A little light music...

Exultate!

Claye and I traveled a ways yesterday evening to listen to a concert by the Lawton Pro Musica--a chamber choir. Since Elijah and Marie are members of this 14-member ensemble, we wanted to hear the performance, particularly since Marie had informed me that Elijah had a solo. Not being too sure of what to expect, and even suspecting that it might be all Latin and German numbers, or, worse yet, modern classical music with its screeches and jagged edges, I almost packed my Kindle. Fortunately, the concert was far from that. In fact, it was quite enjoyable.

The singers were almost all music educators, either in or retired from the school system or music ministers in area churches. The singing was exceptional. Also, and this really matters to me, the songs were meaningful!

From the Gregorian chant, "Creator of the Starry Skies", through hymn medleys and Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, to I Got a Home in-a That Rock, they encouraged my soul.

The setting--St. Andrew's Episcopal Church--and the lighting--subdued as it struck the ancient wooden beams and stained glass--only added to the mood of peacefulness.

The audience even got to participate in a couple of numbers, one of which was a total surprise to me. I knew that Gustav Holst had written "The Planets", which includes a composition for each of those heavenly bodies. (My grandchildren like to imagine they are space-traveling while that music is playing; they hop to the right planet when they hear the music for it) What I didn't know was that Holst had composed hymn lyrics to go with the main theme for Jupiter. Somehow I had never imagined that. The song is called O God, Beyond All Praising.

Our evening was well worth the trip...and Elijah's solo was excellent.

Here are the Lyrics to Gustav Holst' Hymn

 O God, beyond all praising we worship You today

And sing the love amazing that songs cannot repay;

For we can only wonder at ev'ry gift You send,

At blessings without number and mercies without end;

We lift our hearts before You and wait upon Your Word,

We honor and adore You, our great and mighty Lord.

Then hear, O gracious Savior, accept the love we bring,

That we who know Your favor may serve You as our King;

And whether our tomorrows be filled with good or ill,

We'll triumph through sorrows and rise to praise You still:

To marvel at Your beauty and glory in Your ways

and make a joyful duty our sacrifice of praise.

Fourth Grade Concert

Parents proudly peer through video lenses

at these precious presents given them

a decade ago.

They smile as they hear childish pitches,

and see the careful poses on high risers.

But I, feeling oddly older than the crowd,

hold high my well-worn camera

to catch the face of the young director,

my son.

Elijah and Marie

I keep stalling on my post about the wedding,hoping the pictures will come in. Meanwhile time is passing; the newlyweds have returned and settled cosily into their house in Lawton; we have another wedding coming up this Saturday, and school starts on Monday, the 9th...so here are a couple of pictures I stole from various people on facebook. I love the joy on the couple's faces when the formal shots(posing for pictures with lots of people watching you) are all over and they are finally ready to leave all the stress as they drive away in a new car, borrowed from Marie's dad. (Both their cars are travel-worn and unreliable, so all the parents breathed a little easier to see them drive away in the new one--well, all but Marie's dad. He held his breath until they--and the new car--returned safe and sound!)

Elijah

My son (whose blog-alias is Elijah) and my new daughter-in-law (whose blog-alias is going to be Marie) are blissfully far away on their honeymoon, unable to access computers to read blogs and such.
Therefore, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell a couple of funny stories about Elijah.

When he was a sophomore in high school, we all piled into the van on Sunday morning to make the fifteen-mile drive to church. He was in his socks, because he knew that surely there was a huge selection of his shoes under the back seat of the van where he was prone to leave them. As we neared the church parking lot, he began to search for shoes. He found one.

"Alright, who cleaned the van?"
"I did. Why?"
"What did you do with my other shoe? Is it up there?"
"Probably not. I carrying a whole pile into your room and dumped them into your closet."
"Mom!"
"Well!"
"Well I only have one shoe now to wear to church..."

So we all looked, but, sure enough. There was only one.
Elijah wasn't one to let something like that inhibit him, however. Boldly he walked into church and even sang in the choir. (Fortunately from the back row.)
After church we decided to go out for Pizza. Elijah limped a little as we walked into the restaurant and placed the socked foot carefully under the table. Whenever anyone asked him what happened to his foot, he smiled gingerly, and said,
"I think I misplaced something."
They commiserated; we all smiled.

A couple of years later Elijah dove over our backyard chain link fence to do a front flip and keep running--the way he always did. This time, however, he didn't jump quite high enough. The top of the fence left an impressive gash down the entire front of his stomach.
That fall at football practice, when he pulled off his shirt, the guys in the locker room caught sight of the lengthy scar.
"Wow! How did you get that one?"
Elijah didn't miss a beat.
"Fencing," he replied.

Giant Lightning Rods

For several years during high school and college, Elijah worked at the local Farmers' Cooperative, more commonly referred to as the Co-op. Some of the time he was in and on top of the grain elevators, which were accessed with ladders and dangerous, grated "man-lift" elevators; in and out of boot pits, which had to been cleaned of all last year's rotting wheat before the new wheat could take its place; and in and out of storage bins, where the temperatures could reach 130 degrees, and frequently did. After harvest began every year, however, his job was to stand on top of these freight cars and direct the grain-filled, slanting spout to a trap door in their roofs. Cloudless days were trying, because of the unrelenting heat. Cloudy days were better, unless, of course a storm was brewing in the West. On one particular day, I watched the clouds roll in and listened to the storm warnings with trepidation. Knowing that the Co-op guys would work every minute until the storm actually hit--because grain is precious and the farmers were almost frantic about getting it into a dry place before the rain--I did what any self-respecting mom would do and called my son at work to make sure his supervisor would properly value his life. He was standing on top of the car, as usual.
"Don't worry, Mom", he said, "We see the storm coming. I'm sure we'll close down when it gets close."
Of course I didn't stop worrying. In fact, I worried more. Short of driving up there and demanding that they call off work, what could I do? Pray, of course. Doesn't every mom?
About thirty minutes later, the rain began to pour.
He called from the office.
"Hey, Mom, I almost got struck by lightning!"
"Are you ok?"
"Now I am, but it was pretty impressive. First this huge cloud came streaking in just like a bird flying over us. All of a sudden my head felt funny. I reached my hand over my head and felt that all my hair was standing straight up. So I turned loose of the spout and dropped flat to the roof of the car. Then I crawled to the edge and jumped off. It hit right behind me and the thunder was really loud."
"But you're ok now? You went inside, right?"
"Well, I crawled back up, raised the sheath on the spout, pushed it off and lowered the rope so they could put it back where it goes."
"You what?"
"Well, I couldn't leave it in the train like that. By that time it was pouring rain."
"No kidding."
"Aw. Don't worry, Mom. I'm fine now."
"You're not going back up there in this?"
"No. We're just finishing up some things and I'll be home."
And he was.
And he doesn't understand why I worry so much.
It's a mom thing.

Elijah's Christmas Program

Last Thursday, Turtle and I were able to attend our son's first Christmas program...well the first program he put together as a teacher. He had 91 fourth-grade students participating; that's a lot of little children. Even stacked neatly on the bleachers of a huge auditorium stage, behaving beautifully without fights and fidgets, they looked like they would be a challenge to teach. The program being Christmas Around the World, the children sang songs in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, and Japanese. One little boy played drums; another two played guitar (for Silent Night), six little girls played on marimbas, and they all sang. Elijah accompanied on the guitar, piano, accordion, and trumpet(not all at the same time). It was quite enjoyable. I tried to get a picture of all 91 of the students up there, but it had to be rather small, so I took a close up of Elijah and two little boys;it looks like they have a tie-coordinating thing going on. His next program will be in the spring and will feature his third graders. At the end of the year, his fifth graders will have their turn to perform. His job isn't one most people would appreciate having, but I'm sure it means a lot to the children and to their parents. I'm proud of Elijah at times like this.

So Where Did all This Stuff Come From?

Do elementary school teachers ever throw anything away? My guess is "no".

Today I went with Elijah to see his new classroom. He wanted to set up an instrument area for all kinds of instruments to show his elementary music students, so we took a trunk full of them. We also took a chess board and a box full of music books. We thought we'd whiz in there, settle the instruments and books into the closets, meet a few people, eat lunch, and come back home. Well we thought...

The room was spacious and fairly new. It had one window with a great view out over the empty prairie. It also had a file cabinet, a wall of new, short cabinets, a built-in coat closet, dilapidated metal closet, five tables, 16 chairs, a piano, with a crooked leg and two little white statues on top (Beethoven and Haydn, I think) a teacher's desk and three old, brown, broken-down desk chairs on wheels. Every shelf of every closet...every drawer of the file cabinet...the tops of the closets and cabinets--they were all full.

There was bulletin board stuff, music and more music, construction paper, poster board, old tapes, cd's, dvd's, and even records. The biggest headache, though, occupied the only real closet in the room...you know, the lockable one where the teacher is supposed to hang his coat and store his lunch? It was popping out and running over with costumes for musicals--pirate stuff, stacked sets of hats--all kinds, swords, glitter wands and feather masks, Groucho Marx glasses, pilgrim outfits, angel wings, nutcrackers, wigs, boots, and jester bells. We didn't know where to begin, because there was no place for any of the stuff he had brought.

Before we despaired completely, however, another teacher came to his rescue and showed us a storage room where the teachers keep all their leftover junk. We moved a few labeled boxes in there and grabbed more furniture. (She said anything that didn't have a name and 'keep your hands off sign' on it was free to whatever teacher saw it first.) No, we didn't find anything so grand as a book case, but we found a sturdy upright cabinet with doors and a partially empty file cabinet. We moved all the costume stuff into the old upright metal cabinet and were able to find room for Elijah's stuff in the real closet. We relocated the books and teaching supplies he thought he would use--and there were many of those--into the new cabinet. We sorted stuff into the drawers of the empty file cabinet--games, baskets, tapes, cds, mementos of choir contests and programs. Then we carried some of the tables and the three dilapidated chairs back to the store room. He brought a black computer chair from his apartment; it looks much more manly.

Elijah has great ideas about teaching and setting up a stage area for the instruments. I think it's going to be a good room after all...if someone will just help him make some bulletin boards...

CLEP Tests

A lot of college students don't know about CLEP tests, or they are highly suspicious of them and fear that they will fail, or that they won't count, or many such things.
Well, here's my advice: Take all the CLEP tests you can take. If the school allows 30 hours...take 30 hours.

Yes, they cost money. But they only cost one fourth the money it would take you to actually take the class.

Yes, they take a few hours of study; But taking the class--the homework, the notes, the tests--that takes a lot longer.

No, you don't get a grade for them. It's just pass/fail. But if you pass by the skin of your teeth, who will know it? You don't have to take the class. You still get the credit. It's great.

There is a large book, put out by the CLEP test people, which has reviews for all the tests. My advice is that you take the sample test, grade it, and see how you do. If you pass easily, you will pass the real test. If you are close, I recommend subscribing to this website. InstantCert.
This site has an easy system of flashcard study that fully prepares you for tests in almost every one of the subjects.

It costs 20 dollars a month, so don't subscribe until you are ready to study, and be sure you unsubscribe after you pass all the tests you had time for. I've been subscribing every summer for the last five years so Elijah could study for the CLEP tests he needed to take that semester. Today...tada! Elijah passed his last one...a calculus test. He now has 173 hours on his transcript; 33 of those are CLEP. He never had to take a test twice. It ended up costing around 650 dollars for the tests. The equivalent in tuition for classes would have cost $4,110 plus all the textbooks. Besides, it may have taken another semester of school to meet all those requirements.

In a week, when summer session is over, Elijah will be able to pick up his diploma, apply for his teaching certificate, and begin his new job--teaching 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders vocal music.
Ah. His parents sigh.

Apostle Paul, Under House Arrest in Rome

Here's Elijah as Paul. His chained cohort, Brutus, grew the beard especially for the part, and the young soldier, Carl, stands nearby with a message. I don't know what I'd do without these willing volunteers. They certainly make things exciting for the little VBS kids, who hang on their every word. One little girl embarassed Brutus by hugging him a couple of nights ago. She wanted to show him God's love. Every evening, one group of kids takes a letter from Paul to the underground church and the other group brings an offering from the church to Paul. Last night it was a blanket for his bed. I also contacted one of my eighth-graders to put in an appearance last night in the market place so that he could get arrested and taken away. Now it looks like I may have to invite him back, because the children are worried about his fate. I want them to understand history, but I don't want them to suffer needless fear. It's hard to know where to draw the line.

Here are Lucia and Marcus in the catacombs. They are doing a fantastic job also, bringing hope into what was a dangerous time for the early Christian church.

College Guys--A Strange Species

Elijah called me at ten o'clock on the first of June.
"Where are you, Mom?"
"I'm at your sister's, watching the grandkids while she visits the dentist. What's going on with you?"
"You'll never believe what happened. You know I had arranged to stay in this apartment through summer school?"
"uh-huh"
"Well this morning my landlady came charging in here saying my lease was up and why wasn't I out? It seems the guy who told us it would be fine was her son, and she 'doesn't rent that way'. She says we have until tomorrow to vacate, but I have to go to work at two, and after that I have dress rehearsal for the musical until at least eleven tonight..."

So that is how I spent the rest of my Monday. Turtle, Elijah, and I worked until Elijah had to leave. Fortunately, his college roommate, Ray, is getting married in two weeks, so he and his fiancee were able to move stuff right into their newly-acquired apartment in the same town. They arrived at three. At five, Ray's family--father, mother, brother, sister--all came to join in the fun. They finished about seven o'clock, but Turtle and I stayed until after midnight, loading everything into a car, a pickup, and a little flat-bed trailer, leaving a completely bare, polished and scrubbed apartment.

What do you think a college apartment looks like after two guys live there for their senior year of college? Well, these are pretty unusual guys: they don't drink, smoke, do drugs, or party; nonetheless, there were a few surprises.

One wall of the living room was covered with a hanging curtain of suspended empty Mountain Dew cans, and leaning in the corner was a Christmas Tree made out of the same. This was Ray's creation, and all day he and his fiancee were negotiating over how much of this they could keep. (They finally compromised--kept the wall and recycled the tree)

There were three televisions in the living room, a large couch, a small couch, two chairs, a brick and board TV/Nintendo center and two coffee tables. (It seems that whenever somebody moves out of an apartment, they donate whatever doesn't fit in their vehicle to whoever will take it.)

In the kitchen cabinet were all the groceries we moms had sent for the guys to eat, at least all the soups and anything that required preparation. Elijah said he had been eating mostly Ramen noodles and baloney sandwiches.
"That's healthy, right?"
"Well.."
"Carbs and protein?" he said defensively.

He had warned us not to eat anything out of the refrigerator unless we asked how old it was, so we weren't tempted to snack, even though the fridge looked surprisingly clean. Ray's mom and I checked the dates on food, and tossed most of it out, so that was easy. There were twelve eggs--all present and looking perfectly tasty. The date on the carton said September, 2008. "Those are probably the eggs I brought over here when they set up," mused Ray's mom.

In a room lined with plywood and press board panels, there was a sound board station with a computer tied to lots of black boxes, cords leading everywhere, a huge keyboard, an amplifier, mikes, and music stands--late night jamming, it seems. "Nobody ever complained about it," they said, which surprises me, but I guess I haven't spent much time in a mostly-college apartment complex.

There were musical instruments everywhere--a trombone, a guitar, a bass, a violin, two clarinets, a flute, a midi, a mandolin, and, of course, a giant keyboard--which was relatively the size of a coffin and took both of us to carry down to the car. (It belongs to a friend of Elijah's. He says he transported it regularly to music practice, giving me cause to question his understanding of the word portable.)

The clean sheets I sent over a couple of weeks ago and the pillow slips were still in the hamper. Four blankets were in a pile on the floor under the bunk bed. Elijah had slept most of the year in his sleeping bag, which was on the bare mattress along with a couple of slip-less pillows.

Things that would have driven me crazy--light switches not working, disposal being out(we pushed the reset switch and it worked fine), a sluggish sink drain, broken dishwasher, (They said it had never worked; they just hand washed the amazing hodge-podge of dishes they had bought at the local thrift store--along with a quesadilla maker, wok, waffle iron, coffee pot, and blender) and blinds that didn't reach to the bottoms of the windows--hadn't seemed to bother them at all. Furthermore, the guys are still on speaking terms. In fact, Elijah is going to be the best man at Ray's wedding next week.

Here's to apartments everywhere...that support guys learning to live on their own.

And with that, I turn my attention to my own responsibilities: laundry is piled on the floor, the window sills are dusty again, the blinds need their yearly soaking, and the microwave is in deplorable condition. Sometimes I hate the second law of thermodynamics.

Panama Streets for a Picture Meme

Babystepper tagged me. I have to post the sixth picture from the sixth picture folder in my Main Picture folder, only mine aren't quite that simple.

So, after a few dead ends on the picture folders--cul de sacs where there were not six folders, and picture folders called stuff and such, I finally located a picture folder that had six folders in it. I grabbed the sixth picture from that folder and voila.

This is a picture taken in Panama a few years ago on Elijah's mission trip. The older man is a Kuna native who operates a taxi service (the pickup behind him).
The young kid acting weird--um--cool-- is an American teenager .

So whom do I tag. I know. I'll tag you lurkers. This is a great chance for you to break into some really serious blogging with an assignment anyone can do. Go to your picture folder (It's called "my pictures" on most people's computers) and pick the sixth folder. Open it. Post the sixth picture from that folder and explain why in the world that picture is on your computer. Have fun.

P.S. a lurker is someone who reads blogs but never comments.

Go Read this Poem

A few months ago, Elijah wrote a poem from the viewpoint of the Prodigal. I've been nagging him to put it on his "very seldom written in" blog. (He posts as Blackstubble--an alias, just like Elijah is an alias). Well, anyway, he finally put it up today. Here's the post. You might as well accept the fact that moms brag on stuff their kids do. It comes in our mom contract.

Senior Recital

I guess I'll call him Elijah because in singing he reminds me of the prophet. (Not that Elijah ever wore a tux, but his booming voice surely rang out fearlessly over the hills of Judea.) Last night we, the family and friends, sat at the music hall in room 101, and listened to our son's senior recital. And we were proud of him.

The song is an Italian one, taken from the opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, by Mozart. In this part the Count Almaviva is scolding the court page after having consigned him to military duty. He is also explaining to the spoiled young man what his new life will be and won't be like in the army.

I've heard "Elijah" practicing through the years, so the piece was familiar to me. In the background, playing the grand, is his voice instructor. They both did a marvelous job. Elijah sang a dozen songs in German, Italian, French, and finally, English. His voice was tired when it was all over, but he made it through this milestone and was thrilled that he may now resume his regular chess matches with another one of his professors--there had been a moratorium on them until after this senior recital--and spend a little more time relaxing with songs that require less thought, and with pursuits that are less stressful.




I'm going to post another couple of clips. The first is in German (Die beiden Grenadiere) and the second in English. It is from a Shakespearian poem, but of course you'll recognize that from all the hey nonny nonnys.

I know that's a lot of video if you don't know him...but hey. Family reads this blog too, and many of them live too far away to attend, so I guess it's a proud mom's privilege.
Enjoy.