awwrite...
By diana on Jul 23, 2010 | In capricious bloviations
i'm here and bored, so you will now be subjected to another installment of "aren't you glad you aren't me?"
First, I feel the need to reassure you all that I will return to my usual cynical, unproductive self soon. You just have to wait out the period of non-malaise. I expect to be back to the Diana you all know and love around the third week of August, then school kicks in again.
Meanwhile, I have a paper I still haven't written, and thus am motivated to do something else entirely, even if that something else requires far more energy, intelligence, commitment and money than just writing the damn paper would. So here's what I've accomplished in my efforts to avoid real responsibility:
1. I've hired a driveway contractor. That's right, folks. I've received a bid from an uncharacteristically professional excavation company* to install a culvert which will actually span the spacious driveway entrance we currently have, install filler (a clay-like underbelly of the upcoming gravel) along the driveway up to the house, fix in place railroad ties by hammering rebar through them along both sides of the drive all the way out to the road, and pour/spread more than enough adhesive gravel to fill the whole shebang.
* Most are apparently home businesses run by some yokel with a backhoe. When you call, you don't hear, "X Excavating. May I help you?" You get the confused voice of the matron saying, "Hello?" That's a bad sign.
The adhesive gravel is supposed to stick to itself, by the way - not your tires or shoes.
But wouldn't that be fun.
This means, in the long term, that future visitors to our humble cottage won't require an immediate front-end alignment upon leaving. It may even ramp up the number of friends willing to visit by, oh, two. And we'll be out about $8000, but most of that is committed to the railroad ties which will save us considerable money, time, and bad backs in future maintenance.
2. I hired a flooring contractor to replace the now-removed carpet christened by Reina/Holly, Jeff's adorable little not-quite-housebroken puppy. I've used this man* and his crew a couple of times in the past, and they do beautiful work. And they're insured. And they guarantee their work. And they're just awesome people. And their price is reasonable, even. But I guess I was waiting for the right thing to procrastinate before I bothered getting someone to floor the room.
* Scott of Upfront Flooring - not Jeff, who just wishes I'd use him.
3. I still haven't done laundry, but that isn't unusual. Few situations short of no more underwear provoke me to such acts of domestication.
4. Instead of the increasing pile of laundry and the paper for which I am doing an insufferable amount of research without actually writing anything, I've picked up the guitar and begun playing again.
Brace yourself for a tangent. Oh wait. You're reading my blog, aren't you? No warning needed.
Much of my extended family plays one or more instruments, and almost all of them sing. We have gospel quartets (whose harmonies are both spontanous and so perfect that they'll give you chills), and professional singers. Our family reunions, as far back as I can remember, have involved two- to three-day campouts at the family camping grounds complete with people playing guitars, banjos, and violins, and singing, sometimes around the clock.
Well, when I was around 13, I guess (I really don't remember), I was bored at home one day and picked up the old guitar propped in the corner of the living room. My parents had picked it up for a pittance at a garage sale, I think, and played it for a while, familiarizing themselves with the most common, basic chords and strumming. At some point, the three bass strings broke, and the guitar was set in the corner, waiting until we had enough money and inclination to replace them. When I picked it up, it just had the three treble strings. I dinked around with it and discovered that I could make decent music by fingerpicking it. I taught myself a few chords - on the strings that were left - and taught myself some basic fingerpicking methods, and played for my parents, who naturally thought I was a genius.
I'm not, really. I submit in my defense that strumming such a contraption doesn't produce a very pleasing sound, and it was quite unintimidating to teach myself to fingerpick three strings.
At some point, Mother had me play for Granddaddy (Daddy's father, now deceased). Granddaddy was about as deef as he could be by that point, but he watched and listened politely. When I finished my song, he admitted he hadn't heard it at all, but he handed me a $20 bill and told me to go get some bass strings for that guitar.
The next day, Mother took me to the guitar shop, we bought new strings, and I began to experiment with my new toy. The bass really adds something, don't you think? :D
I learned a few songs, Mother decided to take us on the road. I wasn't all that excited about performing (I had a crushing introversion problem), but I didn't want to let her down. We performed in public a couple of times in town. At some point, I hit a plateau with my playing and didn't really have the motivation or direction to overcome it, and I stopped playing.
Mother bought me a beautiful acoustic Alverez guitar (inlaid with mother of pearl) for graduation from high school. It really is a breathtaking instrument. I played it a bit, still needed lessons, then put it away and hauled it around with me for years.
I just went to my 25th high school reunion, right? I'm talking years.
Why am I playing again? My baby brother, David.
David wasn't musically inclined, that I know of, when we were growing up, but he has now played the guitar and sung for years. And he's good. He plays the rhythm guitar, and writes his own music, and plays some favorites. The last time I was listening to him play, I mused aloud that I needed to start playing again. He said, "Two minutes a day. That's all it takes. Pick it up and do something every day, if only for a couple of minutes."
These words were like magic to me. I know...common sense, right?
Common sense is all of the prejudices you've learned by the time you're 13, or so said Mark Twain, and there's a great deal of truth to it. When we took music lessons as children (I had piano for a short period and took violin for a couple of years), Mother required that we practice 30 minutes a day.
I understand why. Completely. In retrospect, 30 minutes a day was very little to ask of a child when you were paying for music lessons and the instrument. But I somehow had it in my head that if I take up an instrument, I need to practice a certain amount daily.
The idea of committing 30 minutes a day, particularly in adulthood, is daunting, don't you think? Many, many people would be published writers except they wait until they have an hour a day (or so) to dedicate to writing. But the ones who make it? They write in the ten minutes their child is napping, on the fifteen minute subway ride to work, or five minutes a day in the time between going to bed and going to sleep. The trick to success isn't a trick at all, as it turns out. As Nike says, just do it.
So I bought a stand for the guitar. This is psychological, but really...when I have to walk past it several times a day, and it's gleaming there in the corner of the living room, I pick it up and noodle with it. I don't have to force myself. It just looks inviting.
Where was I? Oh yeah...
5. I had the front posts on the crib treated with linseed oil to prevent weathering/rotting.
6. I had the air conditioner serviced, as it had failed to heat on the second floor where the master bedroom is (the only one that really counts, to be frank).
7. I'm getting bids to have a new roof installed on the rental property, and will commence that next week.
8. I'm waiting for the hot tub place to get the new motor in for the pool/spa, at which point I can take up aerobic training with a vengence, which reminds me of the big change:
9. I'm in physical training again.
Yeah. It's been awhile. I've gotten soft (in the sense of flaccid muscles as well as additional padding to protect them), and it's time I fixed that. I even have a goal: I wish to ace the Air Force physical fitness test when I take it in October.
I usually do ace it, as y'all know, but two things have changed: my dedication to training and the standards. Unfortunately for me, they went in opposite directions. I prefer to think of this inconvenient fact as fortunate, though, as nothing motivates me more than a good challenge.
I once ran the 1.5 mile bit, but I can no longer use this cardiovascular test. Bugger, because I'm good at it, and I love to run. The last couple of years, I've taken the ergo test, a stationary bicycle where the resistance is controlled by the fitness monitor and you have a heartrate thing on your chest. I always do very well with that, too. The last time I took the test, though, the fitness monitor told me that the ergo was going away, and I'd have to walk for my next test.
The AF used to have a walk as a healthy alternate test to the run, back when I was enlisted.* When they did, the run was 1.5 miles, and the walk was 3. Of course, who wants to suffer for 3 miles when you can just suffer for 1.5? Then they decided that running wasn't healthy at all, and put everyone on the bicycle test. Then they decided no one uses bicycles in combat (I guess) and brought back the run, which was always easier to prepare for (and measure one's progress on) than the ergo test.
* Pre-sliced bread, I think. Napolean was conquering Europe and Jesus was adolescent.
Now they've switched again. Exciting, isn't it? No matter what the standards are, just wait five minutes and they'll change, not unlike Colorado weather.
So I knew two things from my last test: I'd have to walk next time (how far? in what time?), and my pushups would no longer be considered good* (my situps are golden...it's a gift, I think, stemming from extreme spinal flexibility and naturally strong stomach muscles).
* A note is probably in order here, as well. Here it is.
Today, I found the regulation for the new test which went into effect 1 July. Interesting changes....
Before, I had to do 20 pushups (for my age group) in two minutes (?) to max this portion of the test. Now? 38 in a minute to max. I am challenged, and it is good. :)
My situps went up, but...meh. Whatever. And...I will walk a mile and my score will be based on my time, my age, my weight, my finishing heartrate, and my gender. I tried it today. My PFT score, right now, at my most unfit and fattest ever, is 86. That's a good score by AF standards, but it is unacceptable to me, so I'm back in training.
So. I'm tired, but happy. I'm getting stuff done. I'm sleeping enough. I'm me. I'm even getting a suggestion or two (and a bid) on what it would take to extend the front porch down the slope to a fire pit, but there's no telling when that might be done.
Life is good.
d
16 comments
For some reason, this post makes me happy. Maybe because you sound happy. Maybe because it’s sorta rambly. Maybe it’s because the ’small town girl done good’ thing. Maybe all of the above.
Thanks, Puck. I like making you happy…particularly right now. Hang in there. You’re a good friend and I’m proud of you. We’ll do what we can to keep you as chipper as possible.
d
I like it - particularly the bit about playing for Grandaddy. :) Those are the bits and pieces of our family that I don’t know. And, I wish I played guitar… yes, I read how to fix that. :) But in the meantime, maybe my daughter will play. :)
Well, I, too, took piano lessons for a while. But I never got very good at it, and soon left for college. After that, it was never a priority in my life. I’ve also played a French horn (which is what Margie played in the band at Nac., but never got much past the scales with it (fifth grade only; we changed schools the next year, and it didn’t have a band).
But, like most of the family (except your father, who Grandmama wouldn’t let Daddy put in the quartet) I also sang from about the age of six. By the time I was ten or eleven, I was singing in the family quartet. Singing has always been one of the things I do for enjoyment; reading and writing are two others (also like many in the family!).
Mama wouldn’t let Daddy join the quartet? What quartet? and why?
This is new to me. :)
d
Diana, I guess I thought that you knew about the quartet. It was formed shortly after we all went to the singing school, when I was about six. It was held in the Baptist church that we attended, and a friend of ours was the teacher. The entire family attended, and it was similar to the singing schools your grandfather later held, with the introduction of “shaped” notes, the scales, etc. After we got used to reading the notes, we had an assignment to “write a song” of at least one line, with two parts or more. Although I wasn’t expected to write one, I did, and even sang it to the group on the night the songs were due.
The last night of the school, other singers were invited to come for a singing convention, and the Round Robin Singing Convention was born, with Carl Lindsey as the president. We met on the Saturday night before the second Sunday, of every month, for many years; I don’t think it meets any more.
Any way, the family gospel quartet began from that school, and continued to function until after I left for college. When the older ones married and left the area, Daddy just moved one of us into the gap. But when he put me in, Mother said that he couldn’t put Lynn in at all; she wanted him to stay home with her! (She had quit going on a regular basis a couple of years before that.
Basically, your father was her pet, especially after Eddie and Terry started dating. And she really didn’t want him to come to Nacogdoches, because he would probably find a girl to marry. And he did—your mother. She even refused to go to their wedding, but that’s another story.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing that. :)
I don’t remember anything about any of that. I know Daddy can read shape notes, and like most of the Blacks, sing any part of harmony, but…wow. (He tried to teach us to read them, and his lessons may have “took” with Noel, but I never really got farther than understanding that the shapes somehow corresponded to do-re-mi-la-so-la-ti-do.
He was the pet, yes. But he was the baby, too. I hear that happens a lot with the babies. :)
d
Yes, and she never really accepted your mom as part of the family, of course, because she had “taken him away from us"! As for me, she didn’t care much how soon I got married. In fact, she told me that I didn’t need to go to college, because (all you need to do is get married and have a family, anyway!). Too bad about that! lol
Hi Diana and Ms. Bann,
Could you tell me what shaped notes are, please? It is a little like the notation in Walker’s Southern Harmony?
Lorraine
Lorraine,I’m not familiar with Walker’s Southern Harmony, but I’d almost bet they are the same. For instance, instead of the notes that are all shaped the same (as ovals), each note on the scale has a different shape. There is DO, which is shaped as a normal triangle, with the bottom line; re, (pronounced ray), which is a closed “u"; mi, which is a diamond; fa, which is a right triangle; la, which is a square; ti, which looks almost like a cone; and the next note is another do. Many religious groups still use those notes instead of the “round” notes in their music.
By using these shapes, almost anyone can learn to read music in a very short time. My father taught music schools for several years, using this method, and in one or two weeks, everyone who had paid much attention could pick up a song book and be able to sing a song they had never heard before. (And the lessons were usually only 1-2 hours each weeknight!)
Does that help explain what I was talking about?
Yes, absolutely. And you are right, it does sound a bit like Walker’s Southern Harmony. Walker used a notation so that those with no music education could learn to do what he called, “big singing” at camp meetings. Many of the beautiful melodies that Ken Burns used in his Civil War PBS series sounded a lot like those Walker collected in the late 1800s in the Southern US. They are beautiful, lilting tunes that I would surmise have folk song roots.
I envy you your family’s sharing of music together.
Lorraine
Aunt Bann said,
“By using these shapes, almost anyone can learn to read music in a very short time. My father taught music schools for several years, using this method, and in one or two weeks, everyone who had paid much attention could pick up a song book and be able to sing a song they had never heard before. (And the lessons were usually only 1-2 hours each weeknight!)”
Ummm…
Isn’t that long enough to learn how to read _regular_ music notation? I really don’t remember it being all that tough.
What am I missing here?
K
Sorry, Kathy! Back in the 1940s and 50s, many people really couldn’t read the notes, because they had never had “music lessons"! That was something that we didn’t have in the school that I attended; we only had music one day a week, for less than an hour, and the teacher would play the tune and have us follow her lead. Very few people even had a musical instrument, especially in the area I grew up in. (Southeast Texas) The schools started students in band only at the fifth grade level. So most people just learned from rote, and would only look at the song itself to get the right words.
Yes, if you know the lines and spaces, which many people do now, the rest is faily easy, IF (and it is a big if) they know what how far to move up or down with their voices in that particular song. To do that, they also have to know the key signature, and what that means, the time/rhythm that the song is written in, etc. Daddy taught all of those things in the singing schools he taught; and unlettered people loved to learn how to read music—-for the very first time in their lives, they could pick up a piece of music and sing it!!!
How does learning the key signature (time/rhythm and sharps/flats) work with shape notes, Aunt Bann?
I just know the basic notes. :) I have been studying music theory, but not with shape notes.
d
Actually, Diana, the time/rhythm is the same, with the numbers as in the “round” notes. The sharps and flats are also shown as sharp or flat, just as in the “round” note clef. So the only real difference is in the SHAPE of the notes! And that makes it much easier for uneducated people, especially, to learn to read music! They can SEE the note, and since every key STARTS and ENDS with the DO, the rest of it is fairly easy to pick up. And once a person is familiar with the shaped notes, that person should be able to learn to read the normal notes with only a little help.
Remember the song in Sound of Music? That is exactly what we did; we SANG the Do, Re, Mi, etc. I think it is Primitive Baptists who sing the notes instead of the words to the songs! And they do it all without instruments, much as your family does it.
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