I survived the Holland Symphony rehearsal last night. I was prepared. They brought the keyboard to the Zeeland Middle school where we were rehearsing, but did not bring the amp. Consequently, the only time I really heard was what I was doing was when the rest of the orchestra was either not playing or quiet.

This is the view from my stand:

The conductor,  Johannes Müller-Stosch, is conferring with Nate Walker. I have known and played music with Nate since he was in High School. Interestingly, last night he told me he was thinking of becoming an elementary school teacher, presumably a music teacher. This is funny because when he started his under graduate school a couple of years ago he was adamant that he did not want to follow in the steps of his parents, both of whom are teachers. I pointed that out to him and acknowledged that he had changed. He is an excellent bass player.

Johannes Müller-Stosch is on Facebooger. I just sent him a friend request. We’ll see if he responds. He was very friendly last night to me. He is also a very fine conductor. I can follow his very clearly and musical directing easily.

At $47 per service, the pay is low for this gig. But the morale of the group is high and I enjoyed sitting in an orchestra and playing along. Hopefully my stamina will hold up through tonight’s rehearsal and tomorrow evening’s performance (another $47 each, woo hoo, the Bigtime!)

This morning I idly was reading a mailing from Wayne can i buy diazepam in bulgaria State U where I earned my Bachelors degree. The guy above, Norah Duncan,  was one of my classmates. He was a good player and conductor and a fellow church musician.

He is currently interim chair of the Music Department at Wayne. I was tickled to read his letter in the promo newsletter it puts out (link to clumsy pdf of it).

I enjoyed Norah’s reminiscence of Detroit and Wayne State in his letter. He finished his Master’s a year I left WSU and went on to eventually get his DMa from U of M. We were pretty good friends and colleagues when I lived in Detroit. We roomed together at the International Gregorian Chant Convention in Washington DC one year and had fun together.

He was the Detroit Cathedral musician and routinely reached out to those of us who were working in the trenches in Catholic churches throughout Detroit and the suburbs. He would show up at a choral concert for example and sing along in the choir. He did this with me at least once.

I have often thought that if I stayed more in touch with the schools I graduated from I could have either gone on and worked for them or at least benefited from continuing collegiality with students and teachers.  But life is good and the advent of my colleague, Rhonda Edgington, has improved my local connections a hundred fold.

I was thinking about this and realizing that I have had more local acknowledgment of my abilities than I sometime give myself credit for. I remember in particular one concert I gave at my church of my coffee shop stuff with my friend Jonathan Fegel. I had a good supportive showing from people from all walks of life at that one which was nice since it was probably one of my better concerts of this sort of material, what I call my bad Paul Simon music.

My guitar music and compositions of that ilk have fallen to the back burner these days. No matter. Life IS good.

1. The Guns of August – NYTimes.com

More centennial observations on WWI.

2. The Threats to Our Drinking Water – NYTimes.com

Another example of what government is for: regulating our water and ensuring that it is clean.

3. European Spacecraft Pulls Alongside Comet After 10 Years and Four Billion 

I think this is sooooo cool!