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| Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 | | 12:27 am |
Heelys
I see kids roll around in them, so why aren't Heelys popular with adults? It seems to me they'd be very efficient. The wheels are easy to pop out and in with your toes, and they get you places faster. (x-posted to my facebook) | | Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 | | 12:46 am |
I GOT IT!!
Hooray! Now I have to figure out what's going to happen to my Masters. | | Friday, November 17th, 2006 | | 11:52 am |
I'm crossing my fingers, because I just had an audition for my Dream Job. Get this: It's a performing arts high school in Jersey City, and if they take me, they would be willing to do it alternate route. (Getting an alternate route job in NJ in music is no easy trick - it's not like physics or math!) The kids there are highly motivated. First of all, they have to audition to get into the program. If they're accepted, they leave their regular schools for a few mornings or afternoons a week to bus into the program. They get 12 of their high school credits for being involved. And, best of all, if they screw around they get kicked out of the program. So there aren't a lot of classroom management issues. The kids are there for art, to learn about music, and to become the best musicians they can be. And they're so friendly. The audition basically consisted of leading a 30 minute rehearsal of Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine, and it went reallyreallyreally well. At least, I *think* it did. The kids cheered for me when I was done, and I was told afterwards that I would hear back from the program "very soon," and then, "if not next week, then the week after." I'm not sure why the week after next constitutes "very soon", but next week is Thanksgiving, and perhaps they want to have meetings and figure stuff out. Or maybe they have another candidate to see first. (eek!) And that's why I'm crossing my fingers. Wish me luck!! | | Friday, June 9th, 2006 | | 1:50 pm |
| | Monday, November 28th, 2005 | | 5:49 pm |
My Graduate Recital
Will be held during the evening of Sunday, April 23rd, at a venue on Manhattan still to be announced, and the program will include: Faure's Requiem Leonard Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms" (if you haven't heard this, check it out - it's amazing) and seven short new works by seven different (!!) composers, each composed roughly to the instrumentation of Chichester Psalms. If you would like to come and sing, let me know. If you would like to be one of the composers (for which there are still two slots available, I believe) contact me for details. I'm incredibly excited about this program, and I hope to see you there! (Oh, and my email address is musicteacher at gmail, which undoubtedly also has a dot com somewhere.) | | Friday, October 21st, 2005 | | 12:55 am |
It's been a long time since I wrote, so I thought a small update might be nice. ( The dirty details )Oh, before I go: anyone in the NY area should come join my masters recital choir when we begin rehearsing in a few months. We're going to be performing some combination of music from Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, the Faure Requiem, selections from Holst's Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, and Janacek's Lord's Prayer. Also, there may be free pizza or vocal coaching involved. Keep checking this space for forthcoming details!! In other news, I'm planning on seeing Wallace and Grommit on Saturday with some friends. How is it? Current Mood:  mellowCurrent Music: Berg's Wozzeck, which sounds surprisingly like Sweeney Todd | | Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 | | 1:01 pm |
I hate it when people forward bogus warnings... but this one is real, and it's important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list: If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey on deer ticks and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! IT IS A SCAM; they only want to see you naked. I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid now. | | Tuesday, May 31st, 2005 | | 11:51 pm |
| | Thursday, May 19th, 2005 | | 1:20 am |
My googlisms. It actually took awhile to cull these down. "Ben" appears to be a common name. Who knew? ben is great with others ben is very big and strong ben is a domesticon ben is bullied by an older boy ben is based on the book by robert lawson ben is also in april's seventeen magazine ben is having difficulty with vowel sounds ben is first and foremost a type a personality ben is working hard to bring you new products every season ben is technically still a doctor ben is a desperate man who craves the one thing that he can’t seem to find ben is still in the dumpster ben is a black labrador retriever ben is sooooooooooo sweet that i want to crap my pants ben is sometimes referred to as "the borg" for his lack of pigment ben is a coda ben is able to intelligently minimize jitter ben is a hero nonconformist seeking individual freedom | | Sunday, May 15th, 2005 | | 10:07 pm |
 | You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
Cultural Creative | | 69% | Materialist | | 69% | Existentialist | | 63% | Modernist | | 56% | Postmodernist | | 50% | Idealist | | 44% | Fundamentalist | | 38% | Romanticist | | 19% | </td>
What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com |
I don't think this pinned me at all. I don't approve. | | Tuesday, May 10th, 2005 | | 6:15 pm |
A new baby
My sister is pregnant with #3! My 5-y/o nephew told me over the phone that he "saw a baby in mommy's belly". And then my 3 y/o nephew told me over the phone, too, because his brother got a chance to already, and fair's fair. :) | | Thursday, April 28th, 2005 | | 12:29 am |
This post qualifies as definitely not important, but interesting to me because of how unexpected it is. So, I developed this calcium spot about halfway up my fingernail about a month and a half ago. No big deal, of course. It slowly grows out, and eventually gets to the edge where I can cut it. It's been around there for about a week now (about 60% of it is to where I can cut it now), and I've been watching it rather idly, mostly during classes while I am bored. I have noticed something interesting: I can feel my fingernails grow. No, seriously, it feels like there is some sort of vague pressure on my fingernail. The spot doesn't move relative to my skin for days, and then I get this *almost* imperceptible feeling of pressure, and within an hour or two, the spot has moved substantially. For about a week, only about 20% of the calcium spot was cuttable. I noticed this feeling during theory class, looked at my nail to see that it was still about 20% cuttable, and checked again at the end of my next class (two hours later), and it was about 60% cuttable. So: (1) your nails grow in fits and spurts, not slowly over time. (2) They don't all grow simultaneously. They appear to grow whenever they feel like it. (Right now, only my left ring finger and my right thumb are growing.) (3) You can feel it if you spend a moment trying to. (4) They grow pretty fast when they actually decide to grow. If you want to feel it, check out your fingers right now, and a few times over the next few days. You might catch one with a slight feeling of pressure. Make a tiny mark with a permanent marker where you can see the color of skin appear under your nail, and check again a couple of hours later. Weird, right? | | Sunday, April 17th, 2005 | | 9:32 am |
Your Linguistic Profile:
|
45% General American English |
40% Yankee |
15% Dixie |
0% Midwestern |
0% Upper Midwestern | I wonder what this thing considers "Dixie"? Everyone seems to be getting very high Dixie scores. | | Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 | | 11:31 am |
My conducting recital is coming up on Sunday the 20th at the Church of Saint Paul and Saint Andrew, which is on West End Avenue and 86th St. We're conducting parts II and III of the Messiah (meaning we're skipping the Christmas part), and I've got 6 of the movements, including the Hallelujah chorus. If you've ever wanted to come to a concert of mine, this is a good one because it is free, and the music is accessible. And now that I'm contemplating *not* actually being a conductor (argh! big decisions!) it is probably the best choir I'll ever get to conduct - how many choirs does one get to conduct that consist of conservatory vocal masters students? Tiny orchestra, 5 conductors, small choir, freeeeeee. In other news, ani lomed ivrit achshav. (I'm studying Hebrew now) This is because I'm considering visiting Israel this summer on one of these "tour Israel for a week or so for free because some rich guy wants to fund tours for college and grad students" trips - the tour organization is called "Birthright Israel", and it was brought to my attention by some people I know who have gone and insist that it was some sort of incredible experience. While I'm there, I can visit my new Israeli friends. For some reason, Mannes has 10-15 Israeli students, out of 200 altogether. So, now I have a couple of friends who live in Israel. It's almost odd to me to be studying Hebrew without a religious reason... I'd always associated it so closely with Judaism. But now I'm studying it just for fun and communication. Hooray communication. | | Saturday, March 12th, 2005 | | 12:06 am |
My primary email changed sometime a bit before WSO went down to musicteacher at gmail. Of course, WSO is still forwarding, so it's not as if I'm going to miss your mail if you happen to send it to bisecke@wso. I can no longer log into WSO, though, which is somewhat upsetting as there are files I'd really like to regain access to on there. I asked them to change my password, but they (understandably) have bigger fish to fry than one lil' user who can't log in. I doubt I've watched more than 5 hours of TV since November, when I unplugged the thing. But tonight I watched a bunch of Daily Show eps from my parent's Tivo. John Stewart is really, really funny. Also, he is actually John Leibowitz, and I found out tonight that my mom knows his mom. So, three degrees of seperation from me to John Stewart. I'm moving up in the world. | | Tuesday, January 11th, 2005 | | 4:53 pm |
What the hell happened to WSO? | | Sunday, January 2nd, 2005 | | 2:03 pm |
So, last night (or not-so-early-this-morning), as I was talking to some folks, the conversation turned to student bloopers. So, I mentioned something about some essays my Catholic HS girls had written, and they told me that I should post about it. So, most of you know that I taught HS for two years: 9th grade compulsory music survey class. The kids (for the most part) did not know that the word "orchestra" referred to a body of musicians (or as one wrote down for their music-class quiz: "An orchestra is a bird"), that "music" is a separate concept from "beat" (this was hard to figure out at first - one quiz came back: "acapella" is "singing, with no music or sound") It was fun times all around. I was required to teach them about Beethoven, and I was faced with people that didn't think that Beethoven wrote "music", because he provided no beatbox. For one midterm, I gave them some essays. ( Read more... )In conclusion: My kids write better prose than Dave Barry. And it's nice to think that I, in my own small way, have helped them to get there. I hope everyone had a great New Year's! | | Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 | | 5:22 pm |
Suddenly life gets interesting
...and I am left with many questions. For instance, what is a 4-tuple? I read the first chapter of Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now". He separates out your identity from your (conscious) mind. Walking around today monitoring my mind, and thinking about when it is useful to think, and when I would rather have my brain shut off has been enlightening. How very meta. I reject his later assertion that your mind is your enemy (although that may well be true for some people). In any case, I'm now interested in learning how to "shut down" my conscious brain when it is (a) not needed, and (b) interfering with what I am trying to accomplish. (He makes a great point about the horrible loops your mind can make around projected futures - your mind is perfectly happy to do this over and over and over, each time leaving you just a little bit less sure of yourself and a little bit less happy.) In any case, the first chapter of the book has been posted online. I wonder what you folks think about this. Useful? A waste of time? A dangerous diversion? The path to Enlightenment? I've also spent a significant amount of time over the last month and a half learning about ways to modify my own state of mind, and connect back into my body (these are separate but related.) I'm stunned by how far afield I've gone - two years ago, I would have considered all of this stuff to be a great big new-age artsy-fartsy waste of time. Now, I'm learning to monitor my reactions, take some sort of meta-control over my mind, body and emotions, and am becoming calmer, more perceptive, more open, and generally happier. My new attitude is, "Hey, if it works..." I'm happy to share what I'm learning with anyone who is interested. Current Mood: rejuvenatedCurrent Music: Orff's Carmina Burana: "Circa Mea Pectora" | | Thursday, December 9th, 2004 | | 12:30 pm |
A neat quote
... from my conducting teacher, who is amazing. I am the librarian for the Mannes repertory chorus. When I asked him what I should do about people turning in music with no covers, he replied with a great quote: " If there isn't a solution, then there isn't a problem." That embodies about 50% of my life philosophy right there. | | Wednesday, December 8th, 2004 | | 9:21 pm |
What the heck does this mean?
It's by T.S. Eliot:
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
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