Trombone Joke

So, good folks when you are a trombone player, your friends bombard you with all kinds of abuse, jokes and general snide comments denegrating a beautiful instrument. Here's the latest:

A musician went on vacation "to the islands, mon." When he got off the boat, he heard the drummers playing an island rhythm. He found it fascinating. However, after several hours, the sound of the drums became an annoyance, so at dinner, he asked the waiter, "when will the drums stop?"

The waiter went pale and stammered, "No. No. Drums not stop. Very bad when the drums stop."

After tossing and turning through the night, he called the front desk at 2 a.m. to ask when the drums would stop. "No. No. Drums not stop. Very bad when drums stop.", came the reply.

After a sleepless night, he was waiting at the front desk for the manager. He asked again, "When do the drums stop?"

Again came the reply, "No. No. Drums not stop. Very bad when drums stop."

Grabbing the manager by his shirt, the man screamed, "What happens that's so bad when the drums stop?!"

The manager winced and replied, "trombone solo."

Updates Coming

Sorry that I have been remiss in keeping my blog updates. It is already busy at work! I'll have some pics and updates this weekend. Promise!

The First Week of School

The first day of school is always an exciting day for parents, students and teachers. Parents can breathe again because the kids are out of the house during the day. Kids get to see old friends and make new ones, while of course showing off the new clothes, shoes, mp3 players and cell phones! And of course for teachers it's a return to doing what they love; why else would you work in a job that you are under paid in, yet demands constant updates to your education?

But enough of that for now! Opening day at my high school was busy but fun. I saw a lot of smiling faces and that is always a good sign. This was my 26th opening day and I must say it was the smoothest yet.

In fact the whole week went pretty well. We have some new internet technology designed to allow kids and parents to access their grades in realtime online; that launched well. Now the trick is for teachers to keep their grades up to date. Each class can now create a web page easier than ever, but there were some glitches with students accessing mine this week. I'll work with our IT department this week to fix this.

My performing groups are shaping up to be very good this year. Jazz band has plenty of returning players plus some strong new players. I do need a third trumpet but I have a five-sax front, four trombones and a full rhythm section, so it is almost a full big band. I'm still working hard on recruiting that trumpet. There are some players available.

I split my small choir into two parts, keeping the advanced kids in a group called Chorale. They will perform a wide variety of music this year, including barbershop quarter, swing choir, and English madrigal. Great voices in that group.

The younger group has potential but I will give these freshmen a year in high school choir to work on technique and music reading skills before introducing them to senior high school vocal music. There is plenty of talent in this group and I am pleased.

The funniest thing that happened this week was a problem a transfer student from Clark County Nevada had on his first day. He was caught smoking cigarettes on campus and was suspended immediately for the max, 9 days. Our school has a zero tolerance policy toward tobacco, alcohol and drugs. The student's parents stormed into the principal's office demanding to know why there wasn't a smokers lounge at our school. There was one in his former high school in Las Vegas.

The principal let them rant and then quietly pulled up state and federal law regarding smoking in a public educational institution and the law regarding underage smoking. He never said a word other than handing them copies of the law. Both parents huffed out of the school. Presumably back to their old school.

Oxtail Soup

I was watching The Neely's today on Food Network and saw that they were preparing an oxtail stew. Boy did that bring back some memories! My mom, always looking to provide a meal on a very tight budget, about once a month made a great oxtail soup. The meat was very cheap to buy and made a great compliment to a tomato based soup with garden vegetables. I don't know if she roasted the bones first or just cooked it with the stock. I'm going to do a little investigation and experiment with this soup at home first. What do oxtails taste like? My recollection that they had a beefy taste but they could be a little fatty. Maybe someone out in blogworld knows about this soup!  

Teacher Report Day

Even though I have been at work all week helping with the marching band today is the first day teachers report. There was a gala breakfast this morning and a big celebration in the district auditorium for returning and new teachers. I look around at all the young faces and shake my head. I've been teaching here 19 years. So many faces have come and gone.
Students report on Tuesday and it's always exciting to see the kids agai after the summer break. Always love to hear their stories summer trips and adventures. That's another thing that makes teaching so fun!
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Hoarding Paper

I confess; I am a terrible packrat, especially when it comes to documents. I save every receipt for as long as I possibly can and I don't know why. Okay. case in point: Monday my wife bought a new comforter for our bed. It was time. But that left a storage issue because she wanted to have the old one dry cleaned and stored. The only place to store it is in our master bedroom closet, but on the highest shelf I had all these old file boxes. They were receipts and tax returns and records dating back to 1984, when we were married. Would I please remove those boxes so that the old comforter and pillows can be stored there?

Dutifully I brought the boxes down and start pouring through them. Walgreens receipts, cancelled checks, bank statements, tax returns, W-2 statements, charitable donations, worksheets, Quicken reports, registers, medical bills, you name it all dating back before our son was born to a period up to ten years ago. Organized, yes. Unnecessary, absolutely!

I looked through everything and even called my tax advisor, who told me I would be safe pitching tax returns more than ten years old. So, I brought out the shredder last night and started shredding. OMG I cannot believe how much paper I had up there! I've filled ten 30 gallon bags of shredded paper to this point and still have two boxes of cancelled checks to dispose of tomorrow after school. It was fascinating to travel back in time to see how truly far we have come financially, but still I'd rather have my feet up watching a game.

A dear friend tonight told me about a product called Neat Desk, a scanner with software to electronically store all this stuff on a harddrive. It eliminates the paper, which is safer from a fire hazard stand point, and the information can be imported in Excel files, Quicken documents (I use Quicken for personal finances), and Outlook. It's available at the office supply stores so I will definitely entertain picking this up.

Summer Of Gun Violence

Last night, July 26th, nine people were shot at a bus terminus at 79th and Western in Chicago.  This savage episode marks yet another sad chapter that is unfolding in my birth city, a town I still love and call home, even though I moved away to Tucson in 1987. We had judged it as unsuitable to raise a child then and nothing has changed our minds since.

 

I was born in Chicago and saw my share of butchery on the streets as a kid. When our son was born in 1986 we just felt that things were only going to get worse and not better. We had the werewithal to get out, and we did. It broke my heart to leave because I love all things Chicago; the food, the attractions, the neighborhoods, and its sports teams. So this current wave of gun violence feels so tragic to us.

 

Last night's incident is one in a string of shootings have become the norm in Chicago. Thank God no one was killed, but in recent weeks three Chicago police officers have been killed. Most of the violence is gang-related but bullets know no gang members when shots are indiscriminately fired in the streets. Most often the ones who are hit have nothing to do with the gang feud.

 

What scares me most is that I have a good friend who is a beat cop in the Southside neighborhoods most afflicted with the violence. I worry about her every day.The police commissioner, Jody Weis, has mandated that every cop in the department do some street time to supplement the patrol force, but all this seems to have done is to raise bad feelings within the department. We've heard all kinds of crazy solutions, including putting National Guard troops on patrol. They are untrained in urban police work and would simply be moving targets.

 

Calls for stricter gun control are irrelevant. Chicago has one of the toughest gun laws in the nation. It is nearly impossible to register a gun there. The shooters don't use legally owned guns. It's the people in the communities who need to become vigilent, reporting suspicious activity and standing up to the gang activity by working with the police.  Additionally, folks have to get their kids off the street at a reasonable hour and keep them home and out of arms way. Until the people themselves take ownership of their neighborhoods the shootings will only escalate.