02.16.07
Posted in Singing at 1:55 pm by Christina
The audition results for my community chorus came out yesterday morning; in fact, they came right to my mailbox, because the director is on a trip to Germany for a few weeks and we arranged to have him email the results to me, and I would post them on Chessmetrics for everyone to have access to.
I am in three pieces – but more importantly to me, BOTH of the pieces I coordinated were picked!! That’s a milestone I’ve been waiting for; actually managing a piece takes extra skill, both in the selection of a good piece and in the direction of the group of singers. Of course, I manage in a very democratic way, but in the end someone has to be the final authority and that’s the organizer.
Our concerts are on March 30-31 and April 1, and the program is Broadway and Pops (popular music). I organized an eight-person SATB group doing the ragtime piece Handful of Keys from Ain’t Misbehavin’ (by Fats Waller). I also mostly organized a duet (there’s a lot less organizing with just two people), doing the James Taylor/Carly Simon version of Mockingbird. Finally, I will be in a nine-person SAB group doing Put on a Happy Face from Bye Bye Birdie.
Since I am pretty computer-literate, I used a free trial of PrintMusic 2007 (by Finale) to actually do a scanning recognition process on my music. (I bought a paid version after the 30 day trial was done.) Although the recognition process definitely requires clean-up, it enabled me to make rehearsal CDs for my groups which everyone appreciated and which I think really made for great groups. Once I had the music cleaned up, I could record a variety of tracks: practice tracks for each individual part (with the other parts turned off, since they were on different staves); a group practice track with just the piano part; and tracks at different tempos for learning and performance. I figured out how to change the tempo for different sections (for Handful of Keys) and then made new CDs for that group with the final performance accompaniment.
For Mockingbird, I needed to transpose the music down because Bill is not a tenor but a baritone; fortunately I’m a second alto so lower was fine for me! Once we picked our key I had to adapt the music in a few places, building the instrumental bridge in the middle (8 bars for guitar, 8 for piano) and making a new ending with more emphasis on the singers (the original ending said “instrumental fade” which is okay for a recording artist!). I also transposed Don’t Rain on My Parade (from Funny Girl) which I auditioned as a solo piece, for practice!
I’m disappointed that Chattanooga Choo Choo didn’t get in. I was more part of the management committee on that piece, and I did CDs for it as well (it was nine-person SSA). We really had the piece nailed, with one exception; there was a naked harmony part that never sounded consistently good, sometimes it was shrill and unfortunately it was a bit shrill in audition. But I think the real killer for that group is blend; there are two voices that have a hard time blending and I think that is an automatic knockout for the director.
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02.12.07
Posted in Commentary at 11:38 am by Christina
Common Dreams has an opinion article up now called California Split by Gar Alperovitz. As you know, our governor here is an interesting fella by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He ran in a recall election (in my opinion a totally unethical one) against the Democratic governor, so he had a lot of Republican support. However, he’s moderate enough to have married a liberal wife (Maria Shriver of the Kennedy clan). Nowadays, Schwarzenegger is pushing a lot of more liberal issues, like global warming adjustments, universal health care, and so forth. I suppose he is identifiable as a social liberal and a fiscal/governmental conservative.
What is interesting about Schwarzenegger’s activities in Sacramento is how he is moving for action on items more traditionally served by Congress and the President. For example, on global warming he has met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair – and more than met with him, they actually signed “an accord” on global warming. Many states are actively taking stands on traditionally national issues: Massachusetts passed a fairly functional universal health care law; Utah (and other states) are in suit against Washington D.C. over the education law “No Child Left Behind”, and Utah recently passed a statewide voucher law. I’m sure there are numerous other examples of this type of state action.
This type of policy-making represents a resurgence of traditional American federalism. Federalism is defined as the division of responsibilities between local government and national government. Although the founders all believed in varying degrees of federalism, they documented a system of government that held a pretty strong federal line. And at least as early as Andrew Jackson, federalism has been subjected to a series of hits that have diminished state authority. (Jackson struck over a national bank.)
I actually hold a pretty strong federalist stance myself, though no one would call me a conservative. (This is how most federalists are characterized these days – see The Federalist Society, which has come to notoriety as ostensibly fomenting a conspiracy to pack the courts; their stated purpose is to reform the judicial system against “activist judges” and they self-define as conservative and libertarian.) For example, within historical federalism, I believe very firmly that the southern states had the right to dissolve their federalist treaty with the central government in Washington D.C. In modern times, I think the states have far too many rights taken away from them, pulled into the central government, in areas like education and bioethics. The national government is working now to eliminate the right of states to have stricter regulations in areas like food safety, arguing that whatever standard the Congress and the President set are the standards the entire country must follow. If Congress or the USDA say that irradiation or genetic modification can be used in “organic” foods, no state can make a more stringent regulation that says “nuh-uh!”
In federalism, the national government holds the right to set minimum standards only, such standards applying to the entire nation. The areas where the national government is allowed to set these standards are defined by the Constitution and its ratified amendments. For example, Washington clearly has the authority to set policy on voting rights; that authority is scattered throughout the Constitution, as well as in the 4+ amendments on the issue (voting rights for blacks, women, 18+, and the abolishment of the poll tax).
Before the early 20th century the generally held belief regarding the Constitution and its amendments was that they applied only to the national government itself. This meant, for example, that the national government could not abridge the right to free speech – but that (supposedly) the states could if they felt like it. Personally, that makes no sense at all to me, and I had that belief reinforced by much reading back when constitutional law and federalism was something that I was actively studying (in grad school at SFSU). In any event, the Supreme Court, through a series of rulings from I think 1920 or so forward, decided that the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment meant that the various civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution upon the national government were guaranteed upon the state governments as well. If memory plus research serves, this was called “incorporation”; here are a few of the cases where incorporation of civil rights was placed upon the states:
Freedom of speech (1st Amendment): Gitlow v. New York, 1925
Freedom of press (1st Am.): Near v. Minnesota, 1931
Freedom of assembly/association (1st Am.): Dejonge v. Oregon, 1937
“California Split” argues that adjustments to our over-centralized system are inevitable, that the behemoth nature of the United States is generating the multiple federalist actions by various states as I outlined above, and that such actions will only increase. The diversity of geography and demography in the nation is too vast for the degree of central power we’ve achieved to maintained much longer. Interestingly, this is the same process that has occurred to empires throughout history; their boundaries increase to encompass multiple regions and cultures, eventually a tipping point of diversity is reached, and the empire devolves into its constituent parts.
The United States has been reasonably content within its borders. Post-WW2 the U.S. flexed its power primarily in non-geographic ways; that is, it never sought long-term occupation and ownership of external territory. However, even though the U.S. is a single nation, it contains within its borders enough diversity to qualify as an empire without external territory! We have so many resources within our borders that we have built an empire within, where other nations (e.g. Britain, France) had to expand beyond. Our occupation of Iraq seems to be bringing us to the tipping point, both in the level of dissent from the national policy promoting the occupation (Viet Nam had dissenters, but they were a vocal minority; the dissenters on Iraq are a majority by most polls, although less vocal), and in the degree of distraction it brings from pressing national issues like education and global warming.
I wonder if the Federalist Society knows that one can be a federalist AND a liberal? When Katie was born, I was three credits shy of my masters in women’s studies at SFSU; I still am, but I think about contacting them for information about what work I would need to do to gain that degree, or perhaps transfer into the political science department where most of my non-WS credits were taken. When Katie was 6m or so, I sat for the LSAT (law school entrance exam), and I applied that fall to various bay area schools. I was accepted at UC Hastings (which is just a law school, no undergraduate programs) and wait-listed at UC Berkeley. This is still the area where my strongest academic interests are – constitutional law and history – and I suspect I will eventually get back on that path. I have to stop having kids first, so I’ll have an idea of what the timing will be like!
(ASIDE: It’s a significant peeve of mine that most people don’t understand this system, even though it is very important to our daily lives. I actually think that the government in Washington should no longer be called “the federal government”, and instead be called “the national government”, just to drive the point home. I wonder if “federal” as an adjective describing the central government of a federal system came about through misuse…)
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02.09.07
Posted in Books, Kids, Parenting at 10:04 am by Christina
Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know about Sex (but Were Afraid They’d Ask)
by Justin Richardson, M.D. and Mark A. Schuster, M.D., Ph.D.
Crown Publishers, 2003
Without giving away too many secrets, I’ll say that I have a daughter barreling headlong into puberty (she’s 11). And while Jeff and I have always had a very calm and straightforward attitude towards kids and sexuality, a little bit of background support never hurts. While doing some virtual browsing at the library for puberty books aimed at Katie, I came across this book, subtitled “The Secrets to Surviving Your Child’s Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens”. I found it very supportive and informative from my own parenting perspective, and I think it would be a great book for all but the most firm “abstinence only” parents.
This book really means it when it says “everything”. From seeing an unborn son’s erection on an ultrasound, through dealing with a child’s unplanned pregnancy, all aspects of a child’s sexual development are covered. There is a frank discussion of childhood sex play, for example, including how to deal with it when you discover it, how to both protect the children’s developing sexuality (no shame!) and teach them about healthy sexual boundaries, AND how to relate to the other child’s parents on the subject. The section on preventing sexual abuse dovetails with the prevalent attitudes in other books (including Protecting the Gift by the author of The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker – I strongly recommend both books). And the latter parts of the book – covering a sexually active child, sexual diseases, and an unplanned pregnancy – while no doubt challenging to many parents, handle these difficult topics very well.
The authors sprinkle a good dose of science throughout the book, citing statistics and studies that lead to their recommendations in various areas. All the topics are also flavored with quotes from parents and a nice sense of humor on the part of the authors.
To my brother-in-law in particular, who has blogged his dread of this topic in his almost-three-year-old daughter, I say, “This is the book for you!” In my opinion, it’s the book for all parents. Find it at your library and see for yourself.
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To clarify the sex principles of my family – to give you enough data to inform your understanding of this review – I offer the following points:
* We do not have negative feelings about premarital sex of any kind, and enjoyed it ourselves. We do believe in reserving sex for committed, monogamous relationships, but have been exposed to enough alternative families to understand that other adults feel comfortable in different types of relationships (polyamory, etc.). We also have no negative feelings about homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender, etc., and accept these as natural (albeit minority) manifestations of human sexuality.
* We would qualify as rather immodest about nudity and the human body; though we generally wear clothes, we are comfortably naked in and around the house when nakedness applies, i.e. bathtime, bedtime, heading out to the hottub, when the clothes we need are downstairs in the dryer…
* We sleep with our children and always have. Our 11yo requested and received a private bedroom in the last year, but she rarely sleeps in it; it’s for solitude and privacy at other times.
* We don’t hide things of a sexual nature from our kids; many things about the human body that are quite mysterious to mainstream children – childbirth, menstruation, breastfeeding – our kids have been fully exposed to in the normal course of our lives. In addition, our adult sex life, while private, takes place in and around the beds where we cosleep with our kids. When we are sexually active in that space, we of course have a heightened awareness of the presence of the kids, and respond appropriately to protect the intimacy of our adult relationship. However, the veil between children and private adult sexual relationships is a very recent invention (Victorian) and we don’t believe it harms our children to have a peripheral awareness of their parents’ sexual relationship.
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02.06.07
Posted in Kids at 12:00 pm by Christina
Jeff asked me a couple of days ago if I’d noticed that we’d passed February 1, 2007 – which I hadn’t. That date was the one-year anniversary of our discovery of Jamie’s “failure to thrive” and all that meant for our family. It was a crazy year of pumping, bottles, and doctor’s visits; I think Jamie had more trips to the pediatrician in his first year than either of the girls have had in their entire life. I don’t pump any more, and I’ve figured out how to deal with the paraphernalia of bottles. But the less obvious adjustments aren’t complete, and frankly, may never be.
For example, this is the first year (I think) since Jeff and I graduated that I haven’t gotten a holiday letter of some sort out to friends and family (so we’re talking since 1991). I just can’t find the words I need to share about the challenges of 2006; and I’ve always viewed the letter as a sincere communication about our family, so if hard things happened then I want to speak of those hard things. The 2006 edition of our letter will go out at some time, but I’m not sure when.
Still, as I watched Jamie this morning while everyone else was still in bed, I realized that all of our efforts during 2006 have brought us to this place NOW. And so it was all worth it, and I will do the work I need to do to recover my spirit from the challenges. Jamie is 16 months old now, and he is strong and happy. Just over the last couple of days, I have been migrating him out of a lot of the 18m clothes and into the 24m/2y bin. He always outgrows the onesies and such first, so I figure his torso is the larger part of his proportion, at least for now.
He definitely gets sick more often than the girls ever did, which is a combination of factors I’m sure, but impacted by the lack of immunity-supporting breastmilk in his life. He still gets most of his nutrition from his bottles (goat’s milk); he does eat a variety of whole foods, but not in a significant quantity yet. So it’s on my list to research and choose at least vitamin supplements for him, possibly some herbal support as well, in order to compensate somewhat for the lack of breastmilk. I guess I figured he’d transition more quickly into whole foods and be getting what he needed from that. Instead, he seems to be making up for the nursing challenges with a longer stretch primarily on milk. I don’t plan on weaning him from the bottle any more than I would have from the breast, but I need to make sure I’m safeguarding his health to the best of my ability.
The physiological factors that contributed to his inability to breastfeed seem to be continuing, at least somewhat. His linguistic abilities are lacking in the sounds /g/ and /k/ (that’s the hard G), both of which involve the back of the tongue (although Jeff says he’s heard each of them a couple of times). He is also an extremely leaky bottle-nurser, from the corners of his mouth, so he’s not getting a solid seal; where I used breast pads with the girls to keep me from leaking through, with Jamie I need to use burp cloths when I feed him to prevent shirt-spots. I take care of most of his feedings, and we have a nice routine for naptime and bedtime with the rocking chair and fuzzy blanket in our bedroom (our beautiful, new, LARGE bedroom that actually has room for a rocking chair!). He still wakes up a lot during the night to nurse, and I’ve just started the transition process off of nighttime nursing as I did with the girls – soothing back to sleep for the first wake and then milk after that, with the idea being that the first wake gets later and later in the night.
Jamie is very cooperative with brushing his teeth, which I do primarily in the high chair; this is important to the whole picture of long-term nursing, especially with the genetic predisposition to dental problems as seen in Jeff, Katie and Emma. His teeth look great, and he’s got all of them now – 16!
Because I anticipate speech challenges associated with his oral physiology, I’ve been much more active with sign language with Jamie than I was with the girls. We started it with both of them, but their language development was early and strong and we never really needed it much. Some of Jamie’s signs:
People: Mommy, Daddy, Katie (he can say Emma), Cissa, Papa, Poopop (still working on Meemom)
Other: water, moon, vacuum, up, down, bath, ball, yes, no, love, music, finished/all done, more/again (these are two different signs and he is starting to distinguish between them as an adjective and an adverb, which is neat!)
We are starting to introduce more specific food signs, although until his diet picks up we can’t do too much on that front. You may think that not too many babies would bother with a sign for vacuum, but it is one of Jamie’s favorite things, to watch and to play with (he’s much more able to watch now when others are using it), and it was one of his very first signs.
Jamie is very physical, which we were anticipating because of the biological tie between males and gross motor preference. He was an expert walker by ten months, and soon after his birthday he could already balance on one leg to kick a ball! At this point he is very strongly left-handed (and left-footed). He climbs – stairs, chairs, drawers, tables… – with ease and he loves to jump. He is also very happy with prolonged quiet activities, like reading books together and experimenting with water in the bathtub. (He doesn’t care for a face full of water so he almost never splashes in the tub. He also prefers to spend the entire bath standing up.)
All in all, our baby is thriving in his adjusted life, and we all love to have him with us.
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Posted in Life in general at 11:15 am by Christina
Well, at least those days don’t happen very often!! Jeff apparently did NOT value his skin, but luckily for him he has a forgiving partner. Jamie’s health continued to deteriorate, so that now, a week later, he still has a bad cold; but he is definitely over the peak of it. (I’d call the peak the two days and nights were he couldn’t nurse the bottle and breathe simultaneously…) After being exposed to at least a dozen sick people over the past weeks of ensemble rehearsals – because no one wants to miss a rehearsal because they’re sick, even if they don’t sing – Jamie’s cold tipped the immunity scales and now I’m sick as well. I’m babying my throat with lots of warmth inside and out; and after tonight, when I’ll be one of those sick people at a rehearsal, I’m not singing again until Saturday. I decided to scrap my solo audition (Don’t Rain on My Parade from Funny Girl). It certainly wouldn’t get chosen; I was doing it for the solo performance experience. (The director doesn’t care much for the timbre of my voice; the only category of music I have a shot in is folk.)
Other things are settling into place. The homeschooling routine is back in gear after the chaos that started with our house selling in August and went through the girls’ figure skating trip last week. Thank goodness for the realities of unschooling! Even when we aren’t doing any formal academics I know the girls are learning so much. And Jamie… well, I logged in to write a post about him, and decided that I should update the sour note I left on the blog – so I’ll give him a post all to himself.
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