Scout Moves

During lunch, my family was reminiscing about a fanciful New Year's Eve we experienced a few years ago--we took a Caribbean cruise on a Disney ship, which I thought would be elbow to elbow in sticky, noisy kids but was actually delightful and clean. For the big shindig, we stood on a balcony that overlooked many other balconies, sipping champagne and flinging confetti on the people below. One long strand of confetti landed smack on the lap of a woman in a wheel chair--she had no arms or legs and was attended to by a nurse/companion. I noticed the two of them earlier on the ship and found her delight in her vacation remarkable. We joked about hitting the woman with just a torso, but she was an inspiration. This year, we will be spending the evening on a quieter note. We are holed up at the lake house with a stack of movies and checkers and cards, and we will enjoy a three-hour meal one course at a time. Here's the run down (note: I can't claim they will be exquisite, but I...

World cultures are butting heads and causing devastation and civil war around the planet, tyrants are hanged, massive ice shelves are breaking away from Canada--and my local Small Town paper publishes a list of top ten news stories in the area for 2006. They include a squabble between Walgreens, which wants to build a new store in a historic district, and locals who want to protect their heritage. It's possible this issue will be put on a ballot next year, but Walgreens is proceeding with plans as if there will be no delay. The guy who founded a local vocational school died, as did several other community leaders who I have never heard of before so I won't name. We have an old park that I have described before--it's a jewel in this community with it's band shell, giant trees, stone walls, an antique carousel, and other rides like the ferris wheel. Over the summer, a couple of kids visiting from Florida fell out of the top of their gondola, and the ride has been shut dow...

Gina at Just Another Day listed the first sentence of the first post of each month for 2006, so given the approaching end of the year, I thought this would be a good time to follow suit. It serves as an interesting little exercise, maybe a snippet of what is important to each of us. I have only been writing since August, and three of the five sentences are about movies. I'm not going to make too much of that because I write about a million different things that pop into my little head. Here is my list: (Aug) Here's my first entry to my very first blog. (Sept) A small tribute to Glenn Ford. (Oct) When George Bailey was a kid and working for Mr. Gower, he strapped on his apron, scooped up some chocolate ice cream for Mary, and at hearing she didn't like coconut, was piqued. (Nov) I think Ferris Bueller's Day Off is an American classic. (Dec) Last night, my family discussed the meaning of "home."

This is me at the age of two with a cat and a dog I don't remember. They were our pets when we lived in Alabama. It has nothing to do with my subject for today, but it's darn cute! I'm stuck on the box of cards that was passed around during my family holiday, so here is another question. If you were alone in a cabin for a year, what would you do with your time? My niece was asked this question, and she said she would be busy chopping firewood. She had seen a show about families who lived as pioneers for a year, and their biggest mistake was underestimating the amount of firewood they would need just to survive. Let's say you were fully stocked with firewood and food and water. Your roof was intact, the logs were sufficiently chinked, and the windows were sealed. Then what would you do with your time? I would assume there would be no Internet service, so blogging and reading CNN.com would be out of the question. For me that would leave playing my horn, learning to paint,...

On a lighter note than the previous post, here is what I got for Christmas (after reading the list over at The Other Girl's , it doesn't compare--but I am happy). A calendar of kitties because when I start working at the office instead of home, I will miss my cats. A big purse-like bag for traveling. I'm not much of a purse person and usually like to carry something small. But my daughters know that when I travel, I like to have a larger bag with room for a cell phone and a book and a camera, and maybe even an umbrella. Two boxes of blank notes with a personalized stamp from my niece-in-law. The notes have a blank space on the outside for the stamp. (my family draws names each year, so we only exchange gifts with one adult). A contribution to World Vision from my mother, specifically a a contribution to an educational program. A bottle of chardonnay from my neighbor friend.

As I mentioned the other day, my family passed around a box of questions, like conversation starters. One of my questions was "what would you change about your childhood if you could?" My mother was in the room, and although it may not have been the case, a I felt as though she were glaring. I am the youngest of four sisters, quite a bit younger than some in fact. Because of our age difference, we all have different perspectives on certain aspects of our upbringing. For example, my oldest sister remembers living in Alabama and "living hand to mouth," as my mother would say. My father hunted squirrel to put meat on the table, and my sisters picked cotton for so many cents a bushel. I was born into that (and I will post pictures from that time later-- yee ha), but I was two years old when we moved to Indiana and to relative prosperity. I was shocked when my grandfather skinned a squirrel in front of me and expected me to deliver it to the kitchen. In my life exper...

Yesterday, I got to have cornbread dressing for Christmas dinner--with turkey, green beans with bacon, Coke Jello*, and pecan pie--pronounced peeeecan pie. Very nice and full of childhood memories, that meal is. After dinner, my family sat around the room (there were twelve of us), and we passed around a box of cards, each containing a question meant to spark conversation. Each person read the question to the person on their right, but in most cases the questions didn't lead to conversations. We accepted the receiver's answers and moved on. It was interesting to hear each other talk about how we would change our childhood if we could (that was my question, but with my mother in the room...), what we missed about being single (nothing), what our dream job would be, what we would like to be doing in ten years. When you don't see your family except for the two days out of the year, the answers to these questions are often unexpected. Today, the women in my family did a little...

My local paper, which I am fond of criticizing but this morning I adore, reprinted the following editorial this morning which was first printed in the New York Sun in 1897 in response to an 8-year-old named Virginia. She had written the paper asking if there was truly a Santa Claus: VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would...

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Milady the Right Reverend Robyn the Insubstantial of Ofsted in the Bucket Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title Wow, I've been tagged by JanieBelle. I don't think I have ever specifically been tagged before. I like it. You may address me as Right Reverend for short, althought it sounds like an Anglican title, and given the rift in the Episcopal church these days, maybe I should stay out it.

The winery we went to last night was actually a delight, but getting there is surreal. It sits in the hills about 25 minutes from my house. You start by taking a county road to a little town with a stop light and a row of houses along the road. You turn right at the lounge with a martini glass on the sign and go a few miles to another little gravel road marked only with a green sign the size of a check book. You go another seven miles and turn left on another gravel road even narrower and barely a marker, and then right onto a narrow gravel drive that winds through trees and vines until it ends at the winery. During the day, the drive is bucolic (can you tell I've been reading Thomas Hardy?), but at night when it's dark and raining, every scraggly tree that overhangs the road becomes a gremlin, and every drifting pocket of fog becomes a poltergeist. The creepiness of the trip made entering the lit-up dining room with stone walls and a fire in the fireplace and friends at every ...

Daughter #1, who is an avid reader, and I have begun a new project. We are going to create an altered book based on some favorite authors--(in no particular order) Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck, The Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Edgar Allan Poe. I am excited about working on this and finding elements that will represent each author's theme and setting. We have divided the project in half so that we are each responsible for the pages related to four authors (I'll let you guess which ones are mine). I will say that I have begun with Dickens and have a great old sepia sketch of him sitting at a writing desk, and I have printed it on a timeline page that I ripped from a cheap copy of The Old Curiosity Shop. I also have his signature and an illustration from Oliver Twist approaching the fat man in the dining room. I have added the text "I WANT more," which will represent Dickens' general theme of the upper classes neglecti...

You are 100% knowledgeable regarding Christmas culture. CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU DID IT! YOU PASSED! Now you're ready to go on to gotoquiz.com/how_christmas_are_you Have a blessed Christmas! THE CHRISTMAS QUIZ Quiz Created on GoToQuiz Aced it, just like I thought.

Your Christmas lights are glowing 87%. Awesome! Your Christmas tree lights up the whole room! You are a true lover of all things Christmas, and a joy for those around you! Christmas Trivia Make Your Own Quiz I haven't found the quiz Dive stunk at so clearly. But here is an alternative. I'll keep looking.

Tomorrow night, Husband and I are going to a local winery with some friends. It's a little place way out in the country, a little vineyard with a very small restaurant. By small, I mean it has one room with enough seating for 25 or so people, and you have to reserve it almost a year in advance. Most people reserve the whole thing and take everyone they know. That's the case here. We're going with about 20 other people. Because there won't be a designated driver, we have thought about hiring an Amish hauler--which is probably only funny to a local person--there are people who work as drivers for the Amish who don't drive cars but will gladly ride in a van driven by the English. The winery is run by a husband and wife team. The husband used to be a chemist for the government, testing and developing agricultural stuff, but after years and years of that kind of work, he pitched it all, bought this land, planted a vineyard, and now runs his own little winery. He looks ve...

I promise, this is one of my last Christmas posts. I have to get it out of my system. This is a picture of me buying a tree at the fair grounds in Small Town. I went to this place every year that Mr. Frank, a tree farmer, sold his trees there. On this year, one of the last years before Mr. Frank retired, a photographer from the newspaper was there, and my picture made the front page. Big news, indeed.

Several years ago, my family went caroling in my mother's neighborhood in Georgia. My mother lives in what used to be a small town but is slowly becoming a suburb as Atlanta spreads to take over the southern states. But whether carols are sung in small towns or suburbs or cities, it seems that singing them on some one's front porch on a cold night before Christmas is a dying tradition. It's a shame. My family sings very well together. We cover all the parts, and we have a guitar or two to help us out. I have written about The Program before, so I won't go into that again, but we do like to sing. My parents started it--when my father was younger, he and his many brothers would sit on their front porch in Alabama and play "old timey " tunes on fiddles, banjos, and mandolins. When my mother was younger, her family travelled to tent meetings and revivals and sang as featured performers, a bit like the Carter family but without any money or fame. We grew up around...

I just got back from playing Santa. By that I mean I drove to the houses of several friends, knowing they would not be home (except for one who had to help me out with a spare key because I had locked myself out of the house). Anyway, I drove to their houses and left gifts on their porches. Each friend got a little bag with two homemade biscotti and either coffee, tea, chai , or hot chocolate, depending on their tastes. I like to give my friends little gifts, just enough to show them I value their friendship but not enough to make them feel bad, because really, we don't exchange gifts. I thought cookies and something nice to dunk them in was a fair choice. Here is the biscotti recipes I used. Bittersweet Chocolate almond Biscotti 3 c. flour, plus more for dusting 2 teaspoons baking powder pinch of salt 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 cup sugar, plus 1/4 cup for sprinkling 2 teaspoons vanilla 4 large eggs 8 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped 1/2 cup slivered, blanched almon...

Well, since you all thought the Easter picture was so cute, I thought I'd give you one more--me when I was four.

Dive has assigned a task--to post pictures of childhood. Most of mine are at my mother's house in Georgia, so I have a limited selection to post. Here is what I've got with links to previous photos: This is an igloo my father built in our front yard in the Big Snow of '67. Northwest Indiana along the lake shore (that's Lake Michigan) is known for being pummeled with lake effect snow, and it isn't unusual to get a 12-inch snow fall in one storm. But in the Big Snow, we got something close to two feet. You can see in the photo that it nearly reached the window ledges, and the drifting was even higher. The region was shut down for days--this is the storm that trapped me at my baby sitter's house for three days because my parents couldn't get through the country roads. I briefly wrote about that here in a tribute to my neighbor friend. This is a picture of me at the baby sitter's house before winter. My father built the igloo, and when I finally got home,...

This won't really be a review of my orchestra's Christmas concert, just a run down. We performed the traditional concert Saturday night. I say "traditional" because our orchestra has been in existence for 71 years, and we have included a children's chorus for quite a few of those. And over the last ten or so years, the kids have sung songs that are expected. The one we perform every single year is " Marvelous Toy " by Tom Paxton. It's pretty cute, I have to say, although the horn part is the most boring thing--nothing but two solid pages of off beats. Not even a hint of melody. You could sneeze into your horn, and nobody would know the difference. As an aside, sneezing into your horn actually makes an interesting sound. So does laughing into it, which I did once right before the down beat to Sleigh Ride because the 3rd horn guy said something very funny just as we all took our first breath. Anyway, back to the concert. The first half was a hodge - po...

The original cast from 1892 On this day in 1892, the ballet "The Nutcracker" premiered in St. Petersburg , Russia. And just yesterday, I went to a local production with Daughter #2. Small Town has a dance studio owned and operated by the mother of Daughter #2's good friend who played Clara. We also have a little theater called, rightly enough, The Little Theater, where The Nutcracker has been performed by the students of the dance studio for years. The ballet had to relocated because The Little Theater came up with their own Christmas production of something or other. So, The Nutcracker was performed in the auditorium of the local branch of Kent State University. We Small Town folks are a resourceful bunch. While I love the quaintness of The Little Theater, the auditorium at Kent was cozy enough to provide a good Small Town experience. Here was the setting: Daughter #2 bought tickets for the front row in a section with only four seats. We were just three or four feet from...

...to Ludwig Van Beethoven, born in 1770.

powered by ODEO I mailed my Christmas cards out this week--in lieu of cards to the blogpals, here's a song. The only reason I'm not too ashamed of posting this to everyone is because I am confident in my own medocrity. Although it's been said many times many ways...

We're No Angels is a Christmas favorite (a favorite of mine, anyway), starring Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, and Aldo Ray. It is not to be confused with the crap version starring Sean Penn and Robert Deniro. This is the story of three convicts who escape from Devil's Island and find themselves in a bustling village at Christmas time. Their intent is to pillage from this unsuspecting community and then escape by ship--there is a ship anchored just off shore. They stumble into a shop, a kind of general store run by a quiet man, his wife, and grown daughter, and they offer to "fix the leaky roof." While they are on this roof, they crawl from sky light to sky light observing this family and their troubles, and they work out their plot. Bogart: we'll climb down off this roof and cut his throat for a Christmas present. Ustinov: That's the kind of thing that could make you stop believing in Santa Claus But once they get off of the roof and get to know this family ...

...you must do your favorite Charlie Brown dance. Personally, I like the twins.

I like it when Willie Nelson sings Frosty the Snowman. I wouldn't have said that earlier this morning, but while I was out and about on an early run to The Store, driving a car with XM Radio, I pushed buttons until I found an all-Christmas station. Willie was singing the best rendition of Frosty the Snowman I believe I have heard. Huh, I thought to myself because I hate country music. On an all-Christmas station I expect to hear a dozen different versions of Frosty followed by a dozen different versions of The Christmas Song, which always irritates me because everybody knows the only one who can rightfully sing The Christmas Song is Nat King Cole. But it was the song after Willie Nelson that made me wish I had satellite radio in my regular car. Dan Fogelberg sang: Met my old lover in the grocery store The snow was falling Christmas Eve I stole behind her in the frozen foods And I touched her on the sleeve... I laughed out loud. What? I thought to myself. Is this a Christmas song? I...

This morning I was visiting Molly at Somewhat Refined and reading her list of quotes. I'm a weak one for a good quote, especially one that doesn't sound like someone has worked hard trying to say something quotable. Some of my orchestra rehearsals are in the bandroom at Small Town's middle school (hey, we're a small town orchestra). This room is easily accessible and is fully-stocked with percussion. My friend J is the band teacher at this school, and she has lined the walls with quotes for her students to ponder when they sit for band. There are several that read, "NO WHINING," which is always good for a kid to remember, especially the kid who talks through his nose. There is a quote from Yoda about not trying but doing. "There is no trying." There are also a few quotes about the purpose of music in our lives and some on brain activity. "It's OK to be smart." My favorite quote is from Maya Angelou: Creativity cannot be used up. The mo...

I like knowing what time it is, but I don't wear a watch. I don't have to, except at church when there is no visible clock, because I have clocks on almost everything in the house. There is one on the computer, one on the stove, one on the microwave, one on the DVD player, one on the cable box, two in the car, one on my nightstand. There are two that my kids made in 7th grade, although the batteries have died. Mainly, I have an internal clock that gets me up early every morning whether I need to or not. I set my alarm every night for 6:15 AM before I go to sleep, but it's only a precaution in case my internal clock is lagging. It hardly ever is. Unfortunately, this internal clock fails as a metronome. Last night, at 6:30 PM we went to our company's Christmas dinner party. I sat at the table with a man whose sons go to school with my daughter. All three kids go to great lengths to make sure they arrive at school no sooner than they need to. The bell rings at 7:45 AM, and...

makes everything better. I have always been a very fearful person--afraid of my shadow, afraid of peripheral vision, afraid of spiders, afraid of snakes, afraid of deep water, afraid of roller coasters, afraid of public speaking, afraid of claustrophia-enducing enclosures, afraid of being seen or heard or criticized. A few years ago I wrote a story about an attempt to conquer my fears. Just writing the little piece was cathartic, but once I set out to chip away at all the little demons that plagued me, I quickly learned that facing them head on was the only solution. Tackling each one despite gripping anxiety would go a long way to recondition my responses to perceived threats, crawling things, putting my head under water. Last night I went to an orchestra rehearsal for this coming weekend's Christmas concert . It was the first rehearsal in which I would play 2nd horn instead of 4th, and the bell of my horn would be facing a player with a masters in horn performance. I was concern...

Yesterday while doing some Christmas shopping, my daughter bought a vile of artificial snow. What has the world reduced itself to, I know. You just add a little water, and the tiny polymers increase by 100 percent and create a kind of fake snow. You can freeze it for making snow balls, or you can use it to decorate a Victorian village scene, or you can use it to simulate winter on a movie set. It all seemed very enjoyable to my daughter until I said it was the same expandable, absorbent stuff that goes into disposable diapers. Suddenly it wasn't so amazing anymore. It was nasty. All a matter of perception, I guess. During the same shopping trip, we went to our local mall that now has a Macy's. The store used to be a Kaufmans but was recently bought out. I always thought the Kaufmans, at least the junior department, looked kind of trashy and over stuffed, so I was eager for Macy's to come in and clean things up. Honestly, I think it still looks kind of trashy and over stuff...

This is a closeup of the dragon cup my grandmother gave me when I was a kid, my first tea cup. It's from Occupied Japan, so I assume she bought it in the late 40s.

Classic ribbon candy--a favorite for Christmas, but I'm not sure why we don't enjoy it all year.

To counteract the evil spell Dive has placed on Christmas, I will complete his meme, upping the ante. Answer this, you curmudgeon. 1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Egg nog , nice and cold. 2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? I'm pretty sure he doesn't wrap them. The wrapped presents are from Santa frauds--parents who have no faith in the Old Man and think they have to provide the gifts. 3. Coloured lights on tree/house or white? I don't decorate the outside of my house because the roof line is too complicated. I wouldn't know where to put lights. My trees have small white lights, as do the garlands over the mantels. 4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. 5. When do you put your decorations up? The weekend after Thanksgiving, except at the lake house. I haven't made a trip there yet to put up the little fake woodsy tree that is decorated with birdhouses and cardinals. 6. What is your favourite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Probably my mother's co...

It's a day-time shot, which is less appealing than an evening shot. Sorry about that. Here's a closeup of the angel showing the instrument she plays when no one is looking. It's a horn (in case you can't tell from this angle).

Daughter #2 took this picture of our Christmas tree and its reflection in the window. Since I will spend today making cookies and fudge, I thought it would be appropriate to show an image that depicts the spirit of the day. This is Tiger sitting beneath the tree.

These are pictures of some of the tea cups I've collected over the years. My grandmother gave me my first one when I was twelve. It was not long before she died, and she was giving away her stuff, although I didn't realize what was going on at the time. Since then, I have collected almost forty. Most of them have been gifts, but I have bought some unique ones myself. I have a lot from England because a collection isn't complete without bone china from England, for whatever reason. I have cups from Italy, Germany, Czechoslovakia , Denmark, occupied Japan, China, Holland, Austria, Sweden, and a Limoges demitasse from France that sits in a sterling silver holder. Aside from the dragon cup from my grandmother, the Limoges may be my favorite.

I like cookies. "So what" is what I'd say if someone were to say that to me. "So eat them." The problem is, sugar and other carbs don't sit well with me. They make me fat and unhappy, and I get all jittery and dizzy and want to lay down. Or break something. I first discovered I had a problem with hypoglycemia when I was at an antique store looking for a tea cup (oddly, I collect tea cups). Anyway, I has holding a cup and saucer from Czechoslovakia, and my hands were shaking because I hadn't eaten in a while. The cup was rattling against the saucer, and I couldn't stop it. I bought the thing and got in my car, thinking that if I could just grab a sandwich from a drive thru quickly, then I'd be OK. I backed the car into a telephone pole on the way out of the parking lot, and then I managed to cross the street and get a sandwich. Within fifteen minutes, I was steady. My doctor suggested I might be hypoglycemic, and he put me on a high-protein, low-c...

pandora.com I think daughter #1 may have mentioned this some time recently, but not until now have I actually explored it. Quite a handy site!

All this talk of film remakes has caused me to stumble a bit, to feel the need to hold onto the hand rail as I climb the stairs in case something else I normally count on gives way. Every time I get comfortable with a thing, it either changes or disappears all together. First, there is a vote, and Pluto isn't a planet anymore. Then Marshall Fields becomes a Macys . Marshall Fields, I say with my best Chicago nasal tone and with emphasis and extra inflection because the store on State Street in Chicago is an institution. I went there on field trips as a kid (for home ec . classes believe it or not). I bought the material for my bride's maid dresses in the basement of that store. I walked past it every day on my way to work. I bought Frango mints as if they were essential food.* Yesterday, I pulled through the drive through at Wendy's for lunch--a side salad and an order of chicken strips. Since they did away with their chicken strip salad, I've had to construct my own. ...

I recognize the need to generate income by repackaging--publishers do it all the time, but the text is left intact. Here is a short list of some film remakes in which the "text" is altered, besides A Christmas Carol or Scrooge or Old Man and the Ghost, whatever they want to call it: The Philadelphia Story/High Society: Here is a perfectly good movie with excellent casting, and someone goes and messes it up with bad casting and color. And who decided that adding music makes a film better anyway? The Shop Around the Corner/You've Got Mail: I think the remake is kind of cute, but the original was so much more than cute. The characters had depth, and the boss wasn't a bad guy. I hate movies that make the boss out to be bad just because he's the boss and has money. It's a small mind that thinks so flatly. The Parent Trap/The Parent Trap: I'll give them this one. I didn't care for the first one, and I thought its casting was sluggish. But really, what a ridi...

At amazon.com, I searched for "A Christmas Carol" to find my favorite--the 1938 version with Reginald Owen. There are so many different film versions of the Dickens' classic, I lost count at seventeen. Someone has done a much more thorough search that you can read up on here, if you'd like. A general list: 1910--silent film 1938 with Reginald Owen 1951 with Alistair Sim (Scrooge--also a favorite of mine) 1954 with Fredric March 1979 with Henry Winkler 1985 with George C. Scott 1988 with Bill Murray (Scrooged) 1992 with the Muppets and Michael Caine 1999 with Patrick Stewart 2000 with Vanessa Williams (Diva's Christmas Carol) 2004 with Kelsey Grammer, a musical There was a ballet in 1992, and there are too many animated versions to count including Brer Rabbit, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Mickey Mouse, Mr. Magoo, Sesame Street, Beavis and Butthead,..... Evidently, anyone who has ever acted on stage, in front of a camera, in cartoon has done A Christmas Carol. Wha...

I first saw Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Animagic Rankin/Bass production, when I was four years old. Because I watch the thing every year, it's fair to say I have seen it at least forty times, which would explain why I can recite it practically line for line. And I can sing all the songs. There's Sam the Snowman singing "You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,..." And there's Clarise trying to cheer up Rudolph with "There's always tomorrow for dreams to come..." And there's Hermie singing "I am not just a misfit. You can't fire me, I quit. Seems I don't fit in." I know the Abominable is a sad excuse for a monster. I know that Santa is mean to Rudolph when he should be benevolent. I know Santa quadruples in size in just one meal. But none of these shortcomings matters because this little film is my Christmas treat. It's a staple. It's a remnant from when I was able to take things at face value, just sit...

Yesterday, at my lesson, I sat down in my chair and played the Just Desserts swing number. Usually, if I completely stink at something, my teacher will stop me--it's just too painful to let me continue--and he'll correct my mistakes. Then I start over and try for something better. But this time he didn't stop me. I played the whole thing start to finish, feeling as if this time I was getting it right, like I was projecting the correct pulse. At the end, I put my horn back down on my leg and looked at him with raised eye-brows, waiting for a word of encouragement. He said, "So, did you practice this with a metronome?" Deflated, like a leaky balloon that slowly falls from the ceiling down the floor, floating aimlessly with no fuel and no hope for refilling, destined to shrivel into a plastic puddle only to be scooped up and tossed into the trash, party ended. Is that a melodramatic description? Probably. It's just that I had played the stupid thing with a metron...

This is where I curse the horn book Just Desserts and its creator Lowell E. Shaw. Lowell E. Shaw is Lucifer himself, come up from the bowels of hell with a trail of sulfur stench following behind him. Lowell E. Shaw laughs at pain and gnashing of teeth. Lowell E. Shaw finds joy in the suffering of mankind. Lowell E. Shaw causes me to play swing on my French horn. Currently during my horn lessons I play two exercises in the Kopprasch book (a standard), Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 2 (which I play with precision but not with enough delicacy as demanded by Mozart, and in the first movement, not quite up to speed), Beethoven's Horn Sonata (which I have just begun working on and love dearly, Beethoven being my favorite composer), and Just Desserts (jazz style solo exercises designed to encourage jazz playing). Horn players don't often have opportunity to play jazz. It's not in our nature. We play straight, right down the middle--soft lovely arpeggios or big Hollywood rips. But...

I have been soaking up small town Christmas charm to the best of my ability. Our town has not had its own Christmas parade in over twenty years--it shared one with the neighboring town which I witnessed just once. It was the worst excuse for a parade that I have ever seen, even with my own daughter dressed as a reindeer (she was not happy). It was nothing more than a string of cars and trucks with the names of local businesses plastered on them. It might as well have been called the Ad Section parade. But last night, my town put on its own Christmas parade extravaganza. It began with the mayor standing in the middle of the square. He counted down from ten, and at zero, lights were turned on for the giant tree and these rather tacky garland ropes that create a kind of holiday roof over the main street. They are tacky, but I love them. Then there was the parade in which people and businesses actually put effort into creating floats--the old-fashioned floats that I knew as a kid with gian...