To anyone who has been keeping up with my blog from time to time:  I apologize for the lack of content lately.  I'm going through a blogging dry spell, and I may decide to pack it in.  In the meantime, I'll leave this up for a while just in case, but for now, I'm too busy enjoying life!

What I'd do with student papers if I had the time

Sentence in student paper:

"It's harder then you think."

My comments:
Hmmm...

It's harder, then, you think.

It's harder; then, you think.
It's harder then...you think?
It's harder.  Then!  You think.
It's harder, then.  You think.


OOooooooh....!  *lightbulb*

It's harder THAN you think.  And here I thought it was a punctuation issue.

:)
:)
:D

New wines are such fun!

We admittedly went a little nuts with the wine shopping yesterday, but our wine rack is happy again!  Among our purchases:

Door Peninsula's Hallowine -- Quoting from their website, "This sweet apple wine spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg is most popular in fall when served warm...a dangerous substitute for apple cider!"  I cannot wait to try it--maybe a glass or two tonight on the porch with a warm slice of pumpkin bread.

Crown Valley's Chuck Berry BlackBerry Wine -- made with 100% blackberries! This one is of course total froufrou, and I'm thinking it'll go well with a slice of cheesecake, or maybe, as the bottle label suggests, blended into some yogurt or ice cream.

White Owl's Cherry Pie -- This one was a guess.  During our last visit to one of our favorite little wine bars, we asked for a bottle of something that we had enjoyed on a previous visit.  Although we're not usually into rosé, this particular wine came to us as part of a wine flight, and we fell in love with its distinctly cinnamon flavor.  When we described it to the server on this most recent visit, she brought us a bottle of the Cherry Pie.  Hopefully it is the cinnamon wine we were so fond of, but the description on the website suggests we may be in for a surprise.  When it comes to wine, though, surprises are welcome!

And last but certainly not least,The Big Red Monster, brought to us by Jeff Booth and Bob Pepi -- A big, fruit-forward "monster zin" is hands down my favorite in wine, so hopefully this blend will come close.

The best part is that all of these wines are so fun!

Edit:  "The Big Red Monster" ended up as our dinner companion for the evening, and although it wasn't bad, it was a little tamer than I'd hoped, flavor-wise.  Its main flaw was a bit too much acidity, which never earns high marks in my book.  It held its own against a steak, though, so like I said, not bad.  7/10

Names and Titles

And today, from my life in the academy...

If you're female and hold any professional position in which people address you by your last name, you'll inevitably be addressed as "Mrs. __" at least once, whether you are married or not.  I'm not married, but to me, this detail is irrelevant.  "Mrs." and "Miss" both get under my skin (blame it on the feminist in me).  I wonder when the rest of the world is going to catch up to the now-accepted "Ms."  This is only safe, after all, not to mention polite, if you do not know the marital status of the person you address.  My students routinely and habitually use "Mrs. __" to address me, despite my request the first day of class not to do so.

Add to this the fact that I hold a Ph.D. and am a college professor.  Now, to be sure, I'm not some stuffy, you-must-call-me-"Dr. __" type; I'm all about casual, and I've encouraged my students to address me by my first name.  They usually don't, unfortunately.  (The maddening exception to this is the occasional student I've never met who calls my office phone to ask a question.  Then, it seems that it's always, "Hi, FirstName...."  Nice.)  So, not only do some students drop the "Dr.," but they go one step further and use "Mrs. " instead of even "Ms."   My customary response to "Mrs. __" used to be, "I'm not married to my father," but I no longer use this one due to the blank stare I usually got in response.  

So anyway, after being torn about this issue for a while (should I make a big deal out of this and insist on a particular formit  of address, or should I just blow it off and deal), I've decided that people need to be clued in a little.  So, with a friendly smile, I let people know that it is not "Mrs." and that they are welcome to address me by FirstName or by "Dr. __."  I finish up by saying that, if they are addressing a woman whose marital status is unknown, it's safest (and appropriate) to use "Ms."  After all, part of what I do includes capitalizing on teachable moments, and there's everything right, I think, with contributing to a well-educated, socially-aware citizenry.  'Nuf said.

Joys of administration

Not that there are many, but there are a few.  Just today, someone told me, "you know, CC, you're really doing a fantastic job--always looking out for us, and so on top of everything.  I just wanted you to know that, and also that things around here weren't always this good."

Hearing that I'm making a difference really made my day!

Singing for funerals

I never intended for a month to go by without posting, but, well, there it went.  Not to be a downer, but I have a good excuse:  someone very close to me has been ill for several weeks and recently passed away.  Slowly but surely, I'm trying to get back to normal.  So, hopefully I will soon get back to my normal posting frequency.

Onto the main topic for today:  singing at funerals.  A former voice teacher once warned me of the danger inherent in singing for the funeral of someone with whom you had a close relationship.  Well, I totally ignored that piece of advice last week, and I'm glad I did.  Initially, I toyed with the idea of singing at this person's funeral, but I was sufficiently ambivalent and did not assert my half wish to do so.  I was eventually asked, so that tipped the scales.  To begin with, I was asked to sing a folk song, but as a classical singer who doesn't often cross over, I didn't think I'd be able to do it justice.  Not only that, but I realized that the lyrics would prevent me from getting through it without turning into a blubbering mess.  So, I opted for the Schubert "Ave Maria" instead and got through that just fine.

When it comes to singing for the funeral of someone you cared deeply about, there are a couple of rules:  First, know your limits!  The folk song I was asked to sing was one that I've cried to often over the past month.  I can barely listen to it--much less sing it--without breaking down.  So, do not pick something overly emotionally unsettling or provoking.  Singing in a foreign language is preferable, and the strength of this preference is inversely proportional to your knowledge of that language.  True, we all know the text to the Ave Maria, but still, it's not that emotionally provocative, and we've heard it a jillion times.  The second must-follow rule:  Pick something that is musically easy to sing.  The Ave Maria fits this rule perfectly.  Don't pick anything with a ridiculous high note (not likely for funeral music anyway, but...), because if you're having trouble emotionally, you have a greater chance of screwing it up.  And finally, you may have to do a little role-playing game with yourself to keep focused--pretend you're somewhere else, singing for an audience, whatever it takes.

If you can make it work, singing at the funeral of a close friend or family member can be one of the most rewarding and therapeutic things you can do as a singer.  The phrase "giving back" takes on a deeper and more personal meaning.  

Crazies

News flash:

Just because you're offered a role in a production does NOT mean that you suddenly have the right to cast the entire show with "your people."  Please.  And just so you know, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is that indispensable.  Here's a tip:  If you want to be taken seriously and have opportunities extended to you in the professional world, then start acting like a professional.  

You don't approve of the current system?  Fine, decline the role and start your own company.  Let's get one thing straight: When you're offered a role, you either accept or politely decline.  You do not engage in attack politics.  Are you doing all of the organizational and administrative work, including contributing all kinds of resources, to put together a production?  No?  Then it's not your show to run.

I want a refund!

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to replace my antiquated metronome with a small, battery-powered number that also functions as a pitch pipe.  It looked kind of cute in the store, and the number of settings and options attracted me.  But, I get it home only to discover a big problem:  It's pitched!  How on earth is this supposed to not be distracting??  Here you are, singing/playing in a particular key, only to hear the pitch of the clicks completely clashing with what you're doing.  Is it just me here, or was this thing totally designed by a non-musician?  Maybe it's just me, but really.  Why would anyone design a metronome, of all things--a device used exclusively in the context of tone production--in such a way as to interfere with that very activity?  Maybe I'm way too sensitive for my own good.  I really have no idea what other people use in the privacy of their own practice space.  Maybe I've been spoiled for way too long with my old clunker that puts out a good, solid, non-musical click.  But, this just doesn't cut it.  

If good and bad exist in art, how shall we know them?

From time to time, I expend way too much mental energy (because I never seem to come to a definitive conclusion on this one) thinking about the extent to which the "goodness" or "badness" of art comes down to subjective taste versus how it measures up against the yardstick of some set of objective criteria.  Usually, especially when it comes to music, I tend to come down more on the side of objective criteria.  I mean, clearly, there are The Rules (e.g., no parallel fifths) which can, in certain contexts, define good and bad.  And then, there's just the simple matter of the degree to which the performer, for instance, can meet some minimum standard, like staying on pitch, singing or playing the notes correctly on the page, etc.  Yet, beyond a few basics, things get way more complicated.  What is "good technique," for instance?  There are so many variations of good technique (and, therefore, bad technique), and so maybe subjective taste enters in only at the most micro level.

My lunch the other day forced me to think about this general issue from a slightly different angle.  First, though, one assumption:  Food preparation can be an art.  Anyway, there's a place I like to go for crêpes, and there's one crêpe on the menu that I've ordered five times in a row:  the chicken, sun-dried tomato, and goat cheese crêpe.  Except that I detest goat cheese.  Every time I go in, I ask what other cheeses they have that day (it varies), and I pick one to substitute for the goat cheese.  Four out of five times--I kid you not--they have screwed up my order.  The first time, my crêpe arrived in its original menu configuration, with goat cheese, so I sent it back.  The second time, the chef took an extra long time with it, and when it finally did arrive, it contained not only the cheese I had requested, but also a few stray pieces of goat cheese (oops).  The third time, another remake; the fourth, almost no cheese at all.  

Parenthetical:  At this point, you may be asking why I bothered continuing with this routine, given the abysmal failure rate.  After the second time, I became intrigued.  Why were they having such a difficult time following my order, which I clearly gave and watched them write down?  I started to imagine an arrogant chef in the kitchen ("Ahhh! But zees ees my creation!  Me make zees deesh zee weey me make zeet!"), angry with some "tasteless customer" interfering with his idea of crêpe perfection.  

So anyway, back to the issue of good vs. bad art.  Funny how food somehow brings an immediacy to this issue that other art forms do not.  Unlike a symphony or a painting, a plate of food takes us right down to subsistence level.  And here, subjective taste has everything to do with whether something is good or bad, and ultimately, therefore, with survival.  Why do I prefer provolone as opposed to goat cheese on my chicken & tomato crêpe?  The goat cheese turns it into something altogether different, and although I can eat it, I won't enjoy it.  Take out the cheese completely and substitute, say, pickled pig sphincters, and I won't even touch it. Granted, at this stage of the game, one could argue that culture lays ultimate claim to taste, and if this is true, food preparation then has a lot more in common with other forms of art.  In other words, just as culturally-imposed rules and conventions influence our reaction to a student composition, they likewise influence our reaction to a gustatory creation.

But, if we stick with the provolone vs. goat cheese example, there's really no cultural reason to prefer one cheese over the other.  Both are prevalent, and the social value placed on eating provolone is not higher than that placed on eating goat cheese.  If this is all true, then taste must be due to something other than culture, which is nothing if not a consensually-validated set of standards.  Regardless of what this "something other" is, it begs the question of how much what we think of as quality is inherently subjective.  

So then, when it comes to food, there are certain culturally-defined parameters of what good and bad are, and the rest is murky and subjective, given that the response is a more literally visceral one.  With other art forms, though, which exist a few levels beyond the visceral, defining what's good and bad--or high and low, or better and worse--gets trickier.  Why does one person prefer Bach while another prefers Shostakovich?  I'd love to correlate preference here with physiology.  I'd bet there are some interesting relationships.

Thoughts?

Road trippin' it!

We finished out our summer traveling season with a pretty decent-sized road trip.  His dad's side of the family has a reunion every 5 years, and this was the year.  On the way out, we stopped in the college town where I went to grad school (probably my favorite part of the trip...shhhh! don't tell).  

All in all, I think I've gotten my fill of summer traveling this year, and it'll be good to finish out the last couple of weeks of my summer, before I have to be back in the office full-time, with some much-needed R&R at home.  And, I even have a fun little project in mind for myself for this coming weekend and the ensuing week.  Let's just say that it involves a new toy (or two), a few file swaps, much configuring and reading of manuals, and some speeeeed!!  Any ideas??  

This will likely be my LAST new toy for a long while, because, well, I seem to have been in new toy buying mode for the past couple of months.  But, I can't feel too bad, because check this:  This past week, after a few years of hard work, I got myself totally and completely out of consumer debt.  WOOOOT!  So, of course, I have to reward myself with a new toy.  (Oh no...there must be a rule about this--sort of like the rule about not rewarding sticking to a diet with a hot fudge sundae.)  

Before the fun begins, though, I have a couple of annoyances to deal with this week:  Finishing up cleaning the house (got a great start on this one today, though, with a kitchen floor mop and a bathroom scrub), and a dentist appointment tomorrow.  This summer, I've tried to get most of my routine doctor visits out of the way, while I have extra time and few (okay, no) singing engagements.  So far:

Eye exam & first new glasses in 5 years -- CHECK

Annual ENT scope -- CHECK

Dentist -- tomorrow (Sooooo dreading this one)

Annual general check-up -- couple of weeks

So, there you have it.  I meant to get these last two appointments in earlier, but the dentist is always one that I seem to procrastinate on.  It is an ordeal to be gotten through, but I'm trying to be good about going every year (just cannot seem to do the 6-month thing), and it's time.

Also on tap for this week is making as much progress with learning new music as possible.  I haven't been as good as I'd wanted this summer (last summer was much more productive), and I really need to get with the program.  I have a hard time focusing when I don't have immediate singing engagements, but I have to stay focused.  I have a couple of auditions coming up in the not-too-distant future, and I have work to do.