MAD Library Christmas Party

Our Christmas tradition of having fun with random musical compositions...Spicy Pine, with Steve doing vocals, Natasha on oboe, and Bryan sight-reading the piano part on my mom's accordion. 2nd time through, David G. doing the recitation. I can't get it to upload here, so you will have to be happy with the link.

Health care on my mind

So, now that the health care debate is in the hands of the US senate, I have been thinking a lot about health care. Again. I think about it a lot, just because I seem to always be paying doctor bills.

And I don't even mind that. We have really good health insurance, and I am grateful for that every day.

But what I do mind is that I don't believe I feel the "care" in health care very much. And that is something that I really miss about the "evil" socialized medicine that I had in the Great White North.

When we moved to British Columbia, one of the first things I did was get pregnant with Patrick. Not really planned--but glad to be living someplace where an unplanned pregnancy wouldn't present a huge financial burden. I asked around about finding a doctor, and ended up with a Dr. Harris, who was fine. But the really great thing was that he went on a camping trip a few weeks before Patrick was born, so I ended up with his colleague, Dr. Oswin. First time I had a female doctor and I LOVED it. Having a baby with a female helping you, especially a female who is a mother? Awesome. I switched to Dr. Oswin and loved her. When we moved from Burnaby to Port Coquitlam, I was determined to drive in to Burnaby to the doctor...but traffic in greater Vancouver? Pretty horrible. So I looked at the clinic closer to home and found Dr. Ewert.

Dr. Ewert was fabulous! She was young and cute and funny, and she cared. If I went in with one sick child, she would ask about the other kids. She knew their names; she didn't have to look them up on a chart. When our oldest daughter Kelli went through her truly terrible experiences, Dr. Ewert was always caring and concerned about Kelli, about me, about the effects of the situation on everyone in our family. Dr. Ewert had a baby one year and would pick my brain for mothering tips. When I ended up having another baby, five years after Patrick, I picked her brain for doctoring tips, and Dr. Ewert was simply wonderful as Josie's first doctor. I loved her, and was so sad to move to Alberta and away from her.

But in Alberta we had fabulous doctors, too. Dr. Spackman, Dr. Jensen and Dr. Weiss were all top-notch, caring people. I was excited when Dr. Weiss's wife, Dr. Weiss, finished medical school so I could have a female doctor again.

One day, we were at a swim club picnic. Nancy was playing with Josie, holding her by both hands and letting her walk up Nancy's legs, and then back-flipping her so that she would land on her feet. We all played that game with Josie often, because she loved it. Josie was about three, so Nancy would have been about twelve. Well, one time, Josie didn't walk up Nancy's legs as high as usual, and when she flipped, her head was too low, and ended up crashing into a rock. Josie was bleeding (profusely, as head wounds do) and she and Nancy were crying. They came to me for help.

Did we rush Josie to the hospital? We did not. Dr. Jensen, whose kids were also swim club members, stepped forward with his big smile and gentle bedside (or picnicside) manner, cleaned Josie's head, and then said to all the kids who were gathered around to watch in his impromptu operating theatre: "Now, I am going to use her hair to sew up this wound. If we were at the hospital, I would do stitches, but since we are here, I am just going to tie her hair in knots and that will hold the wound together." And he carefully would take a hair from each side of the wound and tie it in a tight knot with a hair from the other side. A few minutes and quite a few knots later, she was all "sewn" up. He was laughing and smiling at her, and she was as calm as could be as he tied her head together.

Of course, we did go into his office for a follow-up apointment, but she was fine, and the knots held, and her head healed, and she and Dr. Jensen were really good buddies after their shared experience.

Josie never liked to take medicine. Even when she was a baby, she would purse her lips to avoid having to take it, and if some did manage to get into her mouth, she would spit it out as quickly as possible. Once, when she was about five, she had a terrible ear infection. She was getting worse and worse, and I really needed her to take the medicine, but she just would not do it. So I talked to Dr. Weiss about it. She asked me to make an appointment and bring Josie in. She sat Josie down and said, "Josie, you need to take this medicine. I know that you hate medicine, but you have to take this whether you like it or not. Now, I am going to tell your mom to give it to you twice a day, and if you don't take it, she is going to call me. And if she calls me and tells me that you won't take it, I am going to put you in the hospital, and then we will make you take the medicine there. If you won't open your mouth, we will give you needles, but you are going to take this medicine." And when we got home, Josie took her medicine--she didn't want to go to the hospital.

Can you even imagine a US doctor doing that? Hospitals are way too expensive here to admit a child who won't take her medicine! And it was not an empty threat either; Dr. Weiss meant every word. She wanted Josie to get well, and she would have admitted Josie just to get that medicine inside her.

Soon after we moved to the US, Patrick began to have some physical problems. We took him to the doctor, who sent us to the urologist, and Patrick was slated for surgery. He was twelve or thirteen, and had the surgery in early June, soon after school was out. He got to recuperate instead of playing and camping and hiking and all that kind of summer stuff. But he didn't get better. Soon we were back at the urologist's office and scheduling a second surgery, which he had as soon as school was out in December, so that he got to use up his Christmas break recuperating, too. It was while we were at the December surgery that the doctor told me that the first surgery doesn't work in about 40% of cases! And they know this! But...insurance companies (at least ours) insist that the first surgery be done. It is more invasive but less costly. The second surgery works in about 99% of cases, is less invasive, but is more costly. So, if the first surgery doesn't work, then they will authorize payment for the second one. Which means they pay for two surgeries in 40% of the cases? How dumb is that? I am wondering if they have ever really done the math on that one...

And I am pretty sure that if we were in Canada, they would just do what works, because hello? Why not? And oh yes, they might even care about the child who has to undergo two surgeries within six months, when one would have done the trick.

This experience makes me think back to my pregnancies--I get diabetic in pregnancy. I didn't pass the first glucose test with David in 1983 in California; they weren't doing the glucose tests yet in Alberta when Nancy came along in 1985, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't have passed; when Patrick was born in British Columbia in 1989, I didn't pass the first glucose test, or the second one. It is pretty miserable to be a pregnant diabetic when you have four other kids with busy schedules and you have to go to umpteen billion different doctors and nutritionists, etc. So when I was pregnant with Josie in 1994, Dr. Ewert and I decided that we would just act as if I had already failed the first glucose test. So from the get-go I was on a special diet and exercise routine, with the goal of passing the second test. And our plan worked, so I was not officially diabetic for Josie! Yeah! Much simpler for me, much simpler for Dr. Ewert. Ultimately less expensive for the medical system. But, surely you can see that if we were in the US, we wouldn't have had that option. Because it isn't the doctor who gets to decide, is it? It is the insurance company. And you can bet they wouldn't pay for the second test unless I had failed the first one. They wouldn't care about my track record of failing that particular test...so even if my doctor cared, the insurance company wouldn't.

When my mom was dying of liver cancer in Canada, her health care providers really cared about her. Her doctor was very up front about what was happening with her. He came over to her house while I was there and had a heart-to-heart meeting with my mom, my sister, my two cousins (Mary and Helen) and I. He talked about her options--honestly stated that nothing was ultimately going to work. That he would do whatever Mom wanted, but that chemotherapy and radiation therapy were going to add a misery of their own. And while using them might extend her lifetime by a few months or even a year, that the extra time would most likely be full of pain and misery. He told her quite honestly and compassionately that she was actually pretty lucky, because she knew how she was going to die (of liver cancer) and that, as deaths go, it is a pretty good one. He let her set the standard of care she wanted, made sure we all understood, answered all our questions.

That was not his only house call. She didn't ever have to leave the house to go to the doctor or the hospital in the last months of her life, unless she wanted to. She had nurses in several times a week to take care of things that were hard for my sister Colleen and brother Bruce, who were her primary caregivers, and home-help attendents to spell them off and keep her company. They brought in a hospital bed and put it in her living room when going back and forth from her bedroom to the recliner she sat in most of the time got to be too difficult. And that was where she died: in a hospital bed in her own living room. Very peacefully.

A couple of years later, my neighbor here got liver cancer. I knew it was a death sentence, because Dr. Steed had explained this illness to us very, very thoroughly. I am not really great at visiting the sick, but I finally got up my courage to go and see the neighbor. I had really appreciated all the neighbors who came to see my mom, though, and I wanted to do the same for him.

Of course, my mom's neighbors all knew that she was dying. They totally knew the score, and so they knew how to treat her. They knew that every day they went to visit might be their last opportunity. We could talk pretty openly about mom's future to her, because there was no pretending. We knew.

So, my neighbor...blew me away! I could see that he was dying, but the talk was all about him getting well. About the treatments that had been tried, the treatments that were planned. I was shocked. But how could I say what I was thinking, which was "Hello!! This is an incurable cancer!! You are going to die. The things they are going to do to you will make you miserable, and will suck you dry financially, and then you will still be just as dead at the end of them!" Since we were all pretending that he was going to get well, it was hard to know what to say. And easy for me not to go back because everytime I thought about him, I was just shocked at the lack of open, honest health care! And the acceptance of health money-sucking invasion!

Well, he lived for about a year, instead of the five months that mom had between diagnosis and death. But what a year of financial and emotional drainage on the family. Death is hard, but lengthening the process does not make it any easier on anyone, the victim or the family.

But I shouldn't have been surprised...my husband goes to a lot of health care providers. I remember we were at one appointment together, with a therapist who was supposed to be helping with the emotional and relationship trauma caused by his physical difficulties. I don't remember exactly what she said, the exact words, but basically what she meant was that she didn't really care about us or what happened to us, she just cared if the bill got paid. Our bills were being paid, no problem there--so that wasn't why she said whatever she said. I just remember us looking at each other, and the look said, "This is our last appointment here." Because she didn't care; we knew that. And what is health care without the care? It isn't worth much, that is what I think.

Dilemma

On Thursday afternoon, I picked Josie up from school. She was wearing a gray hoodie with a front pocket, and I noticed that the front pocket looked strange. She opened the door to the back seat of the car, put her backpack on the seat, took her hoodie off and put it on the back seat, and took her Ipod from the pocket. "Oh," I commented, "I was wondering why your pocket looked a funny shape. It was your Ipod."

Josie LOVES her Ipod. It is her most prized possession. She has very eclectic taste in music, and has sound bites from all over the world on the Ipod. She loves film scores, and has many of them on her Ipod. She also has movies, most notably movies in Arabic and other foreign languages. The contents of her Ipod would not be of interest to every teenager, but they are Josie's treasures.

We came home; Josie came in the house, and as is her habit, placed her Ipod and sunglasses on the table. I made myself a late lunch; Josie made herself an after-school snack. And I left and went back to work. Just as I was leaving, one of Josie's friends was arriving.

After working for another couple of hours and then going to French choir, I met up with Patrick, and we drove home. I didn't even look at the table; Josie had a different friend over, and she left soon after Patrick and I got home. Since Bruce was working late, we just had grilled cheese sandwiches and sat at the counter.

Patrick was excited because he had a date that he was looking forward to; he went and cleaned out the car a bit, and then left on his date. Josie had a morningside, so she went to bed early. She had to be up at four AM.

In the morning, I heard Josie up and about, heard the honk, and she left with the friend who picked her up. When I got up myself at about 6:30, I noticed that she had left every light on! I went around turning lights off, and Patrick and I were ready and out the door by 7:15 am.

A couple of hours later, I got a text from Josie. (She can text my e-mail from her phone) and she said "I couldn't find my Ipod this morning. I looked everywhere." (Ahh! I thought--that explains all the lights on!--she was looking everywhere!) So I messaged back, "We know you took it home, so it must be there somewhere. Don't worry."

She came up to campus after school because we had a two-hour gamelan rehearsal. Josie and I are both playing the gangsas for Hujan-mas, and our parts are really difficult. I play polos, which is difficult and Josie plays sangsi, which is uber-difficult. But we had a good rehearsal, Josie only being mildly distracted and worried about her Ipod.

We had an hour and a half between rehearsal and our concert. We came home to find the Ipod. I thought it would be easy. Because I remembered our conversation about the Ipod from Thursday, I KNEW she had taken it home. Patrick and Garion were here when Josie and I got home; we all did some Ipod hunting. Josie and I spent almost the entire time looking for it. It was nowhere in our house. I even looked in the fridge and both freezers (what if she was getting something to eat and put her Ipod in the fridge?) and in all the drawers of all the bathrooms. (We have four of them.)

Josie has a testimony of prayer--she had already been praying for help to find her Ipod all day. She was frustrated because she had looked everywhere and not found it, and she didn't feel prompted to look anywhere else. So we prayed together about it. When we finished the prayer, I said, "Do you think one of your friends might have taken it?" And immediately the name of one of the friends who had been in our house that day popped into her head.

Not wanting to be accusative, she texted both of the girls who had been over and just asked innocuously about had they seen her Ipod...one answered; the other one didn't. I guess you can figure out which one didn't answer...

When Josie and I went to the concert, we were both pretty distracted. We knew the Ipod was last seen in our house; we both were fairly certain if not positive that her friend had "borrowed" it. And that made us sad and upset, and we both played Hujan-mas the very worst we have ever played it. Hopefully no one could tell, since thankfully we have three other people who play exactly what we play.

But it kind of took the joy out of our concertizing. Now--what to do? That is the dilemma. Josie, as I said, loves her Ipod; she uses it every day. (Except for yesterday, and now today...). She is willing to forgive (although she will be much less trusting of this girl than she formerly was) and she just wants her Ipod back. What would you do?

Why am I so weird?

There is a Halloween play, the name of it escapes me, that has a scene in which a very strange character sings a song that asks, "Why am I so weird?"--a question that I often have to ask myself. Indeed, why am I? So weird?

I guess I am usually weird for no apparent reason, but when I get into those moments on the borderline of awake and asleep, the weirdness gets right out of control.

Once, when David and Nancy were in high school, they had a group of friends over for a soiree. (Well, they did that more than once, but I only behaved quite so weirdly the one time.) I was really tired, so I went to bed, just planning to lie down and rest while they partied on. After some time, I thought I heard the doorbell ring, and Nancy went to the door. Whoever was on the other side of the door started to sound menacing, and then he grabbed her and started pulling her out the door, and she was screaming for help. So I quickly jumped out of bed and raced down the hall to go rescue her. Wouldn't you do the same?

Except...when I got to the door, Nancy and David were laughing and talking with their friends, who were just leaving. I think that Matt Thomas was the only person who saw my look of half-crazed grim determination before I realized that I must have been having a very vivid but totally false dream and beetled back to my room, snickering at my own incredible stupidity. I think he even asked the kids, very appropriately, "Is your mom always so weird?"

Well, last night I had another episode of loony-bin weirdness. Patrick had gone to a late movie with Garion. I was worried about him getting home because he doesn't get enough sleep anyway, and he had a big project at school today. As I usually do, I left the back porch light on, and went to bed. I never sleep well if all the people in the house aren't in bed and the lights aren't all off, but if I fall asleep, and then wake up and the house is all dark, I just go happily back to sleep, because I know that everyone is in the house and in bed.

I woke up, and it was still light. I looked at the time, tried to go back to sleep, but just kept waking up. I was worried about Patrick, so I felt my way (I am blind as well as weird) to the phone, and called his cell phone. He didn't answer, which worried me, but I left a message, "Patrick, it is just me calling to remind you that you need to get some sleep!" Satisfied, I laid back down. And waited for him to come home. Which he didn't do.

So I eventually got up to see if the car was gone. He had left with Garion, but he was going to a girl's house after the movie to borrow a wig (don't ask) so maybe he was just talking to her and lost track of time? So if the car was gone, I would at least know where he was. So I got up, and opened the back door, and the car was there. Wait--the door to "cat prison" is closed--it was open when I went to bed...that means that someone put the cats in cat prison...and then I looked on the table and there was a white curly wig.

So...that means that Patrick was at home, in bed, all those hours that I lay awake worrying! He was just really tired, came in and forgot to turn off the light after diligently taking care of the cats. So why didn't I just check his room instead of calling him?

I'll tell you why...so that in the morning, he could say, "Mom, why did you call me at 12:30?" when he had been in bed and asleep since eleven! He didn't say "Why are you so weird?" but I am pretty sure that he thought it!

We are Family!

(My brother Bruce, Elizabeth and I: Nov. 14, 2009)

Last night my niece Elizabeth and her university choirs and orchestras premiered a new sacred work, sort of like a modern oratorio, at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake. The music was wonderful, but what I want to blog about is family, because that is even more wonderful.

Specifically, I want to talk about how fabulous it is that my brother has married three wonderful women, and that somehow we have been blessed to be able to "keep" them all.

When my brother and his first wife, Marie Christine, got divorced--that was really hard. We, as a family, did not really know how to deal with divorce, and frankly, we didn't know anyone who did. Divorces break up families, after all, and from my observation, it looked like they were always messy and left a lot of hard feelings. I was amazed that my brother had been so civil with his ex-wife, sharing a lawyer, and going his way in peace without much fighting. But I didn't know what to do about Marie, who had been like a sister to me--so I did nothing. Since she was in France, and I was in Canada or the US, it was very easy to do nothing. And I just let her drift out of my life...but I missed her. There was a sadness in my heart when I would look at pictures of her, because I loved her.
(Marie, Colleen, me and Arlene in 1971)

When Bruce married Judy, I was happy to have another new sister. Judy was a lot of fun, and easy to talk to. Our family welcomed her and her three daughters with open arms. But. some years later, after the births of Elizabeth and Andrew, their little family unit passed through hard times, and it got to the point where a divorce was imminent. I remember saying to my brother that I was fine with him getting a divorce, but I didn't want to have to give up Judy. I had already given up one sister-in-law, and I didn't want to give up another one. I wanted her to still feel like family, because I loved her. (Family picture with Judy beside me and Nancy, in the middle, 1985)

My mom set a very good example for me in "keeping" Judy. A couple of years after Bruce and Judy's divorce, my aunt Lillis died. We were all at her funeral--I think this memorable moment happened at the grave site. Mom was standing with Judy, and someone she knew came up to talk to her. She introduced Judy to the person by putting her arm around Judy and saying, "This is Judy. She used to be my daughter-in-law, but now she's my daughter." That touched my heart.

Judy's marriage to Wally brought a whole bunch of new people to love into my heart. Wally is awesome and amazing, and just perfect for Judy. I am so glad they found each other. His six children are fabulous people. I am closer to some of them than to others, but I love them all, and the spouses and children of the girls. It didn't take my children long to be able to call Wally "Uncle Wally" and feel it in their hearts, because he has always been so interested in them, and always made them feel welcome around him.

Sometime after Judy married Wally, I was blessed to "find" Marie again! I am so happy for her that she has Philippe and is so content with him, and happy that my children, at least the younger three, are getting to know her. Patrick is the only one who has actually met her in person, but thanks to the fabulous technology that we have the use of, they can "talk" to her through blogs and Facebook and e-mail, and have enjoyed getting to know and love her as I do. Nancy has met the "cousin" that Marie brings to our family, JC; I can't wait to meet him someday, too!

My brother shocked me when he married Sara. Seems like I hardly knew he was dating her when he was married to her. But I am so glad he did. He is so happy with Sara, who has a warm and compassionate heart. Sara is another sister for me to love, another aunt for my children to love. And Sara's six children are just a whole bunch more nieces/nephews for me to love, and cousins for my children to love! (With a few spouses and next generation as well!) Sara's daughter Jessica is one of Josie's favorite first cousins--even though technically they are not cousins at all!

What does this have to do with last night and Elizabeth's performance? Judy had four tickets to the concert, and had offered one to me. The extra ticket, she gave to Bruce, so he could go and be there for Elizabeth. Bruce invited Judy and Wally and I (and Andrew, who didn't want to go to a concert but did want to see his dad) to a dinner that he and Sara were putting on for some of their family and friends. Isn't that fabulous, that they are divorced, yet so generous with each other? I think it is!

When we got to the dinner, Bruce hugged Andrew, greeting him as "Andrew, my son." And then me "Myrna, my sister." And then "Judy, my friend." And then "Wally, my friend's wife." Much laughter-- "I mean, my friend's husband, and my friend too." And I felt such a feeling of love for my brother and his big heart. And such gratitude for the civility that he and Judy always show to each other.

Inside at the dinner, it was so fun to meet and greet my "nephew' Eli and his wife Sadie, and to hold baby Lukas (who is huge! and heavy!) and to see my beatiful "niece" Rachel's cute pregnant belly, and all Sara's sisters and her mom and her fun family, and to talk with all these people I love who I wouldn't even know if my brother hadn't married Sara.I love this family picture, taken at Elizabeth's wedding two years ago...there are lots of people missing, but isn't it cool how it is a mix of Conrads and Graves and Powells and Breitensteins? I think it is way cool!

At Elizabeth's wedding dance, I overheard my niece Mindy (a Graves step-daughter) say to Jessica (a Powell step-daughter) "Isn't Bruce a great step-dad?" And they talked together about how they loved my brother, and how he had blessed their lives. And I thought to myself that if Bruce hadn't gone through his first divorce, nor his second divorce, much as I didn't like either at the time, those two girls would never have been having that conversation, because they wouldn't have even known each other. And I wouldn't know them either! Hard to imagine my life without them in it!

So, actually, I guess I have to thank my brother for his divorces, because he has blessed me with three sisters to love, and directly (2) or indirectly (16!) more nieces and nephews to love!
I am so grateful that pictures like this one are possible, because my brother and my various sisters-in-law are so wonderfully civilized! We are a very lucky family.

Guy magnet

Where did this girl come from? She is nothing like her mother! Her best friends have often been of the male persuasion, and as she gets older, that isn't changing. (Her mother, as I recall, was afraid of boys.)

So, Saturday about 4 pm a male person came over to "study languages" with her. A couple of hours later, no sign of him leaving, so I asked if he wanted to stay and eat with us. He most emphatically did want to. After dinner, she was going to a girl friend's house to watch a movie--he went too. She came home at 12:30. He left a whole bunch of books and stuff at our house, since he is planning to come again on Tuesday.

Sunday, we are walking home from choir practice at 5 pm. We see a male person leaving our house, walking toward us. Different male. He stops and asks her to come over to his house for hamburgers--okay with me; her brother is already at this particular house. So she joins a whole bunch of boys and her brother for that get-together. She is the only female. Same boy walks her home and comes in and stays until about 9:30 pm.

Monday, she joins that boy and yet another boy to hang out at the other boy's house after school. (This "another" boy would be one who once told her brother David that she is "hot"). When we get home from work, she and the boy from Sunday are on our computer using Facebook. Now that boy is watching a movie with her dad while she is playing with her cats.

Tuesday--it will be the turn of the boy from Saturday for more "language study."

Sixteen is still five months away!

Turn me on, dead man.

Ever since I went to the "New Music Group" concert on Tuesday, I have been thinking about the Beatles and Revolution No.9, which was played for our listening (lack of) pleasure at the concert. (Josie thought it would make for great Halloween background effect, though.) What was surprising to me was that, in the program notes, the only reference made to Paul was that he was not a part of recording Revolution 9.

And that was odd to me, because if I think of Revolution 9 at all, I think of Paul. Because of the "Paul is Dead" hoax, or whatever it was. If you are so young that you don't know what I am talking about, even Wikipedia has an article on the "Paul is dead" hoax, and there is actually an entire website dedicated to the topic. More than one, actually.

But in the program notes for the concert, there was nothing about the whole Paul is dead thing. The notes just discussed John and Yoko and George and the musical experimentation / sound-recording experimentation of the time. And then we listened to the track. Played forwards.

They didn't even play it backwards! So all these poor young people who weren't alive when the "White Album" was released in 1968 don't realize that if you play Revolution 9 backwards you really do hear, repeated over and over "Turn me on, dead man. Turn me on, dead man." In a very weird, electronic-sounding way, but definitely there. You don't need to have a fabulous imagination to hear it; it is just audible to any ears.

In 1968, I was ten years old, turning eleven in that December. My dad (who was born in 1915) was an early adapter of technology, getting an early start with things like cars and tractors and airplanes, and photography and radios and sound recording equipment (etc.), so we had a fabulous reel-to-reel tape system. My older siblings were 13, 16 and 18, and way more into popular culture than I was, so my brother made sure that we experimented with the tape recording of the "White Album" ourselves, so that we could hear with our own ears whether or not you really could hear "Turn me on, dead man" when Revolution 9 was played backwards.

And I thought I was the coolest kid ever, when at the lunch table at school there was conjecturing about whether or not Paul was really dead, and the Revolution 9 "evidence" was brought up and other kids wondered if you really could hear "Turn me on, dead man," I could say "It's true!" because I had heard it myself.

So, at Tuesday's concert, I wanted to stand up and say "Hey, why didn't you play it backwards! That's the best part!" But I didn't do it.

Now, thanks to the internet and its many resources, you can just go to this website, and hear "Turn me on, dead man" for yourself. But who is to say it really comes from playing the original track backwards? They can just put up any old sound file and call it whatever they want. No, it was much more believable and impressive back in 1968, when you had first listened to the track forwards, and then you had played the same tape backwards, your very own self, and heard the message, "Turn me on, dead man." First time: chills up and down your spine, and you and your sisters and brothers all look at each other, eyes wide in incredulity, because you really didn't think it would be there. But it was!

It's a small, small world

Here's my "it's a small world" story for this week:

As you know, Josie and I play in BYU's Balinese gamelan, Bintang Wah-Yu. This summer, our director, who is also into "new music" got talking to a composition professor who is totally into "new music" and ended up commissioning a piece for gamelan and amplified viola. The composition professor who wrote the piece is Christian Asplund.

The piece is really odd, but oddly fun to play, and oddly simple (compared to traditional gamelan, which is actually extraordinarily difficult) and oddly melodic some of the time. We have been working on the piece for the last month or so, preparing two of its seven movements for performance. It is different, too, in that we use a score to play from, instead of just memory.

So, we performed movements one and three at the "New Music Group" concert last night. Josie and I both were not terribly excited about it, because we are not really "new music" fans, being quite happy with the "old music", thank you very much. However, our performance was really good, with lots of energy, and the audience really liked it.

What is interesting is that, while listening to the first half of the concert, some of which was not exactly my favorite listening experience, I was reading the program and especially the biographies of all the professors whose "new music" was being performed--usually by them, too. So I read Christian Asplund's biography, and thought, "I didn't realize that he is Canadian!"

So after the concert, I went and said that: "I didn't realize you are Canadian; because I am, too." So we compared notes. He was born in Calgary, but grew up in Ontario. I was born in Taber; his parents were from Lethbridge and Raymond, my mom was from Raymond. So I asked a good Alberta question, "What was your mom's maiden name?" And it was Strong. I knew that I knew Strongs, but which Strongs? I couldn't remember.

Well, Christian's mom lives here now; his father died about twenty years ago. His mom is Patricia Strong Asplund, and she was at the concert, so I met her and we talked for awhile. I told her my mom was a Hancock from Raymond, and she said that Keith Hancock was one of her really good high school friends, and they used to do a lot of double dating with each other, not on dates together, but each of them with a date, and all four together.

So when I got home I looked in the Raymond History Book. There were no Asplunds, and no Patricia Strong in the index. So I just turned to the Strong section and started reading. And of course, I found her. Because Joe and Marie (Redd) Strong's oldest daughter was named Patricia. Which makes her LeRon's first cousin, since his mom is "Aunt Marie's" younger sister. I thought Patricia was too old to be LeRon's cousin, until I remembered that Keith Hancock is my cousin, so duh...if I can have a cousin that old, so can he.

And oddly enough, when we lived in Raymond, we lived in Joe and Marie Strong's old house.

So, there you have it. Who knew that Christian Asplund is not only Canadian, but he is Michael Torrie's second cousin? And of course, since Colleen and LeRon are like fourth cousins (the Redds descend from a Wintch girl who married a Bryner, and we descend from her brother Casper) dating back to the 1800s in Switzerland...so Josie and I are related to Christian Asplund, too. Just a long ways off. Who knew?

Am I True to Myself? By Edgar Guest

I have to live with myself, and so
I want to be fit for myself to know,
I want to be able, as days go by,
Always to look myself straight in the eye;
I don’t want to stand, with the setting sun,
And hate myself for things I’ve done.
I don’t want to keep on a closet shelf
A lot of secrets about myself,
And fool myself, as I come and go,
Into thinking that nobody else will know
The kind of man I really am;
I don’t want to dress up myself in sham.
I want to go out with my head erect,
I want to deserve all men’s respect;
But here in the struggle for fame and pelf
I want to be able to like myself.
I don’t want to look at myself and know
That I’m bluster and bluff and empty show.
I can never hide myself from me;
I see what others may never see;
I know what others may never know,
I never can fool myself, and so,
Whatever happens, I want to be
Self-respecting and conscience free.

Just because I felt like posting this today...

I remember Helma Barton, one of my grandma's friends, quoting Edgar A. Guest, this poem and others (like Making a House a Home, for example). And President Monson quotes Guest pretty often, too. My parents used to quote snippets of poems, less frequently the whole thing. And I think that maybe our kids and grandkids are missing out, because a poem can be a very effective and memorable way to put good ideas across. I have had the first couple of the lines of this poem running through my head for most of my life, and you know, I think that has been a good thing.

My health care rant

Everyone is talking about Health Care lately, with strong opinions on either side of the question about whether or not the United States should have universal health care. Like the rest of the developed world has. I know that the debate is very complex, and there is much that I do not understand.

I am old enough to remember when Canada made the switch to universal health care. Although Saskatchewan had been doing something about universal health care in their province since 1946, it wasn't until 1966 that the Canada-wide Medical Care Act came into effect. I was nine years old. I can remember that my parents and other relatives were concerned about the ramifications of this act, but it actually worked out to be just fine, and I know that my parents grew to love Alberta Health Care.

I think something that worked in Canada was that the Medical Care Act just required the provinces to do something about universal health care, but didn't dictate a whole program, allowing the provinces some latitude to create something that would work for them. So, if you move from province to province in Canada, the health care that is covered won't be exactly the same. And provinces can "opt out" of participating, too, but if they do, they relinquish federal funding. So they all have opted to participate. I think that maybe part of the problem in the US is that they are trying to create one big behemoth of a national system for this huge country, and maybe some of the decisions would be better made at the state level. Just my opinion.

About the time that the Medical Care Act was passed, I was sick. We lived in the country, and usually when we were sick, our first order of business was to be checked out by my Auntie Beulah, who lived a quarter of a mile away and who was a nurse. If she didn't know what to do for us, then we would call the doctor. Auntie Beulah thought that I had the measles, so my mom called our family doctor, Dr. Campbell. And he was on his way to Vauxhall, the community just up the highway, so he stopped in at our house on his way to the Vauxhall clinic to check me out, and sure enough, I had the measles. That was pretty ordinary. Dr. Campbell made house calls before the Medical Care Act, and he made house calls after, at least to our house, which was literally right on his way between hospitals. So nothing really changed.

When we lived in British Columbia in the late '80s and early '90s, house calls were normal, too. If our kids were spiking a fever at 9 pm, we just called the emergency number, and a visiting doctor would drop by. These were usually young people just out of medical school, but they could take temperatures and write prescriptions as well as any other doctor, and it sure beat bundling the sick kid into the car and driving to the hospital emergency room.

Now, when Kelli swallowed the pencil, I did drive her to the hospital emergency room. And they took us right in. There was no long wait, maybe a half hour. Same thing for when Nancy cut her chin open ice skating. And when David fell off the monkey bars onto his head at school, and I wasn't even the one who took him to the hospital. I just know they took him right in. And all of these were in the Greater Vancouver area, the Port Moody hospital to be exact. A large metropolitan area. No extreme wait like I hear doomsayers talking about.

Speaking of emergencies, when my dad had his stroke in 1978, out on the farm, the medical personnel in Taber wasted no time at all getting him not just to a hospital, but to Calgary for the superior care that he would get there. That is a lot of miles to cover, and I know that my parents were grateful for the excellent and prompt care given to my dad and covered by Alberta Health Care.

When we lived in Alberta post-1994, we had to make a few trips to the emergency room, usually because Josie fell on her head or broke her arm or something like that. There was never a long wait; I have had longer waits at InstaCare here in Utah than I ever had in an emergency room in Canada.

So...enough about Canada...now about the U.S. and why I think universal health care is needed here. Three points, basically:

1. Insurance companies haggling. I read a great book about eight years ago, written by the former editor of JAMA, a doctor himself: Severed Trust: Why American Medicine Hasn't Been Fixed -- And What We Can Do About It, by George D. Lundberg. So basically--if you are a person like my husband, and you have an old injury from a Worker's Comp Claim, and then you get a new injury--the new Worker's Comp says "It's an old injury" and they are probably right, because without the old injury, his shoulder wouldn't be in its weakened state. And the old Worker's Comp says "It's a new injury" and they are probably right, too, because it is new. And our family health insurance says, we don't want to pay because it should be paid by Worker's Comp. So, at this point, a few months down the road...no one has paid for it yet. And that is just dumb. If there was universal health care, it would just be paid for without all this stupid fighting and all this stupid red tape.

2. Which would you like--your house or your health? Nevermind that you have paid your mortgage on time for years, a really big health crisis can put you out of your home, cause bankruptcies and basically ruin your financial future. We were so fortunate to have good insurance that covered my husband's open-heart surgery. But one of our neighbors had to have a heart transplant, and just the medicine to keep his body from rejecting the new heart put them in the position of having to decide--my life or my house? Which one can I afford to keep? And it is all well and fine to say you would choose life, but families do need basic necessities like shelter, too. In Canada, for example, you can have both. And lest you think I only know of ONE family this happened to--I can also point you to the blog of the InMOMniac. Only in her case it was a gall bladder that got them thrown out in the street.

3. Kids just want to have fun--and in Canada, they could. You want to jump on the trampoline? So go jump. You want to jump off the bridge into the river? So jump. You want to go swimiming, hiking, river rafting on church activities? So do it. That was what our kids did in Canada. Then in the US -- PARANOIA. Everyone is so worried that kids will get hurt. Permission slips, activities that you can't even do because they are "dangerous." I don't even think it is about danger. It is about "Who will pay if someone gets hurt?" With universal health care, injuries just are treated when they happen, just like everything else is treated.

And just to end with, one more comment (paragraph?) about the whole "long waiting period" worry. "We would have to wait so long to see a specialist!" "By the time I would see a specialist, it would be too late!" I already wrote earlier that my experience and that of my family-- long waits were pretty much just NOT a part of our experience with socialized medicine. Well, my friend Krista's husband is waiting a month to see a specialist right here in the US, right now. Not because of socialized medicine, of course, but just because this kind of specialist is pretty rare and hard to get an appointment with. Really special specialists are just hard to get in to see, no matter who is paying the bill. We once needed that kind of specialist to see our daughter Nancy when she was little, because she couldn't learn to walk. For some reason, she couldn't put weight on one leg. Our family doctor in Raymond made an appointment with the specialist in Calgary, and we waited for a month or two. We never went to the specialist because Nancy...

nope! she didn't die! sorry to ruin the whole paragraph for you. You thought that socialized medicine failed. Actually, Nancy just was fine. She started to walk. She started to be able to stand on the formerly bad leg. And now, twenty-four years later, she is still fine. She walks and runs and swims and climbs pyramids just fine. I guess we could have kept that appointment with the specialist to find out why she COULDN'T use her leg before, but we just figured if we didn't go, someone else who had been waiting would get in sooner. Our family doctor was fine with that. We were fine with that. Nancy, are you fine with that?

Oh, that brings me to another paragraph. Because I could talk about how in this insurance-driven, make-as-much-money-out-of-this-patient medical system in the US, I think that often too much medical intervention takes place too quickly. But that is a blog for another day.

High School

I thought I would blog about High School, since I don't think that Josie will...but it has been an interesting experience so far, seeing my last child enter high school. I have been at this high school thing for a long time, longer than how old Josie is, actually. I am kind of sad to be at the end of this time of my life. :o(

So, Josie was all set to go to Timpanogos, which is a really great school very close to home. But, when I was in Egypt, she called me one day and said that she thought she would like to go to Provo High so she could continue Arabic; she was working really hard at StarTalk, and didn't want to lose the ground she had gained. Arabic is only offered at Provo High and Lone Peak High which is too far away to be logistically possible.

I said that I would call Provo High when I got home, but what was I thinking? I should have looked them up and called them from Egypt (on Nancy and Andrew's Utah County line) because by the time I got home they were so busy that I couldn't get an appointment with a counsellor until Tuesday Aug. 18. Which would have been fine if we didn't have tickets for Wicked in San Diego that very day.

So I just decided we would forget the Provo High possibility, because as soon as we got back from San Diego, school started. And the day after school started, Patrick needed to be on a plane to Egypt. So I was very busy getting Josie off to school and Patrick off to Egypt.

But on Friday afternoon, Audrey the Arabic teacher called me. The counsellor had come across the note the secretary had left her telling about us, and she was so busy that she asked Audrey to call us. Audrey really, really, really wanted Josie to come to Provo High. By now, Josie wasn't sure, because she really liked all her Timpanogos classes. But we made plans to meet Audrey at Provo High on Monday morning at 7:30 August 24 to find out about what classes might be available there. Josie really wanted to just go to Provo for Arabic, and stay at Timpanogos for her other classes.

But we learned that it is going to be a fabulous year for Arabic at Provo High. They got federal funding to have a teacher from Egypt to team teach with Audrey, so they have two teachers and money for cool things as a part of the funding. So Josie was thinking it would be good to be in Arabic at Provo.

We had to go back to Provo again on Tuesday morning at 7:00 to finish up the schedule, but they couldn't give Josie any classes for real until we filled out papers at the district office, because Provo and Orem are in different school districts. And they said the paperwork would take at least two or three days. They said in the end, we would get in, but not to expect it to happen very fast. Which was discouraging, because how lame is that to be floating between schools your first year of high school, when it is already hard to find friends and figure out where your classes are?

I ran Josie back to Timpanogos to school, and then ran back to Provo to the district office. (Well, actually, I drove. If I had been running, I would have been even more tired and discouraged.) At the district office, I learned that Josie would have to choose one school or the other--the state won't allow students to straddle districts. They can straddle schools WITHIN a district, but can't do two districts at once.

I ran back home to get all the documentation the district asked for, then picked Josie up at school so she could go to Provo to visit the Arabic class, which the administrators had given her permission to do. Then, I went back to the district office to turn the papers back in, because Josie had decided that she wanted to take Arabic badly enough to give up Timpanogos.

I walked into the district office, and the person I needed to talk to was on the phone. But just past her I saw my friend. So I said, "Hi Claudia." And she said, "Hi Myrna. What are you doing here?" And I said, "I am trying to transfer Josie to Provo so she can take Arabic at Provo High." And then we just chatted back and forth about this and that for quite a few minutes, until the lady in front got off the phone. When she did, Claudia said, "I want you to treat this lady really nice because she is my friend." And then I told the person what I needed, and Claudia broke in and said, "I know her daughter. She is a wonderful person. She is the kind of a daughter that all parents wish they had." "Really?" the other lady said. "Yes she is. She is a really good girl," Claudia said. "Is she so good that I don't even need to call the other school and check up on her?" she asked. "Yes," Claudia said, moving her hands expansively, "her reputation proceeds her."

"Okay," the other lady said, "That's good enough for me." And she stamped a paper and handed it to me. "You're all set," she said. "This is all I need?" I asked in amazement, "They said it would take a couple of days." "Well, it usually does," Claudia said, "but this is a special case. Just don't tell them we can do it this fast, or they will be sending us more work than we actually want to do." And we all laughed.

I went back to Provo High, where I amazed and dumbfounded the counselling center with my already signed and stamped paper. The registrar said, "I can't believe you got this all done today! I have never seen a student approved this quickly!" And I said, "I was pretty amazed, too."

So, she was in, but what about classes? Well, Provo High has a couple of other selling points: they have the International Baccalaureate program. And they have a modified math program, so that you can take Algebra 1A one year, and Algebra 1B the next, so you are taking twice the time to learn the concepts. We think this will be a heaven-sent thing for Josie. She may be able to finally bite the math bullet.

And the counsellor had a fabulous idea for seminary: both of her first period classes are seminary, so that when she goes to Gamelan at BYU, she can just go to seminary on Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week. She will end up with MORE seminary than everyone else, because they only have five days in two weeks, and she will have six.

Josie auditioned for choir and is in the concert choir. Today we changed her into drama and peer tutoring, and that helped her to make some friends and have people to spend lunch time with, so she is very happy and life is good. She even said it was an "amazing day" even though with her schedule change she had to go to Algebra two days in a row! Even that didn't ruin her day! We feel so blessed.

She has seminary or gamelan, concert choir, english and arabic one day; seminary or gamelan, drama, peer tutor and algebra the next. She is a happy camper.

Blast from the Past

This is an addendum to my "It's Fabulous!" post from July--my cousin Lori sent me a photo of us taken at her Sept. 4, 1971 wedding reception!
I didn't even know there were photos of us performing! Aren't our skirts short? Mini-skirts were in style at the time, and I am pretty sure we thought our shorts were pretty modest and not quite "in style!" Now I am like, wow, those skirts were short!

Bird of Paradise

While Nancy was preparing dinner tonight, Rachel and I were sitting on the couch looking at my pictures from South Africa. There are a lot of wildlife photos, so I was doing commentary and asking questions. "This is a daddy ostrich. And this is a mommy ostrich. What kind of ostrich is this? And here is a mommy baboon and a baby baboon. This is a daddy baboon. Oh, here is a bird. And how many birds do we see here? Oh, look at the penguins. See how many penguins are walking along. Where do you think they are going? And here is a bird of paradise. This one is yellow. They are usually orange, but isn't this yellow one pretty." Andrew was sitting across the room listening to our patter.

A few minutes later, we are all sitting at the table eating. Rachel kind of slowed down and was not finishing what was on her plate. So Andrew was encouraging her to eat. "Take a baboon bite, Rachel." And she would pretend to eat like a baboon. Then he said, "How about a bird of paradise bite?" Rachel looked at him all confused, turned and looked at me, and I said, "Well, Andrew, it is kind of hard to take a bite like a bird of paradise, because a bird of paradise is a flower!"

How was he to know? We had been talking about it with baboons and birds and ducks and penguins and ostriches! What was he supposed to think!

"See" reference

Hurray, I am relieved of the need to post for a whole week! I am visiting Nancy, and she is a blogger extraordinaire, so anyone who wants to follow what I am up to, please visit Heissatopia, and she will tell it better than I can!

Cape of Good Hope

Who knew, back when I was learning about Vasco de Gama and other Portuguese explorers that I would one day be standing on the Cape of Good Hope? But that day came! Awesome experience! Thanks to New Zealand's own Neil Shephard for the photos. There were 14 of us on the tour, and grateful that we brought a photographer along. These are just a sample of the 216 photos Neil took.

Moyo

This is just blatant advertising for Moyo.

If you have ever wondered if you would really like to visit South Africa, stop wondering--you do want to. And when you get here, make sure you include a Moyo evening in your itinerary.

Moyo is the Swahili word for soul, and the intent of a Moyo experience is to feed you, body and soul.

Moyo is at the Spier vineyard. You enter through the gift shop (in a Disneyesque sort of way) and then you are in another world. All around are trees and waterfalls. I went with Tom and Polly Tatton and Carlos Solare, and were joined by Steve and Penny Kruse. Csaba and Mary, Hester and Peter and Wesley our van driver and his wife also were at Moyo tonight. Polly had asked for a tree reservation, but our host said it was kind of cold, so they had saved us a spot in a tree and also inside. We climbed up to our tree spot, and it was lovely--I climbed to the top of the tree, past two more dining areas, to look out over the valley. I took a picture with my disposable camera, so someday I may post it.

We decided it would be too cold and went inside the tent. They had a table for us right by the drumming platform, and with a good view of the stage where the band performs. We were also right by one of the fires, so it was toasty warm, but they do provide thick blankets if you need them. First they serve you a cup of hot soup--ours was pea and onion. Yummy! Then four types of breads from various parts of Afica, served with four dips from various parts of Africa, served with a delicious salad.

THEN you go to the buffet. All you can eat...salad bar, vegetable bar, starch bar (mostly rice and couscous dishes--the potatoes are in the vegetable bar), meat bar (wild and tame red meats), chicken bar, fish bar, dessert bar. I hope I didn't miss any. Oh, yes, a kind of legumes and lentils bar.

The African drummers and dancers would perform, spelled off by the Bob Marleyesque rockish band on the other stage. The drummers/dancers are fabulous! They are actually singing, too, belting out their songs while expending enormous amounts of energy dancing. And may I add that the dancers were all dressed modestly, the girls all in black from head to toe. Surprise, surprise--one of the male dancers came and got Tom Tatton to dance on stage with him! And Tom did fabulously for an old guy of seventy years! He followed the dancer move for move, until the dancer ended by suddenly sitting on his derriere on the edge of the stage. Tom said, "I'm not doing that!" Polly was so worried because Tom's pants have a tendency to descend. She was just mesmerized, couldn't even pick up her camera, every once in a while whispering "Pull up your pants, Tom." He was too busy keeping up with the dancer to pick up Polly's vibes, but all was well--the pants stayed up. Carlos and Steve got some great pictures of Tom's Moyo Moment--I may have too; just my camera doesn't give out advance information.

So...then we came back to our guest house, and it was the end of a fascinating experience. All for R225, which is about $30 US. Not bad for a full-on buffet AND entertainment. (Oh, and the cost of the flight to South Africa, too...)

Flashback Friday: Kronberg

Being at a viola congress makes me think of all the past congresses, and the good friends made and experiences had with them. This is my 8th viola congress: Seattle, Kronberg, Minneapolis, Reykjavik, Montreal, Adelaide, Tempe, Stellenbosch. When I went to Seattle, I was a bit overwhelmed and also there were a lot of BYU people there, so I didn't branch out and make friends very much. So Kronberg is the congress at which I really started to make friends in the international viola community.

Nancy came with me to the Kronberg congress. This congress was lightly attended so we got to know the participants very well indeed. This congress was also jam-packed busy. The play-in began at 8 AM every day, but the concerts usually ended at midnight. That was because there was always a concert AFTER the concert. One night, the after-concert concert was being given by Henryk and other Swedish performers. We went to the concert in the big concert hall, and then walked up the hill to the little carriage-house building where Henryk's performance would be.

Henryk is a vabulous violist who can play anything from classical to folk to experimental music. Unfortunately, this was to be a concert of experimental music. People started melting away. We wanted to melt with them, but we also didn't want these poor musicians to be playing for an audience of empty chairs, so we stuck it out. By the end of the concert at midnight, there were very few people remaining. The only ones that I am sure were there were the little group of us walking home together.

The girl from Switzerland whose name escapes me was staying close to the carriage house; Michelle, Korey, Nancy and I were all staying in the same hotel, but Jutta was staying at a guest house close to the train station. We didn't want her to walk that distance alone, so we all walked with her, said good night and continued on our way.

There was a little parkish area between the train station and our hotel. In the day time, we had often walked through it with no difficulty. There were two paths on the side of this open area, and at some point the paths diverged, but we thought that it was like "You take the high road, and I'll take the low road" but both would lead to a metaphorical Scotland. I think we were even singing that song for a bit as we walked along, taking the high road.

Mistake! While the low road did indeed lead to our hotel...the high road lead....somewhere! And that is how we found ourselves at two o'clock in the morning wandering around on the highway outside of Kronberg, with no idea how to get back to our hotel! It was a lovely moonlight night, and we weren't scared because there were four of us, and Korey was a guy so we felt somewhat protected. We just were tired and getting really giddy and giggly as we walked and walked and walked with no end in sight.

Finally, we spied a bar in the trees off to the side of the road....there had been nothing but trees for ages! As we walked towards it, the lights went off. "No!" Korey bellowed, "they can't close! We have to ask them for directions!" We sped up our pace to get there before all the people might potentially leave, and hurray! We made it! We talked to an actual person, who told us where to go.

We just had to turn around and walk back the way we had come for a short distance, and turn to connect to the road that led directly to our hotel, from a direction that we had not ever gone before. We laughed and laughed. What an experience! Very bonding for us!

Nancy was playing in the play-in every morning at eight. She was very intimidated by the experience, since she was a new violist, but what a fabulous experience! She was the only "American" in the ensemble: two other Canadians, Anne and Jutta, were participating. But no other Americans! Anne and Beate, from Lithuania, were especially kind and helpful to Nancy, and both of them are among my favorite people at viola congresses to this day.

I knew that Anne would not be coming this year--she had a chamber music festival in Ottawa that conflicted with this congress. I didn't see Beate here, either, until Wednesday morning. I was sitting in Fismer Hall after the students from Manchester had played, and she came up behind me. I said, "Oh, hello, I didn't know you were here!" She explained that she arrived late. She is living in Botswana now, working for Unicef, and did not have enough days off to come for the whole congress. We chatted happily together, but I was wondering, "What is different about Beate?"

She was sitting beside me as the next event started...Csaba was talking about his research on the Bartok concerto. She had talked about how she had laser surgery on her eyes. So that explained no glasses, and that seemed to be the most glaring difference. I noticed that her shirt seemed to have a really masculine cut. She stuck a foot out, and I thought "Wow, that shoe has a really masculine cut to it." Hey, I like to buy men's shoes, too, because they are wider and more comfortable. If I can find some that aren't too clunky and heavy....

About an hour later, Beate came up to me and said, "I thought I should tell you, since people are sometimes confused...I got a sex change operation. I was just talking to Csaba, and he said to me, 'oh you are from Lithuania, do you know my friend Beate?' and I had to explain that I am his friend Beate." And then s/he flipped her/his nametag over and it said Peter. Which I had not noticed before. And that explained why the shirt and shoes looked so masculine, and now that I was looking carefully, the chest was pretty flat, and the haircut was not really what a female would wear.

And now I am trying really hard to act the same as always, but that is very hard to do, because actually, things aren't the same as always, are they?

Cream buns and Carrot cake

When Josie and I went to Australia in 2007, Barbara drove us to the beach one day, and we stopped at a little bakery that Barbara loves, to get ourselves a treat. Barbara highly recommended the cream buns.

I didn't know what a cream bun was, but the description reminded me of two things: bismarcks filled with bordeaux cream, and cream puffs. I love both of those! So I bought myself a cream bun. But a cream bun in Australia is nothing like a bismarck filled with bordeaux cream, nor is it like a cream puff. It is a bun cut in two and filled with cream. Heavy cream, whipped. With no added sugar or vanilla flavoring. Just a cream bun, like its name says. And was that gross to me? It was! All that fat cream--gross! (Kind of made me ashamed of myself to think that, had they just added sugar I could have eaten it without a problem, but when it was just fat without the sugar, it was just too gross.)

So yesterday, here in South Africa, I caved and bought myself a slice of carrot cake. I had been very good about not doing that for several days, because 18 rand for a slice of cake seemed really expensive. But the cake just looked so good, so I did the math, and realized that the cake only cost 3 dollars, and that is not a bad price for a large piece of cake in a restaurant, is it? The cream cheese frosting looked delicious, the cake was moist and filled with chunks of pineapple and feathery carrot slices.

Our carrot cake at home has icing all over the top and sides, and I try to eat it very carefully, icing with every bite, so I don't end up with too much sweet stuff to eat all at the same time. Here, they only put icing on the top, hanging down the edge a bit, and the cake is really tall. Definitely more cake than frosting. And the frosting isn't terribly thick either, so I thought I would eat the bottom of the cake first, by itself, and treat myself to finishing up with the delicious frosting and the top half of the cake. I took my first bite of frosting that I had been saving for last to enjoy it so much--and tasted--butter. Yes folks, butter. There was just a hint of sweetness to the butter, but it was mostly just plain butter. No cream cheese. The lovely yellowish color was the butter. I butter bread very thinly. I don't butter cake at all, as a general rule. Oh, how I wished I had eaten the icing with the entire cake, instead of saving it for last.

As I was choking it down, a New Zealander walked past me and said, "I think one of the best things about this congress is the cake!" and I just smiled and didn't reveal that I am not going to eat another piece of cake for a long time. At least, not this week!

I bet that New Zealanders might like Australian cream buns, too.

Jet Lag

I have never experienced jet lag like this before! Of course, I have never flown to South Africa before, either. This must be what it is like to have narcolepsy. I will be sitting listening to a lecture or enjoying a performance, and bam, I am asleep. I wake up wondering what happened, and what did I miss? Yesterday, Vivienne, the luthier at the booth next to mine, commented that she envied my ability to take cat-naps. "Oh, that is not ability," I protested, "That is jet lag! I don't plan the naps; they just happen!" Brian, the luthier next to her, said that flying from North America to South Africa always gives him about four or five days of jet lag, but he doesn't have any trouble going the opposite direction. Here's hoping! Also Jutta and Christine had trouble with jet lag. Jutta had to present and perform the first day of the congress, so she came four days early so she would feel "normal" by Monday. And Christine flew in a couple of weeks early, and spent the first four days just crashing at a hotel in Cape Town. So...I am not the only one to have this jet laggy experience.

In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, and to quote that play Abra directed in High School that had the line "my mind is on fire!" -- mine was! It was on fire at 3 AM on Wednesday, and I got up and chatted with Josie on FB for a bit, and then created a new blog for the viola archive, which is what my mind was on fire about. And then I had to pay the piper--by 5 pm on Wednesday, it was all I could do to walk the two minutes back to my room and crash. I didn't unpack my backpack and put my sandwich in the fridge. I did nothing but lay down in the bed and go to sleep. I needed a nap before the 8 pm concert!

I woke up and it was dark and 8:35--I thought to myself, "I am late. I need to get up and go so I don't miss the whole thing." At 9:35, I woke up again, and could barely drag myself out of bed to put on my nightgown, brush my teeth, and put the sandwich in the fridge. I worried momentarily about the Tattons--they usually walk home with me after the evening concert--and when they got in at 10:00, they stopped outside my door and said "Good night, Myrna." I woke up again to a lot of noise outside at midnight. I got up and opened the door, and Neil and Anna and Nelly were all outside sort of panicking. The guest house gives you about four or five keys, and many of them are skeleton keys, and they were having issues opening the door to go upstairs. I was about to unlock my interior door and let them walk though my suite, but then at the last minute, Anna got the door to open, so life was good. Everything quieted down, and I went back to sleep. It is almost 5:30 now, and that is a respectable time to get up, seeing that I went to bed twelve hours ago.

Orchestra + Folk Instruments

Concert Tuesday night featured Kobus Malan on oboe and Anthony Caplan on a variety of folk instruments.

Something both Josie and Nancy would appreciate from this congress: you know how we usually go from pretty much 8 AM to 10 PM or later every day? Well, here, they don't start anything until 9 AM. Much more civilized, given the late hour at which we end every day!

Pictures: Songs of Madosini

Stellenbosch

Well, here I am in the beautiful university town of Stellenbosch, South Africa. It is a gorgeous place! Palm trees, yet cool during "winter." I am staying in a little guest house a two minute walk away from campus. The guest house I am in was built in 1904, and is very cute and charming. I worry about mice, but the house cat is always on duty, so I don't worry much.

Stellenbosch is a very old Dutch settlement, the second oldest settlement in the Cape area, dating back to the early 1600s. The down town area has a strict "dress code" for its buildings: all must be whitewashed as they were back in the day. No purple, pink or blue. No red or brown or yellow. Every building is a lovely clean white. The sidewalks are stone or dirt. And most of the people are Afrikaans speaking.

As for the Viola Congress, it has been full of a lovely mix of African and Western European culture. The performance last night of an African work called "The Songs of Madosini" was fabulous! An Afrikaans composer Huyssen collaborated with Madosini Latozi Mpahleni, whose voice is amazing and who also plays the uhadi, the umrhubhe and the isiyolotolo, to create a work that blends string instruments and clarinet with the indigenous instruments of Africa. A young girl, Nosindi Mtiomkulu, narrated the story in a native tongue (subtitled on a screen) blended with English, and the instrumentalists created the musical backdrop to the story. Very cool! I, of course, neglected to bring my camera to the concert, but a friend from New Zealand, Neil, took some pictures...I am going to see if I can get him to send me a couple to put here. So check back to see if I have added pictures.

It's fabulous!

This blog post is in honor of my sister-in-law Marie Christine, whose birthday is July 21.In the summer of 1971, Marie Christine came to our house to stay. We were so excited to have a real person from France coming to our house. Mom and Dad were really worried about having a guest from a venerable civilization of decorum and refinement come to our farm almost in the middle of nowhere. They were so worried that Dad put in a new cistern, which was fabulous for all of us, because our old cistern only held one tank of water, and the new one held seven! (So less worry about running out of water.) And Mom bought new glasses, because we couldn't have a guest from France drinking out of plastic! (And that summer we set two records: A) for most spilled drinks and B) for most broken glasses!)

But Christine, as we called her in those days, was just your normal, down-to-earth person; she didn't care about how much water was in the cistern or what the glasses were like. And soon she was just one of the girls, and we all felt like sisters, Christine, Colleen, Arlene and I.

Our cousins Rita and Lori Navratil both got married that summer of 1971. Lori was planning to have a program at her reception, and she asked Arlene and I to sing. Arlene and I often sang for weddings and receptions and other occasions, usually with our cousin Marie. We usually did all our own arrangements of the songs we sang, from sheet music or transcribing from recordings. Since this wedding was on our Hancock side, just Arlene and I were asked to sing. We decided to sing a song that was on a 45 rpm recording that my mom had. The singer was Charlie Gracie, whose voice was kind of Elvis Presley-esque. The song was called "It's Fabulous" and it had been #16 on the Top Forty charts in 1956. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)

And I just bet you want to know how it goes:

I always knew
I was crazy for you,
But how'd I know
You'd thrill me so?
If this is love....(h)it's fabulous!

Your lips close to mine,
I get chills up my spine,
But when they touch
I thrill so much!
If this is love...(h)it's fabulous!

I read in a book
About love and its charms
But I never knew
'Till I held you in my arm! (my arms)

When I hold you tight,
Well, I know, I know I'm right
'Cause only you
Can do what you do!
If this is love...(h)it's fabulous!

It had some interludes for dancing, and some doo-doo-dooing and oh-oh-oh-ohing. Cool fifties stuff, with the cute little hiccup of "h" in front of the "it." And prominent "ch" on "touCH" and "muCH." Oh, yah. Good stuff.

You probably want to hear it, too.

Arlene and I decided (read: Arlene decided and I nodded my head "Yes, dear sister Arlene!") this song would be fabulous as a quartet. That way we could dress two people as guys, and two as girls, and it would make the dance routine in the middle more interesting. We decided that Colleen and Christine should be the other half of our quartet. They protested that they didn't have the stage experience we had, but we insisted they participate. Colleen and Arlene would sing soprano; Christine and I would sing alto. It would be fabulous!

I don't remember what the "girls" were wearing, though I believe dresses and long beads were involved. The "guys" would tie their hair back, wear white pants and red alpaca sweaters, and we borrowed white straw hats with red bands and canes from someone to complete their ensembles.

We choreographed our musical number, complete with twirling canes and hats. It really was fabulous! We sounded good; we looked good.

If you look back at the lyrics, you can see that there is a part where my arms (my arms) is repeated. That repetition was on the Charlie Gracie recording, and Arlene and I really wanted to do that in our rendition. Arlene wanted Christine to do it. You see, while I am a fake alto (as evidence, just listen to my high squeaky speaking voice) Christine is a true alto. She has a gorgeous, sultry, low-pitched voice. And she was playing a guy in our song. So her voice and her demeanor in her costume would make it perfect for the "my arms" repetition. We asked her to do it, but she said she was too shy. She could sing with us, but she just couldn't sing that line by herself.

And that was where it stood. We were doing the song without the "my arms" repetition. It was still fabulous.

So, it is the night of the reception, and we are up on stage, singing and dancing our hearts out, with the audience smiling and enjoying the music. We get to the middle part of the song, and we are belting out, "I read in a book, about love and its charms, but I, I never knew, 'till I held you in my arms!" And our arms are stretched out like they are supposed to be...and over on my right side, Christine steps forward, and in her deepest alto sings out "IN MY ARMS!" I remember being so shocked at hearing that, but Arlene, who was on my left, turned and gaped at Christine, her mouth wide open and her eyes bugging out. And then someone started to giggle nervously, and it might have been Colleen, or it might have been me, but giggles are infectious, so in just seconds, all four of us were standing there giggling. And then laughing so hard we were almost crying.

Remember in "Foul Play" when the Pirates of Penzance ship falls down in the middle of the Mikado, and the audience is just stunned? Well, that was our audience of about three hundred people in the big gym of the Stake Centre in Raymond. They were stunned, just staring at us while we were laughing like idiots on the stage. And then slowly, they all joined in, and we led the audience in a laugh-fest.

But the show must go on! And so we stopped laughing, and resumed our song. And finished it to rousing applause.

So it turned out fine, but I was mystified...how had that happened?

Well...unknown to Colleen and I, Arlene had really, really, really wanted Christine to sing that line, and there was a little private bet going on the side between Arlene and Christine. I am not sure if money was involved, but I do know that some pride was involved. And Arlene just had a way of getting people to do what she wanted them to do... I think she worded the bet so that Christine just felt compelled to do it; she just had to say that line, or lose face. In spite of which, Arlene really didn't think Christine would do it and was totally shocked when she did. Too bad Colleen and I had no idea that this might even be a possibility....maybe if we were half expecting it, we could have controlled our giggles.

But actually, I am glad it happened just the way it did. If we had sung the song perfectly, without a hitch, it would have been just one more performance blending into dozens of other performances. But thanks to Christine and her surprise line, this memory is crystal clear and always makes me smile! As memories go..."it's fabulous!"
This not-so-fabulous picture of Marie Christine and I was taken in August 1974, a few years after our fabulous singing experience. Presently, she is known as Marie, her first name. And she is still a fabulous sister, no matter what we call her!

Biker Hill

It is a good thing that my kids blog and trigger memories for me. Yesterday David wrote about a funny thing that happened on the hill walking up to campus, and Nancy responded with an incident that happened on the same hill.

And that made me remember something that happened to me on that hill a few years ago. It was probably during Winter semester 1976, I am guessing in late March.

It was Monday evening, and our BYU 100th Branch was having a ward activity on campus. My room-mate Renée and I went, and then we decided to leave a bit early (before the closing prayer--like we had always been warned not to do) and walk home. I don't remember why we were in such a rush; I doubt that we had plans to study, because both of us were goofing off more often than studying that particular semester. But leave we did, and started heading down the long sloping path down the hill on the southwest side of campus, the hill described by my son David as "Rape Hill." But to me, that hill lives in my memory as "Biker Hill."

This path could be very scary, with lots of trees and bushes for bad guys to hide behind. We had always been cautioned not to go home that way alone at night, ever. Our branch would always meet in the library every hour on the hour so that mixed groups of males and females would walk home together. Safety in numbers.

Well ,this night, it was just Renée and I walking down the hill by ourselves. We were happily chatting about the evening and whatever else was on our minds, when we realized that we were being followed by a couple of guys on motorbikes. They were just putt-putting along, staying right with us. We walked faster, they kept up; we slowed our pace, so did they. We thought we were probably just imagining things, because how silly was that for guys on motorbikes to be following us? So we got to one of the sets of stairs leading down from the hill and decided to run down them, because the motorbikes were probably not REALLY following us, and they would probably keep on going down the slope. Of course that is what they would do.

So we ran down those stairs. And we got quite a bit of space between ourselves and the biker dudes, but then they started to go down the stairs, too. On their bikes! We totally did not expect that! We ran really hard. At the bottom of the stairs, just a few houses down, one of Renée's friends lived in a house. She lived on the top level of this three-story house, and you had to go in the back and up some fire-escape-ish stairs to the entrance to the upper apartment. We thought we would be able to go inside her apartment, and if the biker dudes were really following us, we would be safely inside where they couldn't find us.

It was all dark in the yard of the house. And the house was really dark too. We ran up the stairs and pounded on the door, but no one was home. The bikers by then had ridden into the yard, and were circling around below us. We were trapped up there! Luckily, it was really dark, and we cowered breathlessly in a dark corner. They didn't see us, and drove away, but came back two or three more times. They had seen us go into that yard, and they must have thought that we lived there, so had gone inside, or that we were still somewhere in the yard hiding. It was so scary! We cowered in the dark up there on that little tiny dark porch and listened to those bikes riding around in the neighborhood, coming closer, going farther away.

Finally, we decided it was safe to come down off the porch, but we didn't think it was safe to go walking down the street, because we could still hear the bikes riding up and down the street. We ran through the yard and climbed over the fence into the next yard south, and kept on running and climbing over fences until we got to the yard of a house that was facing the next street south. Unlike all the dark, empty-appearing houses whose yards we had been running through, this house was well-lit. So we went and knocked on the back door.

A really nice man opened the door, his wife right behind him. They listened to our story, and invited us in. We talked together for awhile, and then the man walked us home to our apartment, which was only about a block away. We didn't see any bikers and we got home safe and sound, but definitely spooked. That was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me.Here is a picture of Renée now--she doesn't look any different than she looked 33 years ago!