Four beat pattern

My schola friend Teresa took her conducting final this semester. She conducted a Palastrina Mass for us and it was lovely. We were all so proud of her. I think she will be a really great conductor. She wants to teach middle school choir. This makes me thing she is a very brave woman. Anyway, she let me take pictures of her hands while she conducted for my art project. I did one page for each beat in a four beat conducting pattern. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. My teacher spent most of the semester telling me not to be so careful so I was proud that I got these done in about ten minutes a page.
Down Beat


Beat Two

Beat Three Beat Four or the Up Beat

Hands up

I'm done! Schools out till the new year! After a careful inventory check, I have determined that I survived pretty well. I still have all my limbs and senses and so on. My shoulders and back protest that back packs are an instrument of torture and my girls club probably feels a bit neglected but beyond that I think I'm okay.

So, my last project for my drawing class was to pick an object and draw it fifty times. The idea was to get us to stretch and scramble for new ways to present an object. I don't think it worked for me cause I chose an object with SO many variations that I didn't ever have to think very hard to come up with more composition ideas. I chose to draw hands. Several people in my class looked at my like I was crazy when I told them. That kind of made me feel all egotistical and like I was bold and talented. Ah, self deception! Anyway, some of them really turned out nice so I thought I'd post a few here over the break.

Also, Jessie bought me an easel! I was drawing at her house one day and the next day when I walked in she asked me if I could stop by the art supply store tomorrow and take a look at the easel she had on hold there for me. Then she handed me a check. I was a little bit speechless. I ended up buying a different one than the one she picked out but it was just a really odd feeling. I would never buy myself something like that. I walked out of the store with this thing under my arm and I then I realized I was walking out of an art store with an easel that was now mine and that I had an easel and ... well... words fail.... It's the little things...
So, obviously, the hand above is the front of Jessie's thank you note. She has a little paper weight that looks something like that and she let me draw it.

Yesterday was the last Chant Mass of the year until January.
Now I have to be really creative to find ways to sing with people every week.
Dana took me to see the Big Bing Theory. That was pretty cool. Once again, I love a cappella music! I want to do something like that SO bad. They really own the songs they do, even songs that have been done a thousand times. They are just having fun up there preforming together. That's what I really miss; being in a group where you will probably make a fool of yourself but you're all in it together and you're mostly just having fun. It's something you get in theater but not so often in a choir situation. It makes me miss CYT and Christmas Quartets especially.

Fire of Hope is our only warmth

Have I mentioned that Advent is absolutely my favorite part of the Church year? I think I say that about Holy Week too. But it's not Holy Week now, it's Advent. Or it will be tomorrow. We can't listen to Christmas music in my house until the first Sunday of Advent. I've been waiting FOREVER and I really NEED to sing Christmas carols now. So I was on project playlist looking for nice Christmas music to put up here and I found one of my favorite obscure Advent songs of all time. I can't believe that had it! I wanted an a cappella recording of Veni Emanuel but of course they didn't have that. But they did have Night of Silence. Not a very well preformed version but I LOVE this song SO much that I don't really care. Christmas is not complete unless we sing it. I'm so glad they have guitar in this version. That's important for me cause my dad plays it. Anyway, that made me happy. I should do homework now. I'm not out of school till most of Advent is over but I will make the most of it.

Zita is not the patroness of poetry

That would be really convenient. I have always wanted, very badly, to be into poetry or, even better, to be able to write poetry. I have to write a narrative poem for English Lit and hear I am doing anything but. I guess I've been told too many times that my stories need to be longer and I have lost the ability to say much in few words. Blah. So I sat down to do it and ended up writeing something like a story. I don't know how I'm going to get it down to poetry format and a decent length that wont make my classmates hate me when I have to read it aloud.

I am taking violin lessons this Winter! *dance* I haven't met the teacher they have there yet. They hide her office away under some stairs in a dark corner. It took me forever to find it. Then she wasn't there. Bother. I am going to take voice lessons too but I have to take a few prerequisite classes first. The voice lessons are going to be more important. I am ten times more a singer than a violinist but the violin is still so special to me that I am more excited about that.

So the violin lessons have been bouncing around in my head and the art project I'm doing right now (which you will probably get tired of seeing over Christmas break, so I won't go into detail yet) involves me drawing my violin. So I sat down to write a narrative poem. I wanted to write about something I had actually experienced so it had to be my story and the first thing that came to mind was the violin. Go figure. Do they call that 'stream of consciousness' writing where you just write whatever comes to your mind at the moment. When I do it, it makes for very short, choppy sentences and odd phrases that only make sense to me. A lot like what I do on this blog most of the time. I couldn't write a poem till I know the story I was going to tell so I wrote down what I remember feeling and thinking at two moments long long ago. Only time a sleep will tell if I can make it into a poem.

~*~

"What do you want to play" my mother asked me. Maybe if I'm quiet and don't look up, she will not ask again or expect an answer. Everyone plays an instrument. Someday I would too. But what? Names bounced around in my head, each hopping to be the one that made it into my mouth. Something different, something new. Not the Piano or the Guitar. Dad and Dana played those. But what sound did these other names make. Bassoon? Oboe, Clarinet? That thing that's like a guitar only round. What's that called? Cello, Violin? No, not the violin; every one plays that. I wonder what they sound like. What wonderful sound comes out of a bassoon? The Clarinet has a lovely sounding name but when you strum or pound or blow across it, what music does it make? None of these are safe. This one will be mine. Name... name... "What do you want to play?" My mother asks again. She doesn't know what anxiety she is causing. Panic. Name... name... a different name. "Banjo." I proclaim. My mother blinks. What is a banjo? I think I knew once but the image has flown. I think it has strings. Mother gets an encyclopedia and we look it up. She reads to me about it and I look at the picture. It's that thing that looks like a guitar only round. Darn. That's not mine. I want her to stop. Go away and let me go back to the game I was playing. Forget that I said anything. I'm too little to play the banjo or anything anyway. But she doesn't. She tells dad and our friends. They think it's interesting and always look so surprised. Why can't they forget? They forget all sorts of other things. Like how I'd like a doll for Christmas, and how I don't like cake or chocolate. I have to be introduced to every adult they know who plays the banjo. I have to look interested when they talk to me about it. I have to think of something to say.

Dana has piano lessons down town in a room with lots of electric keyboards and headphones. Dad and I go with her. I'm too little to play the piano. Dana doesn't like to. I wish I could wear the headphones and play so no one could hear but me. Dad is going to get some guitar strings at the music store. We walk together between the tall buildings, in and out of the square patches of sunlight. our shadows stretch in front of us. The music store is filled with warm tingling air. There are instruments everywhere. "Here is a banjo." Dad says. He shows me how to hold it and some chords to play when you are tuning. Dad can play anything. The banjo holds no interest for me. Why don't they forget? I know what most of the instruments are but they hold new magic when they are right there; real and solid. There is a violin on a special stand on a table. It is so quiet there, all by itself. We stare at each other, the violin and I. Violin is graceful and small but I am smaller. The polished wood seems to glow and the gentle swell and curves fill my vision. Someone in the shop is telling me to try it. Try what? They hand me the bow. A strange tool. It feels awkward in my little fist. You are supposed to draw it across the string. I don't want to pick up the instrument itself. It's too big for me. I might drop it. I see the beautiful wooden pieces scattered across the floor. The violin will have to stay where it is. I twist my arm around to draw the bow. Slowly, carefully, gently. Something in me is trembling and the world seems to have fallen completely silent. I can feel how very busy we are when we are trying to hold still. The brightest thing in the room is that wooden instrument. The pale horse hair makes contact with the silvery string. Clumsily, for all my shyness. The music is an awkward scrunchy sound. The shop keeper and dad, who have just appeared again, laugh, not unkindly. I get all jittery and try not to knock anything over as I replace the bow. I smile and laugh too. What a silly noise. Dad pays for his guitar strings and we leave. I look back. There is the violin. It still rings in my ears. I know it was not a nice sound, but it rang. Everything vibrated and tingled. The sound is bigger than me but I made it. I want to do it again.

Jessie Update

Here is the picture Aunt Mary requested. This is the lovely lady Jessie
Jessie has bronchitis so she is not looking her best. She protested and yelled to her daughter for help but it was of no avail, we took the picture anyway.Like I said, she is sick right now. So your prayers are needed. For her speedy recover or peaceful death. God's will. Mean while she has found an edition of the Catholic Catechism that would be perfect to get for her family members for Christmas. If only it wasn't so expensive.... Where does my mother buy raisins?

Tap

One of the things I'm liking about going to school is the library. It's not a very big library, not like the Eastern library or the Gonzaga library but it has a a set of the complete works of Palastrina which is very surprising. The best part for me is that it has a collection of obscure musicals. It's a small colection but they have some of my favorites and some I'd never seen. So weekends have taken on a whole new meaning too. Friday means I check out a musical to watch on Saturday night.
There was this era of movie musicals that might be the golden era. When Judy Garland and Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly and all those classic stars were singing and tapping and doing both at the same time. There are some real duds from that era too. We watched some that dragged so much in the second act and were so depressing that we didn't finish them. But we have found some real gems too.

This is all Heidi's fault, by the way. She posted this amazing video of Gene Kelly tap dancing in roller skates (yes. I'm serious) and I watched it one Friday morning before I went to school. It totally made my day. I don't know why watching people tap dance makes me happy but it does. David likes it too. On my way home I looked at the DVD's in the library and low and behold, the musical from which the song was taken was sitting on the shelf.

It is called It's Always Fair Weather and it was really fun. These three guys were friends during WWII and they swear (to their favorite bar tender) that in ten years they will return from their various life paths and still be as close friends as ever. So they don't see each other for ten years and when they get back to their old favorite pub they find out that they all changed into exactly the sort of people who can't stand each other. The plot doesn't get much more interesting than that, they all kind of reflect on who they wanted to be when they met again and why they didn't become those people. They are set up to appear together on a TV show. None of them know they are going to be on the show together and by show time they have decided that they hate each other, or maybe just themselves. There were a whole bunch of great dance numbers and lots of silliness and a musical fight scene. I love fight scenes in musicals cause they're choreographed like dances and they usually involve lots of furniture smashing. It ended happily which is important for me; I like movies that are uplifting. The roller skate number was the highlight but the rest of it was well worth watching
too.

The other movie I really enjoyed was Three Little Words staring Fred Astair and Red Skelton. It was about a career of a song writing team and their friendship. I love musicals about friendship. Astair's character wants to be a magician but that seems to be the one corner of show business he can't get into with any success. Skelton's character likes baseball. He's just funny. They spend a lot of the movies harassing each other about their childish hobbies. They harass each other about a lot of things actually. But they mean a lot more to each other then they will admit. Lots of songs, lots of dance (it's Fred Astair after all) lots of comedy (Red Selton is hilarious). Both of these are really simple in story and message there are not a lot of show real brilliance as far as music goes; they are not masterpieces, but on a weekend when you just need to relax they were perfect.
See also Summer Stock.

St. Zita's Project

Remember how I chose St. Zita as my confirmation Saint cause she has all the virtues and qualities that I lack but wish I had? She was a servant and a cook, which are both things I am Not At All by nature. I've always told her that if she wanted me to be a servant at all when I grew up, she would have to make me her project. She and God have teamed up to make me a servant. It's a long process and it's not nearly done. Most of the time I don't notice, it has to do with taking Maleny out to find some pirate boots or doing CC's kitchen job one night while she's away. Most of the time I'm stubborn and don't take the hints. It just occurred to me as I was walking home from Jessie's house tonight that St. Zita was working on teaching me the other half of her earthly profession. I have my English class, and art and music theory but St. Zita signed me up for a cooking class on the sly. For the last few weeks Jessie has needed me less cause she has had other care takers there throughout the day. She's been getting creative thinking of things for me to do. I walk in and she has found some recipe in her book that she has always wanted to make and wouldn't it be fun to try it? We've started simple with custard and chicken soup, banana bread. Someday, she promises me, we will try something really adventurous. I had enough trouble with the banana bread. It's not so bad, I guess.

To keep myself from falling asleep.

I am trying to drill intervals and triads and seventh chords by ear on This Cool Theory Page but the intervals were putting me to sleep even when I was only drilling minor intervals which are not exactly the stuff of lullabies. So I must type about something else to keep myself awake. I refuse to nap!!! I will not be a sleep deprived college student! I had plenty of sleep last night.

So, today is All Hallow's eve. The day before All Saints Day. A rather controversial day in some Christian circles. As always there are a lot of pagan traditions which the Christians converted and then the secularists turned pagan again. I hate it when that happens. Did you know that the tradition of Trick-or-treating comes, in part (it's complicated), from an All Souls Day tradition. Each household would bake little cakes and attach the name of a family member or friend who had died that year to them. They called them soul cakes. The poor would go door to door collecting these cakes and in return they would say a prayer for the soul to which the cake was dedicated. That's one of those odd Catholic practices. Personally, I think it's a great idea, but it is a little odd. The dressing up is in mockery of Satan cause even if it is the night before all saints day, he still can't get us cause like the Saints, we belong to God.
That's what it was about before the secularists got to it: a crazy mix of traditions, fun, and piety, as all true Holy Days should be.

The Big Climb

From the time when you can talk in complete sentences, people are always asking "What are you going to be when you grow up?" I got asked all the time. Even before you can talk people speculate. The thing you are going to 'be' usually refers to the way you will make your living. Sometimes they mean something a little less superficial; ones state in life; married, single, priest, religious. These are the ways people define themselves. When I was little and people would ask it always seemed like they were checking up on me so I wouldn't forget I had a dead line coming up. "You have about twenty two years to figure out how you will define yourself to you'd better be thinking about it." It's a horrible terrifying thing to be the only seven-year-old you know who doesn't have a plan for the future. But where was I going with this.... SPLAT
The Catholic Church says (and I think Protestant Christians would agree) that how you make your living comes second to your personal relationship with your God. The most important thing about your state in life or your place in the world is how it leads you to Christ. Remember in the Gospel (and, typically, I don't remember where or which one it's in or where, silly Catholic) when John the Baptist is preaching and all these different people come to him and ask him what they should be doing with their lives? He tells the tax collectors to quit cheating people etc. pretty common sense, good morality. But the point is that he doesn't tell the tax collectors to get more respectable jobs, he just tells them to do their job honestly. Neither does he tell the soldiers to become tax collectors, they get to God as best they can from where they are. Each of them lives out their own vocation. Your vocation is supposed to be the surest path to God. Everyone is different and so is every one's vocation. (And every vocation fits within the Catholic Church, but that's another rant all together.)
Some years ago someone wrote a musical based on a real person's search for the surest path to God. There are a lot of musicals about people searching for God but this one was a little more explicit. It was especially beautiful in that the character is mainly concerned with loving people; whoever is around, and seeking Christ in them.

When you are looking for that surest path to follow to God there are two things people will tell you to do; (And I speak from personal experience) they will tell you to pray hard and they will tell you to think of every moment, every opportunity, and every person you meet as a vocation. Right now, my vocation is to be a student, a big sister (a little sister) a daughter and various other things. God leads us step by step. Live every day just walking with God in little ways and eventually you will look up and realize you are well on your way on the path God chose for you.

There is a good reason that Sound of Music is so famous. It because it's true; not just cause it's based on a true story, but because Maria's search for her surest path to God is so real. She has it all figured out. She has prepared herself all her life to join a convent. Then, God throws a wrench in her plans via Mother Superior. She is given a whole new place to serve God in a whole new way and has to resign herself to His will. She just takes it one day at a time, trying to understand why God has put her in the house of a sad widow with seven children. She is always guessing at Gods will and she usually gets it half right. She things she's there to prepare the children for their new mother and she's right, sort of, but not really. The amount of love she gives these children that she doesn't even belong to yet is tribute to the love she has for God. "Make me a channel of your peace" St. Francis prayed. That's what Maria is; a channel through which God pours His love on the Trapp family.

Then suddenly she finds herself messing up what she thought was God's plan. There is never a point where she sees that the Baroness is all wrong for the family. We see that as clear as anything, but she never wastes an uncharitable thought on the baroness. As far as she can see, it's God's will for the captain to marry the baroness. Then the baroness tells Maria that the captain is in love with her. That was not supposed to happen. And Maria is in love her him. That was Definitely not supposed to happen. She thinks she has done something terribly wrong. So she flies away back to the Abby where she is sure God really wants her to be. Wrong again. Rogers and Hammerstein did an amazing thing when they wrote some of the songs in this show. Climb Every Mountain is a pretty simple song with not too many words and a beautiful melody. It's a 'Something More' song that puts the search for a vocation into musical theater language. Your spiritual director doesn't usually tell you to follow every rainbow but he might tell you that after a storm, look for the surprise opportunity and open door. The 'dream' in the song is your path to God and it will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live. Very cool.

God's plan for Maria is to be the bride, not of Christ, but Christ in Captain von Trapp and the mother of seven happy children. And she continues to live life one step at a time as God leads her.
You all know the songs so I wont tell you how much fun they are. Sometimes they get undervalued cause you hear them so much, but they really are popular for a reason. I really want to know if R&H wrote the vespers and the Alleluia at the beginning. I think they did. I like it.

Karen stranded in a strange library

Karen has two hours of dead time every morning between English Literature and Music Theory. Of course there is homework to do and girls club talks to write and all that important stuff. But is that what I am doing with the laptop I have rented for the two hours? No. But to my credit I'm not on Facebook either. I'm on project play list typing in the titles or first lines of random song I only half remember. I'm in the mood for gospel and spirituals lately. It's very cheerful and hopeful but also quite aware that there are plenty of reasons not to be cheerful and hopeful.

For your information, the voice common to the two duets (Music in the Air and Have a little talk with Jesus) is "sister" Rosetta Tharpe. According to Wikipedia, Rosetta was revolutionary in gospel music because she mixed the jazz and blues and early rock styles into her church music. She shocked the people she sang in church with and was wildly popular with her secular audience. All sorts of people including Elvis name her as an inspiration or a favorite.
I don't know who is singing This Little Light of Mine. But I thought it sounded pretty good. So there it is.
And there is some music from Sister Act and Sister Act II and I know that's just sick and wrong but I can't help it. I like it. As a matter of principal I have to hate those movies but I'm a sucker. I hope I never hear that particular version of the Hail Holy Queen in church but it sure is fun on it's own, even with the phony Latin. The second one was better.

Do you have plans for college?

The rumors are true. I am attending the community college. I finally gave in to all the social pressure and signed up and filled out all the financial aid forms and took the placement test to prove that I could read and made myself look somewhat normal on paper while fighting my desire to be perfectly honest and tell the college that my high school philosophy class consisted of a long, in depth conversation on the internet with an atheist from Denmark about the nature of good, evil, suffering, and free will. That was a long sentence. It was an interesting process that ended in a head ache and a bag full of over priced text books. I didn't have four or more years of training in high school to prepare me for all the carrying of books. My shoulders hurt. I'm going to invest in a rolling back pack. So far that's the only draw back to my previous home education. I'm doing pretty well in all of my classes and all that. I'm excited for the part where it gets hard, academically, that is. The getting up before the sun, riding the bus with weirdos and generally not having as much time as I formally enjoyed for the important things in life, like reading and playing with little brothers is hard. Good grief, that's a long sentence too.

I'm taking an Literature class in which our teacher thinks of elaborate ways to keep us busy so she doesn't have to talk. But it requires reading so I can enjoy that. I don't like Greek tragedies, but next we get to read Shakespeare so I should be ok.
My music theory class is getting more fun now. We are getting to things I am less familiar with. It's good to review. I hope we get to some new stuff before the semester ends.
And my art class. In this one I can tell that I'm learning. Ouch. But it's a good kind of ouch. I've never had an excuse to buy all sorts of art supplies I don't know anything about. Then suddenly I found myself in an art store with a long list of things that I was required to have. (YeeeHaaa!) It made me very happy. Now, where can I use these things without risking my brother's digestive system? That is the question. I got to use charcoal for the first time. All sorts of good stuff like that.

So, that's what I'm "Up To" for all of you who ask regularly. And if you miss my more regular posting, you can blame formal education.

Belated reflections

I wrote this sometime several months ago; maybe early July, when I was missing my violin so much. My mind works at an incredibly slow pace. There is a long period of information gathering, then a long period of processing information and forming opinions (that part can take years) and eventually I might be able to articulate it all. Then, some months later, I feel ready to share. Oh, well, here are some belated opinions on things I heard in Malibu.

The Violin is a really awesome instrument. When I went to Malibu, there was all that emphasis on a cappella as the only kind of music suitable for worship. It got me thinking about why I played violin for five years and why it's still so special to me. Did that make any sense? Probably not. I was hearing people say that man made instruments, like the violin, were unworthy of God's praise. I tried to imagine going to church and never hearing anything but the human voice. There is that saying about singing and praying twice. I can't remember which way it goes now cause our choir director always said "he who sings prays twice." but I seem to remember hearing "he who prays twice sings." That has always made a lot of sense for me, either way. I plan to spend most of my eternity singing. Ah, heaven, where there is no such things as a sore throat. But the problem with singing your prayer is that singing almost always involves words. Catholics have the reputation (mostly true) for being no good at spontaneous prayers, we're just an inarticulate lot when it comes to talking to our creator. It's just so much easier to say what we mean by reciting psalms or the Lords Prayer. But sometimes even these fail us and this is the reason I can't say that only the human voice can truly worship God.

When you play an instrument like a violin, you end up carting it around with you a lot of places. Carrying it around so much, I always harbored a hope that I would find myself in an empty church with my violin and no one else around. It happened a few times and I would play all the hymns I could think of by ear plus some improvisations of my own and this was a deep form of prayer for me. I didn't need words. Words would not have been enough.

Anyone who has heard some of the religious music of Bach and so many others knows you don't really need the words to pray those songs. After the communion hymn is over in some parishes there is an instrumental piece which serves as a meditation. I hate it when they pick songs with words for that, it kind of defeats the purpose: they should have songs that let every heart provide it's own words or let Jesus sing to each heart alone.

Our Lady of Sorrows.

September means a lot of things to people: the end of summer, back to school, so many things starting and ending. The month is dedicated to Mary in the Catholic Church. It sure seems like a lot of months are dedicated to Our Lady but I can't think of anyone better to dedicate September to. Specifically, September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. Mary has a lot of titles too. But when you think about it, everyone has a lot of titles, no one is just one thing to everyone.
The Church gives us these feast days for Our Lady to call attention to some aspect of her that may be helpful to us in our journey to heaven. There are seven moments of sorrow in Mary's life that we are asked to reflect on:

1. The Prophecy of Simeon.
2. The Flight into Egypt.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus for Three Days.
4. Meeting Jesus on the Way to Calvary.
5. The Crucifixion and Death of Jesus.
6. Jesus Taken Down from the Cross.
7. Jesus Laid in the Tomb.

There you pretty much have the spectrum of suffering for a womanly heart: Impending doom through the death and burial of a child.
I could rant about how amazing Mary is for a very long time. Our Lady of Sorrows is possibly my favorite Marian feast. When I read the scripture accounts of the seven sorrows and put myself in Mary's place, reflecting on her feelings and thoughts as a mother, as a woman, and I know she had perfect trust in God, (as she demonstrated when she agreed to bare His Son) my respect and admiration for her grows so much. And, just as she said in the Magnificat, I always find myself thanking God and seeing Him magnified in her.

I put two different settings of the Stabat Mater on the music player. The Stabat Mater is a beautiful prayer in Latin that is traditionally associated with the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. It depicts Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Lots of composers have written music for this prayer. The English translation is also very nice though when you sing it, it must be in Latin. My favorite version is a very modern choral piece that I heard the Gonzaga choir sing two years ago. I can't remember the composers name. But anyway, these two are kind of interesting cause they contrast so much. I've heard the first one somewhere before but the more modern one is totally new to me and I'm not sure what I think of it. There's no rule that says you can't have a synthesizer in a setting of Stabat Mater but somehow is seems wrong to me. Not to mention the drums.
Here is the English translation:

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.


Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.


O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.


Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.


Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?


By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.


She beheld her tender Child,
Saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.


For the sins of His own nation,
She saw Jesus wracked with torment,
All with scourges rent:


Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?


O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:


Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.


Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Savior crucified:


Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.


Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:


Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.


Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;


Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;


Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.


Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;


When my body dies,
let my soul be granted
the glory of Paradise. Amen.

The Great List of things I learned this summer.

1. Don't put styrofoam in the oven. It will melt and evaporate into a foul smelling fume and ruin your dinner.
2. Camping in a marsh may result in a wet sleeping bag.
3. I can make a chicken soup! Sort of.
4. When you start seeing big gray patches where the face of the person next to you should be, it's probably a sign of an oncoming migraine head ache. Going to bed immediately is advised. Running up and down stairs, hills and eating giant breakfasts are NOT recommended.
5. Never underestimate my father's ability to make last minute plans.
6. Remember that when ever you run down a hill, you will eventually have to climb up it again.
7. When challenging your twelve-year-old cousin to a water fight, make sure you have a bigger gun.
8. Beethoven piano sonatas must be listened to with my dad narrating to be fully enjoyed.
9. Maleny thinks she's invincible. When you agree to teach her to ride her bike, be aware of this fact.
10. You can get almost anything you want using only monosyllable words like "ai," "uh," and "umm" and pointing at things, but you have to have have Big Blue Eyes and a mouth full of only five teeth.
    

Jessie

I work for a woman who was born in 1912. Her name is Jessie and she's an "little Catholic Italian lady." Talking to Jessie is like talking to a piece of History. She has an amazing memory. She tells wonderful vivid stories; painting a picture for me of the world she lived in. I have been doing chores for her in the evenings since early June. Now that the summer is almost over I thought you would like to hear some stories from this amazing little old lady who has lived through so much. I'll try to reproduce her way of talking. That will be very difficult cause it's her inflection that does it.

Her father ran a restaurant.
"We didn't have a bathroom in the building. There was one of those out houses; little wooden shed sort of... There was a mean old rooster... He wouldn't let me by to use the out house! I was so afraid of him; he was bigger than me! Well, I was just a little thing... three or four."
"You know, they hadn't invented things like the... freezer. We had a..." -- gestures vaguely with her frail arms -- "We called it an ice box. The ice man would come every morning in a wagon and give us our ice."
Me: "How did they make the ice back then, Jessie?"
--Long pause-- "I don't know! I guess they must have... I don't know!"
Her father lost his eye sight when Jessie was still a young girl. She told me how it happened once but I've already forgotten. Her mother took over the management of the restaurant. It was hard on her father to have his wife running the business but there was a nice German man who lived near by and kept him company sometimes; reading to him and talking. "He was a Darling Man! He had five girls, but they were all grown up. He made the best dandelion wine."
"I wonder how my mother did it; with my brother still nursing and us in school. That wasn't normal in those days; having a woman working like that." There sure are a lot of strong, intelligent women in Jessie's family. Her grandmother, she told me on an other occasion, also defied social norms by running her husbands grocery store while he was working on the railroad.

Jessie grew up and lived most of her life here in my home town and even in my neighborhood. She had watched it grow and change SO much over the years. She showed me an old print of the street where her family restaurant was. It's the same corner I drive by every week when I go to the library but it's not recognizable at all. The photo is of a parade. There are two horse drawn, circus style wagons all brightly painted (you can tell, despite the vague black and white shapes that portray them) and Jessie says there are lions inside. There is a park now where her family business used to be. Either that or a parking lot. I'm not even sure what side of the street it was on. I'm so thankful that my city has persevered some of it's older buildings. I love to hear stories about places I can still visit.
"My brother worked at the Davenport hotel. He cleaned the change." (Puzzled look from Karen) "When you got change from the Davenport it was all shiny and new looking. Cause they washed it down in the basement. I used to always give them my dirty change. I would go there for lunch. When I really wanted a treat there was a tea room upstairs. I loved to go up there and see all the lights and fancy things. I would have (name of some food I'd never heard of.) They don't make things like that any more. Has your mother ever made you that?" No.

There is a very old cook book in her pantry. She told me it was older than her. Then we looked at the copy right date and it was the year she was married but that still makes it pretty darn old. There are lots of strange recipes that I have never tasted. Some of them sound better than others. Jessie loves to cook and has her own way of doing everything. She knew her old stove like a good friend but this new one cooks things too hot and fast so she uses a hanger between the burner and her pot when she makes oatmeal.

She remembers her excitement the first time she got to vote. That boggles my mind. She was not one of the first women to vote but she was eight when the nineteenth amendment passed. So it was still a pretty new thing by the time she was old enough. WOW.

She has all sorts of old furniture in her little house. I get to polish the wood with home make furniture polish once in a while. There are also mirrors to clean with home made cleaner. There is a vacuum cleaner that must be from the fifties which we use for many things including getting dust out of the air. One day she asked me to vacuum some picture frames for her. "And be careful," she cautioned me. "those are about a hundred years old." I wish she wouldn't tell me things like that. I have found after moving around her tiny kitchen and her small house in general that I tend to bump into more things that I should. The china cupboard rattles and I hold my breath. Jessie is so hard of hearing that she doesn't notice but that doesn't make it any better for me.

There are a long list of ailments that Jessie must be careful of. She is always very cheerful about them. But it dose bother her when people make things more difficult than she thinks they ought to be.
"Now see this?" She hands me an empty cardboard box which had an eye drops in it recently. "Look in there." I oblige, not sure what I'm looking for. "There's a coupon printed in there! Now why would they hide it in a place like that. I've been throwing those boxes out. Well, I won't anymore. I could get a dollar off! They just raised the price three dollars. Now, that's a lot of money! Listen to me; three dollars is a lot of money. Well, it is. A penny is a lot of money. I always pick up a penny when I see one on the ground. I'll regret leaving it one day. When your a little old lady like me everything counts."
The next day:
"I called Safe Way and asked them why they took the price of my eye drops up three dollars. The young lady I talked to was very nice --her grandmother was Italian-- but they had to jack the price cause the company they buy it from did. So I called the company. I had to call someone else and I ended up calling a girl in Arizona. She said there is some marketing manager who took the price up. I told her to leave a message for him from me. Tell him, I said, that he ought to think about what he's doing to people. Old people have to get what they need and three dollars gets to be a lot of money. Maybe he should rethink his life a little. I bet they pay him a pretty penny. He doesn't need an extra three dollars but it's a big chunk to some of us."
I guess in the world where Jessie was born, people called each other up like that. You could just ask a business man to rethink his life if he jacked the price on something you needed. I pity the people she talked to that day. But, at the same time, I am glad she called. I hope that guy did rethink his life.

Everything does seem simpler back then. People seem friendlier.
"You know those lines they have all the way down the side walks? I don't know if they do it now. You'd go over them and your skates would go 'clicketty-clack clicketty-clack.' We would roller skate to (very specific street address that probably doesn't exist anymore) where they had that museum. There were all sorts of artifacts in there. We loved to look at them and there was a brother. He was a Jesuit brother, he always wore his habit and all. He was the door keeper. He was a darling man, his name was.... I can't remember his first name. I should go to the archives and look that up. I can't go, I'll have to send someone. He was a hunchback. He was a little shorter than me. Of course, I've lost two inches since then. We would go and ring the bell and after a little while he would come and open it with a big smile." (in her 'little kid' voice) "'Mr. (name) can we see your... Museum?' and he would always go around with us. I don't remember an elevator. We climbed up four flights of stairs. You read about door keepers in books. That's what he was; the door keeper."

Jessies faith is very important to her. For years I would see her in the pews at my home parish. "I'm as old as that church. It was dedicated in 1912 in October and I was born that year in October. They're not getting rid of me. They'll have to carry me out feet first. I think they ought to let me have a say in things."
Whether or not someone is Catholic and practicing always comes up when she describes anyone. (The other thing that gets mentioned is any Italian blood in the family.) Her among her favorite Saints is St. Frances Cabbrini, better known as Mother Cabrini, an Italian lady who immigrated to the United States and founded many hospitals, orphanages and churches including the parish my family currently attends. Mother Cabrini eat dinner at the house Jessie lived in once. She was there before Jessie lived there but Jessie loves to tell me about it anyway. She also loves Blessed Padre Pio, also an Italian. Mostly there are a million people she has known in her long life that she will be very glad to see again when she gets to heaven. Her husband Clyde is waiting there for her. I'm not sure if he was Catholic when they were married or not but it seems he was not practicing. She told me about how hard she prayed for him and how happy she was when he came back to the faith.

Being 96 she has been thinking about death and coming to terms with dieing for a while now. Recently she had pneumonia in both lungs. Somehow she pulled through. "I don't know why I'm still here. I'm just waiting to go home." There are certain things you get to do when you know you want be on this earth much longer. "I read that book. I'ts a great book. All about what you should eat for arthritis. But I like all the things they tell you not to eat so if you know anyone who can use it, their welcome to it." No need to sharpen her knives, they won't be in service much longer. It's worth it to buy expensive meat but not to buy a new dress for her grand daughter's wedding. It makes sense, really. She's so excited to be leaving soon. "I was just thinking about heaven; you know we won't have to do laundry. I'm passed the time when I have to cook for people. No more cooking in heaven." I'm very glad to know someone who is so unafraid and happy to grow old and wait for her call to come home.

This post keeps getting longer and I haven't even scratched the surface. She once saved a baby girl's life when the child's mother left her below the low tide mark on the beach. She owned several houses and has no end of stories about renters. She seems to remember every priest who ever preached at our parish. There are stories of miraculously answered prayers and people she regrets loosing contact with and still prayers for after so many decades. This is my favorite story. After writing several little intro paragraphs to it I decided it didn't really need one.

"I used to be prone to fainting when I was a little girl. I used to go to eight o'clock Mass every morning before breakfast. I would walk to the church before I eat. Once when Mass was just over I could tell I was going to faint and so I hurried out of there and made it to the convent that used to be close by there. I knocked on the door and the sister came and opened it. They still wore their habits back then. I just had time to say 'Sister, I'm going to... faint' And down I went. They took me into the parlor and I remember hearing sister call 'Quick! get the brandy!'"

Opera Spaghetti

Opera tastes like spaghetti. When ever I hear La Traviata I think of my dad and my grandparents and I smell spaghetti. It's so much fun to be Italian.
Opera is an acquired taste. And that doesn't mean it's something you like if you are forced to listen to it and there is nothing else available; like freeze dried meals. No one really likes them but you definitely acquire a taste for it when your other option is a peanut butter flavored power bar.
Opera is like the spaghetti sauce my dad makes with four or five cloves of garlic; it's REALLY good, but NOT for the fainthearted. You have to redefine your idea of what is normal cause it's a little bit extreme but once you do there are whole new levels of enjoyment to be explored.

Wild berry hunting

A few years ago I was leading a girls club meeting in the summer and we had some time to kill so we were out in the yard playing 'refrigerator tag.' That's kind of a complicated game but suffice to say that it involves yelling out the names of random edibles and running around. So I was it and I yelled out "Huckleberries!" and everyone ran around. Turns out one visiting girl had never eaten a huckleberry before. This was shocking. She was from Southern California so it was explainable (you have to have a colder climate and mountains or giant hills) but it was still shocking cause the Huckleberry is a staple of the Northwestern American summer experience. It's just hard to imagine a life without Huckleberries. There is nothing quite like a huckleberry.

When describing a huckleberry it is fastest and simplest to say that they are a kind of wild blueberry. Unfortunately this description falls far short of conveying the full mystery, majesty and beauty of a huckleberry. Huckleberries resemble blueberries only in that they are small, round and grow on a bush.
This is a huckleberry bush. There are many varieties of huckleberries. This bush is taller and greener than some; the leaves are perhaps a bit wider than the average bush. Some have leaves with red and yellow splotches. These are usually lower to the ground. In some places you can find bushes that are so big you can pick on one side and a bear can eat on the other and you would never see each other. Okay, that's a tall tale told to me by a Montanan but I guess they can get pretty big in wetter places, like the middle or west side Washington.
The berries themselves are usually a blueberry size or smaller. In color they can be anywhere from red (like an under ripe blueberry) to deep purple or blue that is pretty much black.
You can walk along a path lined with bushes and every third berry you pick will have a different flavor. Some can be very tart, tangy or sweet. Some are closer to a raspberry or an apple even, in taste. I eat one recently that was spicy like cinnamon or something. It tasted like Christmas. They all have a kind of wild mountain tang to them.
The Huckleberry is a highly valued treasure cause they only grow wild. You have to climb into a mountain and go tromping around in the underbrush to find them. You risk the bears who don't want to share them and the bugs who want to eat you and the other underbrush that wants to get in your eyes and up you pant legs and down your socks. It's quite an adventure.
Savor your Huckleberries. They are good on their own but even better when mixed in something. When we go camping we put them in our oatmeal and pancakes. They are the perfect side dish for freshly caught and cooked mountain lake fish. If you get enough to make a pie, this is also to die for. Huckleberries in vanilla ice cream is my favorite. (Don't fall for the Huckleberry flavored ice cream. I don't know how they came up with that but it is all wrong.) The sweetness of the vanilla cuts through any tartness and compliments that mountain tanginess to perfection.
When a good day of Huckleberry picking is through, you can be proud of red and purple stained fingers and even a small bag full of juicy loot.

How to make and eat a berry smoothie

With your baby brother

This is what happens when you leave the baby brother home alone with Karen.

Step one: Give the baby brother something to play with while you make a smoothie.
Something harmless but in the kitchen so he can watch you and you can talk to him. I should have just put him in his seat but I didn't think of that. I gave him a big loud pot to bang on.

Step two: Gather ingredients.
I used all the berries I could find in our freezer, plus some berry jam, yogurt and a spoonful of sugar. I don't like bananas, and though my dad and sister say this is a must for a smoothie, I refuse to put it in. We didn't have any milk or juice so I had to use water. Then I found the biggest, tallest, smoothie cup in our cupboard to put it all in.

Step three: Put down that baby.
I don't know how he got there. Some how those big blue eyes convinced me that he belonged on my hip. I also had to remind him that his teeth were made for biting food, not sisters. But one cannot make a smoothie with a one year old in ones arms. So he had to go.

Step Four: Mix it all up.
This is a tricky business, as most of the ingredients are frozen solid and our little blender had lived active life already and wishes very much for an early retirement. There was a stubborn block of strawberry ice that would not be smoothied. I had to fish it out and defrost it for a while in the microwave. There was some adding of extra berries and yogurt to thicken things up since I didn't have milk.

Step Four: Keep the baby brother form poisoning himself.
Funny how we never baby proofed our kitchen. The cupboard under the sink is full of cleaners and David was determined to get a hold of some Simple Green or, better yet, some Lysol. I guess he was attracted to the smells. We argued about that for some time.

Step Five: Situate yourself for best possible enjoyment of smoothie.
I ended up sitting on the floor with my back against the cleaning cupboard door. No little explorers could get in that way.

Warning: sharing smoothie with a baby brother may result in stained clothing.
It all went very well until he stuck his elbow in the cup. I took a spoonful and then gave him one. His little mouth was rimmed with purple berry juice within minutes. At first he was sitting in front of me. Then I wasn't giveing him his spoonfuls fast enough so he stood up. And then he was sitting on my lap. And then he was trying to get his fingers in that nice cold purple stuff in the cup. I managed to keep the fingers out most of the time. Like I said, he stuck his elbow in at one point and I had to lick it off before he wiped it on my shirt. He thought that was pretty funny. And yes, I know where else his elbow has been. I should have given up on my clothes long ago. Moments later he wiped his mouth on my shoulder. Actually I think he was trying to give me a kiss for sweetly making him a smoothie but the result was the same; my nice yellow shirt has berry stains.
Other than that we had a nice time.

Step Six: Enjoy
We agreed that it was a pretty nice smoothie.

Time for a Saint story!

There are all these great Saint days in August! There's a Saint for every day of the year but some of my favorites are in August. August tenth is the feast of one of my all time favorite Saints: St. Lawrence! It's also my brother's birthday. I can't believe how fast this year has flown. It seems like yesterday we were all at Aunt Perky's house waiting for news of our new sibling. David didn't get named after his day Saint but I'm sure St. Lawrence will be saying some extra prayers for him anyway. You can't get away from you patron Saints you know. They're looking out for you whether you like it or not.
I love to tell the story of St. Lawrence. So most of you who read this blog have probably heard me tell it at least in part. I retold it based on the account in our Saint book a few years ago for an e-mail so here it is.

St. Lawrence is the patron of comedians and cooks and this is why.

Once upon a time in Rome (in 258 A.D.) there lived a cheerful and devoted deacon named Lawrence. Also in that time the Emperor Valerian published an edict against Christians and sent soldiers to apprehend the Pope (St. Sixtus II) and put him to death. As they dragged St. Sixtus to his death his faithful deacon, Lawrence, followed after him saying, “Farther, where are you going with out your deacon?” The Pope answered, “I do not leave you, my son. You shall follow me in three days.”
Lawrence saw this time as an opportunity to disperse the material wealth of the church before the Roman authorities could lay their hands on it. On 10 August Lawrence was commanded to appear for his execution, and to bring along the treasure with which he had been entrusted by the pope. When he arrived, the archdeacon was accompanied by a multitude of Rome's crippled, blind, sick, and generally very dirty, stinky and poor people. Lawrence stood and and smiled. The prefect was at first bewildered and then thinking that some joke had been played on him by the good natured deacon he turned to Lawrence and demanded to see the treasures of the church as he had been promised. Lawrence speared his hands out to the assembled people. “what are you displeased at?” he said, “These are the treasures of the Church!” The prefect, who had no sense of humor, was furious! He prepared a great gridiron with hot coals beneath it. They bound Lawrence to this hot iron bed and he lay slowly roasting. After a long time of this torment Lawrence looked up at his the men in charge of the execution and smiled. “Turn me over,” He said to them, “I think I’m done on this side.”
Lawrence met his beloved Lord Jesus but a few moments later and lives happily with him and Pope St. Sixtus for all eternity.
Here on earth Lawrence is honored every year on the 10th of August. On that day, catholics all over the world celebrate Lawrence's life by having a barbecue with their families.

Burnt Marsh-wiggle of La Mancha

Dana says she and her friend Tristen talk about what's wrong with the world sometimes. I don't think I've ever done that with one of my friends. Not seriously. No wait, I guess that's what me and Millie did at the library the other day. Anyway. It's just so easy to get depressed with a conversation like that. What sometimes needs talking up is being a decent person despite the overwhelming number of people who will think you are crazy for it. To stand up to the things that are wrong with the world is the hard part. In a lot of ways I can't make much of a difference in the world but I have to try anyway. So, where am I going with this? And what does it have to do with the title of this post? *Karen tries for several moments to remember* oh yes, the next musical on my list of favorites deals with this hopeless situation we find ourselves in when we are trying to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Christ in fallen, corrupt world. The Man of La Mancha smells of Burnt Marsh-Wiggle.

I have never managed to read Crevantes' Don Quixote so I don't know how the book compares to the musical as far as plot and such. I'm not very good at plot summaries anyway.
The whole play is written with all these layers of metaphor. It's set in a dungeon where the pensioners are acting out the story together under the direction of Crecantes. We weave in and out of Crevantes' dream and Don Quxiote's.
This musical is on my list because the message (which everyone ought to hear) is so inseparable from the music and the music from the story. This is the way musicals are supposed to be.

Content warning: There is much adult content in this story. It is not always handled tactfully. Certainly PG-13 rating for sexual content. Generally, I don't like shows like that. Phantom of the Opera could have been a little higher up on the list if it wasn't for all the sensuality in it. La Mancha is an exception because, although it's much worse than Phantom in that regard, the sexual content serves a purpose in the story and is not meant to be a crowd pleaser.

Don Quixote is out on his quest to right all wrongs. Righting all wrongs includes slaying windmills and (in one really fun song) rescuing a legendary helmets from a traveling barbers who has mistaken it for a shaving basin. It also involves defending the honor of a woman whom Quixote calls Dulcinea and everyone else knows as Aldonza. Aldonza makes her living selling drinks and food and herself to whatever man walks into her inn. Not much honor to defend. Quixote doesn't see it that way. He sees Aldonza as she was meant to be (Dulcinea) and raises her up out of the life she has been living to something more worthy of her. Aldonza thinks he's crazy. Okay, he is crazy but maybe being crazy is better than being sane and hateful like Aldonza is. First she mocks him with everyone else, but she finds she cannot laugh at him. Why? He lives in a dream world where good always triumphs over evil and people are moral and honorable by default. What Does He Want of Me, she sings (Gorgeous song)

"no one can be what he wants me to be."

The real world simply isn't like that. Aldonza has a very dim view of the world. She can only hate it and she cannot comprehend Quixote who seems to love it even when it is just as cruel to him as it has been to her. Taking her hate from her leaves Aldonza with only despair (or so she tells him in one of her songs) but Quixote is full of hope even in the face of his hopeless quest.

The only recordings I could find from this show are sung by a British guy. And it's obvious. It might be Peter O'Toole cause he plays Quixote in the movie version. I've never seen it. This is really wrong because the actor who play Don Quixote should at least fake a Spanish accent if he doesn't have one naturally. I hear the movie makers cast with singing ability second to acting. That's a matter of opinion I guess. I don't think I would like it. And I absolutely refused to put Frank Sinatra singing the Impossible Dream. It's just wrong. *Sigh* the recordings I find are seldom what I was hoping for. My apologies, you all need to go find the sound track with Placido Domingo.
There is so much passion in these songs. Some of them, I cannot sing along to because they are not G rated but the ones that are clean are very beautiful. I love the Spanish flavor; the brass and the castanets. Ah! It's so good!

Other favorites of mine from this show are "I Really Like Him" in which Quixote's faithful 'squire' Sancho attempts to explain his devotion to a bewildered Aldonza. Okay, any time Sancho sings it's great fun. While Don Quixote lies dyeing his servant comes to his bed side with 'a little gossip' mostly to cheer himself up, since Quixote is unconscious. He's full of common sense and nonsense.
And there is this little song... Quixote's death scene is very moving and at the end, while Dulcinea and Sancho try to make sense of the mans life the good Padre sings a prayer under their dialog and it might be my favorite part in the whole sound track. Maybe it's just cause it's in Latin. *grin*

The Man of La Mancha opens

Hear me now, or thou bleak and unbearable world
thou art base and debauched as can be.
And a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled
Now throws down his gauntlet to thee!

That may be the theme song and opening number but The Quest is really the heart of the show. It pretty much sums it up.

Quixote: It is the mission of each true knight, his duty, nay, his privilege..
{sing}
To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chase from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest: to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far,
To fight for the right, without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell for a heavenly cause.
And I know if I only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this;
That one man, scorned and covered with scares
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreadable star

*Squeek*

Every summer of my life a terrible thing happens; what ever it was that I was doing musically for the rest of the school year, be it theater, youth symphony, choir, whatever, it stops. In a way this is a relief. Whatever I do, I always end up leaving out and neglecting part of my musical interests. Some years I did a lot of violin and not singing, sometimes it's all musical theater and no Church music to be heard. So when summer starts I dust off whatever it was that got left out and play around with it on my own for a few weeks of summer. It's nice to have time for variety. So this year, and for the last few years, actually, my poor violin had been sadly attention starved.

When we had our floors refinished all our bigger instruments, the guitars mostly, got hauled down to my parents room and we never bothered to bring them back up. My fiddle was down there with them and the other day mom cleaned her room and brought them all up and left them in the living room for us to deal with. So I was innocently typing on the computer (okay, I'll admit it, I was probably on Facebook) when I heard my violin calling me. It was calling for help cause my six year old sister had it and was... I don't know what she was trying to do with it but it sounded desperate. I ended up clipping my finger nails and spending about an hours quality time with my old four stringed friend. Boy, three years of not practicing sure don't do anything for your tone. It doesn't help your memory either. I couldn't even remember my favorite Suzuki standards. I knew that would happen. But it was still sad. So here I am complaining about my own failure to practice.

So that's why there has been all that violin music playing here. I'm going through withdrawal. I get opera arias stuck in my head and get chills when someone sings really well and I'm sure there is nothing quite as beautiful as my favorite motets by Byrd. Then I find myself at a symphony concert featuring Sarah Chang and I'm totally hypnotized, hardly breathing. *sigh* Someday I'll have time to be a singer and a violinist. I feel like Sam; always torn in two.

Dang, I missed it!

Better late then never.

Happy birthday to... um... me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear
SPLATness!

This blog was officially a year old on June 7th but since I was in Malibu on the seventh I didn't even notice. This is the seventy-second post, by the way. Seventy-two pointless bits of nonsense! Cheers! *dances*

The mystery of the missing blogger.

Where is Zita Louise?

I don't really know. She's in la la land I guess. ^Z. L. in La La Land. Okay, under a parachute, same thing.

There is this giant stack of books, a long list of silly things to do, a swimsuit and beach towel, a tennis racket, some hiking boots, colored pencils, a piano, lots of song books, a few movies and a baby brother between her and the computer.

Okay, in reality this is what I have been doing that has kept me from posting.

Mostly the books but also the little brother.

He has a way of monopolizing my time.

All I need is *mublesomthingaboutkissingmumble* and music, Music, MUSIC!

It's been a long, full week. So I'm going to rant about it now. I guess I shouldn't use the word 'rant,' cause that kind of implies that I'm angry about it. Wouldn't want to give that impression. I tend to use that word to mean that I have a lot of thoughts on the subject in my head and they are going to be spilled all over the place and probably not in anything like a logical fashion. I don't know what you would call that if it's not ranting. It's too late to think of good words. In any case, I don't think I'm capable of doing this sort of 'ranting' out loud (and my sisters would get sick of it and stubbornly change the subject) so I put it on the blog.

For those of you who don't know, I was at an a cappella sacred music symposium at Peperdine University. Let's see if I can find a link... There we go. The Ascending Voice

Peperdine is a Christian university; Church of Christ by denomination. I didn't know anything about the Church of Christ. Apparently they have a long standing tradition of using only a cappella music in their worship. So they put on this symposium to celebrate this tradition and invited some other faith traditions to come and share their love of a cappella. So the Gregorian Schola got to go and me with them.

The Schola being respectable musicians And in proper concert formation in our starched white robes. Who would guess we are capable of so much Dufay? Don't be fooled by the innocent looks.

I have always loved singing with people more than anything in the world. It's never mattered much what we sing or how we were accompanied as long as I got to blend my voice with someone else's. This is still true but now I can say that a cappella music is my favorite. This week was Amazing.

There were all sorts of choirs and little groups who came and sang throughout each day and panels and presentations and workshops in between. The presentations were great and I learned all sorts of interesting things but the performances were my favorite part. There was not a single group that I didn't enjoy but I tend to gravitate
towards the simpler music. I enjoyed the really polished, complex music like a grommet meal but I really prefer the spirituals and simple harmonizations for everyday wear and tear. I guess that's cause I've been raised on so much folk music and the like.

The 'schola gang.' Don't we look fierce? Wouldn't want to meet us in a dark alley would you. We might sing Terra Tremuit at you or something.

Our concert went really well. We have worked hard on it since November. When we practiced together in the common room of our dorm for the first time since school got out I think we were a bit nervous cause our end of the year concert was recorded and we had all heard that it was not particularly brilliant. So we started working really hard and things started to click. We did a months worth of singing together in about three days and we went from sounding okay to sounding quite lovely in most places and pretty darn good everywhere else. I really wish I could hear or see a recording. I personally was not at my best cause I was quite sick a few hours before we sang. Someone must have been praying cause I recovered very quickly. That's an other story. But I did alright, I think. I have grown SO much as a singer in the last year it amazes me. I'm amazed at my own musical brilliance. Just kidding. I have a long way to go but Dr. Ed has picked on me enough this year for me to hear a significant difference. Now, if I only I can keep it up...

Under all this excitement was a bitter sweetness cause we knew that our director Dr. Ed was leaving and probably not coming back. This was his last concert with us. We were at the air port home at last and suddenly he was getting in his car and driving away and I realized that that was good bye for a very long time. Sad.
Dr. Ed
It's up to us students to continue the schola now. The director they hired to replace Ed for the first year is very talented and knowledgeable but it takes some specialized knowledge and skill to direct the schola and not many people have it. There are simply not many people out there with a passion for Gregorian Chant. The fellow we have for the next year is not even Catholic. How do you lead a musical group thats main purpose is to sing at a service you don't understand or believe in? So it's all up to us. What big shoes to fill! And we will just miss Ed for his own sake of course.

So, it was an amazing week. On top of all the music, Peperdine is a pretty nice place. You have to walk up a lot of hills and stairs but at least we stayed in shape and there were all these deer that pretty much owned the campus. There was a whole family of them that wouldn't let me walk to my dorm one evening. They were stubbornly standing in my path and looking at me as if they were considering getting a camera to take a picture of the strange creature that wondered into their yard as if it owned the place. Okay, my sentences are getting really long. I better stop now.

Ring Bling

My last jewelry class was yesterday and I finished up my ring. If I had had the wax for another week I would have done some more with the band and made it a little less heavy but I am pretty pleased with it in general. I think I may have to take this class again, in the fall perhaps. I was floating when I got home last week cause our teacher asked me if I was interested in wax carving seriously cause she knows a jeweler who is looking to train a new wax carver. She said I had a natural skill for it. Ego Boost! Or maybe she was just being sweet. Mom thinks I should look into it. I sure did have a good time. I definitely want to do some more jewelry work. 3D is incredibly fun to work with.

Oh the cleverness of me.

How many Lord of the Rings geeks like me have done this I wonder. I like to play with charts and things. Pretty colors and all. I was reading the Silmarilion and well...

I get really excited about dead people.

Especially when live people pretend to be them so we can know what they were like. For several years now I have wanted to see the Civil War reenactment but this is the first time I have found out about it in time and had someone who was willing to go with me. The Civil War is my favorite period in American history. There are so many great characters and ideas being tossed around and fought about. Can you imagine what it would be like if the Confederates had won? Scary! But those southerners were Really set on winning. They didn't loose for lack of determination. In fact, some times it's hard to figure out how the south managed to loose. U. S. Grant was brilliant of course, but so were Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Lee sure was licking the North and good for a while there, despite being out numbered and out resourced. Apparently God was for the Union.

I was really impressed with the way the reenactment was set up. As we were driving in there were signs on the side of the road that had dates of great events in American history starting with man landing on the moon and working backwards to the beginning of the Civil War. So it was like you were driving back in time. Then you could walk right into the Union camp. I guess some of the actors actually live there for the weekend! Cook their food over a camp fire and sleep in the tents. They really went all out to make you feel like you were there, seeing it as it happened. The only unrealistic thing was that they would stop to explain things to you.

I got to talk to some Confederates Zouaves (do you know what Zouaves are?) and a guy from the Union navy. The Confederate Cavalry was amazing. I even posted a picture of the Heidi's favorite horse. There were all these little kids in Confederate uniforms drilling each other. They were adorable beyond belief. The little boy leading them was SO In Charge. He's yelling orders and keeping the civilians (us) from getting in the way and waving his little sword around. Very serious in his little Zouaves uniform.
The battle was amazing. I can't describe it. The guys working the cannons were just little blobs from where we were sitting but when the cannon fired the air vibrated so much hit felt like something it us. It would have been much scarier in real life but I guess that's about as close as we get. And who would want to be any closer anyway?

This picture is of the surgical tools they used. They are quite gruesome. The helpful fellow standing there was explaining them to us and showing us some shells found on the battle fields and some balls that would have to be dug out of soldiers. Yikes.

The girl standing on the side was a kind of nurse only not. This was something I had never heard of before. There were women who held the unofficial rank of corporal and were kind of like a mascot for their company. I can't remember the term she used. It sounded something like 'bevondie' or 'vivondea' but I'm not sure and I have no idea how to spell it. Darn French words. She said that the soldiers thought of her like a little sister and she worked as a battle field nurse. She carries a keg of brandy to dull the pain of surgeries. She wears something very close to a regular uniform only with a skirt over top of her pants and a few other more feminine details. She would actually go into battle with them. She didn't carry a weapon but she said that some did for self defense. It was very dishonorable to shoot at a woman so she was relatively safe but I can't help but think of the battle descriptions I have read where the bullets were flying so thick that trees came down. I wonder how much action these women saw. I can't find anything about them on the web. It's most aggravating.

I learned a whole lot and I could have learned a lot more if I had known how. Next year I'm going to be an expert at getting the most out of the experience. I'm going to ask as many questions as possible. Some intelligent ones and some silly ones too if I have to, just get the reenactors talking. Everyone we talked to knew a ton about their part and were just waiting for someone to be interested. So I resolve to be interested next year. I am definitely going to make this an annual event.