JP tried out for the Middle Tennessee State Honor Band again this Saturday. As our faithful blog readers will remember, last year as a 7th grader he made the 7th and 8th grade honor band. There are two higher level band honors available to 7-9th graders, the Silver and Gold Bands. Very few 7th graders make it to the Silver or Gold level, and there are generally a lot more 9th graders on the Gold band than 8th graders.
The tryout consists of two sessions scored by different sets of judges. In both sessions, the judges are behind a screen so that they can not see who the student is and the performance scores are simply placed next to a student's entry number. The first session requires the student to play two prepared pieces, which are the same for all 167 or so students that tried out for the Bb clarinet positions. At the second session, the student is asked to play 2 scales (in this case it was the G and Eb scales)and their chromatic scale. Then they are asked to play from sight reading 1 to 3 pieces of music. Basically, if the judges consider that the student showed sufficient skill on the first piece, they ask the student to play the second piece. If they do well enough on the second piece, they ask for the third piece. For reference, during last year's tryout, JP was asked to play the 2nd piece, but not the third. This year, he knew he was doing even better because he was asked to play the third piece. He also felt that his work during his lessons had paid off in better overall performance both of his prepared piece and scales. The final ranking and seating in the bands is determined by the scores from both sessions and are posted by that night.
JP was quite anxious all afternoon to find out if he had made any of the honor bands. Based on being asked to play 3 pieces he felt his chances of making the Silver band were pretty good. Finally around 8 pm the lists were posted on the web. We went to the Bb clarinets (the main kind of clarinet used in symphonies, but there are also a small number of Eb bass, and contra clarinets) and started scrolling down the list. We didn't get too far down the list before we found his name listed for the Gold band! He was so excited!
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Teddy Bear Picnic
EM wanted to celebrate her birthday with a build-a-bear party. So she invited some of her friends to join her.
O Tannenbaum!
Christmas Tree hunting
Found the right one and loaded
Decorating the Christmas tree
A Beautiful Christmas TreeThanksgiving and Indianapolis
Nowadays, like the New Year's Bowl season, all holidays have been extended to include Pre-holiday and post-holiday events.
So for us Thanksgiving Day festivals began with a Thanksgiving Eve pie night over at some friends of my sister RS. There were a wide selection of pies available, but surprisingly, no pumpkin pie. (Perhaps this is because at the same event last year, over half the pies were pumpkin!). Of course AMD had made my favorite, blueberry pie, but there were other excellent entries as well. Part of pie night was an impromptu concert by JP and one of my sister's friends who was also a clarinetist.
Thanksgiving Day dawned cold, but not as cold as the previous week, brightening the prospect for a good Turkey Bowl. As is well documented in one of the books I read last year, "Mayflower", the original Thanksgiving festival included a series of games. Although the details were vague, as far as I could tell the most important of these games was one where 11 native tribesman squared off against 11 settlers using a stuffed turkey as a ball. Thus in honor of this tradition, no Thanksgiving Day would be complete without a game of touch football. For the folks in Indy, this first involved a game of ultimate frisbee, where our side was roundly defeated.
However, when the game switched to our traditional game, the scoring went much more in our favor. (Here we could use complex offensive schemes to neutralize our opponents speed and quickness.) However, JP switched to the other side, and twice managed to get wide open from a defender twice his size and slightly faster (don't ask me how!) and scored two key touchdowns.
Meanwhile, AMD was back at the ranch preparing a fabulous dinner with the able assistance of my sister. So around 3 pm, we all dug in and feasted.
The evening brought opportunities to play the European version of the Train Game and to watch the Titans demolish the Lions.
The following morning/afternoon, we settled on a hike at Eagle Creek park to walk off our previous day's gluttony. We found that skipping rocks on the frozen parts of the lake made a spectacular sound, which unfortunately we were unable to record for your amusement. We had intended to do geo-caching along the hike, but RS2's GPS unit was on the fritz. We attempted to use our car's GPS for this purpose, but while we found that we could get our GPS to display coordinates in a particular information screen, it wouldn't update in real time. Additionally it took us awhile to realize that the its decimal system was different than the decimal system that the Geocache site and that most hand-held GPS use, so that we would have to do the math to convert each time. So we failed to find a single geo-cache.
Friday night brought the Pacers game, Saturday morning brought a game of Exactica, won by me! (for the first time I actually bid correctly every single round) and then a wild game of true colors, where we discovered interesting nuances in our perceptions of each other.
Finally, it was time to head back home. The trip was uneventful and we made it in time for a final post-Thanksgiving pie night to round out the festivities.
[I hope to post pictures of all this, if I can discover where they are!]
So for us Thanksgiving Day festivals began with a Thanksgiving Eve pie night over at some friends of my sister RS. There were a wide selection of pies available, but surprisingly, no pumpkin pie. (Perhaps this is because at the same event last year, over half the pies were pumpkin!). Of course AMD had made my favorite, blueberry pie, but there were other excellent entries as well. Part of pie night was an impromptu concert by JP and one of my sister's friends who was also a clarinetist.
Thanksgiving Day dawned cold, but not as cold as the previous week, brightening the prospect for a good Turkey Bowl. As is well documented in one of the books I read last year, "Mayflower", the original Thanksgiving festival included a series of games. Although the details were vague, as far as I could tell the most important of these games was one where 11 native tribesman squared off against 11 settlers using a stuffed turkey as a ball. Thus in honor of this tradition, no Thanksgiving Day would be complete without a game of touch football. For the folks in Indy, this first involved a game of ultimate frisbee, where our side was roundly defeated.
However, when the game switched to our traditional game, the scoring went much more in our favor. (Here we could use complex offensive schemes to neutralize our opponents speed and quickness.) However, JP switched to the other side, and twice managed to get wide open from a defender twice his size and slightly faster (don't ask me how!) and scored two key touchdowns.
Meanwhile, AMD was back at the ranch preparing a fabulous dinner with the able assistance of my sister. So around 3 pm, we all dug in and feasted.
The evening brought opportunities to play the European version of the Train Game and to watch the Titans demolish the Lions.
The following morning/afternoon, we settled on a hike at Eagle Creek park to walk off our previous day's gluttony. We found that skipping rocks on the frozen parts of the lake made a spectacular sound, which unfortunately we were unable to record for your amusement. We had intended to do geo-caching along the hike, but RS2's GPS unit was on the fritz. We attempted to use our car's GPS for this purpose, but while we found that we could get our GPS to display coordinates in a particular information screen, it wouldn't update in real time. Additionally it took us awhile to realize that the its decimal system was different than the decimal system that the Geocache site and that most hand-held GPS use, so that we would have to do the math to convert each time. So we failed to find a single geo-cache.
Friday night brought the Pacers game, Saturday morning brought a game of Exactica, won by me! (for the first time I actually bid correctly every single round) and then a wild game of true colors, where we discovered interesting nuances in our perceptions of each other.
Finally, it was time to head back home. The trip was uneventful and we made it in time for a final post-Thanksgiving pie night to round out the festivities.
[I hope to post pictures of all this, if I can discover where they are!]
Indianapolis Museum of Art
AM and the kids came up to Indy on the Tuesday evening before Thanksgiving. Having already been to the Children's Museum, because the Indy Zoo didn't have a reciprocal agreement with our Memphis zoo pass, and because the NCAA Hall of Champions was closed because of previous fire, we finally decided on the IMA as a family outing.
Main galleries including a collection of British art (primarily post-impressionist) and pottery, American paintings, a large African folk art and statuary, and Chinese art.
Some interesting features:
Although I suppose its obvious from the fact that we use the phrase "the good China" to mean porcelain plates, etc... I was unaware that for a very long time, ALL porcelain came exclusively from China because Europeans did not know how to make it. Porcelain was considered as valuable as spices or gold. It was quite the engineering feat when Europeans finally figure out how to use native soils and materials to replicate the Chinese methods.
There was a small exhibit of Chinese pillows. They were all stone. Hmm...makes one wonder what really constitutes good sleeping accouterments.
One exhibit featured ten sketches Edward Hopper made prior to his painting "The Lobby". Of interest was how the characters and the physical arrangement of the lobby evolved through the sketches, allowing some insight into what he was seeking to represent in the final painting
AM got into trouble for taking this picture, apparently because of the light display in the background. It is posted here so her troubles don't go to waste.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Book Reviews
Thanksgiving Holiday was a great time to catch up on some reading. Here are brief reviews:
American Spinx: The character of Thomas Jefferson.
This biography by J. Ellis explores the philosophical development and world view underlying what seem like the fundamental paradoxes of Thomas Jefferson life. Writer of Declaration of Independence and slave owner; dislike of conflict but ardent revolutionist and founder of American partisan politics; belief in the simple agrarian life-style, but wretchedly lazy farm management and extraordinary lavish lifestyle; and privileged land owner who espoused little d democracy. Unfortunately, while Ellis is able to trace how Jefferson's world view evolved from Whig thinking, document his need for polarity in all aspects of history and politics, and illustrates how his essentially invented version of world history and events allowed him to ignore fundamental contradictions, Ellis does not really give us insight into why Jefferson choose this way of viewing and responding to the world, and why he was unwilling to see his own contradictory nature while assuming the worst in others around him. Ellis also wrote "His Excellency, George Washington" which I found to be a far more insightful biography.
Quite Strength: Tony Dungy.
This autobiography by the highly successful coach of our most feared NFL rival, the Indianapolis Colts, was written as a way for Coach Dungy to share his Christian message. The theme of the book is that trusting that God has a plan for each of us leads to success, although not necessarily the kind of success that we immediately desire. Although books of this sort can easily become tediously preachy, this book does not, principally because Dungy is pretty brutally honest about his doubts and failures along the way and his very real sense that winning football games isn't that important in the larger scheme of things. In particular, the loss of his oldest son to suicide is dealt with in a very moving and honest way. I definitively came away with an appreciation of the work that Coach Dungy is trying to do.
The Perfect Mile.
This book chronicles the lives of three outstanding mile runners, Roger Bannister, John Lundy, and Wes Santee, over the period of about two years as they attempt to be the first man to break the holy grail of running records, the four-minute mile. Superbly told, this is compelling story. We discover that for each man, failures of previous training to bring success at the 1952 Olympics drive the three men to experiment with new training methods and more particularly, with extreme training intensity that is ultimately necessary for first Bannister and then Lundy to finally break the 4-minute barrier. Beyond their personal stories, the book wonderfully reveals how national pride, attitudes towards athletes and athletics, and cultural expectations play a role in the pursuit and final conquest of this "Everest of Athletics."
American Spinx: The character of Thomas Jefferson.
This biography by J. Ellis explores the philosophical development and world view underlying what seem like the fundamental paradoxes of Thomas Jefferson life. Writer of Declaration of Independence and slave owner; dislike of conflict but ardent revolutionist and founder of American partisan politics; belief in the simple agrarian life-style, but wretchedly lazy farm management and extraordinary lavish lifestyle; and privileged land owner who espoused little d democracy. Unfortunately, while Ellis is able to trace how Jefferson's world view evolved from Whig thinking, document his need for polarity in all aspects of history and politics, and illustrates how his essentially invented version of world history and events allowed him to ignore fundamental contradictions, Ellis does not really give us insight into why Jefferson choose this way of viewing and responding to the world, and why he was unwilling to see his own contradictory nature while assuming the worst in others around him. Ellis also wrote "His Excellency, George Washington" which I found to be a far more insightful biography.
Quite Strength: Tony Dungy.
This autobiography by the highly successful coach of our most feared NFL rival, the Indianapolis Colts, was written as a way for Coach Dungy to share his Christian message. The theme of the book is that trusting that God has a plan for each of us leads to success, although not necessarily the kind of success that we immediately desire. Although books of this sort can easily become tediously preachy, this book does not, principally because Dungy is pretty brutally honest about his doubts and failures along the way and his very real sense that winning football games isn't that important in the larger scheme of things. In particular, the loss of his oldest son to suicide is dealt with in a very moving and honest way. I definitively came away with an appreciation of the work that Coach Dungy is trying to do.
The Perfect Mile.
This book chronicles the lives of three outstanding mile runners, Roger Bannister, John Lundy, and Wes Santee, over the period of about two years as they attempt to be the first man to break the holy grail of running records, the four-minute mile. Superbly told, this is compelling story. We discover that for each man, failures of previous training to bring success at the 1952 Olympics drive the three men to experiment with new training methods and more particularly, with extreme training intensity that is ultimately necessary for first Bannister and then Lundy to finally break the 4-minute barrier. Beyond their personal stories, the book wonderfully reveals how national pride, attitudes towards athletes and athletics, and cultural expectations play a role in the pursuit and final conquest of this "Everest of Athletics."
Pacer Game
My sister RS got cheap tickets to the Pacers game on Friday, so JP and I, as well as my brother-in-law, went to the Pacers-Bobcat game. On our way into the field house, we also saw Indy's Lighting of the Circle, their big Christmas lighting ceremony.
It was JP's first NBA game. I realized how little I have paid attention to the NBA since leaving Jazz land when I didn't recognize a single player on either team.
It was an exciting game, with the Pacers falling way behind early, catching up in third quarter, then missing the final shot with the scored tied 99-99 in regulation to go into overtime. The Pacers missed about 15 layups in the 4th quarter and overtime and lost the game in the end.
One of the most exciting incidents during the game wasn't the game itself, but the t-shirt cannon. You can imagine that cheap NBA tickets are way up in the rafters and during one of the time-outs the mascot for the Pacers (which I swear is a blue mouse) was walking around on the court with a t-shirt cannon. The guy in the seat directly in front of me was standing up and waving for a shirt, the only person in the whole area doing so. I told JP the guy was crazy as there was no way the mouse could shoot it all the way up to where we were. Apparently the blue mouse noticed this loyal t-shirt lover and took careful aim and fired, the t-shirt flew in a direct line, just out of his reach of his fingertips, and unfortunately, also just out of mine, and into the arms of the man two seats back of me. The man in front turned around and said, "You know he was shooting that for me!" and I said "Yes, he was, I can't believe it got all the way up here!"
It was JP's first NBA game. I realized how little I have paid attention to the NBA since leaving Jazz land when I didn't recognize a single player on either team.
It was an exciting game, with the Pacers falling way behind early, catching up in third quarter, then missing the final shot with the scored tied 99-99 in regulation to go into overtime. The Pacers missed about 15 layups in the 4th quarter and overtime and lost the game in the end.
One of the most exciting incidents during the game wasn't the game itself, but the t-shirt cannon. You can imagine that cheap NBA tickets are way up in the rafters and during one of the time-outs the mascot for the Pacers (which I swear is a blue mouse) was walking around on the court with a t-shirt cannon. The guy in the seat directly in front of me was standing up and waving for a shirt, the only person in the whole area doing so. I told JP the guy was crazy as there was no way the mouse could shoot it all the way up to where we were. Apparently the blue mouse noticed this loyal t-shirt lover and took careful aim and fired, the t-shirt flew in a direct line, just out of his reach of his fingertips, and unfortunately, also just out of mine, and into the arms of the man two seats back of me. The man in front turned around and said, "You know he was shooting that for me!" and I said "Yes, he was, I can't believe it got all the way up here!"