Sonic Granades

Costumes!

2011-10-31T11:29:00.000-06:00

About two months ago, we began talking about Halloween costumes with the boys. They both love to dress up, so we knew this year the holiday would be a big deal at our house. Sam wanted to be a superhero, and thinking that this might be the last year we could dress them alike or in tandem, we suggested that Sam be Batman and Noah could be Robin. Sam was thrilled at the idea. Noah was at first. But soon, he realized that Robin is a pretty sorry costume.

"I want to be Batman!" he soon declared.

We tried to convince him that being Robin wouldn't be that bad. "He drives a cool motorcycle," I championed. "He's just like Batman, only younger," Joy cajoled. But Noah wouldn't hear our pleas. Like Dick Grayson, he realized that being Robin was for suckers, and he was ready to be a headliner. So Joy and I caved and agreed that we would have two Batmans - Batmen, if you will.

Sam, however, had other ideas.

"If Noah's Batman, I want to be a Ninja!" he decided, throwing our plans further out of whack. And you can imagine Noah's reaction to this development: "I want to be a Ninja too. And Batman!" We pacified Noah with the sure knowledge that Batman is both Batman and a Ninja, and set about looking for costumes that would please them both.

We found them, as with most things, at Target:

As you can see, there is no passive standing as Batman and Ninja, only ACTION! That and wondering who would win in a fight, Batman or Ninja. We'll see if we can keep up with them tonight.

Hat Parade!

2011-09-18T17:18:00.000-05:00

Sam is loving Kindergarten, and I think one of the reasons rests on the community his school works so hard to build.

Friday was one of the prime examples of this trend at his elementary school. All of the Kindergarteners participated in the Hat Parade - each student decorated a hat that was supposed to in some way symbolize who they are or things that excite them. Then, they lined up with their classes and paraded through each classroom, from the 6th graders to the 1st, waving like beauty queens and basking in the love of their fans.

Sam's hat, you may ask?

It was a racecar hat.

Joy and Sam and Noah went to buy hats and as soon as the boys saw the racecar helmets, everything was decided. They bought racecar stickers to put all over it and, most importantly, googly eyes. Sam cleverly put six googly eyes on the back of his helmet so you couldn't tell which way he was looking (if you, I suppose, considered him an alien with six eyes in front and back). Most exciting was that another friend in class got the same hat and hot glued Hot Wheels cars all over it, so they got to parade together and have fun talking cars.

And don't worry - Noah wasn't left out of the fun. His good friend Micah was there to watch Cole, Sam's good friend, in the parade, so the two of them set up for tailgating in the hallway, just waiting for the parade to pass by.

All they needed was a cooler to put their feet on.

Best. Facepaint. Ever.

2011-09-14T12:12:00.000-05:00

Last week one of Joy's Kindermusik families wrote her with an offer of tickets to the Kansas City Zoo's annual Kids Jazzoo. She had extra and thought that we might enjoy the event. Joy mentioned the offer to me, I said "sure," not quite knowing what the event encompassed, and she accepted on our behalf.

On Friday evening, we began digging around online to see what Kids Jazzoo was and quickly discovered that we had been invited to bring our children to their idea of heaven - there were up-close opportunities with the animals for Noah (including handling reptiles and getting to touch fur and skin from various animals), crafts of all shapes and sizes for Sam, and all-you-can-ride passes for the carousel and train for them both.

On Saturday afternoon, we zipped the boys into their dinosaur raincoats to protect against the bit of drizzle falling and headed to the zoo. Jazzoo was every bit as fun as we imagined and perhaps a bit more. Sam, who often gets bored at the zoo, was entranced by having a booth with something new to do or eat every three feet. Noah stared in wonder at the animals (which, frankly, is his steady state at the zoo). Joy and I ate and wandered and took it all in.

By far the best part of the evening was the facepainting. Sam loves to have his face painted, but generally you get a small design on your cheek and away you go.

Not at the zoo.

The facepainting booths were doing painting called "jungle eye designs" where the kid's own eyes are incorporated as the eyes of the animals. Since both Sam and Noah are obsessed with Cheetahs right now for their speed and looks, they both declared they wanted to become cheetahs.

As you can see, the face painters acquiesced to their demands.

Unfortunately, Sam go an itchy mouth with his black lips and wiped his face on his arm, which is why it smeared a bit. Still, the boys had fun playing at being cheetahs, and running fast, and growling at each other like prey the entire night.

Sam First Day of Kindergarten

2011-08-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

This morning we dropped Sam off for his first day of Kindergarten. Actually, I shouldn't say that we dropped him off, it was more like we were dropped as Sam ran into his classroom, announced himself with a "Hello, Mrs. Flatley," and immediately went to work surrounded by new friends and experiences. Joy and I went down to the "cry coffee" hosted by the PTA and tried to distract ourselves from the momentousness of the occasion.

It didn't work.

Sam will flourish in Kindergarten - he has a wonderful teacher, a school that works to build community, and an unquenchable thirst for learning. Our hope is that he's able to drink his fill and then come home every day to share with us. That's he's allowed to follow his creativity while acquiring the discipline to shape it. And that we can let him go while giving him a safe place to which he can always return.

The Champaign Gang

2011-06-29T15:39:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago I had to run to Champaign to do a bit of clean-up research for a presentation and article I'm writing. And while it might seem strange to speak of running a 400 mile trip, we did just that - there and back again in three days. Although I spent most of my time in Harry Partch's archives there, Joy and the boys came along to visit dear friends from grad school that we manage to see at least once a year.

On the last day, we grabbed lunch with them all before heading out and snagged this picture on the benches outside:

Look at that line of deviousness. I love how they all are sitting with their feet in different positions, clearly showing their personalities. In a few years we won't be able to get together without them taking over our plans with plans of their own (and yes, Sam has a pair of chopsticks from lunch).

Noah's Third Birthday

2011-06-17T20:44:00.001-05:00

Noah turned three last Saturday.

Three. 3. Trois.

We decided that instead of overloading Noah with one jam-packed day, we would spread things out over the course of several, so we actually began celebrating on the Tuesday before his birthday. That day, we went to the free play hour at Emerald City. Emerald City is a curious place - it is clearly a gymnastics center with all the balance beams and pommel horses you could ever need. But it also has a large area built up for kids to play in and they make extra money on the side by letting kids have birthday parties and come play on the trampolines and slides and zip lines and ropes swinging out over large foam pits. Oh yes, there is a huge foam pit you can jump in, writhe around in, and jump on your brother in. Obviously it was Noah's favorite part.

Wednesday we rested, but Thursday we spent the entire morning at the zoo. Sam has never been a big fan of animals, but Noah has long been obsessed with them. Last year we traveled to the Omaha zoo for his birthday, so we decided to explore the KC zoo this year, especially since they recently acquired a polar bear.

Noah loved the polar bear. We got to watch her swim and do huge back flips, touch some polar bear fur, and watch a short video on how polar bears are in decline. Noah would have stayed there all day, especially since it was obscenely hot even at 10:00 in the morning. In fact, it was so hot that besides the polar bear and the sea lion show, Sam and Noah both were more interested in riding the rides than seeing the animals. So we rode on the carousel (Noah picked a lion as his steed) and all around the park on the train.

On Friday evening, we took Noah out for yogurt. Perhaps you've seen these new establishments, but they feature self-serve yogurt, tons of toppings, and you pay by the ounce. Noah piled his cheesecake yogurt high with chocolate syrup, blueberries, and sprinkles. Three-year old heaven.

Saturday morning was Kindermusik for both boys (we took cookies for Noah's class) and then lunch back at the house. After lunch, we cut into Noah's cake, opened presents, and began the dinosaur portion of Noah's birthday. As you can tell from his new bedroom, Noah LOVES dinosaurs. He picked out the cake he wanted (a dinosaur dig with sugar cookie bones) and picked out the place he wanted to eat that night - T-Rex. What's better than animatronic dinosaurs and big mounds of macaroni and cheese to go with them? As you can imagine by the time we got back home Saturday night, both boys were wiped out from all the birthday celebrating. Happy Third Birthday, Noah!

Noah's Big Boy Bed

2011-06-14T10:04:00.001-05:00

For Noah's 3rd birthday, we moved him into his big boy bed. Joy's parents supplied Noah with a new quilt and pillow sham for his big day (with dinosaurs!) and I spent the afternoon taking down the crib (for the first time in six years) and putting together my old twin bed from college. The bed is missing a few slats that I'll need to make, and we're still rearranging his room to git his new bed, but Noah has declared it "cool" and already sleeps like a champ in it. But that may be because he sleeps with Buzz Lightyear next to him to protect him through the night.

Tenure

2011-05-11T15:33:00.000-05:00

After a long year of waiting, I finally received word on Monday that I was awarded tenure at UMKC. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, it involves the candidate putting together a hundreds-of-pages document that is then reviewed by people in your field outside the university, your colleagues in your division, your Dean, a campus-wide committee, and then the Provost. All those people in all those levels make recommendations that are finally weighed by the Chancellor who makes the final decision.

Needless to say, I am ecstatic to be through the process successfully.

It also means that I need to put aside my long-held back-up plan if the job here didn't work out:

Or, photoshopped at the suggestion of a friend in the field:

Final Listening Journals

2011-05-06T09:48:00.000-05:00

My students have finally reached the end of the semester (in fact, today marks the final exam for the writing intensive students). Their final act in my class was to write about music since 1945, and they all gravitated toward music a bit out of the mainstream, including Anthony Braxton and Philip Glass's great opera Einstein on the Beach. Watch a little early Braxton and then go read the journals:

Sam in Disguise

2011-04-27T09:36:00.001-05:00

You may remember that Sam loves to dress up. Every day he's either a dinosaur or a super guy or a bad guy or an Electro-Sam or something else from his imagination. Noah loves to follow suit, so we end up with these hilarious combinations of mismatched cast off clothes, bought dress up clothes, and bits of paper taped to belts, glasses, and vests.

So you can imagine Sam's excitement when, at the egg hunt last Saturday, he won Groucho glasses in a bean bag toss. Added to his bunny face paint, he was completely in disguise:

Now, he'll regularly run upstairs, put on his glasses, and creep back to the table. We rightly exclaim, "Where's Sam, and where did this man come from at our table?" It's currently the most hilarious game in our house.

Easter Weekend

2011-04-25T09:36:00.000-05:00

We've had quite the weekend, one that zapped our energy so much that the entire family (including Sam!) took a nap yesterday afternoon after church.

It started Thursday night, when I played the organ for our church's Maundy Thursday Service. Then, Friday night, we went to hear Liszt's Via Crucis at a Good Friday service, and then Saturday night UMKC put on one of Joy's favorite pieces, Poulenc's Gloria. The boys went Thursday and Friday nights and then had a sitter on Saturday, but were so wound up by then that they didn't go to sleep until almost 10:00.

They were also a bit wound up because Saturday afternoon we went to the Easter Eggstravaganza that Prairie Baptist puts on each year. Since Noah is only 2 months from 3, he was among the oldest in his age group (1-2 years) and so got plenty of loot in the egg hunt:

Sam, on the other hand, had to fight it out with the bigger kids and so ended up with fewer eggs, but his eggs had cooler stuff, like a compass, stick-on earrings (which he promptly used to decorate his Crocs), and little popper toys (that Noah calls blow-pops):

All in all a good weekend (at this point in life, any weekend with a nap is a good weekend). I even managed to get a few good pictures of the boys in their matching Easter shirts, but when you take 79 pictures, a few are bound to come out right.

Happy Easter!

New Listening Journals

2011-04-05T15:52:00.000-05:00

If you are interested, another round of listening journals has gone up over at my class's site. This time you can read about Zemlinksky's Lyric Symphony, Carl Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, and Carlos Chavez's fascinating Xochipilli:

Thoughts on Lee Hoiby

2011-03-28T20:06:00.001-06:00

Perhaps you saw today that composer Lee Hoiby died. Knowing my musical proclivities, you might be surprised to know that I caught my breath when I saw the news. Hoiby's music, firmly in the Samuel Barber, mid-century mold, is outside my normal research and listening habits. But I've had contact with him several times over the last 15 years and always found him a gentleman and lively conversationalist.

My knowledge of Hoiby began in college and grad school when I worked on a project concerning the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition's commissioned works. Hoiby was the first composer commissioned, so I learned his work and read letters about the commission and spoke to pianists who competed that year and played the work. It was a pleasant work, but did not have the impact of later Cliburn works like Copland's or Corigliano's and did not stay with me for long.

Imagine my surprise a few years later when I discovered that Hoiby played in Partch's ensembles while studying at Wisconsin. I decided that I had to track him down, and so one day in grad school, I received a call from him in response to a letter I had sent. We talked for almost an hour about his experiences with Harry Partch and learning the instruments. I could tell that he was a bit miffed that a musicologist had tracked him down only to talk about another composer, so at the end began talking about his Van Clibrn work. A few days after the conversation, I received a package of music and CDs.

We talked one other time about Partch, and though my interest in his music never progressed from my Masater's thesis, I'll always remember the generous composer willing to talk about another composer with whom he had little in common aesthetically. I just wish that spirit carried over to his publisher who put out a statement today complete with this line:

"During the period immediately following WW II, he also performed in Harry Partch’s Dadaist ensembles, studied with Darius Milhaud at Mills College and pursued a virtuoso career as a concert pianist under the tutelage of Gunnar Johansen and Egon Petri."

Dadaist ensembles? Alas, my musicologist's work is never done Somewhere two men are turning in their graves. God speed, Mr. Hoiby.

Noah vs. the Roller Blades, Part II

2011-03-23T10:49:00.000-06:00

Thanks, everyone, for your kind words and thoughts and prayers towards Noah. Yesterday, we even had cards and cookies and ice cream arrive at our house from Noah's preschool and our church. Today, Noah is doing much better - he slept through the night and was ready to play bad guys vs. good guys with Sam this morning. He still looks a bit beat up, but the swelling on his head has gone down and he's moving with greater ease. He even feels well enough to going back to cheesing for the camera:

Noah vs. the Roller Blades

2011-03-22T13:28:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a gorgeous day - the first true taste we've had of life after winter. The sun had a crystalline luster only possible after months of gray, and the warm outside made everyone want to sit down and never return inside. Joy decided that the boys needed to move and run in the new springtime and so took them to Shawnee Mission Park for the afternoon. They set out on the walking trail as it wound around the lake, the boys running far ahead of her until their energy, already spent playing at school all day, began to wane. Towards the end of the walk, they were dragging a few paces behind, Joy exhorting them to keep up.

Joy later told me she thought nothing of the 40-year-old man barreling toward her on his roller blades at first other than a realization that he was traveling faster than usual. In the time it took her to decide to turn around and tell Sam and Noah to watch out for the man, he had passed her and collided with the boys.

Sam took a glancing blow and fell to the side, scraping his elbow in the process. Noah received all 200 pounds and went flying through the air, head over heels over head over heels until finally landing on his head. Joy's protective instincts kicked in, and she scooped Noah up, ignoring the man who had returned to see if everyone was all right, a wise move given the string of invectives that surely would have knocked the man for the same kind of loop Noah had just endured. She put both boys in the car and drove to the visitor's center, leaving the man and his roller blades far behind.

Joy hoped to find a nurse at the visitor's center, but only found a recommendation of the carefully placed urgent care clinic over the hill right outside the park's gates. She hoped to have Noah examined at the urgent care clinic, but only found a recommendation to head to the nearest ER. She hoped to have a doctor look over Noah at the first hospital, only to find that the hospital did not have an ER.

By this time, Noah was turning blue and starting to doze in his car seat, so Joy enlisted Sam's help and together they began singing, and telling jokes, and poking Noah to get him to stay awake. Noah slurred for them to stop singing, but managed to stay awake as Joy stopped at home to grab the cell phone, call our pediatrician friend, and leave a note for me. She headed to the hospital where Sam and Noah were both born and settled in to wait for the triage nurse.

I was teaching during this entire episode and so arrived home oblivious to the saga. On the door as I entered our house was a note scribbled on blue paper that merely said, "Noah took a fall. We're at the ER." As I stepped in the house, the phone rang. Joy called to fill me in and invite me to the ER, so I packed up toys and books for Noah, a bit of food for Joy and for Noah, and headed out.

When I arrived at the ER, I could tell Noah wasn't himself. He absentmindedly chewed on his fingers and barely offered me a "hello." He was pale, covered in cuts and scrapes, and had a bump the size of a golf ball sticking out of his head at his hairline. The triage nurse had seen him by that point and declared that it looked like Noah did not have a concussion and left Joy and the boys to wait on the doctor. I took Sam home to have a late dinner and to wait for word from the hospital. By 8:30, Joy was home with Noah, cleared by the doctor of all major injuries and provided a list of warning signs to watch for over the next few days. I took Noah to the bath and gingerly washed all the dirt off him, taking note of the scrape that covered half his back and caused him to avoid walking and wince when picked up. Fortunately, with a large dose of ibuprofen he was able to drift to sleep and rest until 5:00 this morning, when he was too sore to settle back into sleep.

It was a scary four hours, but this morning Noah seemed happy again, though sore and slow to move. Well, I should qualify that it was scary for some of us. Sam, on hearing Joy relate the story on the phone this morning, remarked, "Mom, Noah's double flip was awesome." Joy asked, "But wasn't it scary for you?" Undaunted Sam finished, "Well, it was a little scary, but it was mostly AWESOME!"

The Oscar for Best Song

2011-02-28T09:19:00.000-06:00

With all apologies to Randy Newman, who richly deserves his Best Song Oscar last night, here is the best song performed on this year's telecast of the ceremony:

Now, if only they had used autotune on a few of the performances as well...

Noah's a puzzler

2011-02-26T11:24:00.000-06:00

For the past month or so, really since Christmas, Noah has been Sam's mini-me. In the morning I'll ask the boys what they want for breakfast and Noah will shout out "Oatmeal!" Sam will casually look up and say "grits," which immediately causes Noah to proclaim "Grits AND Oatmeal!" Or we'll ask the boys if they want to wear car shirts or dinosaur shirts. Noah's preference is almost always swayed by Sam's decision.

The one area where Noah will always break with Sam is over the issue of puzzles. Sam has always ignored puzzles, playing with the car pieces as cars instead of wondering how they fit into the puzzle's scheme.

Not Noah.

Noah is obsessed with puzzles. For Christmas, his Aunt Heather gave him a box with four wooden Disney puzzles in it. The puzzles fit into nice compartments under a sliding top that acts as the puzzles' frame. Almost every day, without fail, Noah pulls the box out of his closet and systematically goes through each puzzle, carefully putting each puzzle back into its slotted container before moving to the next puzzle. He dug through Sam's toy drawers and found all the puzzles we bought or were gifted to Sam that have languished for years and cheerfully took them to his room and added them to his collection.

Perhaps the best puzzle yet came from Aunt Misty and Uncle Stephen. They gave Noah a giant dinosaur floor puzzle. This puzzle is four feet long and features Noah's favorite animals. The puzzle is a perfect storm of Noah obsessions. He pulls it out and without any assistance (he will actually push me and Joy away if we attempt to help) covers his floor with dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. If we need 15-20 minutes of peace, all we have to do is pull out the puzzle and close the door to Noah's room.

But the puzzling is getting a bit out of hand. I had never noticed before how many doctor's offices, banks, and play centers have puzzles until Noah started pulling them out. He'll find any puzzle around and start piecing it together, not allowing any interruption until he is finished. Just yesterday, I went to pick him up at PDO and after giving me a hug (usually a prelude to running out to the car), Noah turned and declared he had to finish his puzzle. So if we are late in the next few months, you'll have a good guess as to why.

Time for Listening Journals!

2011-02-08T15:09:00.000-06:00

My writing intensive students are at it again, exploring music outside the traditional canon of Western music and blogging about it on their personal sites. Here's my class blog that I use to direct students to their colleague's blogs and where you can find the newest listening journals. Each student looks into the cracks of the Classical period (1750-1810) and finds startling music that I think you'll enjoy. Take a look!

Forget Punxsutawney Phil...

2011-02-02T09:56:00.002-06:00

We have our own groundhogs around here. And they are predicting spring is coming soon. Of course, that doesn't mean they don't want to enjoy the snow while it's here.

In Case You're Wondering About Our Snow...

2011-01-24T10:03:00.001-06:00

Last Friday after school, Sam and a neighbor boy up the street helped us dig out an ice fort for Sam:

But being inside the snow is only so much fun. Much more entertaining for both boys (when they weren't throwing snow at me) was to climb a snow mountain and then slide down the other side:

Needless to say, we all were cold, wet, and happy by the time we came inside.

My Experience with Craigslist Scams Part I - Arianna Emmert and TNT

2011-01-19T10:28:00.000-06:00

Two years ago, we came back from Christmas break, powered up the computer, and nothing happened. I cracked open the computer, cleaned out the enormous amount of dust, and replaced a bit of memory. Everything went back to normal, we backed everything up, and went about our lives.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. We come back from Christmas break, power up the computer, and nothing happens. I crack open the computer, clean out the slightly less than enormous amount of dust, and fiddle with the memory. Unfortunately, I discover that one of our memory slots is shot, meaning that instead of our normal 1 gig of memory we could only operate with 512 MB. In other words, our computer became really, really slow.

I quickly began shopping for a new computer and since I use a Mac at school, thought about switching at home as well. As part of my searching, I went on craigslist and found the following amazing deal:

2 Month Old iMac for sale running 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3 Processor, 4 GB Memory. $610.
Snow Leopard 10.6.4 Respond to post with any further questions regarding this computer!

I read the post and thought to myself, "Too good to be true," but followed up anyway, sending the seller the following message:

Hi,

I was wondering if you still had the iMac for sale.

thanks,

The next day, I received back this message:

Hi, I am getting back to you regarding the 21.5-inch iMac from Craigslist

My name is Arianna and I am now in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom.
I am selling the iMac for $600 USD. I have attached some pics with it to this email.
The iMac is still available and I hope you are still interested. The iMac was bought brand new from Apple a couple of months ago.
About the iMac I can say it's in perfect shape, as I used it only for a few weeks. Included in the $600 price is everything that came with the iMac.
The iMac is here with me.
I tried to be as thorough as I could with the presentation so you can have all the info if you decide to go ahead and buy it.

Please get back to me and let me know if you like the iMac if you're really interested in buying it.

Thanks,
Arianna

Chief Logistic Officer
www.bluechipremovals.co.uk

She even included pictures of an iMac like this one:

Needless to say, a red flag went up when a transaction that was supposed to be local suddenly went global. I decided to play a bit and see where this went, so followed up with this message:

Arianna,

Thanks for the e-mail. Two quick questions. First, why are you selling the computer and second, why did you advertise in Kansas City? How would you get the computer here?

Thanks,

Now the story gets really interesting. Since most people won't just send money overseas without having the object purchased in hand, "Arianna" responded with this option:

Hi,

I posted the ad there because I live there. But now I have been relocated here with my work.
I am selling the imac in the US because the warranty is good only there. Because of that, nobody wants it here for this price.
I found a way to sell you the imac that will cover the both of us. It's a worldwide delivery company called TNT. They have a service that will allow you to test the imac before I receive my payment.
Please go to the TNT website below and read their procedure so we can be on the same page:

http://ukservices-tnt.com/tnt.express.wolverhampton.depot.overseas.transactions/

I will pay the TNT shipping fee and I can use 2 day delivery if you are in a hurry.

Thanks.

Arianna Emmert
Chief Logistic Officer

www.bluechipremovals.co.uk

Hmmmm. I followed the link and it was extremely well put together, and actually looked like the real TNT website. But look through the two sites and you can begin to see small differences. I sent a note to TNT's fraud department and then did a few searches for "Arianna." Seems like she moves a lot, has had several last names, and tries to scam people on craigslist regularly. So I thought I'd see how long I could string her along and replied with the following message:

Arianna,

I'm in no hurry and I need to talk to my wife about the computer today. I'll get back to you.

By the way, where did you live in Kansas City? In the city proper or in one of the suburbs? Find some favorite BBQ while you were here?

She must have realized I was on to her because no messages since then. But hopefully my posting this little saga will help someone else out who encounters "Arianna."

Criminals beware...

2011-01-17T10:27:00.000-06:00

...because the Super Guys are on patrol.

2010 in Facebook Statuses

2011-01-14T16:13:00.002-06:00

Snow Day!

2011-01-10T20:54:00.000-06:00

I was supposed to start teaching today. I had the syllabus up on Blackboard, the powerpoints ready, new topical jokes to try out. Then the snow started falling. I don't have morning classes on Mondays, so I elected to stay in and watch what happened. Slowly, the tally of school closing rose until UMKC could no longer hold on and it closed the campus at 1:00.

I hadn't even gone in.

What to do on a day with everyone home from school and the roads bad enough that going anywhere seemed silly (not that the roads stopped us from going to Target this morning for last minute Kindermusik purchases for Joy and new snow boots for Noah)?

These two had an idea:

After naps, We all bundled up and headed outside. The boys immediately fell on their backs and began making snow angels, they ran from bush to bush and from tree to tree shaking limbs to make snow fall on them, they wrestled and tromped and had a generally good time.

Me? I shoveled the walk. And helped a neighbor up the street in her back-wheel drive, sport tire car that barely got any traction at all.

And, of course, endured a barrage of snowballs from these jokers:

Not that I didn't retaliate some. I mean, I did have a big shovel full of snow most of the time.

Christmas Day

2010-12-25T14:03:00.000-06:00

Christmas Eve

2010-12-24T14:48:00.000-06:00

Fourth Sunday of Advent - Love

2010-12-19T20:54:00.001-06:00

Third Sunday of Advent - Joy

2010-12-12T09:32:00.000-06:00

Second Sunday in Advent - Peace

2010-12-05T20:50:00.001-06:00

Do We Need to State the Obvious?

2010-12-03T13:22:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, flying home from our Thanksgiving trip to the beach, each flight featured a snack choice of pretzels, cookies, or peanuts. I chose peanuts on the second leg of our flight and because I read anything and everything, flipped over the packaging to find the following warning:

Thank goodness they told us. Otherwise I would be concerned about the soy content.

Sam's Self-Portrait

2010-12-02T15:22:00.000-06:00

Sam has long been obsessed with crafts. His craft fetish runs so deep that Joy and I often joke that he was obviously born to the wrong family as neither one of us crafts for our artistic outlet. But we have learned to cope, creating a desk drawer full of scratch paper he can draw on and cut and tape to his heart's content, asking for craft supplies and tips from his crafty Aunt Misty, and celebrating this aspect of his personality even if it mystifies us.

Recently Sam has moved into representational drawing as part of his artwork. He draws Joy, me, Noah, dinosaurs and trains, and other important objects and people in his world. And right before Thanksgiving, he produced his first self portrait:

Picasso would be proud.

First Sunday of Advent - Hope

2010-11-28T19:53:00.000-06:00

Overheard in the Car

2010-11-25T08:29:00.000-06:00

Eli (Sam's cousin): Sam, did you make up Changing Town?

Sam: No, I found Changing Town. I made up the real world.

(a little later)

Sam: babble babble babble babble babble babble (non-stop talking)

Eli: Sam, I have something to tell you.

Sam: babble babble babble babble babble babble

Eli: Sam, I have something to tell you

Sam: babble babble babble babble babble babble

Eli: Sam, Stop talking.!

Sam: babble babble babble babble babble babble

Eli: Sam, I need you to listen to me!!

Sam: babble babble babble babble babble babble

Eli: Sam, I need you to stop talking and listen!!!!

Sam: (short pause)...Energy.

Noah's Sleeping Adventures

2010-11-17T10:29:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I feel as though I'm on a bad reality television show. Perhaps it is "Sleep Deprivation Island" or "When Children Won't Sleep!" Whatever the name, I'm ready to get voted off the island.

Back when Sam had trouble sleeping and going to sleep and staying to sleep, Joy and I had several excuses - Sam had been in the NICU, Sam had reflux, Sam hit his head on a giant falling mirror. Whatever the reason, it was not us. Now that Noah has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, we must confront the idea that we create children who won't sleep.

I should qualify that statement - we create children who won't sleep for their mother. For the longest time, Noah, our mellow child, easily fell asleep. Joy would nurse him, they'd smile at each other, and Joy would read while Noah drifted to sleep. Over the past year, that idyllic picture of maternity has steadily tarnished until Noah refuses to go to sleep for Joy. On the weekends, I put Noah down for his nap, and he is asleep in ten minutes. In the evening, I snuggle with him for ten to fifteen minutes, put him in his crib, rub his back, and he drops on off to sleep. When we have babysitters, he lays down in his crib, snuggles down under his blankets, and goes to sleep. When Joy tries to put him down for nap, he flounces, struggles, makes requests, and fights sleep for two hours. In frustration, Joy spent the last month driving Noah around at nap time for thirty minutes to an hour just to get him to sleep. Yes, our child is a major source of global warming.

At night, Noah has developed a pattern where he will call for the parent who will help him do what he wants. For instance, when Noah wakes up at 3:00 in the morning, he's still tired and wants to go back to sleep. So I hear his little voice intruding in my dreams calling "Dada. Dada! DADA!" I go in to him, pick him up for comfort, he falls back asleep, and I return to bed. When Noah wakes up at 6:00 or 6:30, he calls out "Mama!" The difference in who he calls out for is clear in what he always says when Joy arrives in his bedroom: "Want to watch someting on T.E!" When he's ready to get up and play, he wants Mom. When he just wants to sleep, he wants Dad.

We have hope in Sam. He now goes to his room and reads after his bath and comes down a little while later asking for a story and a snuggle. One of us obliges, and Sam goes on to sleep. Here's hoping that day comes soon for Noah.

I Think I'll Write an Opera

2010-11-10T10:24:00.000-06:00

Every week I grow more and more impressed with Sam's Kindermusik class. He just started Young Child this year and he's learning dictation and instrument sounds and rhythm and all the things that some Freshman music majors struggle to learn. This week, the curriculum even exposed the kids to foundational classical pieces starting with Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Since Sam's class only listened to selections from the opera (and because I'm never one to pass up a musicological teaching opportunity), I brought home my DVD copy of the opera I use in class every year to show Sam, and we watched a few selections from Julie Taymor's version produced at the Met a few years ago. From Tamino charming the animals with his flute to the Queen of the Night's aria to the Papageno Papagena Duet, Sam and Noah were enchanted. Noah probably would have watched the entire opera and certainly will some day, but Sam declared that action was needed. He was going to write an opera.

Over the past day, Sam's plan for his opera has slowly developed. The title is "Elephants Sing at Night" and it features seven elephants, one of whom is the star and sings alone and six that always sing together (notice that he already has a diva role prepared). Each elephant wears a waterproof costume because each has a bucket full of water next to them in the opera. During the rests in the music, the elephants dip their trunks into the bucket and turn and spray water out over the audience. He's already got a cast picked out and told me that at school today he plans to ask one of his best friends, Cole, to be in the show along with one of his teachers, Ms. Lori. Joy and I have standing invitations to come and sit in the audience where we will sit on a bench that is as long as the stage (I suppose we all sit on one bench so that everyone gets wet equally). If you're interested, I'm sure we can swing more tickets as the parents of the composer - just let me know.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T10:03:00.000-06:00

Earlier this year, while out shopping we found some boots that Sam had to have. They were black and tall and altogether wonderful and Sam loved stomping around in them. Inspired, Noah had to have his own pair, leading to the two declaring that they would be cowboys for Halloween.

Joy took them to US Toy Company to find hats and they picked the adult size straw hats along with green bandannas. I took them to a Western clothing store and found badges (a Texas Ranger one for Sam and a Sheriff one for Noah). Then Joy made them matching brown vests last weekend. Add white shirts and jeans and they were their own little posse.

Hope everyone has a happy Halloween!

Ah Yes, that Funky Musicology

2010-10-29T13:02:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure I have anything else to say.

Busy Writing

2010-10-28T15:02:00.000-05:00

It's that time of the year again - midterms where I have mountains of grading to do. In between that grading, I've also been busy writing, and I wanted to quickly share one project with you.

Earlier this year, David McIntire, composer and scholar and member of our minimalist cohort in Kansas City, decided to start his own label Irritable Hedgehog Music. He decided the first project needed to be Tom Johnson's An Hour for Piano and that the wonderful interpreter of all things minimalist and postminimalist Andy Lee needed to record it. The beautiful finished product was just released this week and you can hear it and buy your own copy now. I was honored to be asked to contribute liner notes for the release, which you can also read on the website, download for continued enjoyment, or find on the CD.

Adventures in Birthday Cakes - Race Cars and Dinosaurs

2010-10-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

Since Sam's birthday is in October, we often run into an interesting problem: grandparents come on the weekend to celebrate, but Sam's birthday is in the middle of the week. The easy answer for Sam is to celebrate twice, or three times, or even four times. The hard answer for his parents is how and when to make the birthday cake.

This year was especially tricky because Sam is in Pre-K and birthdays at school at this age are a BIG DEAL. That meant we needed to send cupcakes to school for Sam to celebrate with all his school friends. Simple? Not once Sam heard the plan. He immediately decided we needed race car cupcakes. Perhaps he was remembering his racetrack birthday cake from last year, perhaps he saw a friend with race car cupcakes, but wherever the idea came from, once it was in Sam's head, it stuck. So the Sunday afternoon before his birthday, I dutifully helped Sam ice his cupcakes into a racetrack:

Sam, as you can imagine, had to taste each color of icing and declared the green color the best (even though each was the same icing, just tinted different colors.

After all that work, you would think the next cake could be a standard round cake, but Sam declared immediately after having the race car cupcakes that he needed a dinosaur cake for his birthday when Nana and Granddad came to visit. Fortunately, Betty Crocker had a pattern on her website for cutting two round cakes into a dinosaur shape, so last Friday when the boys were at school, I cooked the cakes. When they arrived home, both Noah and Sam helped ice the cake (both eating more icing than they put on the cake) and add in the candies (perhaps their favorite part to eat), and then collapsed in a sugar coma.

(the smile was Sam's idea) I think when May and Pop come to visit early next month, we'll forgo the cake and just have ice cream. Much easier to manage.

More Thoughts on Irony and Glenn Beck

2010-10-15T10:26:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I discussed my fascination with the way music can often add ironic commentary (intentional or unintentional) to an image. Then, by wonderful serendipity, I discovered some of the footage of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally. If you've not seen it, watch just the first minute or so of this clip of Beck's entrance:

Notice the music Beck chose for his entrance? It's "Hoedown" from Rodeo by Aaron Copland. "What's so strange about 'Hoedown?' you might ask. After all, Copland's music is as American as apple pie and overeating with that pie. True, but in this instance, Beck's use of Copland's music lays a shiny veneer of irony over the proceedings. In early 1953, Copland's Lincoln Portrait was slated for performance at a concert celebrating Eisenhower's inauguration. Fred Busbey, a Congressman from Illinois, publicly questioned Copland's socialist leanings, and Eisenhower's staff responded by yanking Lincoln Portrait from the concert. That's right, Beck used music from a composer known for socialist leanings who also happened to be a homosexual and is even the happy result of our immigration policies as both his parents were Russian immigrants. This rally to "restore" America used music from a composer who represents the marvelous diversity of this country, not the homogeneous ideal for which many attending the rally falsely pine.

Sam Turns Five

2010-10-05T09:37:00.000-05:00

Today, Sam turns five. He's been proudly proclaiming his "golden birthday" for weeks, telling everyone who would listen that he would turn five on the fifth. In the past year he has become more loquacious than ever, largely due to his limitless imagination. He daily tells endless stories that spin from his imaginary world of Changing Town (which mirrors our world except that everything is changed to suit his whims) and are populated by his friends Leilai, Rex-a-rator (the fastest robot dinosaur on the planet), and numerous other dinosaurs that he learns from Dinosaur Train, complete with their correct geologic period of origin. He regularly sings, accompanied by his own drum track in the best beatbox tradition, songs that he creates and those from his Kindermusik class. He sings so readily that a few weeks ago, when we were at a concert featuring a children's performer, he raised his hand up high when the call went out for someone who would sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." Sam was selected and proceeded to sing the song (on pitch) while the performer improvised guitar and vocal lines around him. Afterward one of his preschool teachers leaned over to me and mentioned that she'd been wanting to talk with us about Sam's lack of self-esteem.

Sam is unusually confident in himself, a self that is quirky enough that I pray he will never let it be quashed by unsuspecting friends or teachers. We relish the unique and hope he'll find friends who do the same.

This past Saturday, Joy and I elected to give Sam his birthday present a bit early. We wanted him to have a long time to enjoy it, and since weekdays are so often messy in timing we decided the weekend offered the longest uninterrupted time.

When we visited Stephen and Misty this past August, Sam fell in love with riding a bike and has not so subtly mentioned wanting one at least once a week. Joy and I researched and picked out a bike with 16 inch wheels and training wheels and went to pick it up on Saturday afternoon. We then drove Sam and Noah (who got to ride the plasma car - a rare treat) to a nearby church's parking lot that is long and flat and deserted late on a sunny weekend. Sam climbed on and was off.

In that instant, seeing Sam tentatively circle around us and then slowly venture out from our protective reach, I realized that Sam had become a boy without the qualifier "little." As he fell over, dusted himself off, climbed back on the bike, and triumphantly wheeled away, I discovered that he didn't need me to pick him up and tell him it would be alright - he was perfectly capable of doing that service for himself. Sitting on the warm pavement with the sun slipping through the changing leaves and washing over us, Joy and I experienced a bittersweet moment. Getting your first bike is about freedom, about the grown-up ability to go anywhere you want under your own power, to chart your course. Sam is just beginning that journey and wonders await, but I still want to hold on to the little boy who needs me for help, for assurance, for direction.

Then, upon opening a lego dumptruck this morning for his birthday, Sam turned to me and said, "Dad, let's go play!" Great new experiences and wonders await me too.

Irony in Film Music

2010-10-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

When I first heard about "The Facebook Movie," I must admit I was skeptical. Sure I've loved most of David Fincher's movies and often imagine myself speaking Aaron Sorkin's dialogue when I'm teaching, but a movie about Facebook? Come on.

Then I saw this trailer:

Do you know why this trailer works? It's the music. The images are nothing special in and of themselves - the standard teaser images we are used to seeing. But notice how the music works with the images.

The song sung by the choir, "Creep," was originally recorded by Radiohead in the early 1990s (you can hear it here if you are not familiar with it.) As much of Radiohead's early material, "Creep" feature a hard driving, heavy guitar sound, the opposite of what you hear in the trailer. The lyrics basically describe a man obsessed with a woman who cannot figure out how to talk to her and sees himself as he believes she sees him:
"But I'm a creep,
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doin' here?
I don't belong here."
Musically, this obsession plays out in the relentless modal ostinato that rocks between the tonic, sharp 3rd, and 4th scale degrees. Even the intrusion of power chords around the chorus do nothing to stop the driving nature of that harmonic figure.

If the trailer's designers had decided to use Radiohead's version of "Creep," the impact would have been similar, but muted. By using the Scala & Kolacny Brothers Bulgarian girls chorus version from the album "On the Rocks" instead, they highlighted one of the most marvelous things music can bring to an image that moving pictures have a hard time creating on their own - irony. We are used to seeing how music can work with an image, but sometimes it is more effective to have the sounds consciously go against the image.

For instance, the trailer opens with images taken from Facebook user profiles while the choir sings about wanting control and a perfect body and wanting people to notice us (all matching the images we are seeing). Because of cultural conditioning, we hear the resonant girls' voices and simple keyboard accompaniment as heavenly or other worldly - as though we were getting an outside comment on our current cultural condition. But then, just as the chorus begins to kick in with "I wish I was special," the face of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pixilates into view and we slide into a traditional trailer. At this point, the music falls down in the mix and instead of working with the images, creeps toward irony. As we see a young man create a transformative website and have the standard movie-issued problems that are associated with success (jealously, mis-understanding, rivalry, sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll), we hear the choir sing that he is a creep. We accept the sounds which seem to float above the images as truthful and when we should be admiring the self-made man, we begin to question him. Then notice where the music stops - as Zuckerberg asks for recognition. The choir returns with one final comment - " I don't belong here" - a thought that contradicts the trailer's written message of having 500 million friends. The images, lyrics, and sounds all work together to create an additional layer of meaning to the trailer that at once distances us and makes us want to see the film. It is a masterful use of music, and I only hope the film's music is as smart as its trailer's.

The House Renovations that Never End

2010-09-27T09:54:00.000-05:00

Every summer (and most Christmas breaks) I spend a large chunk of my break transforming various parts of our house. I enjoy the work because it is opposite what I do most days. I usually sit or stand around and talk and think and write - physically inactive work. But working on the house is physical labor that I find rewarding (though I would not want to make my livelihood at it).

I'm aided in my enjoyment by a wife who always has ideas for improving our house. So over the five years we have lived in this house, we have now changed every room in some fashion, some quite dramatically and others only marginally so. Throughout it all, we've always had the ultimate goal of removing our carpet and exposing the hardwood we knew was underneath. We were simply waiting until the boys were old enough that hard wood would not meet soft heads on a regular basis.

So this summer, I slowly started taking up carpet, one room at a time. Our bedroom was not bad - it was small, could be closed off for the kids, and we could sleep downstairs on the pull-out couch. However, once the carpet was up I discovered that the floors needed a bit of work. Evidently, two layers of carpet had been put down and when installing the second layer, the workers left the staples from the original carpet pad in the floor and then gouged the floors in sections putting in goodness knows what. I had to pull two layers of staples out, fill in the holes and the gouges, sand down the floors, clean them, and then apply a few new layers of polyurethane. A bit of work, but not bad because we could keep the boys out of the room.

Not so with the hall, living room, and dining room.

I tackled each individually, and Joy gamely took the boys on excursions. We ate at odd times and in odd places (especially when the piano was sitting in the middle of our kitchen), had mountains of furniture to try and keep the boys off, and had dust and dirt from the carpets everywhere. That was our impression of it. The boys? They just loved having all that exposed, hard floor that was better than a bowling alley or a roller rink.

We have a bit more to do painting-wise, but the floors are finally finished and we've been enjoying them (and the boys still ride all their machines on them constantly). Noah had discovered they make a great loud sound when you throw things on them and the boys have had to stop tackling each other on the stairs (which is a happy consequence of this change), but overall we've settled into new floors quite well.

Sam Joins the Vampire Craze

2010-09-23T14:23:00.000-05:00

I suppose he tired of all this talk about Edward and figured he would get in on the action.

Harry Partch on YouTube

2010-09-22T15:35:00.002-05:00

I tell my students every year when I get to Harry Partch in the Music since 1945 class that the day is my vanity day - a chance for me to spend a day reveling in a composer I find endlessly fascinating. This morning, I was searching on youtube looking for a specific video when I discovered this:

That's right, the Beck song I blogged about last year that grew out of a feud between the lead singer of The Fiery Furnaces and Radiohead has a video. Most of the images are taken from the Partch documentary The Dreamer That Remains and is full of vintage Partch. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.

Adventures in Potty Training

2010-09-14T15:20:00.002-05:00

Joy and I have been making the preliminary motions toward potty training Noah (which means we think he's ready but haven't had the time to hit it hard core yet). For the past month, I've been having him sit on the potty every night before bath, even though he normally just looks around and smiles at being up so high. Last week, however, he decided that sitting on the potty was for girls, and he wanted to stand at the potty like Sam. So now, he stands there with Sam with his penis sitting on the potty's edge because he is not quite tall enough.

Joy had rarely seen this ritual until last night when she took over bathtime duties so I could go to a meeting. As usual, Noah stood naked at the potty, but with a crucial difference - this time he produced. Joy was so taken aback that she exclaimed "You're doing it, Noah!" causing our youngest to immediately stop and look to see what had his mother so exciting.

Joy immediately began encouraging him to keep going, but Noah could not figure out how to make it work again.

Until he had a revelation.

Noah looked down and began jabbing his penis with his finger, loudly proclaiming, "I just push the button!"

New Boots

2010-09-13T11:18:00.003-05:00

For the past few months, Sam has wanted a pair of boots. I believe it began with a pair of rain boots our neighbor gave us that Sam and Noah both love tromping around the house in. Sam quickly took to calling them him "power boots" and wearing them while playing super guys. Then, his good friend Cole got a pair of boots that he refuses to take off. Cole has been wearing said boots every time I've seen him this summer and Sam has declared them "cool."

So when we were in Branson last weekend, Joy stopped on our way out of town to buy a new pair of sneakers. The store was having a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale and they had a perfect pair of boots. We bought Sam a pair and Joy warned me we should get one for Noah too. I foolishly ignored my wife and my own experience of two years with Noah following in Sam's footsteps and declared we would buy him a pair if it became an issue.

Yesterday morning, getting ready for church, it became an issue.

Sam wanted to wear his boots to church and proudly stomped down the stairs to show them off. Noah screamed louder than Ollie, "I want BOOTS!" and ran upstairs. He appeared a few moments later wearing the rain boots (which fit Sam, but are boats for Noah) and insisted he wear them to church.We'll be getting Noah a pair of boots this week.

The Latest Apple Invention

2010-09-10T15:03:00.000-05:00

For some reason, this flew under the radar of last week's Apple announcement of changes to the iPod:

Waking Up

2010-09-07T13:52:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, we went to Branson to spend time with Joy's family. We stayed in a two bedroom condo, which is quite a treat for us because we get to put the boys to sleep in one room and Joy and I can take the other. Unfortunately, as plans always go awry, Noah decided to wake up at 6:00 on Sunday morning. I heard him mumbling over the monitor and padded down the hall to get him only to find Noah standing over Sam declaring "There's Sam!"

I suppose the novelty of finding your brother asleep in the same room with you reduced Noah to fits of obviousness.

I scooped him up before he could wake Sam up and took him back to our room where Joy turned on the TV for him to watch. I was unable to sleep with Noah watching TV, so headed back to Sam's room and slipped into the bed to doze for another hour.

A little before 7, I heard Sam stirring this time and, opening one eye, saw him get up and head for the door. He had only moved a few steps when he loudly proclaimed, "Super Guys, Away!" and ran out the door.

I'm glad to have firm proof that his imagination never rests.

Our Summer Obsessions - Dinosaurs

2010-09-01T15:36:00.003-05:00

Dinosaurs have long been of minor interest around our house. Sam has long loved going to the T-Rex restaurant and had a favorite book when he was two called Dinosaur Train (the name alone shows why the book was beloved). But dinosaurs were a distant third in favorite things to trains and cars.

Early this spring both Sam and Noah became simultaneously infatuated with dinosaurs. Perhaps it was from a book, perhaps from a show they watched, but my best guess for their new found love was a box of dinosaurs our next-door neighbor dropped off one dreary February day. The box was full of small dinosaurs and large ones, multi-hued ones and several monochromatic, and watching the boys with those dinosaurs was like reading Sammy and the Dinosaurs. They ate breakfast with dinosaurs, they slept with dinosaurs, they took baths with dinosaurs, and they took dinosaurs to church. Soon, both boys wanted to wear dinosaur shirts everywhere we went and they stomped up and down "roaring" at everyone we met. We were dinosaur central.

Dinomania escalated when grandparents started visiting this summer. First, Nana and Granddad came to visit and took the boys to T-Rex and got them a few more dinosaur figures to love and adore. Then May and Pop came and we all went to Union Station's "Dinosaurs Unearthed" exhibit which featured dinosaur bones and moving recreations of dinosaurs. The boys were in heaven (as you can see with Sam here holding a Stegosaurus's tail spike):To top the visit off, May and Pop got the boys dinosaurs at Build-A-Dinosaur, Sam getting a pterodactyl and Noah getting an orange, fuzzy velociraptor. Now with our plastic and stuffed dinosaurs, we are never far from a dino explosion at our house.

Our Summer Obessions - Star Wars

2010-08-25T11:09:00.002-05:00

Now that Sam is nearing 5 and Noah is firmly 2 (in every sense of that word - he does everything he can "by self!"), we've discovered a surprising facet of their development. They tend to cultivate obsessions, often of the same thing. We've seen this a little before with the obsessiveness with which Sam devoured everything Thomas the Tank Engine when he was 3, but with Noah as a multiplier, our household has become a bastion of a few choice things. The rest of the week, I'll slowly show the various characters and objects that have caught the boys' fancy, starting today with Star Wars.

An obsession with Star Wars is not that uncommon; I'm of the generation that grew up with Star Wars and had the Star Wars sheets and the plastic figures with lightsabers up their arms and the Darth Vader helmet to store the figurines in. But neither Sam nor Noah has seen Star Wars (and when I've tried to get Sam to watch it he expresses no interest). Sam's obsession comes completely from Lego Star Wars for the Wii. Noah's interest comes from Sam.

When we traveled to Huntsville in early August to see my brother and his family, we hatched a plot to take the kids to the Space and Rocket Center where they were having a giant Star Wars exhibit. Eli, my nephew, had a Lego Star Wars-based love of the series as well, so we bundled the kids in their Star Wars shirts and off we went.The exhibit itself was marvelous. Props and costumes from the movies filled a large exhibit area and alongside the movie memorabilia were small hands-on projects to explore the science behind the movies. So Sam and Eli got to build hovercars out of magnets and legos, see if a robot could recognize whether one or two people stood in front of it, build and program a robot to do small tasks, and even ride on a hovercraft for a few minutes.Since the exhibit, Sam and Noah play Star Wars constantly. Joy's mom got them small foam swords they have christened their "lightsabers," and they run around fighting each other (and us on occasion). Sam makes up stories about being a super guy and flying in outer space. And Sam regularly declares he is a padawan learning and Noah follows up that he is R2-D2. I can't imagine what life at our house will be like once they eventually see the films.

Noah's Birthday at the Zoo, or Animal Overload

2010-07-01T14:19:00.003-05:00

Sam was always into vehicles. When he was just a few months old, we took a road trip back to Champaign-Urbana to let him meet our friends there. On the way back, we left right before his morning nap thinking he would sleep.He didn't.
Every time he would be close to sleep, a large truck would pass and he would jerk awake, excited to see the big trucks pass.

Noah enjoys vehicles because Sam enjoys vehicles, but his heart is with animals. He's the kid who sleeps with a different stuffed animal each night and can name animals before he can label his colors. So we decided to take him to the Omaha Zoo for his birthday. Omaha is about a 3 hour drive and our original plan had been to drive up one afternoon, go out to eat, play in the hotel pool, and then hit to zoo first thing in the morning when the kids were rested. Great plan, right? It was until the day before when we learned it would be storming in Omaha the morning we planned for the zoo. So we packed up and left early on Wednesday morning to spend the entire afternoon seeing animals. It was a good call, since a rainstorm of Biblical proportions hit Omaha on Thursday.

The Omaha Zoo is amazing, full of natural habitats for the animals including a huge desert dome and an underground, dark setting for nocturnal animals. We got to walk through a shark tunnel and gaze at a column of jellyfish. In the insect house, butterflies darted around so fast the boys could barely catch sight of them. And in the gorilla house, one came right up to the class and stared at Noah for a bit before turning around and plopping down. Noah was entranced the entire time, as you can tell when we saw one of his favorites, the giraffe:Sam, on the other hand, ran from place to place, barely stopping to see anything. His favorite part of the entire zoo, the one thing he wanted to see again and again?
That's right, the rope bridge in the jungle. This is why for Sam's birthday we go ride trains.

Dad's Awesome Birthday Song

2010-06-24T21:54:00.002-05:00

I'll get back to chronicling Noah's birthday this weekend, but I thought you might enjoy "Dad's Awesome Birthday Song" (trademarked - Sam Granade).

I just appreciate that I'm rearing two little postminimalists.

Reflections on a Father

2010-06-20T12:55:00.001-05:00

Our pastor asked me to reflect on what I learned about love from my father for our service this morning, and after talking with my brother yesterday, I decided to share it here just as I did in church this morning:

Occasionally, but only occasionally, my brother Stephen and I would find ourselves in a situation where we were tired of doing an activity, didn’t want to start it in the first place, and certainly were loath to see it to completion. In those moments, my father could always be counted on to tell us to keep at it because it would “build character.” Perhaps you have heard this phrase in your lifetime too, and perhaps you feel about it the way Calvin did. You know Calvin – not the theologian from the 16^th century, but the theologian from the 1990s funny pages. Calvin’s father came out one night and called “It’s getting dark, Calvin. Time to come in and go to bed.” Calvin ambled up and responded, “But Hobbes and I were catching fireflies. Can’t we stay out a little longer?” Always ready at teachable moments, Calvin’s dad responded, “Ha! First you didn’t want to go out, and now you don’t want to come in. See, by not watching TV, you had more fun, and now you’ll have memories of something real you did, instead of something fake you just watched.” Later in bed, Calvin confessed to Hobbes that “nothing spoils fun like finding out it builds character.”

Fathers can always be counted on to help us build character, which is why Joy regularly rolls her eyes and restrains herself when I parent by telling Sam or Noah to pick themselves up, shake off their tears, and have another go. A father’s tough love is a cultural cliché – walk down the Hallmark aisle in May, and you’ll be assaulted by pink and white frilliness that proclaims a mother’s tenderness while the next month, the same aisle is festooned in blue and brown straight lines that let us know that dad, by contrast, doesn’t appreciate that nonsense. But that tough guy formulation masks some of the greatest truths about love that we learn from our fathers.

Looking back, one important fatherly truth stands out to me from my own upbringing – love is never embarrassed. Perhaps all fathers have this propensity, but mine was uniquely gifted at embarrassment. Riding through my small Southern hometown in my dad’s blue Chevy Luv truck was an adventure, primarily because he was always on the lookout for treasure. Driving by a household pile of garbage, he’d slow down, his eyes would rifle through the pile, and he’d tell me or my brother to jump out and grab something. We would make sure no one was looking, dash out as quickly as possible, grab the object and toss it in the back, and slink back to our seats with our heads down. Can you imagine how a 13-year-old boy felt performing this ritual, just knowing that someone would see, tell their friends, who would tell your friends. Embarrassment knows no greater field to flourish than a 13-year-old boy’s heart.

I’ll also never forget how my father appeared at my wedding rehearsal and dinner decked out in the brightest yellow shirt you can possibly imagine. Small suns have less luminescence than he did that night. His reasoning was true to his life and training as an historian – Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (and even tiny Elizabeth) wore bright yellow as evidence of their extreme happiness when news of Catherine of Aragon’s death reached them. My father’s happiness certainly exceeded theirs and for better reason. I should have been mortified, but I wasn’t. A strange thing had happened in the ten years between those occurrences. The lesson my father had been nurturing had sunk in. Turn to the person next to you – your spouse, child, or dear friend. Think of all the things they have done over the years that made you cringe and shake your head. But you’re still here. You still love them. You see, love is never embarrassed because love is accepting. Love sees the other as they truly are, as a unique child of God whose life enriches your own beyond all understanding. Picking up trash, wearing yellow, proclaiming to the world that he is who he is was the greatest act of love my father performed toward me. He gave me permission to be myself, to love others for themselves, and to see a penetrating glimpse of God’s love in the process. And it is that treasure, more than any we picked up through those many Arkansas days, which encapsulates what is unique about a father’s love. It is a gift of love that truly builds lasting character.

Noah's Elmo Cake

2010-06-19T11:15:00.003-05:00

Noah's second birthday was last Friday, and after a week of celebrating, I think I've finally recovered enough to begin to share a bit of the festivities here. Joy and I are still in a state of denial that Noah's now two years old, but his increasing moodiness and tantrums are helping reality quickly set in.

Noah is current obsessed with Elmo - he sings the Elmo's World theme song all the time, sleeps with a stuffed Elmo, and will stop any forward motion when he glimpses a bit of the red monster. So I decided an Elmo cake was necessary for his birthday.
The problem is that while there is an Elmo cake pan, I didn't want to spend the $12 for a pan I'd use one time (unless Joy decided she wanted Elmo for her birthday...). So I invented my own solution.

Using Misty's fabulous chocolate cake recipe (which she rightly claims is the best chocolate cake recipe in the world), I made two round 9 inch cakes. After they cooled, I carefully cut around the top of one cake to make Elmo's googly eyes and then took part of the leftover cake and stuck it on the bottom of the other. I then mixed up some buttercream icing and set to work with the food coloring. The fully intact cake I frosted plain white and then used a dessert decorator with the round tip to pipe a bit of blue icing as an outline before writing "Happy Birthday Noah!" across its length. Sam helped drop sprinkles on it (as well as write "Noah") and we called that second cake a balloon. For the Elmo cake, I frosted the eyes with plain white and put two black jelly beans for eyes (the black are Sam's favorite - go figure). I mixed a bit of red and yellow to make an orange nose (which Sam loved doing almost as much as eating the left over icing). Then, after using almost half a bottle of red dye, I used the round tip again to pull short lines of icing together to make the top look like fur. It came out pretty well:After blowing out candles with Noah, I cut into the balloon thinking he'd like to save the Elmo part. I was wrong. Noah screamed and cried to eat Elmo first. He loves Elmo so much he truly wants to eat him up.

Short Takes

2010-06-08T07:24:00.003-05:00

On Saturday, we spent the afternoon at Old Shawnee Days, a fair a neighboring town throws the first weekend after Memorial Day every year. It has what you might expect - a Ferris Wheel and rides best described as death traps, performers of all stripes from musicians to mentalists to a bullwhip comedian, and lots of fried food. Sam and Noah had a good time wandering around, but Sam especially enjoyed getting all the free stuff. Like new hair:When we got home, we had breakfast for supper. We put Noah's omelet in front of him. he peeled back the egg to gaze as the mushrooms and tomatoes and cheese inside and declared "Wow!" It was the best reaction my cooking has ever gotten.

Sam has a new favorite joke that he'll gladly tell you: "What's the pretzel's favorite dance?" "The Twist!"

Noah has completely figured out the word "hello." Any time I walk in the room, he shouts, "Hello, Dada!" But he also wants us to say "hello" to everyone and everything, leading to interesting dinner conversations, where we say "hello" to every bit of food he puts in his mouth - "hello mushroom!" "hello tomato!" "hello dried up Cheerio you found on the floor!"

We're Full of Water

2010-06-03T10:53:00.002-05:00

After the great family room flooding of the past few years, I doubted I would have so much water in my life a mere year later. But with Sam starting swim lessons, we're up to our ears in water these days.

Sam is loving his swim lessons. He goes twice a week right now and will go every day for four days in the next session at month's end. Although he still has trouble sitting still in the pool, he's learning quickly. At his last lesson, he was messing with his goggles and accidentally stepped backwards off the step and into the pool. He valiantly dog paddled and managed to almost keep afloat until the teacher rescued him, but his face was under water. He didn't panic, however, and seems to have found new confidence in his swimming. The lessons and the teacher are hard core and great and once Sam is comfortable putting his face in the water, he'll be swimming.

Noah, of course, wants to do everything Sam does, but has more hesitations. Joy's parents were here this past weekend to celebrate Noah's 2nd birthday a bit early. We decided to try out a local pool that has a playground in the water, a small wave pool, and a few bigger slides along with the pool itself. Sam loved the pool and the water guns and getting splashed; Noah was uncertain at first. He sat next to Nana and Joy and me at the water's edge until we found some small fountains he could splash in. Although he never warmed to the water slides, he did float like crazy in the water - he's much more relaxed than Sam and so finds it easier to let go and let the water take him.

This is the kind of water I can handle in the summer - let's hope it continues to stay in the pool and out of our family room.

Thoughts on Composing and Computers

2010-06-01T15:16:00.002-05:00

This past month I've spent more than my fair share of time staring at a computer. My tenure and promotion portfolio has consumed my life as I've pdf'ed every document I needed and created a massive electronic compendium of the past five years (and yes, I know "pdf'ed"is not a word, but it has as great ring I needed in that sentence). During that time, two links came my way that got me thinking about the use of computers and composition. First, this article in Slate by Chris Wilson profiles a computer program that is composing based on analysis of other words in the classical canon. Then, this video of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring performed by the Vienna Symphonic Library (in other words, but sampled sounds rather than live performers:

I've some thoughts on these developments, but was curious as to your initial reactions.

Sam Lost His Hair!

2010-05-20T07:22:00.004-05:00

Every once and a while, Sam's hair gets long enough that it needs to be cut. And anything that employs sharp objects around the children automatically gets tasked to me in our house, so the heavy burden of making sure Sam isn't a ridicule based on his haircut falls to me. I've generally kept his hair about the Sam since it came in - he has my wavy hair, so I've kept it long enough to see the wave which usually results in cute hair, but in strange weather tends to stick up in awkward places. But with the coming of summer and Sam's need to run around outside all day long and get little-boy sweaty and his new swim lessons, I decided he needed a little boy summer haircut.

Enter the buzz:
Sam likes the new haircut because it makes his hair feel all prickly when you run your hands over it against the grain and because it takes less time to wash it in the bath. In fact, he celebrated his new hairstyle by posing for his emo singer album cover photo:

Swim Lessons

2010-05-19T06:39:00.002-05:00

Since we often spend a decent amount of time at Greer's Ferry Lake with Joy's family in Arkansas, we've been wanting to get Sam swim lessons for some time. Now that he's four going on 12, we decided this summer would be the one to start. So Joy scoured local lessons and asked for recommendations and found a group of teachers who keep class sizes small and teach even young children to swim and not just blow bubbles in the pool.

Sam's first lesson was yesterday and before he went we had to fill him in on the rules. He diligently wrote them all down including doing exactly what the teacher says immediately when she says it (we often have slight problems with that rule at school) and raising hands and waiting to be called on to speak. To Sam's credit, he followed all the rules, though his hand was up for much of the lesson.

There are only three kids in Sam's class (including Sam) and right off the bat they worked on floating, proper form in kicking, in hand and arm posture, and keeping your face in the water. While the teacher worked with one kid in the middle of the pool, the other two stood on the stairs and were supposed to be practicing. Instead they looked around, mesmerized by standing knee deep in water.

Sam seems to be enjoying the lessons so far, but I'm a bit worried about what lesson he is bringing home. He had the most trouble with keeping in face in the water and humming and blowing out bubbles, so he's supposed to practice in the tub. With Noah. Who will also want to practice. And Sam might want to help. We'll see how it all goes.

Nurturing

2010-05-10T13:47:00.002-05:00

Noah has discovered his closet. It used to be that he didn't wonder about what was behind those two big white doors in his room - he was happy just to play with the toys in his toy basket or pull books off his shelves or, if he were lucky, sneak into Sam's room to get some of the good toys. But last week, he began opening his closet door and pulling out all the toys hidden in there. We generally keep toys and clothes he has just outgrown or hand-me-downs from Sam that he isn't ready for yet in the closet, but Joy also keeps some of her Kindermusik toys. In the Kindermusik section of the closet rested a baby doll. Sam never showed any interest in the doll and so we never bothered getting it out for Noah.

Big mistake.

Noah found the baby and was instantly smitten. He carried around the baby all morning, feeding it, singing to it, and even demanding a blanket for the doll. Sam, not wanting to be left out, asked for a doll of his own and together the boys happily cared for their babies. Joy, overjoyed at this display of nurturing, decided to call me at work and let me know how loving our children were being toward these dolls. She walked over to the phone but was stopped short by a sound. It was a rhythmic thumping like hollow superballs hitting the ground, but louder. She went to investigate and discovered Sam and Noah gleefully grasping their baby dolls by the ankles and using them as swords to bash each other.

Ah well, at least they are MacGyver-esque in their ability to create weapons out of anything. That's a useful life skill, right?

Post-1945 Journals Available for Your Reading Pleasure

2010-05-05T14:55:00.002-05:00

My students have finished their final round of listening journals, and you can find them over on the class's blog. My recent profile linked to the blog, so hopefully the students have been getting useful feedback from complete strangers and you can help that process by going, reading, and commenting. Enjoy!

Noah sings Elmo

2010-04-30T20:36:00.002-05:00

I suppose that most kids these days go through their obsessions. For some it is Dora, for some (like Sam) it is Thomas, for some it is Marvel ms. Capcom. For Noah, it is definitely Elmo.

The obsession started innocently enough. We had an Elmo's World DVD that Sam had received but never cared much for and one day, feeling desperate for some time with the boys occupied, Joy put it in.

Be warned - "Elmo has Two Feet, Hands, and Ears" is a gateway drug.

Both boys loved it, but Noah, who was just beginning to speak, began saying Elmo (he certainly said it more than Dad). For Christmas, he got an Elmo that he now sleeps with most nights. For Easter, he got the Sesame Street Dinosaurs DVD which features what Noah calls an "Elmo-dactoo," an Elmo flying dinosaur. But the kicker has been the song. First Noah just sang the "Elmo's World" theme song, but now he puts in everything to the song. "That's Elmo's dinosaur World!" "That's Elmo's snake World!" "That's Elmo's car World!" He even sings it in his sleep. Who knows what new turn our obsession will take in the coming weeks. Perhaps an entire singing and dancing number?

I'm Everywhere

2010-04-27T12:52:00.002-05:00

Yesterday afternoon in my 4:00 class, my students were getting their presentation material off their e-mail and our Blackboard site, and repeatedly this appeared. As my students said, "Dr. Granade, you're famous!" Of course, that was only after the entire class went "Ooooooo!" in unison. I just told them I'm basically like Big Brother - they can't get away from me anywhere.

You can read the entire article on me here.

Something Good to Remember at the End of the Semester

2010-04-24T08:45:00.002-05:00

My Child, the Nudist

2010-04-23T14:12:00.002-05:00

Since the weather has turned warm, we've been spending as much time as possible in the backyard. The boys are now old enough to play outside without our constant supervision (meaning we can sit on the deck and read, check e-mail, or what have you), and they run themselves silly making bedtime much easier. It's a win-win for all involved.

Earlier this week, Joy sent the boys out back and went to get her book. Coming back outside, she sat down on the deck and started to read, glancing up at Sam and Noah. Sam had climbed into his fort and was playing happily, but Joy noticed that he had no pants on.

And no underwear either.

Joy called out to him, "Sam, why do you have no pants on?" He just laughed. Joy didn't. She reminded him he really needed clothes on and they went about their day.

The next afternoon they were outside again when Joy noticed Sam making his "I've got to use the bathroom" motions. She called out to him that he needed to run inside just as Sam started to pull down his pants. "SAM!" Joy shouted. "I'm just going to go outside," he responded, "just like that time I had to go on the side of the road when we went to visit our friends." True enough, last summer we pulled off at an exit to change Noah's diaper because he had horrible diaper rash and there was no reststop for miles. Sam declared he needed to go, there were no public restrooms at the exit, so I helped him go off to the side of the road. But beyond acknowledging his crazy good memory, Joy wasn't going to give an inch on using our backyard as a bathroom and sent him inside.

I think we're going to have to make him wear suspenders and tie his pants on this summer.

Sam's Life Lessons

2010-04-21T14:13:00.001-05:00

Recently, Sam has experienced an enormous outpouring of spelling and writing. He wants to know how any word he's never encountered before is constructed. He wants to understand the finer points of sentence structure. And he's even started writing, so every project that comes home from school bears the stamp: "To Mom, from Sam." (yes, I never get the love in these scenarios)

I attribute this outpouring to a late Christmas gift of the LeapFrog Word Whammer, a jet-shaped magnet for your refrigerator that allows you to create 3-letter words and have them spelled and said back to you. While Noah loves the toy because it plays the Alphabet song and he can sing along (though he tends to get stuck at E and just hold the vowel for a very long time), Sam loves that it has upper- and lowercase letters and allows him to create massive sentences in our kitchen. One night a few weeks ago, I came downstairs after putting Sam to bed and found this on our fridge:
I pondered over the meaning for quite some time, trying to figure out if Sam was thinking of a recent time we went out to eat or if he had a more existential meaning, some important life lesson he needed to share but was interrupted by bath time. My curiosity only grew the next morning when I was making breakfast and Sam marched over to his letters and added three more:
(in this one you can see the Word Whammer itself) Evidently, whatever his tip was, it shrunk in the night. Any guesses as to Sam's obscure meanings?

The Return

2010-04-19T14:37:00.003-05:00

The past two weeks have been a bit hectic at our house. Both last weekend and the weekend before, I had conferences where I was presenting new research. So I spent the week leading up to each talk researching, writing, and getting my slides together. Add in papers to grade, two reviews to write, and a set of four programs to annotate and my family hasn't seen much of me recently, much less this blog. Most of that is behind me now (and one of the papers went so well that I was invited to submit it for a graduate student award), so back to filling you in with stories of Sam and Noah and general musicological musings.

If you need something to fill your time until then, you can see the redesign of our church website I've been finishing in my spare time the past three weeks. It isn't done quite yet, but it is at least ready for prime time.

First Day Back from Spring Break Videos

2010-04-05T17:26:00.002-05:00

Everyone knows that students and faculty are useless the few days before a break, particularly Thanksgiving and Spring Breaks as the stretch before them is so long. But what most don't know is that the first day back from a Break can be just as bad. So as I'm trying to pull myself back together, here's a little video that I might just use in class instead of me teaching.

It would be just as good as anything I could do, right?

New Listening Journals Available

2010-04-01T12:50:00.001-06:00

Just in time for Spring Break, my students have posted their listening journals for music from 1900-1945. With this unit, we've entered into music that many are either unfamiliar with or perhaps a bit nervous about. In fact, this video sums up many people's reactions to this music, and I often play it for my students just to break the ice a little.

Music in the early 20th century certainly was full of brash experimentation, but it produced music as strange and as beautiful as any ever produced. You can find out about some of that music by digging into the blogroll on my class's main page.

The Pleasures (and Dangers) of Being a Little Boy in the Springtime

2010-03-31T06:41:00.003-06:00

Sam Skis

2010-03-25T12:30:00.003-06:00

Last month, Sam and I watched a lot of the Winter Olympics. I wasn't sure what Sam would be interested in as we began the two week event, but he quickly gravitated to two events: the biathlon and the slalom (though ski jumping was a close third). For the biathlon, we had long discussions on what you use a gun for, how you use it, and why in the world you might want to ski and shoot at the same time. For the slalom, he just decided to set up his own course and shoot off down the hill on his "skis."

I figured this was a better way for him to experience the Olympics at home than shooting at us and Noah all day.

Virtual Choirs

2010-03-22T13:07:00.002-06:00

Last year, I wrote about the YouTube symphony, and the delicate balance such an undertaking seemed to create between democratization of music and a devaluing of what music schools stand for. At the same time, however, I realized that tapping into YouTube's potential for world-wide music making was a new frontier and it was only a matter of time before a composer latched onto it in order to promote his own works.

In that vein, I give you Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir:

Whitacre is a savvy composer when it comes to marketing himself to his fans. He started this project last summer on his blog when he put up a track on YouTube of himself conducting his piece Lux Aurumque to a piano accompaniment and provided musical instructions as to style, dynamics, pronunciation, and interpretation, much as you would preface a new work to a choir. Singers were then instructed to download the sheet music from his website, record themselves singing to this track, post the results on YouTube, and wait to see how he sculpted all the tracks together to form a virtual choir. Just think about the network he's creating for his pieces, the groundswell of support from teenagers in choir who ultimately grow up to lead school choirs of their own. No matter what you think of the musical results, the idea is really stunning.

Listening, Not Talking

2010-03-19T18:16:00.002-06:00

This afternoon, I had the opportunity to go on a soundwalk with Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Schafer is a fascinating composer, perhaps best known for coining the term "soundscape" and drawing attention to the way the world around us sounds. He began putting together a World Soundscape Project in the late 1960s that made attempts to record the soundscapes of various cities and regions and then began asking questions about how rapid industrialization was impacting what we hear and therefore how we live. He went so far in his 1977 book Tuning the World to propose that we always ask what impact new sounds would have on the soundscape before releasing them into the world.

For the soundwalk, Schafer seemed to have two goals: 1. make us begin using our ears, and 2. to tune us in to Ottawa's soundscape. We started the walk with a few ear cleaning exercises: we closed our eyes and he and an assistant walked around the room constantly talking and we had to follow them with our hands; he passed around a sheet of newspaper and we each had to make a new sound with it; we had to fill in the blank as to what sound an object would make before we heard it. Then, we stepped out into the busy Ottawa downtown.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but focusing on the sounds around me rather than the running dialogue constantly in my head was an amazing experience. Schafer stopped us every once and a while and asked pointed questions about what we were hearing - the sound furthest from us, the lowest sound we heard, what definite pitches we discovered. Then, when we arrived in a large park, half of us were blindfolded and led to a space we had never been. He ran around making sounds (shouting, crinkling, banging, scuffling) and then asked us to describe where we were. I was fortunate enough to be one of the blindfolded participants, and I can't remember when I've ever used by senses as deeply. There were certainly aspects I missed, but the simple act of listening opened up new worlds.

I'm now extremely curious to listen on the soundscape of my every day life. Schafer is right that just as we destroy old buildings without a thought, we destroy sounds than can never be recaptured. He's proposing something of an eco-music where we actively work to conserve sounds before they disappear, but its a hard sell in a world where even musicians like myself rarely truely listen.

Growing Up

2010-03-18T19:34:00.002-06:00

Last Friday, I dropped Sam off at his school as usual and in doing so, I got a peek into his future. He ran into the building, his usual exuberant self, stopped next to a girl in his class and said "Hi!" with a big grin. She looked at him, turned on her heel, and grabbed her friend to run down to the classroom. She didn't respond to Sam, but her body language clearly said, "Why are you talking to me?" Sam, unfazed, was off to drop off his bag and ride the tractors with his friends, but I stood there, holding Noah, and fighting off the urge to ask the 4-year-old where she got off ignoring my son.

This insignificant exchange was a lightbulb moment for me. Sam and Noah go to school every week, but for the most part their interactions with other children have been through us and through church - they primarily play with the children of our friends and acquaintances. We have a lot of control over the people with whom they associate and the worldviews that shape them. But in that moment, I saw that my children will grow up and leave my protective grasp, venturing out into a world of people who will not like them and will act toward them in ways fundamentally opposed to the way we treat them. Deep down I know that it is healthy and normal and desirable for them to find their own way and forge their own path, but I can't help but want to hold them tighter to me for the fading years in which I can.

Speaking too Fast

2010-03-06T07:16:00.001-06:00

I suppose I spoke too fast yesterday in announcing that Noah now knows himself. Asked this morning who he was, he responded: "Elmo!" This made Sam laugh, so Noah kept repeating that he was Elmo over and over. Who knows how long this identity crisis will last. Oh well, at least he was wearing red pajamas.

Noah Discovers Himself

2010-03-05T20:52:00.002-06:00

After Noah's word explosion of a month ago, he's quietly cooled his language acquisition. He still picks up words every one and then, but more often than not he just repeats what people say to him that he finds funny.

In terms of names, he firmly has Joy and I down as Mama and Dada, and he calls Nana and Pop by name, but his favorite person in the world (Sam) he stills calls by sign language. Eventually he'll say "Sam," but right now he just likes to sign "eat" "Sam" when Sam's having a snack or "bath" "Sam" right before bedtime.

But finally, Noah seems to have learned his own name. Sure, he's been responding to it for a long time, but whenever you would ask him his name, he'd look at you quizically and say "Ja," which is his baby-German way of saying "yes." But today in Kindermusik, we were playing with mirrors and he was pointing to me in the mirror and saying "Dada" and when he suddenly pointed to himself and said "Nohna." Sure that double vowel is a bit tricky, but it's fun to see that he finally has a sense of self enough to use his own name for his own reflection.

More Reasons Why I Teach

2010-03-03T15:37:00.002-06:00

I just gave a big music history test yesterday to my undergraduate students and endured the typical grousing about how the subject doesn't relate to what they do and they get tired of memorizing facts.

No matter how many times I tell students the ways in which music history can enrich their musical vocabulary and make them better performers, many refuse to see. That's why I was encouraged by the article "In Search of Lost Sounds: Why you've never really heard the "Moonlight" Sonata" that appeared on Slate.com yesterday. In it, Jan Swafford gives wonderful audio examples of the differences between the pianos Beethoven wrote for and our modern, equally-tempered and equally-voiced Steinways. The article is an ear-opening read, and I encourage you to jump over to Slate and listen. For me, it was encouragement that music history is important. As a pianist, hearing those recordings opened up new interpretive strategies in my mind and made me hear the music afresh, a goal of all performers of others' music. It is a concrete example of why music history is important. Do you have to play differently because Beethoven wrote for a different piano? No. Do we always have to try to replicate the exact circumstances and choices of pianists in Beethoven's day? No. But I would argue that our music takes on deeper resonance when we understand the choices we are making and the options open to us as musicians rather than blindly playing whatever is before us on the stand. The musicians in any realm or genre that last, that continue to impact us 10, 20, 100 years after their life and work are the ones who understand this simple rubric. History, style, ideas, do matter and matter deeply.

Questionable Musical Choices

2010-03-02T21:29:00.002-06:00

Every other Tuesday night we go to a friend's house for fellowship and bible study with a group from our church. Since we start around 7:00, and our children's bedtime is 8:00, twice a month they get to stay up a little late. Often both Sam and Noah are so exhausted that they fall asleep on the way home, and we usually dress Noah in his pajamas before we leave for that eventuality. But sometimes they are too wound up to sleep.

Tonight was one of those nights. We loaded in the car and immediately Sam started scat singing to make Noah laugh. Hearing Noah laugh just made Sam laugh harder and scat louder, so I decided to short circuit the cycle by turning on a little music. I picked a beautiful, slow work by Lou Harrison that is meditative and calming off the iPod and turned on the stereo.

The music didn't phase Sam and Noah.

I sighed, resigned myself to staying up late with both boys coaxing them to sleep when we got home, and turned my attention to Joy. We talked about our day and I mentioned that I was teaching Post-Romanticism and had gotten my students' attention with a disco/funk recording of Also Sprach Zarathustra by Eumir Deodato. I flipped over to the recording on the iPod so Joy could hear it and immediately the back seat went dead quiet.

This immediate, strong reaction to disco can only mean one thing - Abba is not far in our future.

More Wheat, Please

2010-02-27T10:46:00.002-06:00

One of the great things about having a four-year-old boy is the insatiable curiosity with which he attacks each day. And one of the most exhausting aspects of having a four-year-old boy is the constant questioning of every little thing on the planet. Joy read that the average four-year-old asks 400 questions a day.

Sam surely doubles that number.

But we don't want to squash his inquisitive spirit, especially when he is obviously so eager to learn about everything under the sun. Including this week's obsession - wheat.

Given that we live in Kansas, being curious about wheat is not too strange, I suppose; we learned more about corn in our years in Illinois than I thought I would ever want to know. But with Sam, wanting to know about wheat means a level of depth you've never imagined. We have found videos about wheat growth and production, read treatises on how wheat gets from the field to your table, explored the food pyramid to see wheat's nutritonal value, dug through the nutrion information on everything we eat to see if it has wheat, and even played internet games about wheat (did you even guess there was such a thing?) Every morning for breakfast this week, Sam has asked if he could have wheat for breakfast (I had to make pancakes with wheat flour this morning, which were surprisingly delicious). He's asked if his tomatoes on sandwiches have wheat and then not been sure he wanted to eat them. It has been nonstop wheat at our house.

Oh, and the Olympics, but don't get me started on trying to explain the biathlon to him.

Snake Dancing

2010-02-24T13:07:00.002-06:00

Wonder what we've been doing for the past two weeks instead of regularly blogging?

We've been sick.

But beyond being sick, we've also been dancing. Dancing with snakes.

A Little Light Reading

2010-02-23T18:40:00.003-06:00

Looking for a little light reading? Have access to online journals through your local library or institution of higher learning? Then you should check out my new article "Rekindling Ancient Values: The Influence of Chinese Music and Aesthetics on Harry Partch" in the Journal of the Society for American Music. The cover features my picture of Partch's Chromelodeon and is full of fun facts like Partch's experiences in San Francisco Chinese theaters. You can read the abstract and more about the article on the journal's webpage.

A Big Day

2010-02-16T08:18:00.002-06:00

Yes, if you'll look closely this is Joy writing and not Andrew, and yes, I almost never write on our blog. To be honest, blogging stresses me out. Sounds stupid, but it's very very true. I greatly digress....so, what would bring me out of blogger hiding to write? Some very exciting news for Andrew. (He doesn't know I'm doing this. He forgets I can login to our account.) Drum-roll, please...

Yesterday Andrew was given the "Chancellor's Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching"! Yep, out of all the young, assistant professors at UMKC, Andrew was chosen for this prestigious award, which is "UMKC’s highest honor for excellence in teaching for an assistant professor." If you'd like to know more of the specifics of how he was chosen and exactly what this means, you can read here. It's really pretty cool.

Needless to say the boys and I are awfully proud of him! Congrats, Andrew. We love you!

Classical Listening Journals

2010-02-09T13:23:00.000-06:00

For those of you who like to keep up, my first round of listening journals in my undergraduate writing intensive class is now up for your enjoyment. Just head over to the class blog, peruse the blogroll for Spring 2010 listeners, and find something that interests you.

What Excited Me in the Superbowl

2010-02-08T14:16:00.003-06:00

I'm not much of one for the Superbowl. In fact, I can't recall ever actually sitting down and watching one. In grad school, Joy and I often used the sporting event as an excuse to go to the movies when attendance would be low (though we attended strange art house movies that weren't hurt by the Superbowl, but it was a good excuse nonetheless). However, we often get invited to Superbowl parties and so I'll go and play games and take breaks from the games to watch the commercials.

For those of you who watched the Superbowl and know of my previously stated love/hate relationship with autotuning also know which commercial was my favorite:

Sure it wasn't actually the best Superbowl commercial, but what is a better punchline than T-Pain autosinging about guacamole?

Words for Muggles

2010-02-05T14:40:00.000-06:00

For your Friday, here's an excellent graduation speech on the power of failure and imagination, two ideas I would love my students to take to heart (thanks to Peter Witte):

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Last Weekend

2010-02-04T12:37:00.004-06:00

We've been quiet around here because we've been busy. And we've been busy because last weekend we traveled to Champaign-Urbana to do research, attend a concert, and see friends. Having those three intersect was fortuitous, and Joy and I decided to take advantage and brave the possibility of snow and the likelihood of children meltdowns to travel.

We left Thursday morning later than we expected, but Noah, who had decided not to sleep the night before, decided to sleep for over half the trip. So we were able to make record time to Champaign and only had to entertain one child for most of the time. Things were looking good for team Granade.

Friday morning, I packed myself off to the archives to do a bit of Partch research (discovering a wonderful review of a Partch production by Roger Ebert, of all people), while Joy met up with our friends and their children for a playdate. Here was the result:Yes, everyone got so carried away that they stayed past the saturation point into full-boil meltdown (even our even-tempered Noah is getting in on the action).

Saturday morning, we all met at Barnes and Noble at story time so the kids could be afraid or indifferent to Clifford the Big Red Dog, who was making an appearance, and instead play with trains or books or stuffed animals or each other. All went so well that we decided to try dinner that night:Ah well. At least Sam was the only one tired of this party. He had places to go, people to see, bedtimes to miss. That's right, we decided to put him and Will, son of our friends with whom we stayed, in the same room for sleep. The first night, Sam crashed. But the second night, we heard them giggling and getting out toys and saw the light come on in their room. We reminded them that it was nighttime and threatened to separate them if they didn't stay in bed. We checked later and the light was out and though we heard soft giggling, thought nothing of it. When the giggling didn't die down, we investigated further only to discover that they had shut the door so we wouldn't see the light and had been up playing from 9:00 until after 10:00. They are already outsmarting us at four; I worry for fourteen.

Saturday night after dinner, I attended the excellent concert of Mikel Rouse's Gravity Radio, a composer I'm starting a project on who writes incredibly interesting and marvelous music. By Sunday's drive home, we were all happy but exhausted, a condition we are only now remedying but happily took upon ourselves because we had such a fantastic time. (and thanks to Jaime for the pictures.)

On Easy Nostalgia

2010-01-30T13:29:00.002-06:00

Every once and a while, you get one of those opportunities like I've had this weekend, to remember former times in a physical, not just mental, manner. It is too easy to romanticize the past, especially when the present is as difficult as it always is, and forget the true lessons of life in favor of easy nostalgia.

This lesson was brought home yesterday while I was having tea with a former grad school colleague. We're both finished with the degree, officially with Dr. before our names, and so spent time catching up on shared friends and experiences. Stories, as they often do, turned to those who didn't make it through school for one reason or another and our own times preparing for comprehensive exams.

I bring this up because I'm drowning in comprehensive exams from the other side at work. We're gearing up for the comps in history and theory that all DMA students take, I'm writing my own comps for student committees I'm on, and I'm also part of a committee re-examining our comps process and making changes. In all the discussion about current and future comps, it is too easy to romanticize my own experience, to talk about all I learned and mastered and conquered without remembering the struggle and long sleepness nights and attempts to connect the process to my ultimate goals. Meeting with my friend was a good reminder that when dealing with students and milestones in their career, easy nostalgia is no substitute for honest appraisal.

Neglectful Parent Sleeping Lesson #1

2010-01-29T12:03:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday night, we had a visioning session at our church that went very late into the night: we finally left at 8:30. Now, 8:30 might not seem all that late to you, but when you have a 4-year-old and an 18-month-old, and the church is 18 minutes away from your house, 8:30 might as well be midnight.

Our neglected children chose not to fall asleep in the car on the way home, even though I put in Sam's "Naima" music. So by the time the kids were asleep it was 9:30, a full hour and a half after bedtime.

Then, a miracle happened. Noah, who usually wakes up around 1:00 or 1:30 and fusses until I bring him to bed with us, slept until 5:30. That's right, he slept through the night. Our neglectful style of parenting worked in our favor! Go us!

Until we realized that we merely reset Noah's body clock so 5:30 is now an acceptable time to wake up - and stay up. *sigh* Maybe if we kept him up until 10:30 tonight he'd sleep until 6:30?

Noah's Words

2010-01-21T12:37:00.003-06:00

For the past month and a half, Joy and I have watched Noah's language begin a slow burn. He picks up a new word every day, chants it at length, and then moves on to the next one. At this point we might as well give him a dictionary to chew on.

What is most adorable about his language learning is that he still speaks in that early toddler drawl. He doesn't quite get what middle and especially ending consonants are for, so we get "baaaa" for ball and for bath and only those attuned to his slight vowel fluctuations can understand him.

That basically means me and Joy.

But I never stopped to consider the downside of Noah learning to speak until last night. In the middle of the night I heard him saying "Mama...mama...mama " over and over again. Worried that something was wrong, I got out of bed and trudged over to his room only to find him sacked out in his crib. That's right, Noah has inherited Joy's tendency to talk in her sleep. It never meant much before now - he just would babble in his sleep. But with words he now wakes me up. So my new plan is to get him saying "Sam" so that his brother will come and take care of him in the middle of the night and I can get some sleep.

Today's Important Lessons from Sam

2010-01-19T20:27:00.002-06:00

Sam is at the funny stage of development. By that, I don't mean his ears are bigger than the rest of his head or anything, but that his imagination is running so wild that he says funny things all the time.

Coming out of Kindermusik today, he turned to Joy and announced that Annemarie, the older sister of his good friend Cole, was going to have a baby in her belly. Joy asked when and why and Sam responded, "We are going to get married, and then she will have a baby in her belly." At least he has the order right, but I'm afraid that, like many men, he's overreaching. Annemarie, while fun to play with, is in Kindergarten while Sam won't even start preschool until the fall.

He's also evidently figured out the purpose of all big red buttons, because he declared "If you push a button that is connected with electricity at the firestation it will start the siren."

He also seems to be internalizing our lessons. He must have heard someone at school mention a bad baby, because lately when Noah does something he doesn't like, he proclaims that "Noah is a bad baby!" We've patiently explained that Noah is not bad, but his actions are and so you should tell him to stop what he's doing that is frustrating you. This afternoon he let out a grunt of anger and yelled "Noah is interrupting my story!" which is Sam code for "not playing the right way." He then started "Noah's..." but stopped, thought, and then finished the sentence, "...actions are bad!"

Yes, he's learning a bit of empathy, which we heard in his final important lesson from today when Sam told us that he had created a friend for the unloved dinosaur. Those poor dinosaurs. At least they have an advocate in Sam.

This is Why I Should Have a Minimalism Class Every Semester

2010-01-13T13:13:00.004-06:00

I need classrooms where I can legitimately share discoveries such as this one:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

We Are at War - Philip Glass

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Economy

And So It Begins

2010-01-12T19:52:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, a good friend at work gave me a piece of chocolate to take home to Sam. I had a late meeting at church, so by the time I arrived home, Sam was already in bed, so the chocolate had to wait for tonight. After supper, Sam sauntered back into the kitchen and asked if he could have any dessert. My memory finally jumped into gear, and I told him that Ms. Laura had sent him a piece of chocolate. He gobbled it down and licked every last bit of chocolate off the wrapping. Then, he turned to Joy and said, "I'm still hungry."

Joy responded, "well, you can have some triskets if you want."

Sam's whine kicked into high gear, "no, I think a piece of candy would be better."

Joy kept her cool and replied, "well, you've already had candy. You could have some yogurt."

Sam's brain processed this information for a bit before he declared, "then ice cream would be best."

I finally asked him if his tummy only wanted dessert and he said yes, going off to find a corner to contemplate the tragedy of his life. I'm surprised we lasted this long, but Sam has finally succumbed to the "dessert is dinner" point of view. I can't say that he'll ever grow out of it. I certainly haven't.

Time to Get Out of the House

2010-01-08T21:31:00.002-06:00

We've been home five days, and I've shoveled snow four of them without completely clearing our driveway. It is so cold that Sam could stand playing in the snow for 10 minutes before demanding hot chocolate and Elmo. My iPod shut down while I was shoveling because music evidently only sounds above 10 degrees. We've watched our two Elmo DVDs so many times that Sam recites them almost verbatim. Every toy from the bottom of the toybox has come out, been played with, and deemed passe. We've actually gone through our bread and milk and needed to buy more.

All this, and you know how I knew today that we've been isolated in our house for too long?

Going to the post office today seemed like the social event of the season, and not just for me. Noah was beside himself he was so enchanted by a room he hadn't seen in days that he stood, staring at it all and wouldn't respond to my voice.

Perhaps it's time to play in the basement. Or the bathroom. There has to be some place in our house we haven't played.

Stuck in the Snow

2010-01-06T11:43:00.003-06:00

While we were away for Christmas in balmy Arkansas, Kansas City got sacked by snow. To give you an idea of how much snow we've gotten (and how strange the amount is), last year the city received 18 inches of snow throughout the entire winter. The amount for the past week and a half since the snow started falling for a White Christmas? 16 inches. And there is 2-4 inches forecast for this afternoon with wind over 30 mphs tonight and tomorrow.

Some of that snow fell on Sunday when we drove home. We were fine until we got to northwest Arkansas, an area of the state that seems to own one snowplow. It was amazing to see that the moment we crossed into southwest Missouri, the roads instantly cleared and we were able to make good time back to Kansas City.

When we arrived, though, our driveway was covered under snow. I bravely (read foolishly) tried to pull on in our garage, but the car got stuck on the snow that snowplows had piled at the foot of our driveway. As the sun sank, I frantically dug the car out and cleared enough of the driveway to get the car in the garage. But I still had to unload the entire car (and all the boy's Christmas presents) before it was light enough to move again.

While the snow is giving us headaches, the boys are loving it. They were thrilled to watch all the snowplows pass our car as we drove up Missouri's spine Sunday afternoon. Sam "helped" me shovel snow Monday morning and both have been begging to get outside (though I think it is a clever plow to then come back in and have hot chocolate). But as much as we're getting tired of being stuck inside or at the base of our driveway, at least we're not stuck in an airport. Though if we were, hopefully we'd be as resourceful (and contagious) as this singer stuck in Newark on Monday:

Christmas Day

2009-12-25T13:47:00.002-06:00

Twas the Night Before the Night Before Christmas

2009-12-24T11:28:00.003-06:00

Last night, after putting the kids to bed and planning our Christmas Eve, we all sat down to watch a movie before turning in. About 20 minutes into the movie, Noah woke up crying, an uncommon occurrence these days. He wouldn't go back to sleep, so Joy and I abandoned the movie and brought him to bed with us.

An hour later, he began to vomit. And not just a little bit, but everything he had eaten, including a McDonald's strawberry shake. As Joy comforted him, I started cleaning up the bed, and the trail into the bathroom, and the bathroom itself, and all Noah's and Joy's clothes (said strawberry milkshake? Majorly stain-inducing.) Joy's sister Shelly was helping get things into the washing machine when she slammed her finger in the sliding door that goes into the laundry room. Joy and I deposited sleepy Noah and bandaged Shelly on the couch to recover for a bit and got Shelly a drink, which she promptly dropped out of her hurt hand onto the tile floor where it shattered, throwing bits of glass all over Sam's train track left out for early morning play. We finally finished cleaning around 1:00 this morning, only to have Noah continue to throw up about every hour until morning.

Needless to say, we're now planning a low key Christmas Eve. Hopefully Santa will bring us some deep sleep and Shout stain remover for Christmas.

On Video Games

2009-12-22T10:53:00.003-06:00

Last night the grandparents took the grandkids to Chuck E. Cheese and the parents got to tag along. The pizza was as bad as you'd expect (really, does even pizza sauce need to be sugared so kids will gobble it down?) The building was so overstimulating that you needed to step outside just to avoid a seizure. And the kids were in heaven.

At one end of Chuck E. Cheese was a stage full of animatronic anthropomorphic creatures all playing instruments and singing "Feliz Navidad" and "The Dreidel Song" and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas." Noah and Ana, our neice, were entranced and watched and danced for most of the night.

Sam? He couldn't care less about dancing animals. Not when there were video games to play. Last year when we took Sam, he thought the moving trains and cars like those outside grocery stores were the best thing in the world. This year, he wanted to try every single video game that you drove or flew. So we drove big rigs, batmobile-like off road vehicles, race cars, wave jumpers, fighter planes, and even go carts. Most of these games moved so much they had seat belts, and Sam was in heaven. I operated the pedals while he steered and once he discovered that most of the rides had turbo buttons, we never went below 150 mph and never missed an opportunity to crash into other cars.

Noah, who wants to be like Sam in everything, tried the snow mobile game with Joy driving him, but one seat vibration and he was done. That was fine with Joy, who was getting motion sick from the games, but it won't be long until I'm hoping from game to game with two little boys who want to drive. I see many sugar-laden pizzas in my near future.

Sam Loves His Alphabet

2009-12-21T15:42:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, as we drove to visit grandparents, the boys were being restless so I decided to engage Sam in the alphabet game. We started spotting letters on signs, finding A and then B. When I mentioned we needed to start looking for C, Sam declared from the back seat, "C is my favorite letter!"

We had never heard this before, so I innocently asked, "Why is C your favorite letter?"

Sam paid me no attention and continued, "And T. T is also my favorite letter. Oh, and R too. My favorite letters are C, T, and R."

Completely flummoxed, I asked again, "why are those your favorite letters?"

With more than a hint of incredulity in his voice, Sam responded, "Because all my favorite things start with those letters - Cars, Trains, and Railroads!"

Of course. How could I have been so silly.

Fourth Sunday in Advent - Love

2009-12-20T22:40:00.000-06:00