreciate, care for, learn from, and preserve.

Full Circle

A couple of years ago, Rachel Barton Pine was in town to perform the complete solo Bach works on Baroque violin, under the auspices of Seattle Early Music.  When I saw that concert listing, I choked for joy and for price, then happily put down the $60 for a ticket.  (The concert was memorable!)

It turned out that while she was in town, some fellow CIM grads living in the area (I don't know them - I think they were in school after I graduated?) hired her for a high profile masterclass at a fancy place in Bellevue.  I did not send any students to play, as I didn't have anyone at the level they were looking for, and I did not go either, as I didn't want to plunk down another $25 to attend. 
But... my former violin student and babysitter, now neighbor and teaching colleague, Anne, had won a free ticket to the masterclass from the Classical radio station.  And at that masterclass, she heard it announced that Rachel would be giving another free masterclass at a church [in a non-descript lower-middle class neighborhood] in south Seattle [near Renton.]. She texted me about it in the wee hours of the morning, and the next day, she and my Anne and I loaded up and drove over to the location in question.

The masterclass was wonderful, as were the students.  The students, it turned out, study through a non-profit in Renton call Keys to Change Violin Studio, run by a Dr. Quinton Morris.  They were all middle and high school age, and mostly people of color, playing music from French Folk Song, up to Lalo Symphony Espagnole.  And clearly their teacher knows what he is doing.  Very perceptive, kind, and detailed.  Rachel worked with them in such helpful ways, and at the end, she and her young daughter (close in age to my own Anne) performed several violin duet pieces, which were as yet unpublished, from a project Rachel was spearheading called Music by Black Composers.  They had put together a program they were going to be performing all over Chicago for Black History Month that year, and I was impressed with the pieces, and with the performance of the little girl with her mother.  (When she wasn't playing, she was with her nanny coloring in the other room; Anne and another young child joined them when they tired of the masterclass.)

As I was duly impressed with Quinton, whose day job is on the faculty at Seattle University, I took down his contact information.  A year later, last Spring, I invited him to my little living room to give a masterclass for some of my and Anita's students.  It was a wonderful masterclass, as I knew it would be, and my students and I appreciated all the concrete and helpful feedback he gave them.  Also... Quinton mentioned that grew up various places in this very neighborhood, starting on a street just two blocks down the hill from me.

Before that, however, the first volume of the Music by Black Composers series was published, and I ordered it right away, and I began using it in group classes right away.

This Saturday (tomorrow) at 2:00 pm Central, Rachel's daughter, who will be celebrating her 1200th day of consecutive violin practice, is giving a recital of the entire Music by Black Composers Volume One via Facebook Live, with her mother accompanying; and Rachel says, via an online music teachers group of which we are both members, that they are planning to put it up on YouTube for future listening.

(Link to Live recital HERE.)

This coming Wednesday, it is my turn to offer a masterclass for Quinton's students at Keys to Change (via Zoom, of course...).  And our own studio will be playing recitals on Skype this Thursday and next Sunday, on which will be performed two numbers from the Black Composers book.  I can't wait for the second volume!

My Tiny "Corner" of the Planet

Last evening around 9:00 pm we were finishing up dinner in the back yard.  It was not dark yet, but certainly dusky.  In the large plum tree which hangs over the fence from the neighbor's yard, a beautiful, perfectly groomed creature woke up, stretched, and climbed down the trunk onto our large junk pile.  He watched us but did not seem afraid of us, not even Nutmeg or my toddlers.  We watched him, too, in awe.  He is a large raccoon.  I have the feeling he has been watching us in the evenings for some time as it has been light so late, and knows we are no threat to him.  He poked around in the pile for a bit, then went straight to his watering hole - a large tarp folded around leftover roofing material, which collects and holds water with each rain.  He sniffed around in the short grass in front of the shed where Nutmeg had been sitting for some time.  He decided to wander into the open shed, and Jared walked over to tell him he didn't want to get stuck in there for the night.  Our beautiful friend exited the shed and went underneath to explore there.  After a while, he crossed the yard again, climbed up the gate, and then walked the top of the fence along the alley until he was out of sight, off on his evening mission of whatever it is raccoons do - finding some meals and socializing with others of his species?  We watched him in awe and are so glad he is here!  In our yard, which was quite sterile when we moved in, and has now progressed to European import meadow, we have only ever seen insects, small invertebrates, the occasional visiting cottontail, crows, small songbirds, an occasional visiting opossum, a rare visiting squirrel, and sometimes an exploring rat invader come from the next door neighbor's attic (I can see the rat family's egress from our back patio table - they come out at night, and I have seen a little rat face poking through a knothole in our fence, or a rat scurrying in the plum tree or junk pile.  Rats are not native.)  Now we are privileged to have a raccoon for a neighbor! 

In other news...

We are underway with Furniture Tetris, and have done some of the big jobs already - Jared has started teaching (online) this week in the garage remodel.  Lazarus and Anne have moved into the front bedroom.  We have seating for more than two people in our living room.  Laurel has her own little toddler bed.  Shed clean-out has begun.  There is lots more on this project to keep us going for the whole summer, I am sure.  For example:  hemming the curtains in the kid's bedroom, finding a Craigslist dresser for Laurel, migrating all the file drawers and boxes from various locations around the cabin and shed to the newly reinstalled bookshelf in my room, "seasoning" the chalkboard paint in the new studio, painting the trim, moving the upright piano to its new corner, finishing up the DIY coatrack for that space, going through more boxes in the shed, adding more wall-top bookshelves, hanging up our framed pictures, finding some industrial shelving for our little dining/mud room/laundry/kitchen annex to put all the bulk bins on, getting a dumpster for the enormous junk pile, etc.  You might get the idea, but somehow this list makes the project list sound smaller and tidier than it feels to me.

With our family spread into two bedrooms now and all of the teaching moved to the outbuildings (minus daily morning group class online, which requires the use of our living room spinet - it has been tuned in the last century, unlike the new donor upright in the new studio, which needs a full servicing, new strings and everything, before it is useful in teaching), our cabin feels much larger.  It is sort of a freeing feeling.  At the same time, it feels as small as it is - we cannot "grow" here anymore without some unforeseen creativity or a house addition.  However, I have been blessed during the years of my adult life to live in some places where I saw the creativity of neighbors in small spaces.  I think especially of our apartment complex in Kent, where the majority of our neighbors had come here from abroad and were ready to make do with whatever they could.  We were all in two-bedroom/one-bath units with one living room, a small kitchen, a couple of closets, and a tiny porch.  (Our cabin has the same square footage as those apartments.  But we have the massive blessing here of a yard, unlimited street parking, and the outbuildings.) Our family of two, then three, then four, hosted an exchange student and taught lessons in our small place.  Our next-door neighbors on one side were a couple plus an elementary-aged son and teenaged daughter.  Our upstairs neighbors changed a few times, and usually had three generations in the unit.  Our other upstairs neighbors were a family of four plus the wife's sister and her two kids.  And our next-door neighbors on the other side were three related couples with four children between them - one family sleeping in each bedroom and the third in the living room.  Our neighbors across the parking lot from us were a family of four, which grew to five.  So I have no illusions about what is required for space that one might get from looking around at suburban America and all the home decor magazines....

There has been a lot of painting this spring.  The garage studio: one layer of primer.  A layer or two of white on the ceiling.  Two layers of yellow on the walls.  Three layers of chalkboard paint over that.  And the fence along the alley is now held up on the outside by a thick layer of paint - leftover from a project our professional painter neighbor did.  He often has extra paint from a project which doesn't match anything, and he gives it away.  I will have to acquire some more for the inside of the fence, which is currently held up by... toothpicks.  If it has enough paint holding it up, we won't have to replace it for a few years.  Also, we need to scrape and paint the exterior of the cabin.  The shed needs some more painting, and the studio building will need exterior paint after we finish replacing the rotten bits of siding.  I also have not painted our mudroom, although it has been on my list for two years.  So that's plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

Also, I have gone wild with the garden this year.  Last May I used some leftover landscaping bricks to build a kitchen garden off the edge of our patio and I migrated the few things we had been growing in the pre-existing, nearly decayed-into-the-ground garden box out by the garage to the garden box.  This year I wanted to buy some seeds (a desire which I had begun to plan to indulge in before lockdown and victory gardens).  Our kitchen garden has a number of perennial herbs as well as rhubarb, but there was still space for a number of seeds.  And then everyone went wild with victory gardens, such a happy thing!  My brother built his, and filled it with starts.  When he ran out of space, he brought me his extra starts, which filled the rest of our kitchen garden.  So I determined to rehabilitate the old garden space for my seeds.  I planted it with flowers, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, squash, and pumpkins.  More of the seeds took than I imagined.  Plus we had some really exciting volunteers from the compost in addition to a few ancient seed packets I threw in pots to see if they would germinate.  So now I am filling up our driveway with pots of tomatoes and squashes and pumpkins and greens and flowers, and it is really quite astounding.  I am collecting neighbor's cast off nursery pots and buying potting soil and I am having so much fun.  I loved plants as a child when we had a very large, semi-wooded backyard, but I have had no reason to engage much with plants when I spent most of my adulthood in various apartments with little access to nature.  Now I am spending a lot of time replanting and watering and weeding and admiring, and it is very happy.

Disappointments

There were a couple of big disappointments for me personally in the last two weeks.  A candidate I actually looked forward to voting for dropped out before I had a chance to fill out my ballot.  And the Seattle Young Artist Music Festival was cancelled.  This was the first year I had three students entering in the complete program category, two of whom I started myself, and they have been working hard, and had already been working with a professional accompanist.

...

Someone Near and Dear was hospitalized for a lung issue for nearly two weeks starting January 10th, the same day the first traveler from Wuhan was hospitalized in another Seattle hospital.  Near and Dear found the hospital quite boring and did as much research on the far away corona virus in China as could be done - reading every paper and scientific opinion put out there.  In late January, Near and Dear detailed to me quite a bit of this research, which made it clear to me that we would be experiencing the virus in the US at some point in the next year, and that a large percentage of the world population was expected to get sick (40%-80%) without any intervention.  I was given a lot of statistics on communicability and incubation and fatality rates and the possibility of reinfection, as far as it was known.  When it became clear on March 1st that covid-19 had been silently spreading through Seattle and the first fatalities were happening, I had already been prepared for the idea that Seattle might be the first place in the US to get hit, and that social distance and quarantine might be a real thing.

That weekend we went to Hurricaine Ridge for our one day of winter (and it was glorious!).  Glad we got that in, as last year it was cancelled due to the government shutdown. (Plowing in National Parks was out.).This weekend we went with Jared to Vancouver, B.C., where he was teaching a Dalcroze workshop, and we got to experience some more beach, mountains, and rain forrest (and the hotel pool!)...

Last February we had two weeks of being snowed in and teaching via internet - Snowmaggedon.  This year, looks like we'll have a similar deal, but without snow.

The government in Washington state has taken clear leadership.  All gatherings of more than 250 are banned, and schools in three counties are closed for a minimum of six weeks.  Our business will continue as usual, but with more internet lessons, likely.  I have one student's parent who is being tested for covid-19 as we speak.  That parent has not entered my home in months due to the driver's license of the child, and as a precaution, we have moved that student's lessons online indefinitely.  I hate internet teaching, but I see the wisdom, and frankly, I can't afford not to teach.  Several of my Seattle colleagues have already taken all their teaching online this week, and we are all talking about how to manage group class ideas via technology.  Group class is a real part of our students' tuition, and we owe them something beneficial, as we owe ourselves the income. 

Our weekend recital is cancelled.  We chose to do that preemptively before the state implemented new rules to protect the elderly from a visiting virus; I did not want to unwittingly take germs into a retirement home.   Another retirement home about 10 miles from here has had 20 deaths to date from this virus.  So we are having small recitals in-house, during group classes next week.  Possibly taking the two at home to the park a block away if the weather permits.

Anyway, I don't see anyone around here panicking.  Truly I just see lots of people and organizations taking the lead to protect our vulnerable neighbors.  Near and Dear is one of them.

(It is interesting to be in the middle of all of this, not so long after I finished reading about the cholera outbreak in London of 1854.)

Imperialist Gardens

Yesterday morning as I was walking the neighborhood solo while the kids were still sleeping, basking in the morning sunlight, enjoying exploring everything I can see, my mind was whirring, as it is often wont to.  Some themes from the previous night's post came spinning out in new ways, and now I have more to say, and it is not about schooling, although maybe it is...

It is about colonialism in all the negative senses of the word. 

As I look at yards around houses, I see familiar things.  I see a few large native trees.  I see some smaller ornamental trees, usually imported from another continent.  I see lawn.  The lush lawns are made up of only one or two species of grass not from around here.  The scraggly lawns are made up of whatever felt like growing.  Most of them, lush or otherwise, are regularly mowed into submission, chopped to a length deemed attractive by the residents, or to a length imagined to be deemed attractive by the neighbors.  There are flower beds containing shrubs and flowers and various plantings, mostly imported from other continents.  And there are the gardener's nemesis: weeds.  Weeds, of course, are ugly plants that we don't want soiling our space.  Or a gentler definition: weeds are any plant that is not where we want it to be. 

In a naturally balanced ecosystem, of course, there are no weeds.  Weeds are only defined by what humans don't want.

Think me crazy, but I have always been sympathetic to weeds, and I have felt badly about pulling them, preferring to let life live its own way.  But of course, that isn't practical is it? 

I realized on my walk, all of a sudden, that the imperialist culture of Western Europe (which we erroneously conflate with Christianity ALL THE TIME) that took over the world, snatching unknown people for forced labor, and rounding up or killing other unknown people which were in the way, to create a lifestyle of comfort for ourselves, is exactly how we create havens of rest around our homes, too.  "Weeds" are how we see the native plants which are the foundation of the carefully balanced ecosystem in our place.  And "weeds" are how we see native people who don't fit in with our culture of comfort.  We bring in other, more-comfortable-to-us species to please our senses without considering the soil, the water systems, the insects, the birds, or anything else that lives in symbiosis.

This was heavily on the back burner of my mind while I was teaching in my corner room at the church in Gig Harbor late yesterday afternoon, when a man came around the corner with a LARGE propane torch, setting fire to the weeds growing up between the landscaping rocks just outside my window.  He got carried away, and accidentally burned some young trees and ferns and shrubs which were meant to stay.  With heavy clouds of smoke going up, he had to run the hose on his fires and stomp them out, leaving charred blackness in the so-called landscaping.  Then he came back with a huge plastic bucket labelled weed-killer. 

The man was merely doing his job. 

I felt angry.  Vaguely angry that he was endangering the building with roaring fires so close to the eaves.  Very angry that he let the fires burn some carefully bedded plants.  Partially angry at the environmental degradation caused by unnecessary smoke, the production of propane for this purpose, and the poison of the weed killer.  But I was most angry that we see the miracle of tenacious, beautiful native life, growing in its own perfect spot, as a nuisance which must be killed. 

But the man was merely doing his job. 

We do this stuff ALL the time in so many ways.  And we have NO idea what we are doing.  We are all just doing our jobs.  This is how its always been done.  This is the most efficient, expedient way.  This is what's practical.  This is what the neighbors expect.  This is normal. 

We never stop to think outside the box - our little box of cultural comfort handed down to us generation after generation.  I come from slave-owners many generations back.  Slavery is officially illegal, but do you think all the attitudes which made it possible are dead?  I doubt it.  There are tiny whispers in the way we do little day-to-day things, handed down from parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren. 

Looking at imperialist gardens, it is easy for me to see today how we could slash and burn whole forests, kidnap families in the middle of the night and ship them overseas to work unpaid under the eye of the whip until death do us part, selling off their family members at a whim,  pour poison in people's drinking water for financial gain and lock the clean-up in irrelevant legal battles for years, create damaging earthquakes to wrest bits of ancient forests out of the ground to propel us from place to place at our convenience, laugh at the possibility that the only way we have left for the few tough-enough-to-still-be-alive remaining rightful inhabitants of the continent to find their way forward is to let them swindle us in casinos, consider nomads eyesore to be rounded up and placed somewhere out of sight (was that the Plains Natives in the 1800s? or is that the tent-dwellers in large cities in the 2010s?).  We are a culture that uses force, coercion, and abuse to control those we see beneath us, and THAT INCLUDES OUR VERY OWN CHILDREN.  And then we are unhappy people, and we wonder why.

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  The enormous dump filled up with things that should never have been made in the first place.  Garbage that will never rot.  Plastic that will break into smaller and smaller pieces and haunt us for hundreds or thousands of years.  The everything that you buy which is packaged in plastic.  Or the garbage that never even made it to the dump, which the sea water has collected in rafts the size of Texas.  Unprecedented-in-the-history-of-the-world conspicuous consumption at a daily level, and we can't even see that we're doing it.  It's cheap.  It's convenient.  It keeps us in our comfortable box.  If we want to imagine we don't need it all, never fear: every day we are advertised to in so many ways.  And we have the biological push to keep up with those around us, so we keep chasing all this pointlessness...

I wish I could take all this baggage to the dump, leave it there, and start fresh.  But the reality is slower and more difficult.  We must work through it little by little, day by day, painfully.  True change is often slow.

Noticing the problem is the first step.  Anger is a signal.  When we notice the signal as a call to action, we are letting anger work its magic.  Get good and angry...

Words

I have a sudden and possibly short window of opportunity since Anne is at the neighbors', Laurel is asleep in bed, and Jared and Lazarus have just left on a run.  Seize the writing!

Just bits and pieces today, about literature and life, not so much related....

Matthew 5:38-48 in N.T. Wright's translation:
"You heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."  But I say to you: don't use violence to resist evil!  Instead, when someone hits you on the right cheek, turn the other one towards him.  When someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your cloak, too.  And when someone forces you to go one mile, go a second one with him.  Give to anyone who asks you, and don't refuse someone who wants to borrow from you.
'You heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy."  But I tell you: love your enemies!  Pray for people who persecute you!  That way, you'll be children of your father in heaven!  After all, he makes his sun rise on bad and good alike, and sends rain both on the upright and on the unjust.  Look at it like this: if you love those who love you, do you expect a special reward?  Even tax-collectors do that, don't they?  And if you only greet your own family, what's so special about that?  Even Gentiles do that, don't they?  Well then: you must be perfect, just as your heavenly father is perfect.'

...and some of his commentary...

"The shocking thing about this passage in the Sermon on the Mount is that we are told to watch what our heavenly father is doing and then do the same ourselves.  Here is the puzzle: Israel, the chosen people, are challenged to realize that God doesn't have favourites!  What sense can we make of that?  If they are chosen, doesn't that mean they are God's favourites? 
"The answer to the puzzle is found earlier in the Sermon.  Israel isn't chosen in order to be God's special people while the rest of the world remains in outer darkness.  Israel is chosen to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth.  Israel is chosen so that, through Israel, God can bless all people.  And now Jesus is calling Israel to be the light fo the world at last.  He is opening the way, carving a path through the jungle towards that vocation, urging his followers to come with him on the dangerous road.
"And dangerous it is.  Not only has Israel in Jesus' day got many enemies, pagan nations who have overrun the land and made the people subject to harsh rules and taxes.  There are just as many dangers within, as movements of national resistance spring up, fuelled by anger at the increasing injustice and wickedness.  And, within that again, the divisions within Jewish society are becoming more marked, with a few becoming very rich and the majority being poor, some very poor.
"These were all pressing issues for the people listening to Jesus.  How did his kingdom-message apply to them?  How can it then apply to us today?
"Jesus offers a new sort of justice, a creative, healing, restorative justice.  The old justice found in the Bible was designed to prevent revenge running away with itself.  Better an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth than an escalating feud with each side going one worse than the other.  But Jesus goes one better still.  Better to have no vengeance at all, but rather a creative way forward, reflecting the astonishingly patient love of God himself, who wants Israel to shine his light into the world so that all people will see that he is the one true God, and that his deepest nature is overflowing love.  No other god encourages people to behave in a way like this!
"So Jesus gives three hints of the sort of thing he has in mind.  To be struck on the right cheek, in that world, almost certainly meant being hit with the back of the right hand.  That's not just violence, but an insult: it implies that you're an inferior, perhaps a slave, a child, or (in that world, and sometimes even today) a woman.  What's the answer?  Hitting back only keeps the evil in circulation.  Offering the other cheek implies: hit me again if you like, but now as an equal, not an inferior.
"Or suppose you're in a lawcourt where a powerful enemy is suing you) perhaps for non-payment of some huge debt) and wants the shirt off your back.  You can't win; but you can show him what he's really doing.  Give him your cloak as well; and in a world where most people only worse those two garments, shame him with your impoverished nakedness.  This is that the rich, powerful and careless are doing.  They are reducing the poor to a state of shame.
"The third example clearly reflects the Roman military occupation.  Roman soldiers had the right to force civilians to carry their equipment for one mile.  But the law was quite strict; it forbade them to make someone go more than that. Turn the tables on them, advises Jesus.  Don't fret and fume and plot revenge.  Copy your generous God!  Go a second mile, and astonish the soldier (and perhaps alarm him 0 what if his commanding officer found out?) with the news that there is a different way to be human, a way which doesn't plot revenge, which doesn't join the armed resistance movement (what's what verse 39 means), but which wins God's kind of victory over violence and injustice.
"These examples are only little sketches, like cartoons to give you the idea.  Whatever situation you're in, you need to think it through for yourself.  what would it mean to reflect God's generous love despite the pressure and provocation, despite your own anger and frustration?
"Impossible?  Well, yes, at one level.  But again Jesus' teaching isn't just good advice, it's good news.  Jesus did ti all himself, and opened up the new way of being human so that all who follow him can discover it.  When they mocked him, he didn't respond.  When they challenged him, he told quizzical, sometimes humorous, stories that forced them to think differently.  When they struck him, he took the pain.  When the put the worst bit of Roman equipment on his back - the heavy crosspiece on which he would be killed - he carried out of the city to the place of his own execution.  When they nailed him to the cross, he prayed for them.
"The Sermon on the Mount isn't just about us.  If it was, we might admire it as a fine bit of idealism, but we'd then return to our normal lives.  It's about Jesus himself.  This was the blueprint for his own life.  He asks nothing of his followers that he hasn't faced himself.  And, within his own life, we can already sense a theme that will grow larger and larger until we can't miss it.  If this is the way to show what God is really like, and if this is the pattern that Jesus himself followed exactly, Matthew is inviting us to draw the conclusion: that in Jesus we see the Emmanuel, the God-with-us person.  The Sermon on the Mount isn't just about how to behave.  It's about discovering the living God on the loving, and dying, Jesus, and learning to reflect that love ourselves into the world that needs it so badly."

Some more great children's literature we have been listening to on library CD's:

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
During the Depression, a family in Chicago is split up when they lose their apartment, and the teenaged daughter goes to small-town Illinois to live with her rather colorful, self-supporting, and unaffectionate grandmother.  Her year in such a tiny town where everyone knows everyone's business is quite extraordinary.  The large snake in the attic falling on the nude postmistress posing for the New York artist who is renting a room in Grandma's house is only one of many AMAZING and uproarious scenes.  Story telling at its finest.

Ice Whale by Jean Craighead George
A bowhead whale is born in the Arctic in 1848.  The young boy, Toozak, who sees his birth from his canoe names him Siku.  This novel follows Siku until the last sighting of him in 2048, as well as several generations of Toozaks, whose lives are bound to that whale.  It follows the commercial whaling of the late 1800s which decimates the whale populations, as well as their slow recovery after whaling falls apart.  And it follows the change in Native cultures from subsistence to dependance on Western interventions, as well as the building of the Artic Research Station in Barrow, Alaska.  It ends on a hopeful note, and is full of love.  Love for humans.  Love for animals.  Love for plants.  Love for land- and water-scapes. 

On the Far Side of the Mountain, also by Jean Craighead George
This is the sequel to another book we have not yet listened to.  Two teenagers have left home and are living off the land in the Catskills.  Their wilderness survival skills are awesome, and their careful observations of the land, plants, and animals around them allow them to use what they need while living peaceably with their surroundings.  They have adult friends nearby - a librarian, a university professor who lives in a cabin, a farm owner...  This story follows the confiscation of the boy's endangered falcon by a wildlife ranger, and a pair of long, interrelated treks through the mountains, using special wilderness communication skills.  Just as in Ice Whale, there is a lot of love.  Love for people, animals, plants, and the landscape.  Also, history.

Recently neighbor lent Anne the Ramona Quimby books, and I have read her two of them so far.  I remembered not liking them very well as a child, and now from my adult perspective I can understand why.  Ramona is such a real, wonderful child, with such big feelings, and frankly, most of the grownups around her don't make much effort to understand her and despite their sympathies toward her, pretty much feel that children should be seen and not heard.  She is loved dearly by her family, but her insides are pretty much a mystery to her parents.  I think Anne can really relate to her, and is LOVING reading them.

Also, I am loving the little bit of homeschooling we've been doing.  We have started math, handwriting, and phonics (in addition to cello), and because we started in late June, I feel no pressure to hurry through anything.  So we do one or two or three subjects most days, and if we miss something here or there, it's totally fine.

...Here's a post I put yesterday on facebook, if you're not on there:

Ballance Talent Education

Published by Ruth Marie Ballance · 23 hrs · 

What a group class week! Lots of learning and fun. Plus...our musicians experienced the unfinished studio space, noisy work by a trio of electricians, a visit from a city inspector (who it turns out is a singer in his off-hours and was beyond tickled to be serenaded on the job), and a visit by a service dog who tried very hard not to chase all the tennis balls bouncing around during Dalcroze. Our musicians capped the week by playing an inspiring pop-up concert under the trees at the neighborhood park. Their program:

Chocolate Drops by Will Marion Cook

Sonata IV by Isabella Leonarda

Duchess of Devonshire's Reel, Marianne's Reel, and Just So in the North by Ignatius Sancho

The Boom & Birds at Sunrise by Stanley Fletcher

...and three folk songs: All My Little Ducklings (which they also sang in English and German), Go Tell Aunt Rhody, and Suzuki's 1st Twinkle Variation

A little about the composers on the program:

Will Marion Cook grew up in D.C. and Chattanooga.  A fantastically talented young person, he attended Oberlin Conservatory to study violin at age 15, studied in Berlin for two years, and attended conservatory in New York where he studied composition with Antonin Dvorak.  Much of this was sponsored by Frederick Douglass, who was himself (I did not know this!) a violinist.  Working as a Classical musician, Will faced a lot of discrimination as a Black man, so he ended up turning to popular styles and writing for the theater, where he was more accepted.

Isabella Leonarda, a Baroque composer, lived her whole live in Novara, Italy, where she was quite famous as a musician.  She entered the convent there at the age of 16, and spent the rest of her long life there.  She composed extensively, and also likely taught the younger nuns music lessons.  She wrote an entire set of twelve Sonatas for two violins and violone.  There are recordings and scores available.  They each have several movements which are through-composed.  If you're looking for the female Vivaldi, my fellow violinists, she's the one.  The Sonatas are all up on imslp.

Ignatius Sancho... it is hard to tell his story without wanting to break down and bawl.  He was born on a slave ship off the coast of Africa, which can only mean... His very pregnant mother had just been kidnapped and forced onto a horribly crowded, unsanitary boat and was being shipped overseas to work as a slave.  She somehow managed to give birth with very little or no medical help, and she and the tiny newborn survived the voyage to South America.  As a toddler, Ignatius was again put on a boat and shipped across the ocean to England - with or without his family?  I don't know.  This tiny boy is then sold to a family in England who held him captive, although they did choose to educate him as well.  He was eventually freed.  Due to his force of personality, I can only imagine, he survived all this and was quite prolific in publishing papers on abolition and was the first Black man in England to vote in an election and to have his music published.  The fiddle tunes we played all date from the late 1700s.  By the way, I found his music in the amazing new book Music by Black Composers, Volume 1.  It's got music suitable for Suzuki book 2-4 students, and can be played as duets, or with the piano.  I can't wait for the second volume to come out!

And Stanley Fletcher.  Well, all I have to say to my violin readers is, if you have never watched the Paul Rolland videos, it is more than well worth the $200 to purchase The Teaching of Action in String Playing.  That thing is a gold mine.  Truly life-changing.  Watch it.  And watch it again.  And then some more.

Coming up:

My dad is arriving on Tuesday to do some more electrical work on the garage conversion for us.  This is very exciting!  With the two studios out back totaling something around 358 square feet, our 840 square foot house is going to feel SO MUCH MORE MANAGEABLE.  Next week we also are rehearsing the Brahms C Minor Piano Quartet with Adam for our upcoming August 2nd house concert.  And next weekend is Jared's and my 13th anniversary, which we will celebrate by loading our poor little car to the gills, and dragging the children all the way across the state to the desert to teach at the Walla Walla Suzuki Institute next week.  I am hoping to figure out how to do something slightly more fun, but the logistics of travel and childcare and rehearsing and teaching are a bit daunting...

Meadow

Two specific meadows linger in my mind.  The first is swaths of Clark Lake Park in Kent, where the grass can grow almost as tall as I am during the summer.  It was my daily haunt for five years.  There are so many types of grass with beautiful seed heads and so many wildflowers.  Once for our July wedding anniversary, Jared and I walked there together and picked a bouquet of grass.  You can stand in those varietous meadows and look out eastward at the Cascade Mountains.  

The other meadow is Spray Park at Mount Rainier.  Visiting it is a hard won pleasure.  After driving to the national park area, there are another 11 miles of unpaved and bumpy logging roads, all uphill, and then a three-mile uphill hike from Mowich Lake.  The plants in the alpine meadow are so delicate, cut through by tiny mountain streams, with views of the summit behind it.

This year I am taking the hippie approach to lawn care here in Renton, and I'm going for meadow.  I mowed rather infrequently and sparsely last summer, and the areas which I mowed less are healthier and sport more species this year.  (Because I live in a less swanky area, I have minimal trouble with the neighbors in getting away with this.)  I have one type of very thick stem-y grass I really don't like along with a few horrible prickly things lurking beneath the shrubs, but otherwise I am marveling at all the little surprises springing forth.

I love all our dandelions.  The outrageous spray of yellow is so cheerful, and I feel sad when they go to seed.

Economic Fly-Over

I'm not sure if any economic lessons were learned this week, but...

Friday:

My small entrepreneurs. They are selling weeds and pinecones they picked up on the alley. Anne is trying to get enough money for another slime kit. Jared bought a pinecone on his way to the bank.

Sunday early afternoon:
Today's lemonade is a more desirable commodity, but with more sellers, the per capita earnings are lower than desired....

Sunday evening:
She came up with a more lucrative deal - performing for the yard sale shoppers across the street.

Monday, same set up, but only contractors were over there, so she was disappointed not to be receiving any tips during her practice.  Now, let's see if I can convince her that she can buy more slime supplies if she buys them separately rather than in a fancy kit....

Car Trouble in Narnia

We have had snow on the ground for fourteen days now at our house.  These pictures were from height of things.  

On Friday morning, I finally went to dig out our Honda from the driveway, as Anne was slated to go back to school for one day before the break, and Jared wanted to run out to the grocery and bank.  As it turned out, Anne's school was cancelled yet again, as the parking lot at the park was unplowed and the gate locked.  

Later on Friday, Jared went to dig out the Chevy from the street.  After he dug it out, he was going to move it into the driveway behind the Honda, but it wouldn't start.  So he pulled the Honda around and tried jumping it.  Still nothing.  So we texted my brother, and he showed up a while later with his car battery charger.  

Having two cars working on Saturday morning was going to be important, as Jared and I were slated to play special music for church, and five people plus a cello don't fit into one car.  

So they charged the Chevy for a while and we ate dinner.  And it still wouldn't start.  So Jeff and Jared and Anne loaded up to go to the only car place still open at that hour in Renton to buy a new battery.  But the guy there wouldn't sell them a battery, saying that the car needed to charge overnight.

So Jeff went home, and we left the car plugged in overnight.

Saturday morning, Jared was up early to practice for church, and he went out to check on the car.  Good news was it started, and he drove it around the block.  BUT, the check engine light came on.  So he didn't want to drive it to Auburn and have it conk out and have to be towed all the way back to Renton.  So he did some calculations and figured out how to get us all in one car.  At departure time, we had the head rests off the front seat, the bottom end of the cello case balanced on the top of Laurel's car seat (her head is low enough so as to be out of the way), and the top end hanging over Jared's shoulder in the front passenger seat, braced by his left arm.  

We limped down to Auburn and walked in the door just a few minutes before the service started.  The lovely greeter of the morning asked if we needed any help, so I recruited her to watch the kids while we were playing.  Jared picked up a bulletin.  It turns out we were listed, not only for special music, but also for offertory.  So he grabbed some hymnals, and we came up with another number with five minutes to spare.  It all turned out fine, but was a bit crazy.

The car is going to a shop tomorrow morning, and our trip to Oregon is a bit postponed...

That was the first time in two weeks I had been down the hill from our house, and I was surprised to find that it was snow-free down there.  Looked like winter had never hit.  Saturday night we went into downtown Seattle for a fabulous concert.  Today I took the kids to the waterfront to see the Aquarium, and we had a family outing to Lowe's for shelf-building materials.  Every time we came home, it was like returning to the land of Narnia - winter, where it was only drizzly and grey down the hill.  The rest of Seattle seems to be back in normal business.  But we still have three or four inches of snow in the yard and piles in the street.  Wild.  And I love it!

Today's view out the front window:

Growing Pains

There's been so much going on here lately that I don't even know where to start.  And I'm not sure I have the stamina to see the blog post through in terms of writing, but it's been brewing for a while and I have the urge to get it "in print".

The last week and a half we have gotten record breaking snow - something around a foot and a half, which means we have mostly been snowed in during that time.  In the more normal winters we have experienced here, we have had between one and three snows on the ground a year, and each snow was on the order of .1 to three inches at most and lasted a day or two, tops.  This has been dramatically different and reminds me of Rochester, except on hilly terrain without snow plows and salt and snow shovels.  It is kind of wonderful, and we've sort of been on vacation, although we have not been missing lessons, but rather teaching via the many internet video calling services.  There has been lots of sledding and playing with the neighbor kids since everyone has been off from school.

While being snowed in, I sort of got the bee in my bonnet about going for broke on potty training Lazarus.  He's been interested for quite some time, and using the potty occasionally.  He has not worn a diaper since Friday morning.  A couple of days have been accident-free and easy.  A couple of days have involved lots of floor mopping and showers...  I think he's going to do it!

Anne went to her first rock concert last week with Jeffrey and Linda; 2Cellos played here in Kent, and they are her main inspiration when it comes to her own cello playing.  Also she lost her sixth tooth this past evening.  She's been quite precocious on the tooth-offloading, as she is not even six years old yet.

So many little things are coming together.  I skim through lots of information in life, and I don't always retain it very well, but then sometimes I surprise myself when I pull things together and have a great idea or solution or sudden lurch forward.  I realize that some of the things that buzzed by me have been sitting on the back burner waiting for the flavors to meld.  I guess you could call it intuition, but it's more like little seedlings waiting for the right conditions to sprout.

Anne has been wanting to learn how to read.  And also we have to decide about what to do for her for school next year.  Which is a big decision, and it's hard to make up our minds.  There are great things on one path as well as big draw backs.  And great things on another path as well as other big draw backs.  I read a great article on the science of learning to read the other day.  And also Anne pulled a book off the shelf which I haven't looked at in the year it's been sitting there.  It's a book of Montessori activities to do with your child, which Nancy lent us some time ago.  So all of a sudden, I'm intentionally doing little bits of school with Anne in the cracks of every day, as sort of a test run for the next phase of her life.  And reading to her, not just the reading for fun that we do normally, but also discussing the characters' feelings and motives and choices in an educational way.  Or maybe the phonics and patterns of some of the words on the page.  Mostly I've been in the "she'll grow up just fine and learn what she needs to learn" mindset with her like any good self-respecting 1950's mom, but I'm suddenly in the "let's grab onto her interests and grow them intentionally" mindset.

...After Christmas our toy situation was awful.  May I remind you that we live in 840 square feet with three children, three cats, and two teachers working from home and students traipsing in most days.  We have slowly unpacked the garage (our dumping grounds the day of the move), not wanting to overburden our small space.  But we have the volume of stuff which is considered normal and appropriate for our grouping of people in our culture.  So... we do have a problem.  In the last few weeks I brought in most of the rest of the shelving which was lying fallow in the garage and placed it strategically in our living room and bedroom.  And also the bedroom was completely rearranged.  So what I want to know is, why in the European tradition have we always slept with our heads to the wall and our feet in the middle of the room?  Due to various factors of bedroom shape and size (with all five of us sharing one bedroom) and the sleeping order of people across the beds to best facilitate a nursing baby and a cuddly toddler, we find ourselves now sleeping with our feet to the wall and our heads in the middle of the room.  I'm pretty happy with the change.  Anyway, the toys all now are sorted and kept with sets together on shelves and baskets in the bedroom and living room (it's not House Beautiful, but it's functional, and far better than the horrible alley of junk which was squeezed between the bunkbed and wall formerly).  And then this lends itself to the kids having some agency in being able to clean up their toys in some meaningful way.  So now before bath time, we have a nightly clean up time.  (I realize this sounds like a no-brainer to many of you, but just go with me here.)  I am heavily involved in this - it's more of a family clean-up time than a kid clean-up time, but we are getting the house mostly put back together before bed.  Of course, my kids are creative, so there are things like massive construction-paper confetti projects and such which may take a couple of days to dissipate, but we are becoming a bit more civilized in a Western sort of way, which our volume of people and Western toy pattern is calling for.

...There is so much going on in my teaching right now.  I had a parent-teacher conference out of the blue a few weeks ago which helped me bring some of my teaching frustrations to the fore, along with some of my students' learning frustrations, all in a very productive way.  I am going through one of those "intuition" the pot is coming to a boil moments.  So many things coming together!   The question I wrote about two summers ago as to why I am a pretty fantastic workshop/masterclass teacher (if I may toot my own horn) but seem to be only mediocre on a weekly basis here in Renton is in there.  And I'm running that question through the databases and comparing it to my teaching in Rochester, which was on the whole pretty high-powered.  But also *not* that different than now.  And there's the statement which Mr. Guy made to me when I was a long-term sub in his freshman harmony/keyboard/sightsinging/eartraining classes back in Cleveland that I didn't have high enough expectations for the students.  That rubbed me the wrong way, because in my mind I expected a LOT from them, and they were not producing.  Someone recently posted a meme I can't exactly remember about not matching the energy of the room you enter but projecting your energy into the room.  That is suddenly speaking to me.  I'm thinking about how to set up systems around my teaching to do the hard work of setting boundaries so I don't have to spend my energy on that and can dive into the creative interpersonal challenges and depth of the musical meaning, and of course all the technique.  I come from a place where I feel like I've spent my whole life being the one trying to keep everyone else on an even keel, and I am generally pretty skilled at that, but that is not working in my teaching.  I've been functioning on the "don't overwhelm the student with information they're not ready for," because I've seen great information presented poorly or at the wrong time go unused at the end of the day.  But now I feel like in many cases I'm withholding information from students, so as not to upset them, that I could really push them to use.

I remember myself as a small piano student whose mother took prodigious notes and practiced with her in remarkable ways.  I was so skilled and completely unaware of my precociousness or the very careful, thorough, and consuming process which got me there.  I also remember myself as the piano student who had graduated from her mother's daily practice help who was basically every teacher's nightmare.  As I have been telling one of my violin students recently, there are three types of students:  those who don't do what the teacher asks, those who do exactly what the teacher asks, and those who take what the teacher asks and run with it.  I spent a lot of time as the first type of student.  My teacher would write detailed notes on EXACTLY what to practice.  And I would put them on the music rack next to my scores.  And I would not read them.  Just bash through a few things and call it a day.  Because, people, the mental effort to practice well is exhausting, and I did not have the desire to tax myself that way.  Even though it would have been so good for me.

But I especially remember myself as the graduate student in violin who was with the teacher I respected and trusted so much, when I was that third type of student.  I showed up to my first lesson of the year in September and played the first movement of Bartok 2 from memory, pretty much at performance level.  If you know about violin repertoire, you know that Bartok 2 is one of the most difficult concerti ever written for the violin.  It tops Tchaikovsky and Brahms and Beethoven.  My amazing teacher, supposing this was an old piece I trotted out by the level at which I played it, asked who all I'd played it for before, and the only person I could list was my roommate.  I prepared for my lessons for him like that.  I suppose I wanted to impress my teacher, but more than that, I didn't want to waste any of my precious lesson time with him, hearing him tell me something I could have figured out on my own.  That passionate-just-turned-22-year-old is the student I always imagine inside my own students.

I feel disappointed when they aren't actively pursuing their best and using all the powers of their imagination to get there.  But I forget it was a lifetime of study and learning experiences before I got to that place.  I come into a lesson and toss the tennis ball to my student and watch them serve.  I match their energy and we play ball on their terms.  When their imagination and sights are set so low, it's a lethargic game.  In some odd way, I expected to receive energy from them.  But it's slow.  It's boring.  And it's not getting much of anywhere.  So I am taking steps to serve the ball hard and fast.  And throw it back again.  While reading the temperature and turning down the heat if I am getting overwhelm signs.  Although I occasionally make grave mistakes, I am for the most part VERY empathetic.

I am stepping up my game about communicating expectations clearly.  Part of it is testing out some new systems for practice assignment delivery.  I don't have the perfect answer yet, but I am honing in on what seems to be broadly effective, and I am contemplating implementing a whole new plan next fall.

Also, I am working harder to have fewer kid distractions while I am teaching.  I teach pretty decently with my kids around, but when I have 100% of my brain available for my students, there are more moments when that "intuition" has a chance to boil over.  Not letting my students gloss over something I don't like (and hope they ultimately won't like either), because I can't muster the bandwidth to figure  out what's bugging me about it, finding ways to address and break it down to create more skill, and open their awareness to more beauty.

Going back to my thoughts about my skill as a workshop teacher coming in well above my skill as a year-round teacher...  Communicating in a masterclass setting feels easier, because it is a high-energy situation to begin with.  The teacher, the parent, the student, and the observers are all looking for a big change in a short period of time, and there is a commitment to do something dramatic.  The long-haul teaching makes it easy to slip into family mode... you know how healthy, loved kids are worst behaved around their parents and best behaved when they are at school or at their friends' home or church.  Well, teachers can be like that, too.  By which, maybe I mean too relaxed.  Like my mode of figuring that Anne will learn what she needs academically over the years.  (And she will, without my help.)

I have been recording a lot of things for students lately.  Video-recording.  And sending them home.  I think focussed and specific recordings are part of my delivery system upgrade.  Back in the old days we would record a whole lesson, and you know, many times that whole lesson wasn't listened to.  Or it was listened to distractedly.  (Except, of course, that passionate, uber-prepared 22-year-old listened to her lesson later that day with headphones on, in the library, her scores and a notebook and a sharpened pencil ready, taking notes on everything the teacher asked for, as well as everything she heard that she herself wanted to improve upon.  And none of my students are that young lady...)  But students need a recording of a specific shifting exercise.  Or a tricky accidental-laden passage in slow motion.  Or a review of the new bow exercises along with an explanation of what skills we are developing in them.

I have fewer students this year.  And an easy-going baby.  So I am able to have enough bandwidth open to actually process some things outside of lessons, not just *commit triage* when they show up.  When I spend time preparing certain things, I can ask for more.

Our December recitals were the biggest-progress-from-one-recital-to-the-next sort of recital.  I got up the nerve this time to ask my students to complete 100 performances (and mark them on a chart!) of their piece before the recital.  Most of them did it.  I'm asking for that again for the March recitals.  I'm realizing that it's not forcing them to do work they don't want to do (although it may be that -- see "Practicing cello with daughter").  It's offering them the opportunity to feel really confident and ease when it comes time to share their music with others.  I am working in my mind to reframe things I associate with "pushing" students to "giving them the opportunities they deserve."  Because 99 out of a 100 will serve the tennis ball just barely over the net.  I have to teach them to put it out of the court.  Because that's how they'll gain the energy to be that 22-year-old who didn't just do what the teacher said, but ran so hard with it the teacher was passed up.

One element which worked well in Rochester is that all my teaching was in the same room.  I was not constantly changing environments and spaces and having to carry everything with me.  It's gotten easier this year with only one commute, but I still don't have that magical whiteboard in *my studio*.  That's the board on which I wrote down the students' names who had practiced what I considered an acceptable amount for forward progress during the week, and included their total practice time for the week.  And which triggered one little girl to ask her friend why her name was never on the board.  And then it was every week thereafter.  And that little girl made some incredible progress.  You should have seen her bow arm when she was in book 5.  I'm working on how I can combine my weekly practice assignments, and video clips, and lesson reporting, and that sort of friendly peer pressure into one technology for next year.

Holiday Spam

Truly, Christmas lights in a dark season are one of my favorites.  And I took a lot of pictures over the holidays.  If you missed fb, here you go.

We unexpectedly saw a friend at  Carpinito, while we were drinking hot apple cider, shopping for vegetables, and greeting two very unhappy reindeer and a bored camel named Moses.

I spent a decent amount of time in early December sitting at the piano learning parts for recitals.  I did a lot of accompanying.  Given the amount of music I needed to play artistically and the amount of time I had to practice, I practiced more intelligently and efficiently at the piano than I had before.  I've been thinking about that as I've been teaching some of my students who are slow to progress due to busy lives.

 Below:  not my photo.  We joined some other studios for a big concert at the Maple Valley LDS Church Nativity Festival.

And we took our Thursday group classes to play during the Christmas concert at the SDA church around the corner from us:

Jared and I (not my photo!) also played a couple of movements from the Messiah at our church's Christmas program:

Studio recital at the retirement home in Auburn:

Studio recital at the church where we teach in Gig Harbor:

Bad picture of a video I didn't take from our church's candlelight communion:

Hike at Snoqualmie Pass the day before our departure to Texas.  Snow pack was 29 inches.  

I carried Laurel on the hike, obviously.  And Lazarus was grumpy, so I carried him, too, allowing Jared to help Anne with snow shoes and sled....

First ever flight with 3 kids:

Followed by our connection:

I got to go to both Christmas Eve services at home.  This spot really is home now as my parents no longer live in the neighborhood where I grew up:

Christmas Day.  The boy was busy trying out new gifts.

Ed and Justin brought a game Ed never liked playing with his sisters when he was growing up.  It was still dumb:

My sister always had these same two fingers in her mouth when she was tiny:

Gift exchange with Emily and Morgan:

Born one hundred years and four days apart:

Musical fun at Emily's:

Morgan's adorable dog:

My guys 💙

My mom busted out with the party hats on the 30th as we were leaving on the 31st.

Happy New Year!  We arrived back at SeaTac after midnight Pacific time.  Which was after 2 am Central.

Gratuitous baby pic.

Another hike at Snoqualmie Pass for Jared's birthday.  It was exactly two weeks after the first, and the snow pack was now 49 inches.