Scout Moves

A couple of days ago, I heard about a young woman who was considering suicide and had made some specific plans to carry it out later in the evening, but then she decided to hang on to just one good thing for at least that day. In her case, that one good thing was Disney movies. The innocence and nostalgia were the elixir she needed. I’m not considering suicide, but I’ve got an elixir of my own to draw on in hard times (or easy, for that matter), and in my case, it’s playing with an orchestra. We performed last night, and the experience was good medicine. In Small Town, there is a quiet kind of guy named Bob who, with his wife, teaches piano lessons in a private studio. Eustacia took lessons from him for a couple of years when she was much younger, in fact. Bob also composes piano music, which has become beloved with students and teachers around the world. I said he was quiet—he’s also humble and unassuming, and unless someone else takes on the role of trumpet tooter on his behalf, ...

Apropos of nothing, the song “What Do You Do with A Drunken Sailor” keeps popping into my head. Well, it’s not completely from nowhere—my orchestra will be performing Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2 in a few weeks, and my part for the first movement has “Drunken Sailor” notated above one set of rests. If you listen closely, you can hear a hint of the tune in the music. The question I’m really asking isn’t about drunken sailors, though. It’s about sick cats. What do you do with a sick cat? You put him down. Is that harsh? Yes, it is, but these days, I see no way around such really difficult situations but to approach them harshly, or maybe just frankly. You do what must be done even if you’d rather pass the cup to someone else. My family has endured a series of very unfortunate events as of late, and just when I thought I had reached my load-bearing limit, I woke up Saturday morning to a sick cat. Tiger was our beloved orange tabby who we have had in our house for 13 years. He on...