MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Fox in Socks with Ben!
So today I was reading Seuss's Fox In Socks to Benny, and was delighted to find an entire section that had a Seuss character named Ben in it!!!Bim comes.
Ben comes.
Bim brings Ben broom.
Ben brings Bim broom.
Ben bends Bim's broom.
Bim bends Ben's broom.
Bim's bends.
Ben's bends.
Ben's bent broom breaks.
Bim's bent broom breaks.
Ben's band. Bim's band.
Big bands. Pig bands.
Bim and Ben lead bands with brooms.
Ben's band bangs and Bim's band booms.
Boy, when he's old enough to understand that, he is going to think that is just the coolest thing!!
There's even a little Seuss character wearing a turtleneck that has "Ben" on it. How awesome! It makes me want to scan it and make a poster out of it for his wall!
Hey, that's a great idea!! Man, I never thought having a child would be this much fun...last night, after I fed him I sang Ben a jaunty little song I made up for him called "The Burp Song", which IMO is meritorious of its own post some day (he loves it!), and then he seemed alert and awake enough to play some on his Ocean Wonders play mat. I gave him some time on his back, looking up and batting at the little dangly things, and then some tummy time, which he loved. I got some really cute pictures of him to add to his next Picasa web album. It is such a joy to experience his world through his eyes - everything is so new to him, and watching things dawn on him and seeing the synapses in his brain fire is just so exciting and miraculous. I just love it!
Friday, February 22, 2008
I can't wait to practice today!
So I ordered the original Barenreiter Bach Cello Suites score from http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/, which is a great online source for pretty much anything you could ever want (a relief for us professional musicians who get tired of schlepping ourselves around to various local music stores who only seem to have band method books and Easy Piano versions of classics like High School Musical and Harry Potter. Ugh...).So I'm very psyched about having such a great edition to practice from. It's going to be a challenge, because to play it in the original cello key of C, the horn player has to live in the bass clef (we normally are most comfy hanging out in the treble clef) and also have to transpose from our home key of F to the key of C. This means every note goes up a perfect fifth. That involves some pretty nimble mental acrobatics - to say nothing of the embouchure ones! - but that's what makes it fun. :)
Another thing that makes practicing fun is being comfortable and well-supported. (What a concept.) So when I finally got sick and tired of sitting on our dining room chairs, which are too tall and have no padding, I ordered a Wenger professional orchestra chair for use in my own home when I practice. It arrived a few days ago and is extremely comfy - I got it with the lumbar cushion option. It was ridiculo
usly expensive, but for the amount of time I'm going to spend on it it's worth it to me.
usly expensive, but for the amount of time I'm going to spend on it it's worth it to me. Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Don't give up, Hillary!!
I'm officially bummed out that Hillary lost the Wisconsin primaries...but there is yet hope! I am optimistic that she will win Ohio, and Texas is looking good too. I'm sorry, but the more I see and hear of Obama, the less I like him. He has the vocal intonations of a preacher getting his congregation all riled up (which in and of itself is annoying), but where are his strategies? Where is the problem solving? Where are the answers? I'm not saying he hasn't gotten results in his career, but I wish he'd say more than "uh....we should do this" and start talking about how we should do it. Every single time I see my girl Hillary, she's right there, with answers, with plans - and she never has to stop and say "uh..." to think about it.Ah, politics. As I had to learn to survive W, politicians are only a small part of life. The good news is that Ben is 2 months old now, and he's gained 4 pounds in the last 6 weeks! I'm glad he's thriving. I'm focusing on that when I start to get blue about all the Obamaniacs in this state...
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Salome: The girl we love to hate
I have had a great time playing Richard Strauss's opera Salome this week, happy that I was in relatively decent shape and able to step in when they hadn't found a horn player to replace me. I had missed my job. And I had never played a Strauss opera.
It was a great experience, but initially Salome totally kicked my ass. The counting, instantaneous meter and tempo changes, and transpositions were enough to make my head spin. Man, was it hard, especially after being away from work for two months (I'm going back on maternity leave after this; I'll go back to work officially in April). Barnewitz, who has played the Santa Fe Opera for many years and was nailing the insanely difficult Principal Horn part with amazing ease, says that this is the easiest of the several Strauss operas he's played. Holy crap. That was humbling.
Some of the things I love about this opera are its length (only 90 minutes total, without intermission), fantastically sensationalist and riveting score, and grippingly depressing and disturbing story. I wrote this post about Salome back in 2006 when David and I went to see it in Chicago, but I still just can't believe how messed up the plot is. Salome is 14 and her mother, Herodius, marries her uncle Herod after her father dies. Herod openly lusts after his stepdaughter (his former niece) right in front of her mother. Makes Jerry Springer look tame, doesn't it? Salome is curious about John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned in the basement of their palace for openly spewing venomous judgments against Herodius for marrying her brother-in-law. (Oh sure, in the Bible, men are allowed to take lots of wives and openly sleep with their handmaidens to produce children and have recreational concubines without shame, but god forbid a woman remarry after her husband dies...gross as it is that she marries her bro-in-law...)
So anyway, Salome seduces one of the guards and convinces him to let her see John the Baptist. She falls madly in lust with him, all buff and bare-chested and long-haired in his chains, and tries to seduce him, too. But he just tells her that she's evil, that "by woman evil did come into this world" (again, gotta love the Bible's scant and mostly misogynist portayal of women) and to get the hell away from him.
Now, I'm not saying he should have given her what she wanted, but man, couldn't he have been less of an asshole to her in the process of letting her down? Like, "Look, hon, I'm just not that into you. The life of a prophet and everything, you know. Can't do it. But I wish you well. No hard feelings, 'k?" But no, all this anger and judgment is like throwing a match into a gas chamber. Clearly, Salome's living a less than ideal life with a stepfather/uncle always trying to get into her pants. JTB does sing some really beautiful parts prophesying the coming of Jesus, to be fair, but in the same breath he completely disses her mother. And viciously, too.
So of course, Salome, Princess of Judea, is used to getting what she wants. (I never said she wasn't spoiled.) And she is most certainly not used to her seductions falling short of any man she wants. So she is absolutely livid. She goes upstairs and her stepfather, nasty and pedophilic as always, says he'll give her anything she wants if she'll do a sexy dance for him. After the evil light bulb goes off in her head, Salome does. This is the famous Dance of the Seven Veils, which is spine-chillingly raucous; sort of a late-romantic interpretation of a middle-eastern strip-tease. (I'm not sure if our Salome strips down to a body stocking; the Salome in the Lyric Opera of Chicago version we saw did. You only saw her naked for a split second before the lights went out.)
So then Herod, who after this dance is panting and ridiculously horny, asks Salome what she wants in exchange for her entertainment. She demands the head of John the Baptist on a platter. (You saw that coming, didn't you?) After much begging and pleading to give her anything else instead in vain, he finally agrees, and they bring it to her, all dripping and hairy, on the silver platter.
Now I'll admit this next part is completely nasty: Salome proceeds to dance with and sing to the head, kissing it and rubbing it all over her body, saying things like, "I got you after all" and "see, I got to kiss you anyway!". Her sparkly white dress and her entire mouth becomes stained with his blood. Eeeeeeeew.
Herod walks in on her doing this, suddenly realizes he wants her dead and orders the guards to kill her. They stab her with their bayonets as the opera crashes to its bitter end with a flourish of violent chords.
Despite its morbidity (and perhaps even because of it), this is really an amazing opera. Every second of it is filled with tension, and you are hanging on for the ride at every turn. Once I caught up with all the tempo changes and transpositions and felt confident about not trashing my part, I started really having a good time.
Here's my rant on the popular interpretation of Salome. Everyone focuses on how demented and evil Salome is. Fine, but how the hell would you have turned out if you were spoiled rotten, had never been denied anything but were simultaneously being molested by your uncle, who is also your stepfather? And why doesn't anyone seem to remonstrate Herod's pedophilic ways, or his wife's ineffectual passivity and voyeurism as he lecherously drools over her daughter? And what about the aforementioned John The Baptist, who seems to think it his mission in life to tell everyone and their mothers that they're horrible and evil and going straight to hell in a handbasket?
I'm not saying Salome shouldn't be held accountable for her actions, but come on, people. Let's be fair and look at the whole picture, at all of the players involved in the admittedly dysfunctional family situation. It's the same thing when people judge prostitutes and strippers for what they do without even acknowledging, much less shining some of the same judgment on, the men who support them so well, whose conduct is equally immoral if not moreso. Yes, of course, women should seek empowerment and avoid such demeaning work, but I refuse to judge them for doing so unless the men who make such professions so lucrative stop enabling it. Both parties are equally reprehensible.
It was a great experience, but initially Salome totally kicked my ass. The counting, instantaneous meter and tempo changes, and transpositions were enough to make my head spin. Man, was it hard, especially after being away from work for two months (I'm going back on maternity leave after this; I'll go back to work officially in April). Barnewitz, who has played the Santa Fe Opera for many years and was nailing the insanely difficult Principal Horn part with amazing ease, says that this is the easiest of the several Strauss operas he's played. Holy crap. That was humbling.
Some of the things I love about this opera are its length (only 90 minutes total, without intermission), fantastically sensationalist and riveting score, and grippingly depressing and disturbing story. I wrote this post about Salome back in 2006 when David and I went to see it in Chicago, but I still just can't believe how messed up the plot is. Salome is 14 and her mother, Herodius, marries her uncle Herod after her father dies. Herod openly lusts after his stepdaughter (his former niece) right in front of her mother. Makes Jerry Springer look tame, doesn't it? Salome is curious about John the Baptist, who has been imprisoned in the basement of their palace for openly spewing venomous judgments against Herodius for marrying her brother-in-law. (Oh sure, in the Bible, men are allowed to take lots of wives and openly sleep with their handmaidens to produce children and have recreational concubines without shame, but god forbid a woman remarry after her husband dies...gross as it is that she marries her bro-in-law...)
So anyway, Salome seduces one of the guards and convinces him to let her see John the Baptist. She falls madly in lust with him, all buff and bare-chested and long-haired in his chains, and tries to seduce him, too. But he just tells her that she's evil, that "by woman evil did come into this world" (again, gotta love the Bible's scant and mostly misogynist portayal of women) and to get the hell away from him.
Now, I'm not saying he should have given her what she wanted, but man, couldn't he have been less of an asshole to her in the process of letting her down? Like, "Look, hon, I'm just not that into you. The life of a prophet and everything, you know. Can't do it. But I wish you well. No hard feelings, 'k?" But no, all this anger and judgment is like throwing a match into a gas chamber. Clearly, Salome's living a less than ideal life with a stepfather/uncle always trying to get into her pants. JTB does sing some really beautiful parts prophesying the coming of Jesus, to be fair, but in the same breath he completely disses her mother. And viciously, too.
So of course, Salome, Princess of Judea, is used to getting what she wants. (I never said she wasn't spoiled.) And she is most certainly not used to her seductions falling short of any man she wants. So she is absolutely livid. She goes upstairs and her stepfather, nasty and pedophilic as always, says he'll give her anything she wants if she'll do a sexy dance for him. After the evil light bulb goes off in her head, Salome does. This is the famous Dance of the Seven Veils, which is spine-chillingly raucous; sort of a late-romantic interpretation of a middle-eastern strip-tease. (I'm not sure if our Salome strips down to a body stocking; the Salome in the Lyric Opera of Chicago version we saw did. You only saw her naked for a split second before the lights went out.)
So then Herod, who after this dance is panting and ridiculously horny, asks Salome what she wants in exchange for her entertainment. She demands the head of John the Baptist on a platter. (You saw that coming, didn't you?) After much begging and pleading to give her anything else instead in vain, he finally agrees, and they bring it to her, all dripping and hairy, on the silver platter.
Now I'll admit this next part is completely nasty: Salome proceeds to dance with and sing to the head, kissing it and rubbing it all over her body, saying things like, "I got you after all" and "see, I got to kiss you anyway!". Her sparkly white dress and her entire mouth becomes stained with his blood. Eeeeeeeew.
Herod walks in on her doing this, suddenly realizes he wants her dead and orders the guards to kill her. They stab her with their bayonets as the opera crashes to its bitter end with a flourish of violent chords.
Despite its morbidity (and perhaps even because of it), this is really an amazing opera. Every second of it is filled with tension, and you are hanging on for the ride at every turn. Once I caught up with all the tempo changes and transpositions and felt confident about not trashing my part, I started really having a good time.
Here's my rant on the popular interpretation of Salome. Everyone focuses on how demented and evil Salome is. Fine, but how the hell would you have turned out if you were spoiled rotten, had never been denied anything but were simultaneously being molested by your uncle, who is also your stepfather? And why doesn't anyone seem to remonstrate Herod's pedophilic ways, or his wife's ineffectual passivity and voyeurism as he lecherously drools over her daughter? And what about the aforementioned John The Baptist, who seems to think it his mission in life to tell everyone and their mothers that they're horrible and evil and going straight to hell in a handbasket?
I'm not saying Salome shouldn't be held accountable for her actions, but come on, people. Let's be fair and look at the whole picture, at all of the players involved in the admittedly dysfunctional family situation. It's the same thing when people judge prostitutes and strippers for what they do without even acknowledging, much less shining some of the same judgment on, the men who support them so well, whose conduct is equally immoral if not moreso. Yes, of course, women should seek empowerment and avoid such demeaning work, but I refuse to judge them for doing so unless the men who make such professions so lucrative stop enabling it. Both parties are equally reprehensible.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Baby, it's COLD outside!!
I knew I was asking for it when I moved to Wisconsin, but come ON.This past Wednesday, we got clobbered. I think it set records. We got a whopping 18 inches throughout the course of the day (as evidenced by the piles of snow you can see by our driveway and front walk), and it was such an intense blizzard that the MSO canceled both subscription rehearsals it had scheduled for the day, and the local malls closed. You know it's bad when that happens!
Today I checked weather.com for the forcast for our area. Guess what it said?
Severe Weather Alert
Current Temperature: -5 degrees
Feels like: -31 degrees
Today's High: 1 degree
Winds gusting to over 40 mph
I'm sorry, but that's insane.
But it does make beautiful frost patterns on our kitchen windows. I particularly enjoy the silhouette of the Amaryllis that David's mom gave us for Christmas that's sprouting up quite healthily on our kitchen sink windowsill.
Unfortunately, this means no foreseeable end to my cabin fever, though it's not too bad yet.
I just can't bring myself to go out in this ridiculous weather, much less subject a 2 month-old infant to it (although in his well-insulated and shielded carrier he'd probably be fine for 3 minutes while I hurriedly shuttle him inside somewhere).Fortunately Benny is providing lots of entertainment and warm cuddling, and I have a lot of fun practicing I want to do these days. I volunteered to play Salome this week since they hadn't yet found a replacement for me, and I'm really excited about it.
Of course there's also all the office paperwork and tax preparation I have to do sometime in the next few weeks, but practicing is much more fun than that....
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Lullabye, Bennybye...
It's so strange to think about it, my loving motherhood so much.
I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. When you're pregnant for the first time, it's bloody terrifying. You have absolutely no idea how a baby will change your life. Sure, people tell you, but you can't know how you, personally, will change, react, grow, feel. All you can do is hope that you will survive the immense and drastic changes without the world as you know it collapsing around you in pieces.
For most of my life I have considered myself the complete career musician. I still do. I never pictured myself as the "mom" type you see plastered all over every ad for every household product, food, cleaning item, laundry detergent, etc. I still don't. It doesn't bother me, though; I never saw myself as the "wife" type either, and I adore being married. It's just blissful. It's been fun redefining these roles, rewriting them to fit whatever David and I want or need them to be at any given point.
It just never occurred to me that a baby would give me a new lease on life, more energy (despite, somehow, the 4am feedings), a renewed focus, a clarity of perspective on what really matters. But that's exactly what happened. Ben is such a little sweetheart. Every time I used to think about what it would be like to take care of a baby, I never thought it would feel like anything other than a chore. I'm grouchy when I hear him crying at 5am, but as soon as I get into the room and scoop him up in my arms, I smile through my groggy exhaustion at his sweet little teary face and kiss his cute chubby cheeks.
And how could I have possibly known how much fun it would be to sing him to sleep? We keep a music stand in the nursery by the glider for magazines for us to read during Ben's meals. I have recently put a Disney songbook and a book of jazz ballads there, for sending him off to dreamland after his immense belchfests. It's so much fun to sing to him. So far he loves Gershwin, Copland, Ellington, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter tunes. In the past several days I've sung a capella versions of "Over The Rainbow", "Body & Soul", "When You Wish Upon A Star", "Someday My Prince Will Come", "Once Upon A Dream" (Sleeping Beauty Waltz), "Mood Indigo", "The Nearness Of You", "Moonlight In Vermont", and "Misty". The song "Embraceable You" is another one of his favorites, and the words of that song really hit home somehow now that I'm a mom. I want to print out lyrics to "My Attorney Bernie", which is one of my favorite contemporary jazz songs, and I need to get the sheet music for "Blame It On My Youth" which is another great chart.
For some reason, though, "Chim Chim Cheree" (from Mary Poppins) really freaked him out tonight. Maybe it was the cockney accent or the minor key combined with the waltz tempo, but it might have just been unfortunate timing with some uncomfortably unreleased gas.
But as I sit there, singing to his sweet little face and looking into those perfect, tiny deep blue eyes that are gazing at me, his budding little mind thinking a million thoughts, I think over and over again, this is absolutely fantastic, blissful, wonderful. It's relaxing, grounding, and so fulfilling to take care of him and to continually meet his needs and to know I can meet them. I'm sure a lot of it is programmed into us as humans, this love between parent and child, to ensure the survival of the species; it kicked in so strongly and suddenly as soon as I held Ben for the first time that it must be an instinctual response. Whatever it is, it's completely taken over my heart. I had to go into work a few days this week to be on an audition committee, and when I got home I was so happy just to hold him again, even to change his diaper and feed him.
Which isn't to say I'm not getting a bit of cabin fever. It felt fabulous to go back to work for a few days and see everyone and to have highly intelligent adult conversation and musical stimulation. I really miss my job. I volunteered to play the opera since our personnel manager hadn't yet found anyone to play for me that week, and I'm really looking forward to it. We're doing Salome by Strauss. I've never played a Strauss opera before, and I'm really excited about it!
By the way, it feels wonderful to play the horn again. I started playing a few weeks ago; I had really missed it. My lip feels light years better now than it had while I was pregnant. I think pregnancy really loused it up. I had thought my face was swollen from overuse, but in hindsight, I think 90% of it was pregnancy water retention. Anyway, I am very glad to have my face back and to be playing again.
I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. When you're pregnant for the first time, it's bloody terrifying. You have absolutely no idea how a baby will change your life. Sure, people tell you, but you can't know how you, personally, will change, react, grow, feel. All you can do is hope that you will survive the immense and drastic changes without the world as you know it collapsing around you in pieces.
For most of my life I have considered myself the complete career musician. I still do. I never pictured myself as the "mom" type you see plastered all over every ad for every household product, food, cleaning item, laundry detergent, etc. I still don't. It doesn't bother me, though; I never saw myself as the "wife" type either, and I adore being married. It's just blissful. It's been fun redefining these roles, rewriting them to fit whatever David and I want or need them to be at any given point.
It just never occurred to me that a baby would give me a new lease on life, more energy (despite, somehow, the 4am feedings), a renewed focus, a clarity of perspective on what really matters. But that's exactly what happened. Ben is such a little sweetheart. Every time I used to think about what it would be like to take care of a baby, I never thought it would feel like anything other than a chore. I'm grouchy when I hear him crying at 5am, but as soon as I get into the room and scoop him up in my arms, I smile through my groggy exhaustion at his sweet little teary face and kiss his cute chubby cheeks.
And how could I have possibly known how much fun it would be to sing him to sleep? We keep a music stand in the nursery by the glider for magazines for us to read during Ben's meals. I have recently put a Disney songbook and a book of jazz ballads there, for sending him off to dreamland after his immense belchfests. It's so much fun to sing to him. So far he loves Gershwin, Copland, Ellington, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter tunes. In the past several days I've sung a capella versions of "Over The Rainbow", "Body & Soul", "When You Wish Upon A Star", "Someday My Prince Will Come", "Once Upon A Dream" (Sleeping Beauty Waltz), "Mood Indigo", "The Nearness Of You", "Moonlight In Vermont", and "Misty". The song "Embraceable You" is another one of his favorites, and the words of that song really hit home somehow now that I'm a mom. I want to print out lyrics to "My Attorney Bernie", which is one of my favorite contemporary jazz songs, and I need to get the sheet music for "Blame It On My Youth" which is another great chart.
For some reason, though, "Chim Chim Cheree" (from Mary Poppins) really freaked him out tonight. Maybe it was the cockney accent or the minor key combined with the waltz tempo, but it might have just been unfortunate timing with some uncomfortably unreleased gas.
But as I sit there, singing to his sweet little face and looking into those perfect, tiny deep blue eyes that are gazing at me, his budding little mind thinking a million thoughts, I think over and over again, this is absolutely fantastic, blissful, wonderful. It's relaxing, grounding, and so fulfilling to take care of him and to continually meet his needs and to know I can meet them. I'm sure a lot of it is programmed into us as humans, this love between parent and child, to ensure the survival of the species; it kicked in so strongly and suddenly as soon as I held Ben for the first time that it must be an instinctual response. Whatever it is, it's completely taken over my heart. I had to go into work a few days this week to be on an audition committee, and when I got home I was so happy just to hold him again, even to change his diaper and feed him.
Which isn't to say I'm not getting a bit of cabin fever. It felt fabulous to go back to work for a few days and see everyone and to have highly intelligent adult conversation and musical stimulation. I really miss my job. I volunteered to play the opera since our personnel manager hadn't yet found anyone to play for me that week, and I'm really looking forward to it. We're doing Salome by Strauss. I've never played a Strauss opera before, and I'm really excited about it!
By the way, it feels wonderful to play the horn again. I started playing a few weeks ago; I had really missed it. My lip feels light years better now than it had while I was pregnant. I think pregnancy really loused it up. I had thought my face was swollen from overuse, but in hindsight, I think 90% of it was pregnancy water retention. Anyway, I am very glad to have my face back and to be playing again.
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