Scott, over at Views Infinitum, has posted a photo challenge – to capture the end of summer. Or at least what represents the end of summer to each of us.
I’ll be keeping my eyes open to see what I might find. For now, enjoy some tomatoes from my garden. Now that it’s mid September the plants have decided to hand over a bit of goodness.
Garden bounty
Seems they always wait until the last minute. Tomato plants are fickle that way.
Heading to ‘The Big House.’
We had such a great day! Saturday afternoon we parked near the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium, then walked thirty minutes south, enjoying the sunshine, the students partying in the street, the crowds, the tailgaters, to the stadium where we sat in a VIP box, guests of the School of Education, to watch Michigan beat Massachusetts.
I’ve never been in a VIP box before. Let me tell you, that’s the way to watch football! Of course I don’t really get football, though I do enjoy a good long run down the field. Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really care which team passes long or runs, it’s just fun to watch.
For me, a college football game is all about the band. Yes, the band; that group of kids who puts everything they’ve got into providing entertainment and pumping up the crowd.
The band over on the other side kept us in the game.
While other people were chatting before the game I was watching the pregame show. While others went to the restroom at halftime I was watching the band. While others were cheering and booing ref calls I was watching the band across the way in the stand as they chanted, shouted, danced and blew their lips out creating excitement. Yep. Love football…because of the band.
The “M” marches toward the sideline.
In the middle of the fourth quarter we had to leave the game to walk the 30 minutes back up to the main campus. We had symphony tickets. It was the opening night of this year’s season and the Ann Arbor symphony was playing Beethoven.
Hill Auditorium.
As I settled into my seat I jokingly told my Aunt that it would probably be inappropriate to stand up, pump my fist in the air and shout “GO BLUE!” in the middle of Symphony No. 9…right? She thought probably it would not be good. Apparently I was not the only one feeling the dichotomy of experiences that day, as during the introduction remarks the speaker actually commented on how cool it was to watch a football game then walk across town to hear a symphony. Then he yelled “GO BLUE!” And the audience applauded in response.
The program opened with the National Anthem, the second time I’d heard it that day. It was played by the full orchestra and sung loud and clear by the audience. Then most of the orchestra stood up and left, stage left.
The symphony played Twelve Contradances next. Twelve short pieces,played by a smaller, mostly string subset of the full orchestra. Each movement is a slightly different version of music to keep your toes tapping..composed in 1802. As I was listening I noticed a man sitting a couple of rows back from the conductor. He was sitting quietly, not moving, no instrument that I could see, hands folded in his lap. I thought maybe he had played with the full orchestra and just forgot to leave with the rest of them. Then in movement #8 he picked up a tambourine and played it expertly till the end of the movement. When movement #9 began he again sat, stoically, hands folded in his lap for the rest of the piece.
Ah! Perfido, Op. 65 was sung by soprano Laura Aikin who has a beautiful and powerful voice. The music was written to the verse of a poem written by Pietro Metastasio and was all about cruel love.
Symphony and choirs
The last half of the program was Beethoven’s Symphony #9, Choral, or most of us think of it, Ode to Joy. It was played by the full orchestra, and sung (in the 4th movement) by 4 soloists and a huge choir.
The first movement was full and lush, my favorite way to listen to a symphony. The second movement was fun and fast with some amazing oboe, french horn, bassoon and tympani work. The third movement was a sweet chorale and I was beginning to struggle to keep my eyes open.
All that was overshadowed by the drama of the fourth movement. It began with notes you’ve all heard in commercials. Then moved to the cellos and basses, wonderful seamless building of the familiar Ode to Joy melody, followed with the tune repeated in the violas and then the gentle violins. By now we were all humming along as the sound built and built, bigger, more and more lush until the choir stood up and the sound became wonderfully overwhelming.
The crowd was on their feet before the last note hit the ceiling, cheering and applauding. Sort of like at football. We clapped till our hands ached. The artists on stage grinned like kids.
Yes our day was full. Full of joy.
I’m going to need a little help. I’ve been trying, admittedly sporadically, to get this blog setup finished. I’m trying to get my blogroll to appear on the right. As you can clearly see the list of blogs I follow only indicates a WordPress blog. Which, by the way, I don’t follow.
I have a lot of your blogs all lined up on my links page, and I’ve moved the little widget thingy over to the right side bar place. Which is how the “blogs I follow” title showed up. But obviously that title is not connected to my list of links.
I tried to study the WordPress link that does show up there, to see what was different about it than the rest of the links I have ready and waiting to go…but don’t see anything.
I think this is the limit of my computer tech abilities. So all of you out there that work with WordPress…if you have any hints I’d appreciate it. I know someone out there will know how to do this. And that it’s probably something stupidly simple.
Katie says “Please help my mama, as she spends all her spare time, and she has so little of that, working on this stupid blog. She should be spending it playing with me!”
Come ON Mom! I smell hot dogs grilling OVER THERE!!
Today on the 11th anniversary of the attack on America I find I have no cohesive thoughts. Yet I can not let the day go by without saying something. Maybe it’s a day for each of us to have our own thoughts and our own memories. Surely this day is not as difficult for those of us who lost no immediate family members, no close friends, no acquaintances as it is for those who did. But we were all changed that day.
We all lost some of our complacency, some of our tenacity, our feeling of being immune to the sort of hate we’d all seen on TV in news reports from some other part of the world. We lost that safe feeling. But only for a moment. Because even as the second plane hit, before we realized the magnitude of what was happening, we were already gathering ourselves. I remember telling my staff that “they might be able to kill some of us, but they can’t get us all.” And reassuring them that we were safe there at work, encouraging them to check on their family and friends, letting them hang together is a quiet group gaining comfort and strength from each other.
We all changed that day, and change is hard. But not so hard that we can’t all take a moment to remember those whose lives changed the most; the family and friends of the almost 3000 people that died. And especially those 3000 people themselves. For them, change was the most profound.
We are strong. And we will never forget.
Got treats?
Look how young! And thin!
Sisters
The folks.
Just yesterday I swear. Yet when I think of all that has happened since….it was a lifetime ago.
I finished this post on my old blog moments before my server crashed a couple of weeks ago. The old blog was up for a couple of hours Friday and I copied this from the drafts because I know at least one of you has been waiting to hear about the race. So here goes!
The last Saturday of August was the 36th running of the Crim Festival of Races in Flint Michigan. It’s a big race, with thousands of runners, walkers and wheelers. It brings in big name runners from all over, and it’s a spectacle to watch and even more fun if you get to participate.
This year I walked the 8K (5 miles)…though I was nostalgic as I watched friends head off for the 10 mile start, a race I have done many times.
Heading off for 10 miles of hills and heat.
My race didn’t start for an hour and forty-five minutes after the 10 milers left, and rather than stand around I went back to the car and read a book. That saved my feet which was a good thing. Because by the time we set off on our race the sun was high in the sky and it was HOT HOT HOT!
We start out on our own 5 miles.
As usual, this race was well organized and had lots of entertainment. From the drum group that set the cadence at the beginning of the walk…
..to the young band in the parking lot singing “GO BABY GO!”….
GO! GO! GO!
….the woman at the top of three Bradley Hills singing “I never promised you a rose garden…”
No roses were found on the Bradley Hills.
…and the preacher along the way that told us….
Run faster!
“You all are gonna have to step it up if you’re gonna catch up to those Kenyans!” in reference to the lead runners who had finished long before we left the start line.
All along the way we had entertainment and support from both sides of the road. Volunteers were offering water, in cups…
Grab some water!
…and from cooling hoses.
Enjoy the shower!
My feet were killing me…but there was a lot of fun distractions…
Girls cheering for us.
…and inspiration.
Inspirational…but a lie.
I’m really glad I did it. Now I have to figure out what is going on with my feet so that I can start training for next year. I really want to do the ten miles on the last Saturday in August next summer.
Because I’m lucky enough to be able to.
Finally on the bricks..almost at the finish line!
Have you ever had an hour or a day or a week when you need to do too many things? When you should work with multiple lists to remind you of tasks to be done? But because you’re too stressed to make the lists you muddle along doing the best you can? Sometimes things don’t turn out so well.
You know what jello is, right? That wiggly insanely colored not food thing. I was supposed to make it last night before I went to bed. I promised to make it last night before I went to bed. But I went to bed without thinking about jello. The neon food never entered my mind.
Even this morning as I was getting ready for work I didn’t think about my promise. Until I pulled the cereal box out of the pantry. And there it was. The little box staring accusingly up at me. The box of jello dust. Waiting for the boiling water. Waiting for me to fulfill the promise.
I put breakfast on hold and set the kettle on the stove. Water takes a long time to boil when you’re in a hurry but I didn’t use that time to read the directions. That would have entailed finding my glasses, and after all this was jello. Who needs directions?
So I boiled the water, poured out one cup of the steaming liquid and stirred it into the jello fixings until it was clear. I knew that the little box made four servings, so I poured it into four little custard cups, each cup not even half full. Hmmmm, I thought. That’s odd. I remember the servings being bigger than this when I was a kid. But when was the last time I actually made jello and poured it into little cups? So I put them in the refrigerator and set about making my breakfast.
But something kept nudging my brain. How is it that a small box of jello is supposed to make four 1/2 cup servings and what I had looked like so much less? How come. How come.
WAIT! Where was that box? Where were my glasses?
The directions say one cup of boiling water….and one cup of COLD water! AHHHHHH I could double my output if I followed the directions! Isn’t that just like life.
I grabbed the four pathetic custard cups of jello out of the fridge, poured them back into the bowl, added the cold water, stirred. And I laughed quietly, assuring myself that I’d never tell anyone about my failed jello project. But I’m telling you.
Keep it under your hat, OK?
Don’t let the stress make you crazy!
It was hard to let August go, to feel it slip away. I tried to make it stay longer but it was like hugging jello. The more I held on the faster it slid away from me. It seems August fled from most of us; everywhere I hear people exclaiming how quickly the first days of September have arrived.
I don’t know why I struggled so much with the loss of summer this year. It’s not as though I have children heading to school so I can’t say that I’m pensive about them growing up. And I’m not a school employee heading back either. My work at the bank is the same regardless of the month at the top of the wall calendar.
It’s not that I truly love hot weather, or pulling weeds, or watering, or watching trees we planted two years ago struggle. My garden produced a handful of green beans and two or three tomatoes. That’s it. We bought most of our produce from the farmers’ market. Our grass was brown for weeks on end and so prickly that even the dog didn’t want to walk on it.
Maybe it’s just that I love the long days and the evenings spent on the deck reading or watching the birds. But I can still do that for awhile as we head into autumn. Maybe it’s just the dread of the dark mornings heading to work followed by the dark commute home. Maybe it’s just the thought of slippery roads, downed power lines, or quick trips out with the dog that require layers of clothes and big boots to be dragged from the closet and worn so that she can prance through the snow to find a perfect spot.
Regardless of why it was so hard for me to let August go this year today I decided to embrace the fall. I went for my lunch walk through the neighborhood and saw maple leaves turning red and yellow and orange. Not all over mind you, just here and there. Hickory nuts had fallen to the sidewalk and asters were in bloom. People with gardens more successful than mine had ripe tomatoes waiting to be picked, and miles and miles of vine covering zucchinis as big as footballs. Children were out on the playground, swinging high or chasing a big rubber ball. The sun shone down and warmed us all.
I admit I was sad to see August go but September has been beautiful so far. I think I’m looking forward to the change.
Change doesn’t always have to be hard.
Change Is Hard 