Friday morning things

* Something I'm noticing, and I don't know if it's actually there or I'm just imagining it's there: some of the harmonizations in the version of "When You Wish Upon a Star" that I am teaching myself to play, well - to me, they sort of recall some of the harmonizations on Debussy's "Clair de Lune."

Now, granted, the two pieces are in VERY different keys - C with some accidentals (for the version I have) versus one of "those crazy keys with all kinds of flats" (D flat major, with a visit to C sharp minor). But still, there's something there I'm hearing. I don't know if I'm overinterpreting or if the composer intended a little nod, or if it was something coincidental or subconscious.

(I DO that with music. I have a pretty good auditory memory and I find myself going, "Wait, that thing sounds like this other thing." And that's even beyond the blatantly obvious like "Symphony of Love" by the Toys being a Bach minuet)

It's funny because I never received all that much music instruction: the standard in-school stuff, plus a few years of clarinet lessons (before I got discouraged and gave it up, and really, I was not that good at the clarinet, and also, trying to learn to play a woodwind while you have braces that are regularly being adjusted is not such a hot idea), plus a few teen years of piano (before I realized there was no way I could attend prep school with its afternoon sports commitments* and heavy homework load and find time to practice) and now off and on piano lessons.

(* We didn't have gym, but everyone was expected to participate in sports, either on a team or as "C Squad," which was the group of non-competitive floppers who wouldn't make a team (or didn't want to) but still needed exercise. I played C Squad tennis for four years, for example....)

* Though I will say, the older I get, the more grateful I am my parents made the sacrifices (it was expensive, even back then) to send me there. I received such a good preparation for college, and heck, for just being an adult - we were given more autonomy than your typical high school kid, a lot of things were left up to our judgement (e.g. "You don't have a class this hour. You can decide whether to go to the library and study, or go to the common room and study, or to hang out with the other kids who have that hour off and goof off,, or whether to go to the library and read fashion magazines instead of studying....")

And I learned really well how to take notes. And how to organize and research a paper. And time management. And I can still understand spoken French pretty well, and probably speak it well enough to get by....

I was also happier there. It was a selective-admissions school, so most of the people there really wanted to be there (or the other high-school option for them was considerably less attractive) and the Lord of the Flies nastiness of your typical public school was a lot less. (It wasn't absent, and I don't know how it was for the guys, but I was generally happier and felt less "weird" than I had in junior high). And also, really horrible disruptive people could be expelled (there were one or two expulsions when I was a student, I think one was for drinking? maybe another was for cheating?)

In my more deeply-reflective or perhaps bleaker moods, I speculate I might not be here today if I hadn't gone to that school....either "not here" in the sense of "not having made the achievements I have made" or perhaps even "not here" in the sense of "not here at all" - I was really pretty miserable in junior high, I felt like I didn't fit in at all, and that it was somehow my fault I didn't fit in, and high school would have been more of that. Prep school taught me that there were peers I fit in with and that if other people thought me weird, that wasn't really my fault. (Well, it laid the foundations for that; it wasn't until later I came to that last conclusion)

My brother went to a public school for high school (my family had moved to Illinois by that time); he took mostly honors classes but there were one or two gen-ed type classes he was in that everybody took and he commented on how very different the tenor of the classes were - even when the same teacher taught them. That makes me a little sad, especially when you read things like a kid somewhere in rural Africa who goes out in the evening and sits under the one streetlight in his town (no one having reliable electricity in their homes) so he can have light to study by. There are a lot of things we take for granted in this country....

* And it's Friday. I'm trying to decide whether to go and do "big" grocery shopping (including a trip to the natural foods store) today, or put it off until tomorrow.

The cons of going today: it will be after noon before I can get on the road (and I have to go pick up crickets for a lab next week before I can go) and it's Payday Friday (though it will be a little better shopping in Sherman than going to the walmart here would be)

The cons of going tomorrow: less flexibility to decide whether to come in here and work, and it's supposed to be cold and rainy all day long.

I'll have to see how I feel after I get the crickets but I'm leaning towards this afternoon.

* Chrysalis has got one wing. (Heh. And now my mind blips to a song about probably the most-known-for-evil human being having just one of something. And where did I learn about that song, anyway? I was born more than 20 years after WWII ended, and yet I remember hearing kids singing a version of it....and they say it's a British song, to boot)

I started the second one but I am not very far on it yet. As I said before: I will be so glad to have this done. I think I wouldn't have been tempted to make the pattern if I realized how involved it was, and how insanely tedious making all those holes are.