Be careful what you wish for!

You have all read how my 8th grade orchestra class at Oakland has had some behavior/attitude issues and that the particularly difficult one transferred out the first of October, right?  After he left, things have been getting better and better and the last few weeks have been really great - there has been lots of cooperation and positive attitudes and even enthusiasm for what we were accomplishing.  I e-mailed the principal on Wednesday to ask about raising money for orchestra t-shirts and to see if we could get transportation funds for playing at a near-by nursing home in December and she responded with "can you come see me tomorrow?"  So, I went into the meeting thinking it was going to be about all these fun things and, instead, she said, "we are cutting your class.  Would you like today (Thursday) or tomorrow to be your last time with the students!"  WHAT????  The school district wants class sizes to be no smaller than 18 students.  We started the year with 13 which was already pushing the envelope.  Then, three dropped the class and now, with just 10, they are eliminating the class to I suppose save money. As if my salary for five hours a week was gigantic?  Couldn't they have waited until the end of the semester???  The students will be put into the 7th grade orchestra class for the rest of the year!  If I had been told this a month ago, I would have been completely fine with this and probably thought "Good, being demoted to the 7th grade orchestra will teach these kids to be rude and obnoxious in my class!"  But, now my thoughts are "We were just starting to like each other" and "The kids have worked so hard on our five pieces and now they won't get to perform them!"  I didn't tell the class the news until Friday and, you can imagine they were pretty upset.  They do NOT want to play with the 7th graders, even after I told them that, in high school, students of all grades play together.  (although, in high school, we TRY to group kids into levels of ability.  And this group of 8th graders are particularly far ahead since they were the last group to have every-day instruction in 6th grade and this 7th grade group is particularly far behind since they had every-other-day classes in 6th grade.  It is not a good combination, sadly)  Thankfully, the principal has agreed to let my kids play their five concert pieces at a choir concert in November so I will go to Oakland three times between now and the 11th (on MY dime) and rehearse to keep the music fresh in their brains.  And, so now, I am just teaching at Rock Bridge every other afternoon.  I will love my extra time but I sure think it is rotten to have things happen this way....

Mid-October

We are enjoying a PERFECT autumn afternoon today:  the sun is shining, temperatures are deliciously cool but not chilly, the gold leaves are here and my “burning” bushes out front are turning red.  The backyard maple, always a late one, has just one small branch of red but the rest of the tree is thinking it is just about time and I bet by next Sunday, it will be in full glory.  Steve had a speaking assignment in the Fayette Branch today and, on our drive there, we actually saw a bald eagle up close!  He was feasting on road kill with some crows so we got to see him spread his wings and fly to a nearby tree.  Magnificent.

This past week was a pretty packed one.  Now, you say, all your weeks are packed, Jeanne, and I suppose you are right.  But they are ones I pack myself with things I want/like to do and that I usually do here at home.  It feels more “packed” when I have to do things away from home every evening or be away all day.  For example, I had B-days on Monday-Wednesday-Friday which only allowed two afternoons of discretionary time.  And, I was out almost every night this week. 

On Monday, Steve and I went to see “Meet The Mormons” at the theater.  We both really enjoyed it.  Highly recommend it. 

On Tuesday, I attended the Hickman High School orchestra concert to hear three of my students play.  Both ensembles played movie music and it was fun listening experience. 

On Wednesday, I had MY orchestra concert. 

Here I am with Alice Yu

We did more “serious” music but it was still fun.  We played a Mozart piece, a gorgeous Shostakovich waltz, a great arrangement of Danse Macabre, and we ended with a Copland-esque piece written by a young man from Kansas City called American Sojourn that I fell in love with last spring when CCO played it.  You all know my loyalty to Hickman – I raised seven Kewpies – but I have to say that my orchestra at Rock Bridge just leaves the Hickman group in the dust! Student for student, I have better players in each section with hardly a weak link anywhere.  Well, except for the bass section. We each just have one bassist and I wish I had theirs in my orchestra.  But, my student is a Star Trek fan so that certainly carries some weight J.  But, with the concert over, it certainly lifted a large load off my shoulders.  Even though I was not worried about the performance, performances are always just a BIG responsibility.   

Thursday night was absolutely one of the highlights of my life – Steve and I drove to Kansas City where we heard Yo Yo Ma in concert.  It was a wonderful performance.  We had decent seats for the price we paid – of course I would have loved to be closer but I was grateful for what I could get while not paying over $100. 

 

 how far we actually were....

 

  

a close-up photo

The first part of the program was a lot of fast, dance-type music (a Stravinsky ballet suite that was surprisingly listenable and several Spanish/Latin style pieces) – very impressive.  He opened the second half of the recital with an absolutely gorgeous Messian piece that took my breath away.  And he closed with a Brahms sonata AND he gave three encores – finishing with “The Swan”.  He is my age and I just marvel at his stamina.  His accompanist, Kathryn Stott, was also brilliant.  

Friday at noon was a "Friday Forum" at the LDS Institute building.  This is something that the new institute director has initiated - during the noon hour, people can come and listen to a guest speaker and they can purchase a light lunch.  Steven was a speaker, Steve will have a turn this coming week.  My schedule allowed me to attend the most recent one that featured a direct descendent of Joseph Smith.  His name is Lachlan McKay and he is the director of the Kirtland, Nauvoo, and Independence RLDS (Community of Christ) historical sites.  His presentation was old photos of Nauvoo and its history after the saints left.  VERY interesting.  Then, Friday afternoon, Prairie Strings had to attend a wedding rehearsal with the wedding yesterday afternoon.  This bride paid a LOT of money to have a classical string quartet play pop music!  (Beatles music & Elvis music).  I blame it on YouTube.  Brides hear groups like Vitamin String Quartet play rock and roll and decide they want this for their wedding.  Boo on you, VSQ!  But, this wedding marked the end of our fall wedding season and I am so relieved to be done for a while. 

Saturday morning was a neighborhood “tea”.  We have lived in this house almost twenty years and it has only been this past year that I have had a chance to get to know more than just the neighbors on Parker.  So great.  Also on Saturday was a huge genealogy conference put on by the stake.  It went all day and guest speakers were invited from all over.  It was geared to the novice as well as well as the experienced genealogist, member or not.  It was free and it had a terrific turn-out.  I attended two classes and I was one of the presenters as I was asked to share a display table with Leslie Ethington since we have both done family history books (hers are more traditional – mine more of the photo kind of histories)

 

Steve "manned" the exhibit while I attended my two classes.

Family near and far

Lately, in my family history work, I have been populating my family lines on familysearch.org.  I have been doing this from family group sheets from mom’s tubs of genealogy.  The most recent line I have been working in is the Harris family.  My grandma was a Harris before she became a Fraedrich.  As I have typed in names and birth dates and places, I have wondered about some of these distant cousins since many are my age.  Especially when I have to state “living” or “dead”.  Since I don’t know, I have to put down “living”.  That made me think that I should try to get a hold of some Harris relations and update my information.  When I rummaged through more of mom’s Harris genealogy collections, I found a thick 5X7 envelope and in it was information about a 2000 Harris family reunion, complete with photos and a full sheet of addresses.  Eureka!  Except it is now 2014 and who knows whether these people are alive or dead or even living at the listed address.  So, my first step was to write directly to Edna Harris, my mother’s 1^st cousin and contact with the Harris clan.  I mailed it September 3^rd and waited.  By the end of September, I figured Edna was no longer alive and no one related to her was still living at her address which wouldn’t be surprising considering she looked pretty old in the photo and that my mother, if she were she still alive, would be 100 years old this year.  So, on to step two - write to all the other people on that sheet of addresses.  And that is what I did about two weeks ago. I hand wrote to 12 Harris relatives – all living in Canada (British Columbia or Alberta)- and mailed them out hoping for an e-mail, a phone call, a letter, or even a text from at least one person.  On Wednesday, I was rewarded by an e-mail from Marcia Harris, daughter-in-law to Edna.  And, turns out, Edna is still alive – she is 92 – AND, Marcia was responding to my September 3^rd letter!  Finally!  I am so excited.  And, I am now making some plans to travel next summer up to British Columbia where Edna and Marcia and Phil, her husband, live to pay them a visit.  I strongly believe that my mom has been prodding and prompting me from the other side to make all these efforts.  I just wish I had done it sooner and I sure hope Edna stays alive for another 8 months!

We went to St. Louis on Friday and Saturday.  We attended the 7:00 pm temple session on Friday and then headed over to Joe and Emily’s to stay the night.  Emily was out of town this weekend – off to Indiana for a Hootenanny with a bunch of her November mom friends – and Joe had his two-day, once-a-month class to take so we took charge of the grandkids on Saturday.  First, Steve took Noah to his soccer game (where he made 5 out of the 7 goals!) and then we loaded them in the Southerland van (Joe took our Volvo to class) and drove to Columbia.  We couldn’t just stay in St. Louis for the rest of the day because there was an RTO rehearsal and I had to play in another wedding.  Steven came over and watched the kids while Steve and I rehearsed and then he helped Steve with dinner while I went off to play cello.  Tamara joined in for that endeavor, too.  I am not sure I can describe the utter chaos that reigned when we first got home.  Three VERY HAPPY dogs combined with three VERY ENERGETIC kids and two grandparents hurrying to unpack and set up nap stuff.  Turns out, we needn’t have bothered – neither Quinn nor Lucy took naps.  We tried.  But when I had to go into Quinn’s room to get keys to Oakland so I could open up the building for rehearsal and Quinn was not only, NOT asleep but SO EXCITED that naptime was over, I just couldn’t shut that door on him again and expect him to settle down.  Nor had Lucy settled down in her room.  Ugh.  I guarantee, they DID go to bed very well after dinner and they slept all night.  This morning, I fed them, dressed them in Sunday clothes (all by 8:00 am!!!) and loaded them back into the van and Joe and I rendezvoused in Jonesburg.  Whirlwind visit, for sure.  

 These are the beanie babies from my collection that Lucy adores:  mamma and baby frog, mama and baby seahorse, and the jellyfish or octapus (I can't tell which)

  

 Noah is done with breakfast, he is all dressed for church and he is playing with a little tube of slime and a plastic spider.  Bones thinks it is his treat.

 

 

 Lucy and Quinn eating breakfast this morning before we head out...

 

 

We have had quite a bit of rain this week.  It all started Wednesday night with unbelievably loud thunder and it really hasn’t dried out much since.  However, last evening, skies were clear-ish and temperatures were pleasant our last outdoor wedding of the season.  

Finally, two Netflix reports.  I watched the documentary "Blood Brother" about a young man living in and helping with an orphanage in India that cares for children who are HIV+.  It was very good.  Then, I watched "World War Z" last night.  I am usually NOT a horror-zombie-monster movie watcher but this was an interesting take and I enjoyed watching it, probably because it was more like the films Contagion or Outbreak or Andromeda Strain.

October is here

What a great weekend of general conference!  Did your computers have glitches as you watched?  Ours did – particularly during the Sunday afternoon session.  Wasn’t it cool that some of the speakers gave their talks in their native languages?  Did anyone else see Elliot Morris singing in the choir during the Saturday afternoon session?  He was front row/first man after the women’s section. 

I had two wedding gigs to play on Saturday so I missed the last half hour of both morning and afternoon session, unfortunately.  Thankfully, I can watch them any time now on the church website.  Yesterday, although it was finally sunny, was NOT a warm day – it hovered in the upper fifties with a wind/breeze depending on where you were.  Our first wedding (a duo) was on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri river and there must have been 30-40 mph wind gusts!  They had to find big rocks to hold our music stands down but our music books kept blowing off the stand so we had to have a wedding guest (who Siri knew from her church) hold our books onto the music stands for the entire wedding.  When Siri and I got back to the car when it was all over, we felt like we had just been through the ringer between the cold and the wind.  The second wedding was not as windy but it was a lot colder.  I had on four layers and I was still chilly.  It was in the back yard of a very lovely home in central Columbia.  It must have been sitting on a 2 acre lot – it had its own pond!  Here are some photos from that wedding.

 Siri Geenen, Margaret Lawless, Grant Bradshaw, and my music stand

 

 

We had rain for three days before yesterday – and we broke an all-time record for rainfall in a 24 hour period in the month of March.  We got 5 1/2 inches of rain!  We have been wiping off muddy paws ever since.  And I mean REALLY muddy paws with clumps of clay/mud imbedded in between toes and clinging to the hair between the pads.  And guess who HATES to have his feet touched?  Bones.  In fact, the first time I tried to wash his paws in the bucket of water, he almost did a back-flip to get away.  After that incident, whenever he came to the back door to come in and he saw me, he turned right around as if to say “I know her – she is the foot torturer!  Never mind. I won’t come in”.  He finally let Steve wipe his paws with a wet wash cloth. 

Yes, Bones is now living at the house – as is Sarah.  She started sleeping here Wednesday night.  Not that we have seen much of her before or since.  Between working at Bob Evans and cleaning and painting her old place, all she has done is just sleep here.  Poor thing.  And she STILL has to paint a second coat on a few places tomorrow before she can say sayonara to the apartment above the garage.

It was a short week for teaching – we had a collaboration day on Monday.  And, being part-time, I only had to show up to a two-hour meeting that afternoon.  It was also a great week for teaching.  First, the Rock Bridge orchestra played “Eleanor Rigby” during lunch in the commons on Wednesday and got a great reception from the students.  

  

Second, the one cellist in Oakland’s orchestra who has been making class miserable for me TRANSFERRED OUT!  Class on Friday had a completely different atmosphere with him gone. 

Otherwise, it was a normal first-of-the-month week (grocery shopping Tuesday and Friday evening, paying bills Thursday evening).  I prepared gig bags and watched “A Winter’s Tale” on Wednesday.  It was not what I was expecting – a fantasy.  I thought it was good and it had a remarkable cast.

The poor dogs are totally worn out this evening because they had to spend a large portion of today in the yard.  We invited a family with two little kids over to watch the morning session and we had another family with five little kids over for cookies this evening.  Trissy hasn’t been out for such a long time in months and, because she didn’t know what to do with herself, started digging under the house.  Not to be outdone, Bones dug up a corner of the garden (thankfully nothing was growing there).  Sadie was confined to Steve’s or my lap all day because she got snippy at the little two-year old who just couldn’t leave her alone.  I think they are all just so happy to have things back to “normal” (whatever that is).