110 Degrees

Dave finally made it to a 110 degree knee bend, both on Monday and then again today.  His next goal will be to go down the stairs into our basement.  That could happen later today.  Right now he is at the chiropractor's for an adjustment to his sore back.  This happens every fall during marching band season.  It's either due to general stress or to the hours of sitting at the computer re-writing drill, or both.  Anyway, we are happy with his continuing progress in spite of the back problems.

I finally completed the practicum placements for the music education majors yesterday.  We have 41 music education majors at Nebraska Wesleyan, an all-time high, and 31 of them needed practicum placements.  I used 15 teachers in the Lincoln Public Schools, one in Waverly, and one at a local Catholic high school.  A few students will be doing their practicums during fall break back in their home towns.  But I am happy that I can finally say that they all have their assignments now.

I stayed home today to work on domestic projects.  Translation:  I stayed home to continue reading "The Historian."  It's getting harder and harder to put that book down.  We're in Bulgaria now, hot on the trail of Vlad Dracula.  The characters' recent visits to Istanbul and Budapest (in 1974) have been rich with detailed descriptions of the architecture, cuisine, politics and history of these grand cities.  Oh, and back in Istanbul, we just witnessed Professor Turgut Bora drive a silver dagger through the heart of a dear friend who had just received his third bite from a vampire.  (One needs to use a brick to accomplish this feat.) If one dies after the third bite from a vampire, one becomes eternally "undead."  Oh, and Professor Bora just happens to have a vampire kit handy at all times.  It seems his friends (usually librarians) are attacked fairly often for custodializing secret vampire documents.  Like I say, this book is hard to put down.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through now.  I'll keep you posted.

Last night I attended a wonderful world music concert at Wesleyan.  The artist was Todd Green, who studied composition, arranging and performance at Berklee in Boston.  He has studied with George Benson (one of my all-time favorite guitarists), Pat Metheny, Christopher Parkening and Mick Goodrick.  Todd performed on over 30 string, flute and percussion instruments from the Middle East, Asia, South America and Africa.  All of his selections were either original or improvisatory, and he had a way of recording a sound loop so that one or several instruments could continue to be heard while he played another.  It was a stunning and masterful performance.

Tonight is Parents' Night for the Lincoln Southeast Marching Band at Seacrest Field.  This is a totally amusing event (for me, anyway).  The students rehearse for a couple of hours.  Then they perform a run-through of the show for their parents.  And THEN the parents go out on the field an follow their children around during the final run-through.  My favorites are usually the parents of the drum majors and the drum line.  The drum line sometimes has to do this thing they call a crab walk, sort of like the Greek grapevine dance, and it's fun to see the parental renditions.  The dance movements by the flag corps also create some interesting challenges for the parents, especially the dads.  It should be fun.  I'll report back later.

Ciao,

Jeannette