QuidNunc/QuidTunc?

…was a week ago. The inauguration of Christmas music, that is. There is nothing like sprightly C-music to brighten a gloomy fall day ! We have to do a presentation at the end of ASL class and I think I will sign to Mannheim Steamroller’s ‘Silent Night’.  Jeannette and I have both been notorious for rushing at the C-music button. I remember one year I put my foot down and said, “No C-music until after Thanksgiving!’. That was a hardship. :>)

I got my first substitute day last Friday. It is really kind of fun for me, because everyone is glad to see me and I get to have lunch with old friends and I just have to make sure the students do what the teacher left for them to do. I would always get a little ticked off if the substitute didn’t do that! The other thing that would bug me is if the substitute didn’t require them to do Latin during Latin class and they would show up the next day when I was there with undone homework!!!! Anyway, I didn’t have a car that day so someone came and got me. Then I caught the Red Rose Transit  bus on the way home……. for the first time! Joel was so proud of me! I sang “the wheels on the bus go round and round’ with two bright -eyed litle black girls. They were ready for some fun, so I had to quit being so entertaining so they would stay in their seat! *sigh* (they liked ‘the baby on the bus goes waaa, waaa, waaa’)

Joel had a free ticket to Longwood Gardens as a result of his Friday seminar, so we went down on Sunday afternoon. We haven’t been there for a long time, maybe 3 years??  I can’t remember. Their fees went up so much and then there was the time thing. It was so absolutely relaxing! we checked out different spot or specimens that we are accustomed to checking out. Joel has a friend I call ‘Franky’ which is a franconia tree . Little blossoms in the spring, nice ornamental fruit in the summer, great fall color. I like the copper beeches. The meadow gives me a nice space fix and every time I visit the ‘idea garden’ which is mostly vegetables with some flowers mixed in, I think, ‘I could do that’, and I never do! There was even a railroad garden which covers something like 20 or so square feet with different RR running on different sets of tracks. Joel and I gazed on it for a while and I said, “You and Chris could do that!’ Such faith have I. Longwood holds a lot of family memories for me. One fine sping I took the kids every Monday morning when we were homeschooling. It was a great place to watch spring roll in. One time after a visit the kids made a big muddy mess in the yard and called an “Italian water garden’! After Sunday dinner Joel wopuld say, “Who wants to go to LG with me?” Most of us were recalcitrant because he would want us to gaze at specimens for as long as he wanted to (and we got bored). Mary always volunteered to go! Then she would lean on his leg and keep walking and sucking her thumb! A parent needs a good buddy with at least one kid!

Well, it’s off to the races, folks! Going to hang out with the girls and the grandchildren for a couple days.

  One reason I quit teaching was that I was losing my voice and I was afraid if I kept going, I may lose it altogether. I am still not singing much, although I think the singing is slightly better, but I have been playing the piano a lot. We have an old book “Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms” which I have always played from quite a bit in the Bach and Beethoven section, but when you get to Brahms, you just don’t sight read. I usually quit there. One day I thought, “Where am I going?” so I played very slowly and played every note. It’s an Intermezzo. Then another day I thought, “I could practice!” so I played the first page 5 times every time I played it without going on to the second. Now I am to the point where I am telling myself to know those notes and not think so hard about what they are, and I am going on to the second page. I feel as though I am carried into another world. My limited opinon is that you have to do Brahms to love Brahms. He is not understood on first glance and when you think you got it pinned he rearranges the furniture. For me, this is soul food.

I have the piano out in the middle of the living room so I can paint it, and decided to give it a good round while there was no carpet, no wall and lovely plaster wall acoustics. It is a big upright of quality, next best thing to a baby grand. It was made by a German family from Baltimore named Stieff and my tuner tells me it is of the Mason-Hamelin/ Chickering quality. I think it is nearly 100 years old. It has a full bass sound and sparkling high treble. For anyone who is interested.

There goes the timer . got to get painting

Yesterday when I stopped at my Amish landlady’s to pay my rent, it was Sister Day. Her daughters and daughters-in-law had rallied together to get the fall cleaning done and the place was a beehive of busyness! They invited me to take up a bucket if I wanted! I just might have except I was getting some things for Sam to take to Luisa and he was leaving in an hour. I’ve been trying to get most of my cleaning done on Fridays. Today I decided I wasn’t going to try to do it all and I have worked only in the kitchen. If I start in the kitchen and do a good job, I’m tired of cleaning and won’t finish the house! lazy melinda. I have beautiful wood cupboards that I think are birch, because they look like Liz’s and hers are birch and they shimmer, especially when they are clean. Clean hasn’t been a big word around here for some time and I am finding out how much nicer things can be. It was a whole lot easier when there was a cleaning ‘crew’. Short of that, I could use a pile of sisters. It’s so much more fun than saying to myself “You can’t stop until you get the top cupboard doors done. You will not finish for sure if you don’t get at least that much done before you eat or write something entertaining on the computer.” See you later, girls. I’m getting hungry for a tomato sandwich.

I’ve been watching snatches of Ken Burns’ new documentary on WWII. It is true Burns style with a lot of narrative. Also, a lot of real pictures, most of which I can’t look at. But the first hand stories are always interesting. One woman, with a lovely Alabama accent tells how toward the end of the war in Europe the ‘boys’ would come through Mobile on the train and she and a few of her friends would meet the train with sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee and the guys would get them from the windows as they held up their trays. One time, however, they started to get off the train and this storyteller says she threw her sandwiches and  ran, because she knew they were going to kiss them! The doughnut girl did the same. They ran into the depot and locked themselves behind the door. Coffee was not so easy to toss and run and the coffee girl got soundly kissed!!!

Another man, who went into a Japanese POW camp in 1942, told how he was filling in a mass grave one day and he had two sets of dog tags, He decided to throw one in, so if anything happened to him, it would be deduced he had been there. Well, it was deduced he had been there and his parents were duly told and offered the standard insurance compensation of $10,000. His father asked if his son didn’t really die, would he have to give the money back and he was told yes.  So he told them to keep their money because he didn’t think his son was dead. At the end of the war, when the son came back, he called home from San Francisco. His mother answered and when he said his name, she fainted. his aunt picked up the phone and she fainted, too. His older sister came to the phone and she followed suit. His father came and picked up the phone and said “Who the ____ is this?!” When his son replied he said, “Well, I knew you weren’t dead, but I’ve got 3 dead women who are going to want to talk to you, so if you hang on till I get them going on again, they’ll be right on.”

While there was a battle going on a Japanese beach a Naval officer was watching from the ship. He saw this one trooper going around with a flame torch, burning away, then he stops, goes down to the water, puts his weapon down, strips, goes for a swim, comes back, gets dressed, picks up his weapon and goes back to work. As though to say, I am going to die anyway, might as well enjoy a swim first! He was probably very stinking hot.

Ken Burns is always very educational and brings history into a realistic perspective and so there is a lot of stuff that is gut wrenching. I heard him say in an interview  that after he had done the Civil War, he was never going to do another war because it is so emotionally gut wrenching, but then here is this generation of storytellers who are dying off and if their stories are not captured, they are lost. I thought it might well take 50-60 years to go back and talk about it as candidly as some have. And yet, for some of them, the memories are only a step away in their minds, they are burned so deeply.