Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Trouble, trouble, when will it ever end?

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006
6:59 p.m.
I was doing my Latin homework, translating a passage from one of our text books, and I just couldn't continue; my eyes felt like they were burning and I just feel so sleepy. So instead I'm updating my diary, and I must warn you ahead of time that there will be a lot of griping and complaining going on.

First off: I'm finding choir to be extremely boring. I am a trained musician, I read music, and I sightread (which means that I can sing a tune I've never seen before if you place the music the proper distance from my presbyopic eyes) rather well, at least tonal music. Herr Doktor Professor's method for teaching the choir the music is to take miniscule sections and have us repeat them until they're practically memorized, then join them up with other miniscule sections thus learned until the piece is complete. What I want is to sightread the piece through from beginning to end, or at least start at the beginning and see how far we get, and then go back and fix up the places we didn't get. But because many (maybe most) in the choir do not read music, we do it this way. Hence, I'm bored to tears. I was yawning so much today that I got the soprano next to me doing it.

Second: Hubby came home fuming today. Little Princess made up a beautiful poster for our blues concert in two weeks. There's a great photo of H0wIing W0If laughing which she photoshopped so that it has reddish tones, set on a bluish background with the heading Chicago Blues and all the names of the players. The print shop enlarged it from legal size to 11 x 17 and printed it on stiff, glossy paper. It looks great.

When Hubby first picked them up and showed them to his colleague the Duke, who just happens to be in charge of the concert series this year, the response was a positive one. How nice! Aren't they lovely! Today, however, he barged into Hubby's office and started giving him the gears because the poster is too nice, it makes a much too difficult standard for the kids whose job it is to provide publicity to meet, the cost of them is too much when compared to how much money the concert will actually bring in, and there's no French on them. Hubby's response was that it was the print shop's idea to use the glossy paper, the cost is not charged directly to the department, it comes from a central photocopying slush fund, the content of the poster is so obvious who needs French, and there's nothing to stop the students from creating lavish posters in this fashion. Luckily, the phone rang and Hubby was able to kick the Duke out of his office without further ado, but it did make him very agitated and rather upset.

One of the points he had brought up was that the choir started the tradition of extravagant posters for their extravaganzas, and the Duke more or less said, "You dare to compare your dinky little blues concert with what the choir does? The choir brings thousands of dollars into the department; you're going to lose us money!" So, it would appear that it comes down to money now. Sheesh! Our concert series was never meant to make a profit, we've always run it at a loss. It's true that the choir shows help to fill the coffers, but their quality is nowhere near that of the money-losing concerts. It just so happens that the Duke really doesn't like blues and jazz. I don't think he considers them legitimate music, which is his loss, really. I don't know what's going on. But it's really petty.

All right, I think I'm done complaining. The weather was alternately wet and sunny and the leaves are starting to change rapidly now. I noticed the hills are developing a marked blush, and the street and lawns are littered with yellow birch leaves. I scarfed several more ripe arctic kiwi fruits from the vine when I got home, starving, which was a nice reprieve. Hubby is at a guitar and harpsichord rehearsal and Buddy Boy is at a play practice (he auditioned for and got a part in the fall presentation called New Plays, consisting of scripts written by students in the play-writing class last year) creating the role of a drunken Scot (they wanted him because he can do the accent). Tomorrow I rehearse the Mozart with F. Piano, and in the afternoon we do blues. So, when will I do my Latin translations?

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