Scout Moves

My column in today's edition of Small Town Newspaper is about conquering the deep end. You can take that literally or as a metaphor—either way, it works. The piece is here . When I was a kid, the Knaver family down the street had a swimming pool, an oblong above-ground pool that was probably not more than four or four-and-a-half feet deep. When you're 12, that's pretty deep, but I don't recall being afraid in it. The Knaver girls were relatively generous with their pool and would invite the rest of the neighbor girls to swim, although they learned quickly how to use their pool to their advantage. One day, after inviting Linda and Kitty who lived next door to swim, the meanest Knaver girl told me I wasn't allowed because her mother didn't like my mother and didn't want me in her yard. That made no sense to me because our mothers had never interacted. There was that one time the same girl, who was sort of chubby, called me "fat" at the bus stop...

For the past three years, I have volunteered as a tutor for Even Start, a family literacy program that operated with federal funds, but the program is folding this week because Congress eliminated it back in the spring as part of the Continuing Resolution. Based on a study done several years ago that revealed some of Even Start's flaws, they determined it was a failure and not worth the $66.5 million we put into it annually (our local program operated on just $13o,000 annually). No one with a Yay vote stopped to consider that vast improvements were made to the program because of that early study, and there was no current study to show how effective the new and improved Even Start program had become, but it was a target, and that was that. There are other literacy programs around, but none of them, at least none of them locally, provides transportation and childcare for needy people who wouldn't otherwise be able to get an education. These are people who made bad decisions as...

I was twiddling my thumbs one day when Conductor Eric suggested I might be useful in promoting the Tuscarawas Philharmonic, the local orchestra (its link is in the sidebar). So, I thought about some options and decided what this group needs is a newsletter. I did some digging and discovered it didn't have one, and possibly never had one in its 75 years, although I can't confirm that. Every organization has a news letter these days because email and websites have made them cheap to produce. You can print them and mail them, but you aren't locked into that format, so why not go all out and keep people posted. I have this idea that connecting with fans and supporters and musicians and board members outside of concert performances might strengthen the sense of community of the group. And talking in detail about what goes on behind the scenes and offering insight into programming and personnel might strengthen the interest of people on the fringes. I talked to people about...

For today's column in Small Town Newspaper, I wrote about the birthday of Claude Debussy and what his music has meant to me over the years. You can read it here —I'd be honored. In it, I talked about La Cathedrale Engloutie, a piano piece I first learned in high school when I took lessons from the eccentric Mr. Stevesand, a bachelor with frazzled hair and dirty glasses who lived up on a hill with two cats who ate out of pans left sitting on the stove. Those are the things I remember most about the man, those and that he claimed to have difficult playing complex music because his fingers had grown so large. He was a big man, that Mr. Stevesand. The Cathedrale piece has crazy chords that require you to play two notes with one finger because there are so many notes to cover—six or seven with one hand, even. I would sit at our piano in the living room, and on days when my mother had reached her nutty limit, I would pound as hard as I could on those chords. Very satisfying, if...

I did something new yesterday. Alliance, Ohio has a symphony orchestra, and I filled in for an unwell horn player in its most recent concert. We performed at a park in Alliance as part of its annual Carnation Festival—the town is known as Carnation City. There is actually an interesting story behind that designation—in the 1860s, a doctor in Alliance who grew red carnations in his greenhouse ran for a congressional seat against his friend William McKinley. Before each debate, he gave McKinley one of his carnations, and McKinley wore them all the way to the White House. Now, every year on his birthday, red carnations are placed in the hands of a McKinley statue in Columbus. Well, back to the concert. This town is about an hour from Small Town, I know because it's where I used to go for horn lessons, and I had the route emblazoned in my brain. Still, for this fill-in concert, I often found myself showing up ridiculously early for rehearsals and even the concert—more on that ...

As usual my column appeared in yesterday's edition of Small Town Newspaper—you can read it here , if you want. I found the site, Combat Paper Project while nosing around the Internet a couple of weeks ago, and I thought it was worthy of some local attention. Plus, it put me in mind of the homemade paper projects my girls and I used to do when they were younger and how we took useless trash and turned it into one-of-kind things I think were beautiful. I still have a collection of the paper they made. We had a couple of small kits with framed screens and blotting paper, and on slow days, the girls would take off and let their imaginations go wild with paper. They would rip up scrap paper and throw it in a blender and then add other things—herbs, flowers, lavender from the back yard, ribbon, bits of rope, you name it. Then they would blend it all into a slurry, pour it into a tray, dip in the screen, and pull out something entirely new. You can let the new paper air dry, or y...

The 500 Words game has been revived, monitored by Dive at Small Glass Planet. This month's story is based on the photo here : Jean turned the corner and stepped down gingerly from the curb, letting his stronger knee bear the weight before allowing his age-worn one to manage the cobblestones. He winced in anticipation as he took the next step, but today seemed a good day, and he crossed the street to the café without any more strain than warranted a few winded groans. It was early, and the shops were just opening. A few grazers cased the fruit stand, one or two aimed for the bread shop and Jean set his course for one of the empty tables on the sidewalk. He set his jacket down in an empty chair and eased into the one beside it, and he exhaled with the sound of a man with weary bones. When the server delivered his croissant and coffee, he watched how adept she was at holding the silver tray with one hand, and how she kept it perfectly level without a sign of trembling. “I’d ...

Well, it's been a quiet week in... I feel as though I should begin this post with the opening line from a Lake Wobegon story even though I don't have a snapshot tale to tell you about what has happened in Small Town this week. It's just been a quiet week here. Husband has been visiting No. 1 in Berkeley this week, tidying up a kitchen remodeling project we've been managing long distance and spending time with the kid. All reports suggest they're having a nice time, even though the kid will sometimes resort to answering her father in Arabic, a language he does not speak. I can imagine that eventually feels like your child is mocking you in Pig Latin, but I'm sure they're working things out. When Husband embarked on this trip, he said he would approach it like a personal vacation. So, I'm approaching my time alone at home as a personal vacation as well. True, I don't have a stressful job to breakaway from, or any job for that matter, but a bre...

Hey, its my blog birthday! Happy birthday to Just Sayin’, born mostly of curiosity but long-lived because I can’t figure out how to quit. On August 6, 2006 I finished reading a couple of blogs I had discovered, and I thought I might like to give this odd hobby a try. It is like a hobby, isn’t it? I mean what else would you call something you do almost every day solely for the purpose of amusement and creativity? Well, sometimes my blog posts are creative, although I’ll admit to writing filler posts like everyone else does from time to time. I remember that Post Something Every Day for the Month of November business (I know that wasn’t the name of it, but it’s all I’ve got on hand), and I posted small watercolor paintings on some days just to participate. I have incorporated some Photoshop skills in my posts, like the series of cat photos melded with historic imagery, or like the photos of book-mobiles modified to represent far-flung ideas I had for traveling businesses. I’ve w...

We know a woman who organizes friends like she's sorting flatware in the kitchen drawer, and it's a good thing. She sometimes organizes us into pleasant events, choosing destinations and making reservations on our behalf, which was the case this weekend, Husband and I, and three other couples, met in Columbus for Gallery Hop, a monthly event in the Short North, which is a trendy area in Columbus. That section of High Street is now filled with shops and galleries, restaurants, cafes and bars. The first Saturday of the month, the street is also filled with tons of people, street musicians, activists with petitions to sign and a few Harikrishnas. We spent Saturday night at the 50 Lincoln Bed & Breakfast , a big house just a few short blocks from High Street. The place was big enough to accommodate us all, plus a group of about eight women. We had private rooms and baths, and we shared a comfortable living room and had the run of the kitchen. There was a guest refrigerator fill...

"And you thought you wouldn't have anything to do." That's what a friend said to me yesterday when I told him how I had spent my day. He was referring to a conversation we had had a few months ago when I was facing a future of watching day-time TV, knitting at noon and becoming one of those women whose lives revolves around working out at the Y and getting regular pedicures. I was preferring a lobotomy in my worrying. But here's what happens when you see the future and don't like the potential, or lack of potential, you see. You change it. My tutoring gig for Latins has dissolved because Congress cut our funding; and except for my weekly columns, the newspaper writing has dissolved because the publisher has squeezed the budget to eliminate people like me. My children have moved out, my needy mother lives hundreds of miles away, and here I sit. The idea of getting a job isn't unreasonable, but I wonder what sort of job I could get with no degree and in a sm...