Cento Cento Cento!

This was a Language Arts project in which I had to write a poem by combining lines from other poems.

Once upon a midnight dreary,
After nightfall he set out:
Down to a sunless sea
For he heard the loud bassoon.

The tide rises, the tide falls.
Not an instant stopped nor stayed he!
For ox and ass before him bowed,
Lying at impossible distances.

He gives his harness bells a shake—
Sweet is death forevermore.

Double points if you can guess which poems I used!

The “Facebook Face”

my mother needed a photo for her avatar on various websites. also, i had found that the only pictures i had of her were these really hideous ones from when i was thirteen. and if, god forbid, she should die, i would have to put the ugly picture on the funeral program. not to mention that i wouldn’t have anything to remember her by.

sooo we did a little photo shoot!

pensive mother.

“just what do you think you’re up to, young lady?” mother. she was not actually saying this but by jove that is what she was thinking. trust me.

um. the facebook face! is somehow not so hilarious on your mother.

jk lol!

Why You Should Not Let a 12 year Old Boy Have Free Reign With a Digital Camera

or, “Whose Eyeball is This?”

Ben had a photography class a few years ago at co-op, and our camera card has never been the same since. He delights in finding the strange and unusual and artsy photos you’re about to see. <relatively mild sarcasm for Olivia> His motto is, “Why make it simple when you can use settings?” I personally am more in the “There is a reason God had someone invent the ‘automatic’ setting” school of thought.

He takes hours setting up a shot.

“OK, now let’s try indoor portrait with children and fireworks blah blah megapixel blah blah blah more to the left blah blah blah awesome.” is a typical example of Ben’s photography. That is why when I needed a portrait of myself for the Pray for Taize bookmark Mom did it. He also has this annoying habit of putting the camera on video and then forgetting about it so we have numerous videos of Dad’s voice trying to figure out what’s going on and why he isn’t getting a picture.

So here’s Ben’s first ever public appearance as an artsy photographer. World, get ready.

This is a relatively nice shot of our pew at church.

This is a Campbell’s Soup Label Official Deposit Box. Speaking of which, The Campbells Are Coming is one of the only songs I can still play on the piano anymore.

The Campbells are coming ho ho, ho ho, the Campbells are coming ho ho, ho ho, to bonnie Loch Levin, ho ho….

This is an absolutely horrible shot of the audience/Dad’s chin/a wall taken at my last orchestra concert.

Yes Ben, seeing a photo of the auditorium wall and people I don’t know really brings back the fond memories.

Ben climbed a tree, with the camera, and took this attractive shot of himself acting like a goofball.

This is a shot taken at the same time, of the view from the tree of the swingset. Notice Ben’s foot. REAL ARTISTS use their feet.

It’s artist’s code.

Speaking of which, has anyone seen those t-shirts that say, “Real Men Play the Marimba”? I always thought those were cool.

This is the namesake of the subheader, because after I found this on the camera I spent a lot of time figuring out who I knew with brown eyes that would allow Ben to take a picture of them. Ben of course has taken many pictures of his own eyeballs, but our entire family has blue eyes. (although some people wrongly insist that mine are green, but that’s another post.)

The eye belongs to Jonathon.

I think those last few pictures speak for themselves.

Plus, I canoed a lot today, and I have to go to a “Service of Blessing” tomorrow, so I don’t feel like writing about them.

Sit vis vobiscum!

Music Musings

You know you’re a music geek when:

• Your stand partner tells you he plays the psaltery. You say, “plucked or bowed?”.

 

• You spend valuable time arguing essentially worthless points, such as where to shift, whether to use a fourth finger or an open in measure 135, and the merits of French bow versus German bow…

 

• …and you enjoy it.

 

• You know which composer was the bridge between the Classical and Romantic Eras

 

• And you know the distinct differences in style between those eras and the Baroque Era, as well as which came first.

 

• No matter how sensitive and mature of a musician you pretend to be, you know, deep in your heart, that faster is more fun.

 

• You own your own soprano sax.

 

• You can play the harp

 

• You regularly ask and answer questions such as “do you have perfect pitch?” and “do you have a guitar pick?”

 

• You know all the verses and the violin riff to “Braes of Killiecrankie“, despite not being Scottish and therefore not having any idea what the words actually mean.

 

• When you’re bored, you practice.

 

• You know that in beginner books, they call the William Tell Overture “Go Tell Bill”, and this bothers you deeply.

 

• You know La Folia by heart, even though it’s the most boring repetitive song that ever was, and you know who it was written by and which number sonata it is.

 

• Speaking of violin sonatas, you know the difference between Handel’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth, and you will never admit that yes, they all sound sort of alike.

 

• Your high school ambition is to learn “The Devil’s Trill”.

 

• You can transpose by sight and yet you are NOT a French Horn player

 

• Rachmaninoff and Rimsky-Korsakov? Similar names, yet totally different.

 

• REAL orchestras tune to an oboe.

 

• You find Fiocco Allegro “fun”.

 

• You LOVE the Bach Double.

 

• You can tell viola jokes.

 

• When you screw up, you become mildly obsessed and play the offending section 50 times a day until it’s perfect.

 

• You feel that the portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus was disappointing.

 

• You actually watched Amadeus?

 

• You can sing Psalm 133 in Hebrew at the age of 12

 

• Bedrich Smetana: good or bad?

 

• Pachabel’s Canon? Three violins, one cello, a piano if you’re feeling reckless. That’s it.

 

• You’re sitting with twenty other people just like you; all holding small wooden boxes in the same manner; all watching a middle-aged guy wave a stick; all looking at a page full of little black dots with tails; and you all know exactly what to do. Enough said.

 

I am actually guilty of an astonishing number of these.