Concert Week

Concert week technically started on Thursday the 4th and won't end until Thursday the 18th, but seven of the ten concerts fit between Monday the 8th and Friday the 12th, so I'm considering that week to be concert week.

The first concert was the elementary instrumental concert. Heather played in the fourth grade orchestra (the first group), and Allison played in the sixth grade band (the last group), so we got the joy of staying for the entire concert. Before the concert, I got to help tune the seventy-some stringed instruments in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade orchestras. I'll admit, I wasn't all that concerned with absolute perfection. Their instruments go out of tune quickly, and they can't play in tune to begin with, so I figured I wouldn't be adding a whole lot of pain to the listening experience by letting a few of the instruments remain slightly out of tune. The fourth-graders weren't supposed to get to use their bows, but my sister brought hers out anyway and had to be sent back to put it away. The fourth and fifth grade orchestras performed at the expected skill level, but the 9-member sixth grade orchestra should have been much better. The fifth grade band played as expected, but the sixth grade band played exceptionally well. They were actually pleasant to listen to for the most part.

On the Monday of the main concert week, we got to hear the fifth and sixth grade voices of Whitaker along with the Whitaker percussion ensemble. The songs were surprisingly un-hokey, considering the director. He's really quite a character. I don't know how else to describe him. You should see how high he crosses his lowercase t's (I'm not sure if I wrote that properly, but I'm sure that you all get the idea). As usual, the percussion ensemble played painfully repetitive songs that lasted somewhere between five and ten minutes each.

I guess it's typical for local churches and other groups to ask the high school's audition choir (Chorale) to come and sing around Christmastime. This year we're singing at two or three churches and an assisted living home, along with our annual concerts for the senior citizens of the community and the middle and high school students. Our first in a long series of concerts came on Tuesday during school. We drove over to St. Paul's Church of Christ in North College Hill to play for a group of elderly women. I called them the Widow Brigade in my head. Our first song didn't go so well, but the others went just fine. Our last song was a version of the "Ave Maria" that is evidently sung at many funerals. It actually caused several of the old women to cry. In the last song, my friend Eddie and I sing a tenor solo as a duet. He never wanted to sing it in the first place, but I think our conductor felt bad about giving both tenor solos to girls, so he had Eddie and I sing the lower one together. Since he had never intended to try out for the solo, he didn't know the words until today. The fact that he had no idea what he was singing would always make me a nervous wreck during rehearsals, so I'm glad he fixed it in time for our first concert. I felt that we did well, and several of the Chorale members told us that our balance and blend was excellent. Hurrah! I have one last thing to mention about the kind old ladies: one of them looked a little spacey and was wearing a pair of reindeer antlers tied on top of her head with a large bow under her chin. We had a hard time looking in her direction with a straight face.

Tuesday night was the high school and middle school instrumental concert. Before the concert, we did some last minute practicing. A week before, we had started looking at a variation of Greensleeves, and it wasn't coming together well at all. She told us to pull out the song, and I raised my hand and politely asked if she really thought we were prepared to perform the song. She completely blew up and yelled something about how we never listen to her or do anything she says. So we played through the last section of the song. The ending part is just the traditional Greensleeves. When we were done, she told us that we would just be playing the ending since that was the only part we could play even moderately well. I know that she's been under a lot of stress these past few weeks, but I don't still don't feel that she was justified in biting my head off. The concert started out with the jazz band, and they were excellent (as usual). They were followed by the middle school orchestra. They were not excellent. Between the middle and high school orchestras, I played a piece in a quintet with two violins, a cello, and a harp. It went pretty well...except for the fact that the first violin can't count to save her life. She came in a beat late on one of her entrances and bungled things up. She always misses that part. You'd think that she would hear that something wasn't fitting together correctly, but she never seems to notice. Until this year, she's been a soloist taking private lessons. She can't play with groups very well, but she doesn't seem to notice that. The high school orchestra did okay. We always do a lot better during actual performances than we do during practices. The high school band was wonderful like they always are. For the finale, we had the high school orchestra cram on stage with the full high school band to play a song together. The orchestra has 27 people, and the band has 70-something. And we were behind them. The cellos had a mic, but that was it. Evidently, it sounded fantastic, but I have to wonder if the strings were heard.


Wednesday evening we went to the third and fourth grade chorus concert at my old elementary school. The director has been rotating through the same set of songs since Dan was in third grade. This year she actually added a new one. We were shocked.


The final official concert was Thursday night's high school choir concert. Between choirs, we have solos or ensembles. For this concert, almost all of them were fantastic. The first one was horrible, but it just made the others look even better. Adam Weber sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and he has the perfect voice and attitude for that song. It may have been my favorite of the solos. Chorale went last, and all of our songs went pretty well. The audience about died laughing during "Fruitcake," and we got a standing ovation after "Ave Maria." Both Sean and Dan (the opening soloists) and Eddie and I (the second set of soloists) blended better than we had for any previous rehearsal, and Victoria finally fixed the pronunciation on her solo. I love singing that song. I love singing in Latin in general. It fits my tone very well. If I sing a senior solo, it will probably be something in Latin.

On Friday during the day, the high school choruses sang a condensed version of Thursday's concert in the morning for the middle school and our community's senior citizens. We had to cut one of our songs, we never felt as comfortable with that one as we did with the others. In the afternoon, we sang for the high school, but the principal took away ten minutes of our concert time, so we had to skip "Ave Maria." It's somewhere between seven and eight minutes long, and our conductor didn't think that very many of the students would have the attention span to sit through it. He may have been right, but I still really wish that we could have sung it for everyone.

I have two more chorale concerts this week, but they aren't likely to be very eventful. If something exciting happens, I'll make a comment.

My Groovy Purse Pins

I was writing an article for my school's literary magazine (which is really just a collection of odd surveys, thoughts, lists, and articles written by myself and some friends of mine) when I realized that it would do just as well as a blog post. I know I've been silent for several weeks, but I've been rather busy. I currently have four other posts in progress, and I hope to publish them over winter break.

My Groovy Purse Pins
by: gwendolyn maple

Most people in our high school have seen my fabulous purse at least once. You may even have taken the time to look at the pins covering it. But you may find yourself wondering… what do they all mean? The time has come to answer that question.*

• pirate flag: Do any of you remember the boat project from seventh grade? I worked with Christina McGuire, Courtney Dennis, and Sara Crowell to make The Black Pearl. The Jolly Roger on my purse once flew proudly from the main mast of our little boat.
  
• “dots” label: I love Dots . I don’t actually like eating them all that much (they get stuck to one’s teeth), but I like some of the flavors and I like looking at them. They have nice colors and shapes.
  
• orange duct tape with writing: It says “Hey Band! Watch out for my flag!” and was given to me by Megan Menke during band camp 2006.
  
• blue-scale: There really is nothing more to this strip from a paint sample other than the fact that it looked lovely.
  
• Halloween doughnut: My youngest sister gave me a sticker with a Krispy Kreme doughnut dressed up as a cowboy saying “Howdy goblins!” The letters and parts of the doughnut glow in the dark.
  
• Purdue ticket stub: My family generally tries to go to a Purdue football game every year. Both my parents went there (along with countless other relatives), and I plan to go there as well. I feel the need to emphasize that I’m not planning to attend Purdue just because my relatives have. The school fits me very well.
  
• dutchman scrap: Dutchmanning is a set-building trick in which tape or glue-soaked canvas is laid over seams between flats to conceal the cracks between them. In Cinderella, the 2005 musical, we used canvas to dutchman, and I filched a piece that I had painted to look like wood.
  
• sparkly smiling clover pin: Hopefully that was self-explanatory. I am proud of my Irish heritage. Along with my German, British, Scottish, French, and Native American heritage. I’m a mutt, and this pin shows a part of my mixed ancestry.
  
• cutie tangerine sticker: There are these delicious little tangerines (or maybe they’re actually clementines) called “cuties.” They have little stickers on them that say things like “cutie” or “I’m a cutie” or “kiss a cutie.” The one on my purse says “I’m a cutie.”
  
• shapes sticker: I found my old purse from seventh and eighth grade, and – lo and behold – there were stickers all over the underside of the closing flap. I found where it all began. One of the stickers said “I learned my shapes.”
  
• Grool/Gruel: We never decided how to spell her name, but Grool/Gruel is a drawing created by myself and several others (I know I’ll miss some people if I try to remember everyone) in tenth grade English class. We were bored, so Megan Menke started to draw a girl, and she passed it to someone else to add something. They passed it to the next person and so on. She wound up being quite interesting, but I don’t have room to describe her here.
  
• security sticker: I save the stickers that come on the inside of watches and some other pieces of merchandise. I assume they’re supposed to set off an alarm if you steal them. I think they look nifty. The one that is currently on my purse is bright blue and transparent.
  
• tree-hugger pin: It says “hug a tree” and depicts a panda climbing some bamboo. It came to me from Target via a friend of mine. Hurrah for Target!
  
• no hunger: At the Community Service Leadership Conference this year, the Freestore Food Bank was handing out pins that had the word hunger encircled and crossed out in red.
  
• Dove chocolate wrapper: Whenever I’m having a crappy day, I find at my elbow a piece of Dove chocolate (courtesy of Courtney) with a pleasant word inside. My favorite wrapper yet is the one on my purse that reads “Go to your special place.”
  
• green rectangle: There is no significance to this green paint sample other than the fact that it’s a swell color.
  
• orange star: This puffy little star that I often refer to as a starfish is yet another decoration on my purse that has not deeper significance than its aesthetic appeal.
  
• leaf mask half: Once upon a time last year, Katie Schmidt (Le Phoque Volant de Neige) made me a leaf mask. She drew two leaves connected by a mutual petiole and made them rather colorful. However, the mask was not very useful as a mask, for it lacked eyeholes. I took the only logical alternative course of action: I taped the mask to my upper lip and wore it as an outrageously gorgeous moustache for the rest of the day.
  
• water cycle: Layla Owens used to bring these water bottles with nifty labels displaying an illustration of the water cycle. I cut out the illustration from one of the bottles, and it has lived on three different purses since then.
  
• Crush label: My Crush outfit has reached the level of notoriety. Not only do the shirt, earrings, bracelet, and shoes coordinate, but my purse also has a bit of Orange Crush spirit.
  
• Ireland triangle: And here we have some more Irish spirit. This groovy triangular sticker came from a Highlights magazine and has on it a Celtic knot and the word “Ireland.”
  
• tidbit from box of chucks: “This box deserves another chance to hold a pair of Converse shoes. Please recycle.” (and yes, I did recycle the rest of the box)
  
• “go green” button: It says “go green” and has a green viny background. It also hails from Targét.
  
• happy frog: This smiling amphibian actually belong to a Hello Kitty mobile one of my sisters got years ago, but she doesn’t know that.
  
• ninja penguin: Originally an ordinary penguin, this sticker deserved a little more pizzazz. I added shuriken, a headband, and some Japanese sandals. You may recall that I also have a pirate flag on my purse. I am in fact a pinja (a pirate-ninja hybrid). I can’t pick a side, so I choose both.
  
• tato: The technical name for the windmill-esque origami thing on my purse is “tato.” I have no idea what that means, but it the thing looks cool and it was fun to make.
  
• “support the separation of church and hate” button: It says what I just wrote (minus the word "button"), and my youngest three sisters got it for me in Chicago. I will proudly admit that I am a Christian, but I’m ashamed by the fact that the church sometimes attacks people before trying to love them.
  
• MS button: I got this button from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for participating in the MS Walk this spring.
  
• fortune cookie paper: It reads “You find beauty in ordinary things. Do no lose this ability.” Anybody who has known me for any length of time should be able to testify to the truth of this statement.
  
• photo booth picture: While on a mall-wandering adventure, Anna Worpenberg, Courtney Dennis, Emily Christenson, Sara Crowell, and myself all crammed into a photo booth. I love this picture.
  
• Germany sticker: As I mentioned before, I’m part German. I’m more German than anything else except Irish. This sticker also came from a Highlights magazine. It depicts a black eagle.
  
• evil smiley: This button provokes more inquiry than any other button on my purse. It was also the first button on my first hand-made purse. I found a plain red smiley face button in my basement three or four years ago and decided it needed a little personality… hence the fangs, crooked front teeth, and sharply angled eyebrows. People often believe that it is angry, but this is clearly not the case. Its broad smile should make that apparent. It is merely mildly deranged.
  
• R.I.P., my beloved art button: I would like to take a moment to recognize a dearly beloved pin that only lasted for a few months before disappearing. Life on the outside of my purse is hard indeed. This button came from my sisters along with the “separation of church and hate” pin and boldly called out “Doing strange things in the name of art.” I have been known to collect pine sap, wire a scarf to the wall while wearing it, create an abstraction of advice for reading poetry, search for lovely leaves, and write out literally hundreds of words by hand in meticulously straight lines in different sized fonts for the sake of art. And this only touches the tip of the iceberg. Rest in peace wherever you may be.

*The decorations on my purse are likely to change without notice. Do not consider this list to be by any means a comprehensive list of the various pins, buttons, and patches that have adorned or will adorn my purse throughout the years.

I Had a Dream...

I've had some really odd dreams. I'm pretty sure all of my readers have heard about at least a few of them, but I'm going to attempt to compile some of my strangest ones. I can come up with some sort of explanation for the first three, but I have no idea if the others have any relation to reality whatsoever.

Last night, my dream involved derivatives, an academic team meet, and presidential candidates. I was at an academic team meet, and we had to compare the derivatives of the presidential candidates' stances on certain topics. When I was rudely awoken up by my alarm clock, I continued to try to solve the problem for a minute or two before I woke up enough to realize that I didn't really have to find the derivatives of their stances and that such a task was a category mistake.


In a rather recent dream, Kari Buchheim had had a nightmare in which dogs were wearing glasses (in real life, I had seen these glasses on a friend of mine I ran into this weekend for the first time in over a year). We arrived at school, and everyone was wearing the same glasses the dogs in her nightmare had worn. For the rest of the day, we ran around the school trying to hide from the people wearing glasses. Hannah Irvine kept on creeping up on us and scaring the crap out of Kari. At one point I gave up (on escaping? I'm not sure exactly what I was giving up on) and laid down on the ramp between the locker area and the English hallway. The Jeremy Bell came up to me and startled me. He wasn't wearing glasses.

This is the only dream out of this collection that counts as a nightmare, but I can think of few people other than my eleven-year-old self who would be frightened by it as I was at the time. I freaked out quite a bit in the weeks leading up to the commencement of middle school. One night, I had a dream that someone had put my schedule in my locker, but I couldn't find my locker without a schedule. I ran all over the huge building (I can't believe I used to think it was so large) searching for someone to help me, but they were all in class where they were supposed to be. I ended up running away from a teacher who I assumed was trying to give me a detention, but I kept getting lost.

Another time, I was sitting in a sunlit cottage in a clearing in a forest late one morning. There were three doors and a window. The window faced the east (thus letting in the morning sun), the door to the outside faced the west and had a small window, and the other doors led to rooms. I was in the main room. It was a light greyish color and had no source of light other than the sun. The only pieces of furniture were a table covered in a white tablecloth and I chair I was sitting in. On top of the table was a basket containing many different types of apples. I was trying to cook apple pies for my friends, but I couldn't remember which apples each one liked best.

I was standing alone in a sunlit, circular tower made of stone in a clearing in a forest. There was nothing inside the tower, and it wasn't paved. The floor was grass. There were narrow, un-paned windows arranged so that they spiraled up the tower (I'm not sure that was a clear description, but I can't think of how to describe it in words), and they let in lots of sun. I was the only person in the tower, but there were several robins and cardinals clinging to the walls and singing.

This dream came from seven or eight years ago, but I still remember it well. I know this one will sound familiar to at least one of you. I was in an expansive white room. I couldn't see any walls or windows, but it was naturally lit. Tall, white, regularly-spaced columns held up the lofty ceiling. The floor was a black and white checkered pattern. Near where I stood, there was an orange goldfish in a bowl on a pedestal and a black cat trying to catch the fish.

Sir Cephelebrum Man and His Mighty Brain

For psychology class, we had to write a children's story explaining the functions of various parts of the brain. For my project, I created a super-hero. I can't stand my character. He was kind of fun to create at times, but he's like something my little brother would invent and love. I can't just change the entire personality of a character if it wants to be the way it is. Without further ado, here's my brain book.

Sir Cephelebrum Man and His Mighty Brain

Greetings, friends! My name is Sir Cephelebrum Man. I have learned that any real super-hero needs to use every part of his brain, from the cerebral cortex to the medulla. Allow me to introduce the parts of my brain and explain how they help me in my super-heroism.

My cerebral cortex is the outside layer of my cerebrum, the largest part of my brain. It is split into two halves called hemispheres. The corpus callosum is a bundle of neuron (nerve cell) fibers that connects the two hemispheres and lets them share information.

My cerebral cortex is divided into sections called lobes. Each lobe is responsible for different kinds of activities. The four types of lobes are the temporal lobes, occipital lobes, parietal lobes, and frontal lobes. The lobes come in pairs, one for each hemisphere.

My temporal lobes are found at the bottom the cerebral cortex around my ears. These lobes help me process information from my ears. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to hear calls for help. If I don’t know when the citizens of my fair city need my help, how can I be a hero?

My occipital lobes are at the back of my head. They let me process information from my eyes. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to see sinister villains, damsels in distress, stranded kittens, raging forest fires, or any other matters in need of my heroic attention.

In front of my occipital lobes are my parietal lobes. These lobes allow me to feel. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to feel whether I was walking on firm ground or flying through the air. Plus, I wouldn’t know when my admiring fans were timidly tapping my shoulder to ask for autographs.

My frontal lobes are at the front of my cerebral cortex. They let me move and make decisions. Without them, I couldn’t rush to the aid of helpless civilians or decide which superhero suit to wear each day. What on earth would I do without my frontal lobes?

Without the help of my thalamus, my cerebral cortex would have no information to work with. My thalamus sends messages from my eyes, ears, hands, and other body parts to my cerebral cortex so that I can see, hear, and feel. It also sends messages to my cerebellum and medulla, who we will meet later on.

My cerebral cortex isn’t the only part of the brain that helps me out when I save the day. I also rely on my limbic system. My limbic system is responsible for important things like emotions, memory, and hunger. My hippocampus, hypothalamus, and amygdala make up my limbic system.

My hippocampus helps me process memories. If it were damaged, I wouldn’t be able to remember who my enemies and allies are. Just think of the chaos that could cause! I also wouldn’t be able to remember my countless heroic deeds or the directions to my favorite pizza parlor.

My hypothalamus tells me when I need to eat and drink, and it keeps my body temperature stable. If I forgot to eat or drink, I would be too tired to accomplish my daring deeds. If my body couldn’t keep a healthy temperature, I would have a hard time travelling to the ends of the earth to fulfill me heroic duties.

Without my amygdala, Mondays would be unbearable. It has a lot of influence over my emotions, especially anger. On Monday mornings, it’s hard to muster the enthusiasm to fight evildoers if I don’t feel any righteous anger. I turn my anger into something productive, and it helps me save the world.

Outside of my cerebral cortex and my limbic system, I have additional helpful brain parts. My reticular formation keeps me awake. Imagine what would happen if I fell asleep while I was flying to save a woman from a burning building! Surely we would both perish in the flames!

My cerebellum is responsible for my impeccable balance and coordination. It allows me to scamper across power lines in pursuit of ne’er-do-wells in addition to helping me fasten my cape to my shoulders while I rush to save the day.

My medulla and my brain stem work hand in hand. Both of them take care of my body’s vital functions so I don’t have to. My medulla controls my heart rate and breathing rate, and my brain stem takes care of digestion and other tasks. If I had to think about all these things, I would never have time to leave my lair and fight evil.

My pons helps out my reticular formation, my medulla, and my frontal lobes. It helps keep me awake, regulate my breathing, and control voluntary movement. When my other brain parts are overloaded by the stress of controlling a superhero, my pons is there to lend a hand.

All of these brain parts combine forces to allow me to become the super hero that I am. Guess what? Your brain has each of these parts too! You, too, could one day become a super hero or super heroine. I look forward to seeing you working for the good of awesome!

Frustration and Music

Why? Why does the orchestra suck? Why don't the members of chorale care? Why am I still part of either?

This year in orchestra we have barely 30 members, and the total apathy and lack of skill is simply astounding. For starters, intonation is abominable. I can understand occasionally missing notes, but our degree of not-skilled-ness is inexcusable in a high school orchestra. For example, one of my fellow violas consistently plays a B flat rather than a B natural during a viola solo no matter how many times I remind him that he's wrong. I think the violins think they're playing the right notes, but they aren't even close to in tune with one another. It's hard to say much about the cellos. I'm so excited when they actually play that I'm willing to give them a bit of a break. The music we're playing right now isn't that great. I don't mean that I just don't like it: I mean that musically it isn't good. The harmonies are sub-par, and in one song they build chords that shouldn't fit into the key we're playing in. It's just bad. Even if we had decent music and we could play in tune, we still wouldn't be making music. There is minimal dynamic contrast, scarcely any phrasing, and a negligible amount of emotion. Add to all of this the fact that our teacher is unreliable and garners little (if any) respect from the orchestra. I come to school at 7:15 in the morning every day to participate in a group that I am thoroughly ashamed of. Why? I have a tremendous amount of love for my viola, but I have no time to plug into a group of devoted musicians outside of school. I can't wait to play in college. After all, it can't get much worse.

The chorale is the top audition chorus at Finneytown, so all of its members are talented. In this way it far surpasses the orchestra. Unfortunately the class is unbearable. People never stop talking. Literally. Some people talk while we're supposed to be singing, and more than half of the chorus bursts into chatter the second we pause in a song. It's ridiculous and irritating. Absurd, even. The director has to tell us to fix the same things day after day since few people pay any attention to him, so we can be stuck on a single passage for days with minimal improvement. Like the orchestra director, the chorus teacher doesn't demand much respect. He is generally liked (unlike the orchestra director), but nobody pays much attention to him. I despise that class so much that I'm considering dropping it and jumping into AP Art History (which I originally wanted to take, but rejected for the sake of chorale). I do love to sing, but I can always sing elsewhere. I'll probably audition for the vocal jazz ensemble (even though jazz isn't exactly my thing), and if I make it I'll give more serious thought to the idea of dropping chorale. I'm not going to go into all the reasons for and against taking art history instead of chorale, but it's going to be a more important decision than it may seem. The issue goes far deeper than chorus versus art, and my choice could have a major impact on how I make future decisions. I'm going to have to put a lot of thought into this.

Thank you, readers, for reading through my disorganized mental dump. Sometimes it's nice to vent a bit.