Eileen taught her reading group kids at the library to count to five in Chinese…. Ages 3-5….. heh

Teaching was grueling yesterday, but I felt like I did a good job under the circumstances. Class remains quiet (intimidated?) but they seem pretty connected throughout the lecture.

I feel bad that I am reduced to lecturing but covered an awful lot of material yesterday. I was proud that I had posted a chart of information for my class online. They seemed pretty unimpressed.

Continued reading in “Children of the Alley” yesterday.

Mahfouz
tells a
good
story.

It covers
several
generations
living in
an alley
at the
edge of
a desert
and just
outside
the gate of
the lavish
home of
the founder
of the alley.

Good stuff.

Still learning about the whole teaching thing.

This morning, I decided to put some charts on BlackBoard (this is the site where students can see their grade and other info I put up). I can project these charts in the room.

As I was doing the first one, I realized how helpful the information will be to students who want to organize their thinking.

So I did a compartive chart of stylistic characteristics between Baroque music and Classical music. I will use the chart today to present the material. Then make the chart available to students online.

This is especially important to me right now because I am trying to figure out how to present material and test it in a coherent and unconfusing manner.

Due to meeting two times a week, instead of three, I have to quiz material that has been presented in the previous week. This means students receive new material that will not be on the very next quiz. I can see how that would be confusing when you are just learning.

I don’t see how to avoid it with my present schedule of quizzes and only meeting two times a week.

If I (God forbid) teach another semester and have to teach twice a week I may re-evaluate and come up with a better system.

But I do think that giving the students a bit more study aids via Blackboard is very warranted under these circumstances.

Hey…. Sarah and I were poking around trying to figure out plugins and how to post a Youtube video on our WordPress sites. I’m pretty proud of myself of gettting the dang video on there. Yes I would like it to fit my site better…. but what the heck.

Eileen and Steve in China?

Thanks to Sarah for showing me this….

His name is Ted Atkatz. He quit the Chicago Symphony to play in his own Indie Band. Thanks to Mike M. for this link. Hmmmm. I wonder why he sent this one to me. Heh.

So I went to the doctor on Monday. The nurse flushed my right ear (eeyoooo I know, but a good thing). Since then I can tell that I have some kind of cold thing in this ear.

My doctor said my ear drum was “red.” It perplexed him. It’s a symptom of infection of course. But my ear doesn’t actually hurt.

Now that I know my ear is free of wax, I can tell that something’s not quite right.

It feels like my right ear and sinus is inside a cardboard box. And kind of itches.
O great. I always wondered what I would do with serious hearing loss. Hopefully this won’t end up that way.
Since it doesn’t actually hurt, I’m going to wait a few days and see if it clears up.

Technology stole several minutes from my class yesterday as I attempted to show them a DVD of the Bach Freiburg Orchestra playing the first movement of the Fifth Brandenburg.

Of course the DVD player would not work. Roads were snow covered here in Michigan so it took me a full fifty minutes to do a twenty-five minute drive. I arrived with about five minutes to spare. Got to the class and the DVD player would not work for me.

Went to the office (hah) and reported it with unfelt civility.

Came back and tried it on the computer. AHA! It worked.

So I handed back papers. The IT guy came while I was doing this. When I pointed out that I had the DVD queued up on the Mac computer, he was satisfied and left.

Of course, after I handed back papers and attempted to play the DVD on the computer, it was no longer loud enough to hear. Another several minutes while I tried to figure out how to change it. I ended up ejecting it and putting it back in and lo and behold that worked.

This kind of bumbling around increases my sense of my own ineffectiveness.

Then the review for Thursday’s quiz seemed to catch the class completely unprepared. At least no one who knew stuff was talking and most everyone looked a bit confused. Oy!

By the time I had finished the review, I had about fifteen minutes left to give two listening quizzes (one practice for Thursday, one extra credit over material the students were supposed to have studied for that class) and teach the new concepts.

I just managed to give the two quizzes.

This morning I finished looking at these.

It surprised me that close to half of the class identified three or more out of five pieces that they were supposed to have listened to for class. And three people identified all five.

This is encouraging.

Wow. I was poking around on my Blackboard site and found an announcement that the GVSU campus is closed today.

Of course, I don’t teach, but still…..

I played through several
dances by Francois
Couperin last night.

I do admire this man and
his work.

Afterwards Eileen
and I
watched the
movie, “Unknown.”
It tried very hard to
be one of those
movies that keep
you guessing. But
the premise that
everyone in a warehouse
somewhere suddenly
lost their memory
and couldn’t remember
their role in an
ongoing crime
(victim or perp)
was just too
thin a premise for
me.

Just got off the
phone with the
doctor. I made
an appointment
to have him look
at my right ear.

It has been stuffed
up on and off for
several weeks.
Finally it is acting
up when I can
actually get to the
doctor.

Just in case you’re wondering who Chuck Norris endorses for president (It’s Newt Gingrich…. sure he has personal past shortcomings… and He’s by no means a perfect man or candidate , but Chuck believes Newt is a Republican as they used to be)

… and just in case you’re not clear on why Newt as a God fearing man is a good, choice check out Norris’s contention that the founding fathers were clear about about the necessity for having Christians at the head of the USA. He quotes Rev Daniel Foster who was speaking to Governor John Hancock, Lieutenant-Governor Samuel Adams, and both houses of the Massachusetts legislature in 1790.

From Norris’s column

For Foster and our Founders, government is a ”divine appointment,” an ordained institution of God, and ”an important mean of delivering us from the evils of the apostasy; and designed to prepare us for the more encouraging restraints the gospel enjoins.” As such, it too has Jesus Christ, not some nebulous and neutered god, as its head.

Right. Newt. You can see what a good idea it is from the company he keeps:

Eileen and I bought several books about Mandarin Chinese yesterday.

This book has only pinyin
or romanizaed characters
in it. We bought one
of these for each
of us. I don’t think
I have enough days
between now and
our trip to do too much
learning. But I am
combining it with
some other books
we bought

like:
This book teaches
both vocab and
characters.
It teaches
and emphasizes
practicing writing
characters.
It
starts
with numbers
which are pretty easy.

Also bought this one

It’s really quite good
and I am thinking it
might be one to
bring along.

It has been designed
for the absolute
language beginner.

This morning I
got up and practiced.
I have about ten
characters and
compounds I am
trying to remember
at this point.

My goal is not be stupified in another country. Not sure about learning how to communicate very much in such a short time. Actually I am pretty sure I can’t learn too much in that way. But I like being as aware as I can of what’s going on around me and having some sort of a context.

So I am about half way through a history of China (China: A New History by Kingsford mentioned before) and doing a bit of surfing of pronunciation web sites. There are a lot of them.

I found a memory game this morning that just works with numbers. Pretty cool.

Just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin’s article,”Google’s Moon Shot.” I received my New Yorker today but I notice the article’s been online since Wednesday.

It’s about Google’s project to scan all books into a database. I think this is a beautiful idea. Of course they are getting their ass sued off.

Just as YouTube had to bow to
Viacom recently. Sheesh. When
will these people quit looking at the
short term buck and figure out that
networking of interconnected
information and
art could be a cool future?

9:18 AM

Began working on getting a small notion about Chinese today. After all, our flight leaves in about four weeks.

Yesterday, Eileen pointed me toward a Chinese Memory game online. I keep saying that it would make sense to play a sort of matching game to familiarize myself with a few ideograms. Eileen has been working harder on the spoken language.

This site has a list of the most common Chinese characters. In order to see them, I had to install an XP patch of some sort. I started out in Explorer (which I rarely use) and it walked me through installing the needed stuff. Then I accidentally reloaded the page in Mozilla and Yahah! it worked. Thank goodness. I am so disgusted at Microsoft right now. Why vista? Could it be another way to convert old tired ideas into new money? Consumer’s money? Yikes.

So I printed up the first seven pages of the most common Chinese characters.

Had a look at a couple pronunciation guides online and started fooling around with it.

After Eileen gets up, we are planning a trip to Barnes & Noble to see if we can buy a set of Chinese flash cards. If not, I’m pretty sure I could print something up anyway.

4:44 PM

It’s been a good day. Even though it is really cold out.

I’m listening to Joni Mitchell’s Miles of Aisles record on Napster. I think I still have the vinyl in the basement. I like this record quite a bit because it’s mostly Mitchell playing convincing renditions of her songs with a kick-ass back up group. All live recordings.

I hooked up my remote speakers and cooked this afternoon.

Am making beef stroganof for my carnivorous wife and calzone for both of us.

I kept thinking of Eileen’s recent comment that so many people do not take the time to prepare food from scratch these days. Surely that’s not true. It’s so much fun. At least for me, anyway.

I took some time off and went and practiced organ a bit.  Put the stroganof in the slow cooker for safety’s sake (I don’t like to leave food on the stove in the house while I am gone.)

The mailman seems to have skipped my house. Ok. So my path is a bit full of snow. But it’s only a few steps from the main sidewalk which they keep pretty clear. Maybe I didn’t have mail. Maybe.

I’m still waiting for a check from Holland High school for the work I did for the musical in December. Good grief.

I am beginning to wonder if it’s ever going to come.

Money is kind of tight right now due to getting cut back at GVSU to one class (Did I mention that? Alright, I know I’m harping on this) and going to China. But whothehell. I’m not known for my belief in the concept of money anyway.

However, I do like to pay bills I owe.

Silly me.
I have decided to charge my solo and ensemble students that I accompany a flat fifty bucks. In years past, I have made the fee a minimum thirty bucks so that people could afford to have their kids accompanied. Now that feels a bit low.

I have three scheduled for Feb 17. They are all playing real music. Concertos mostly…. Haydn Cello, Poulenc flute sonata or concerto and a generic violin concerto…. I see the music to the last two on Monday evening. Ahem. I just hope I can play them.

8:34 AM

Well it’s Friday and I’m not feeling as exhausted as I have the past few Fridays. That’s a good thing.

My life is good. I know it.

I resolved my issues (in my mind) with the student I allowed to preoccupy me yesterday afternoon. I will pull him aside on Tuesday and tell him I have changed my mind about making an exception for him. I will point out that it’s still not too late to drop my class. Heh.

Exceptions do not help anyone. I think they especially don’t help the person asking for the exception.

I’m listening to an old CD mix tape I put on this morning. It started with a Fiji Shuffle, then went on to a Shins tune, a Vivaldi Oboe concerto movement and right now I am listening to Balinese Gamelan music.

This music helped me realize how good life is and and how good mine is this very day.

3:52 PM

It drives me crazy that I let stuff like college get to me.

A student accused me of being unfair today and it kept bugging me for the whole drive home.

And it bugs me that it bugs me. Ay yi yi.

I know part of my over reaction is that I am feeling guilty about deciding not demonstrate harpsichord for this class. I am cheating the class because I am disgusted with the department.

I feel like if I arrange for this class to have the extra benefit of a live demo of harpsichord, I am kind of a sap after the college has cut me back to one class and the chair has made it clear to me that I am too big for my britches, much less a colleague.

Another reason I have dropped the harpsichord demo is the class is so big. The room that the college’s harpsichord is in is very small (it’s a two teacher office). In the best of all possible worlds, I could ask the department to let me have the harpsichord moved to a larger room so I could demonstrate it. Or I could drag my harpsichord up and demonstrate it in the commons area right outside the auditorium in the music building.

Or I could just forget it.

So I think I’m just where can i buy cheap diazepam going to forget it. But I can’t help feeling guilty.

I came and composed a note that would rectify any misunderstanding of my classroom policies for people who think I am unfair. I didn’t post it yet.

Then I worked on preparing a score for rehearsal tonight. A million years ago (1981) I did a little canatata based on T.S. Eliot’s poem, “Ash Wednesday.” I wrote and performed this piece when I was working at a Presbyterian church in downtown Detroit. I haven’t thought too much about this piece since about 1984 when I copied over about half the score (don’t remember why… probably delusions of marketibily).

Anyway, lines from Eliot have been going through my mind quite a bit in the last few weeks:

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive toward such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)….

It seems to me that this is important for me. And if it’s important for me, why not do it during the Ash Wednesday service? Why not?

So we start rehearsing it tonight.