When I grow up, I want to play in an orchestra!!!

I love my life. I'm spending the week in Bar Harbor, Maine (pronounced "Bah Haba") at the College of the Atlantic. I'm here for "Bar Harbor Brass Week," which is easily the best, most well organized, most fun, most musically fulfilling summer festival I've ever been to. And that includes Sarasota and Tanglewood. The people are awesome, the faculty are amazing, and here's the real clincher for the title of "best summer festival": The food is awesome. I've never really enjoyed cafeteria food, and summer festival food tends to be the worst of the worst. But this is like eating at a restaurant for every meal, truly looking forward to what is going to be next. We had real Maine lobster last night! MMMMMM. We had Adam Unsworth give us a tutorial on how to rip the claws and tail off. Rather primal, but pretty hilarious.

The other college participants are great: dedicated, fun, intelligent people who love what they do and want to excel. And now I'm going to name drop: the faculty can't be beat: members of the National Symphony (Steve Dumaine, principal tuba), the Philadelphia Orchestra (Matt Vaughn, trombone; Adam Unsworth, horn; and Blair Bollinger, bass trombone), and the new principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony, Chris Martin. The Extension Ensemble, an out-there brass quintet from New York is here, mostly to teach the high school branch of the camp. But they add an interesting dimension to the faculty because they have mostly decided NOT to become orchestral players.

I love what I do. I am so privelidged to be able to go to beautiful places, meet wonderful people, and spend whole days doing what I love: playing. It is days like today that I am completely overwhelmed with my successes, and humbled by whatever divine intervention brought me such luck. I only hope that the rest of you get the opportunity to feel this way sometime, because it is amazing.

De la Terra.

I've been helping out my friend D on his organic farm lately. Hell, I'm unemployed and I have a master's degree in music. Why the hell not? It's fun to play in the dirt, especially when it means you can make someone buy you beer for the rest of the summer. So far I've done useful things like picking asparagus and fava beans, tying up tomatoes, weeding pepper plants, and cultivating potatoes.

All of this gardening has really given me a new perpective of the grocery store. Do you ever stop to look around you? See those mountains of apples, and all that lettuce over in the corner? Check out the hundreds of bags of carrots and celery, not to mention the potatoes, onions, and other root veggies. A grocery store is one of the most amazing places to witness American consumerism at it's "best." All those choices! But have you ever stopped to think that every single fruit or vegetable came from the ground or off of a tree? Have you ever stopped to think about all of the manpower it takes to plant, grow, and harvest all of that produce?

You might not have stopped to think about whether that apple came from a local farmer, Florida, or Brazil, or who might have picked it, or if that individual was paid more than $1/day. You might be living in a pleasant state of denial thinking that the pesticides that are on that fruit are actually going to wash off with a little bit of water from the tap. And maybe it never occured to you that those pesticides aren't only going on the fruit: they're polluting the air we breathe. They're seeping into your ground water. And they're probably planting the seeds of diseases like cancer and Parkinsons inside your body that you might not know about for YEARS. "But it keeps bugs off the fruit!" you say. Well, maybe I'm crazy, but I'd rather eat a bug than ingest the stuff that kills bugs. Ever stop to wonder what it is about that chemical that kills bugs, and why exactly it isn't harmful to humans, too?

Money is power, and ever time that you spend money, you are wielding power. Yes, organic, locally grown produce is more expensive. But at what cost? What are you supporting by buying pesticide laden bananas picked by farm laborers who aren't paid a living wage? Is paying 75 cents a pound for bananas really so much? For those who can afford it, and even those who can't who feel it is an important way to spend what money you have, I am speaking to you. We can't all be organic farmers, but we can all put our money where our mouth is. Buying organic, local produce might seem insignificant, but it's not. Change begins at home, and after all, you are what you eat.

Tell me how you really feel... or at least post it on your bumper.

I have finally entered the real world. At the age of (nearly) 25, I have become a true American. I bought a car. And I think it's about darn time. While the expense of owning a vehicle is worrisome, as is the environmental impact, the freedom that it affords me is long awaited, and much anticipated.

I love my car. It's a white 2003 Dodge Neon, with a manual transmission. The manual transmission is a major point of pride with me. I know that it's not really practical for the increasing amount of city driving that I'll be doing over the next year or so. And you know what? I don't care. It's so incredibly satisfying to feel the clutch engage between 4th and 5th gear. And another bonus: not everyone can drive stick, those wussies, so they can't borrow my car. Seriously, sidebar rant here: Learn to drive. Learn to really drive, people. It's not hard, and it gives you the power of knowing that you can drive anything, including a tractor. I know, you're thinking, "When am I going to have opportunity to drive a tractor?" But it's happened to me three times in my life, and believe me, it was a much easier ordeal since I knew the concept of shifting gears. Not only that, it's way easier/cheaper to repair, and studies have shown that those who drive manual transmission vehicles are much less likely to get into accidents. (Probably because they are actually paying attention to their cars instead of checking their email, reading the morning paper, and doing their makeup simultaneously.)

But I digress. Enough about why everyone should at least be able to drive a manual transmission. This is about my car: The Wonder Car.

I realized today that since I now own a car, I have a whole new place to display my views for the world. (As if my loud mouth and my blog weren't enough, right?) Ladies and gentlemen, I now have a BUMPER.

So tonight I have spent a good deal of time looking at the website of Northern Sun, the best and most comprehensive place for liberal merchandise, be it mugs, bumperstickers, buttons, or t-shirts. Now, I have a pretty strict idea of what kinds of bumperstickers I would consider affixing to *ahem* MY car. I will not post any pictures of George Bush. I can't put anything on that has super tiny font because I don't want to encourage people to tailgate while they're reading 'em. I am staying away from the hateful stuff, and I'm trying to keep it polite enough that people who disagree aren't inclined to rear end me or engage in any sort of road rage activities. I like to at least attempt humor, though I learned long ago that some people just don't HAVE a sense of humor. I also want to try to convey a positive message. In other words, though it caused quite a bit of debate on this blog a few months ago, "Who Would Jesus Bomb" is not in the running. While it might raise an interesting question, it tends toward the negative side, and I don't want to condemn Christians.

So here are the contenders. Please vote on your favorites, and submit them in the comments area, please.

We don't want a bigger piece of pie. We want a different pie.
Freedom of Speech is the Freedom to Disagree.
No you can't have my rights. I'm still using them.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. -Thomas Jefferson
The Arts are not a luxury.
CHOICE
Draft SUV drivers first.
Remember who you wanted to be.


Ok, people, let it rip. TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL.

New York, New York

I love New York City. But only for about 72 hours at a time. I always get there greeted by that rather distinctive "New York City Subway Smell" thinking, "Man, I love this town." And by the last time I step out of the subway and into Penn Station I think, "I still love this town. But I can't WAIT to leave."

So, loyal reader, while I might have all of the answers as to how one can advance to the 2nd round of an orchestral audition, that doesn't mean that I can actually DO THOSE THINGS, as evidenced by my rather poor showing at the Honolulu Symphony Audition on Thursday. I started strong, but the new horn didn't react with my nerves the way I expected it to. And (truly) although I am disappointed that I didn't play better, I'm not terribly broken up that I wasn't offered a job. I'm really excited about the opportunities that await me in the fall in Philly, and not moving 4000 miles away to get paid CRAP by a symphony that can't seem to get their administrative POOP together... well, I just can't be too upset about that.

I did get to go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Lady Liberty is looking just fine these days, and Ellis Island is the most interesting and well-kept memorial/national park site that I've ever visited. Although I didn't come armed with any names of my ancestors who came through Ellis Island, it is the kind of memorial/site where you can feel history. The National Park Service and the curators of the museum have really managed to capture what it might have been like to show up at Ellis Island ciirca 1910. Though I'm not big on tours and tourist attractions, I left Ellis Island feeling like I was a better person than when I arrived.

A few important questions still plague me, though:
-Does everyone on the Upper West Side have a dog?
-How much is rent on those adorable brownstones I walked past?
-How come New Yorkers don't seem to have a sense of irony?
-Who are those crazy !@#$%$ on bicycles?
-I walk all over Madison and never get a blister. I step on the island of Manhattan and I've got two debilitating ones. What's with that?

I'm really glad that New York is so close, and so easily accessible by train. I hope to visit more now that I'm back from the Midwest (the place the rest of America flies over). But I don't think I would ever really be able to live there. Perhaps I would feel differently if I could stay for a longer period of time, but New York is just too overstimulating for me. I was happy to sit down on a train and watch the scenery go by while I listened to Mahler 5. I wasn't happy to leave the company I was keeping, but New York just isn't where my heart is. And apparently, neither is Honolulu.

Weird.

*Warning: There will be a lot of cameo appearances by my friends in this blog.*

So, I went to a party with DD today. I think that DD knows everyone. You know that "six degrees of separation" thing? I think that DD only has about two degrees. So we drove to College Park, MD to go to his friend A's place. When we got there, there were two people sitting on the couch talking about Mahler and Bruckner, so my ears perked up. I asked if they are music students and they said yes. Here's the catch:

THEY ARE MUSICOLOGISTS.

Musicologists are some of the most boring people on the face of the earth. Anyone who seriously wants to spend the rest of their lives in a library doing research on music rather than actually PLAYING music is really probably not someone I want to spend a lot of time with. And while these two seemed like nice enough people, I don't think they were really breaking the musicologist mold....

DD and I agreed afterward that what that party really needed was beer.

But I found out early on that they all know each other from Intervarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship. Alas, my hopes of beer were dashed early on.

Dinner was squid. Like, tiny octopuses. Squid. From the ocean. Squid. Sauteed squid.

And after dinner, P., a woman from Kenya talked for awhile about how she was "saved" and how she is going to spend her summer in Singapore learning how to be a Christian businesswoman, and how she will reconcile making a profit with doing the work of the Lord.

Then, another guy asked her about witchcraft in Kenya, which pretty much led to an interesting discussion about demons and an experience this guy had with exorcising a demon from a guy in 1971. It was a good story, but pretty long.

Shortly after that, we left. In the car on the way home, we wondered things like "is it safer to drive a car or a buggy, like, statistically speaking?" If anyone has an answer, please feel free to let me know.

***

LB is going to 8 minute speed dating tomorrow night, where she sits down and meets 8 eligible bachelors and has 8 minutes to win their hearts. LB, if you can come up with a story that is better than my night, I promise I will let you guest blog.

Home is where....

your shit is?

If that's the case, my home is in a Penske truck in my parents' driveway right now.

Last night I talked to LB, and we reminisced about the last year. One year ago today, LB was driving up I-95 headed for Boston to canvas for the Kerry Campaign, while I was in Boulder, CO, having a terrible time at a music festival and about to return home to be dumped by my live-in boyfriend. And LB and I decided that one year ago today was what could only be described as a turning point. The past year has been such a bizarre string of events for both of us that we realized it takes a lot more to elicit true shock than it used to.

****
"So, I'm going to Israel."

"Huh. Interesting. Why?"
****
"I'm in Cleveland."

"Interesting. What the hell are you doing there?"
****

If you had told us when we were freshmen in Rodney 3C in the fall of 1998 that this is what we'd be doing SEVEN YEARS LATER, we would NEVER have believed you. What at one time would be screams of incredulity has now turned into a raised eyebrow. Things that might have been completely unbelievable at one point are now just another bizarre story.

**************

Today at around 5 pm EST I drove into my parents driveway with everything I own in the back of the moving van I was driving. (Except for the horns. They were in the cab with me.) I drove over 800 miles, across roughly 1/4 of the United States of America.

Before I got out of the van, I sat there for a moment, thinking about what I have: I have $40,000 in student loans, $2000 in credit card debt, a master's degree, a bachelor's degree, two horns (one is on trial right now, but I love it and I'm going to buy it) and a whole boatload (or vanload) of memories.

And I started to cry. This is the beginning of the next chapter for me, reader(s), and I am excited. I'm scared shitless, but I know this is going to be good.

Everything is ok in the end.
If it's not ok,
It's not the end.