TubaOrNotTuba

Early last week one of my high school teachers passed away. I had a lot of different teachers but a small handful did make me better. This was one. The alert came from one of my siblings who knew of the man without ever having had him had as a teacher. And then on Facebook where I go less often one of my former classmates pointed out that the obituary was online. Based on the comments this man was very well respected. I did meet with him long after graduation but only for a short while. However the skills that he planted for me musically have stayed with me for a lifetime. Most teachers avoid allowing students a place to discover what skills they can achieve. In the music room we were all part of the band. When I asked to take home a different instrument just to try it out I met with no opposition. This was a place to learn not to pigeonhole. And so over a three-year. I did get to try most of the instruments in the band room and that ability stayed with me for the rest of my life. If you are a teacher and you want to be remembered years after the fact; let your students discover things. Avoid putting a break on the ability to learn. If someone wants to try a new skill set allow them to do so. After all we have already removed most of the danger from our school system. Allowing someone like me to take a clarinet home did not make the world a better place other than for certain sonic moments. Probably you would not have heard them because sound does not carry that well. So to my former teacher I salute you. You did things properly. And to my former classmates who also are taking the time to give a salute I hear you. A pity we can’t get together for practice. And yes I realized there are ways to do things over distance but that will not happen biggest band director will not be there. And that is when a band is at its best. Instead let us have a moment of silence to recognize that a good one is no longer here.

Since we tend to divide time up into units I have to mentioned that this year is almost over. There are still a few more days to run on the calendar but for the whole this one is done. Not much changed during the last twelve months. No comings or goings. No instant fortune. In fact the only thing that comes to mind is that one of my former addresses has been sold. And it was for a house where I have not lived for decades but my family hung on to it Good year through bad. For about six decades. And now in one of those moves that is so final the house was sold and the last of my family members moved away from there. From now on anyone living nearby can say that’s where they used to live. Not me. They do not even know me, it’s been so long. What I still have left are artifacts. Objects that I’m marked with that address years ago as a place to send my stuff. There is a steamer trunk in the garage with my name an address proudly stencilled on the side of it. Using a stencil that I prepared at one job I had. Given that I will never use that trunk again to actually travel I will just leave the address there like a mark on the wall. Note that I do not say a mark in the sand. Around here those are easily erased by the tide. Twice a day. As I look back I realize how small that house really was even though it held more than a dozen people at one point. Believe me, not to mention, a rather a quickly built house by the federal government after one of the wars to house the returning servicemen. The story of how my family ended up there has nothing to do with the war. And my own children when they look back will have old addresses to relate to but I doubt that any of the addresses will reflect life over six decades. In a world where the family castle no longer exists that is just an object from a story. Would things have been different for me if I had stayed in that area? Most certainly. You will note that I got out at the first opportunity: on a train and they don’t even do that anymore.

Back in the day there were shows that people referred to as Broadway. Whether or not the show was actually there. And as a young person I knew the tunes sort of but I did not actually place any importance on the idea. Except for that one musical that came out as a record album back when I was in grade 9 or 10. I did not buy the album right off the bat but my local AM radio station play that all four sides one weekend afternoon. And I was there with my tape recorder ready to record it. The quality was mediocre but it was a complete two record album now on a cassette. And of course I listen to it over and over again. I knew all the words to the songs. And then life went on and this became just another musical reference. Except that YouTube played me one of the tunes today performed by a modern artist. And I was immediately transported back to that happy time six decades ago. The music had not aged at all. I guess that’s the definition of quality music. We have all those songs that go by on the radio that have a shelf life of weeks and then we have those pieces of music that do not need to age. They remain important to us decades later. It was fun to hear it again. I no longer listen to AM radio. Is it even a thing in this part of the world? We are so much more FM now due to the quality. I will probably never go to a Broadway show; too far and too expensive but I realized that getting to that area of theatre requires something beyond the pale. Something that becomes timeless. Just to satisfy your curiosity I am talking about superstar. The one with JC. Think of any other show that has remained as timeless. I guess having a 3000 year old story helps. Or is it 2000? Again some things do not need to be calculated. And I still remember most of the words after all these years. Another clue that things were well written.

For some reason I remember three particular trees from my childhood. We’re going back decades. My family lived in a railway house and in the backyard there were three trees in line. A maple, a chestnut and a cherry. There were no other trees of these species close by so I know that they were purposely planted by someone who had lived in the house before me. The railway did not do things like that. And all of these trees had grown large enough to be considered adult. That is the maple had a strong trunk that I could barely put my arms around. The chestnut tree produced those prickly orbs that were so pleasant to find because they always contained something inside. It could be called a conquer. That is, you put them on a string and you conk things. And the cherry tree bore fruit. Acerbic but good enough to attract a large number of birds every year. I remember these three trees because where I live, most people do not plant trees. They depend upon nature to do the job and we usually end up with a hodgepodge of spruce and birch. Having trees that could be found in a tree book meant that these were special trees. Chosen. I have a memory from later of going back and finding just the stumps which means that someone else had cut them down but since people do not tend to remove such stumps I figured that if I was to go back I could go to exactly that position and say that the three trees were here. Maybe next year. The field lies right beside a major walking trail so access would be simple. The house is now gone. Moved down the road a ways and still used. I guess what I really want to know is who did this. Can I do a calculation based upon the age of the tree and the date that I remember versus who would have been living in the property at that time. No reason to. This probably goes back about a century. It is however good to think that the acts we do now, may be recognized by those that come after. I guess I am getting old.

Over the last few weeks I have been following the manic adventures of a young couple.. Specifically trying to renovate a small kitchen. Of course they have no experience in the field but they do have a plan and it’s on a big cardboard on the wall. As each step is passed they mark it off. Is that how it works on a real construction site? And so today we’re down to the final moments. Just in time for the holidays and we are out of sync with them by only an hour or two. It has been a ride. There is even a quote which we have heard over and over again that deserves to be on a T-shirt. Guys we don’t have time for this. In the end they did and the kitchen seems to be wonderful. I take away from the video that they do not ever want to do this again because some things are meant to be learned and then promptly forgotten. PTSD. Now I have no experience installing something as large as a kitchen. I think that is why we paid a company to get ours done because if it had been left to me with a hammer and some nails I would be eating outside on the lawn. Summer and winter. I have to give congratulations to the couple for staying with the task all the way to the end.. In time to demonstrate it to their parents who had been out of the country I think that must be a wonderful sort of gift to receive. A fully renovated kitchen. My take away from this adventure is that everything can be done if you possess time and money. I am not sure they had either but they did manage to tile the whole kitchen floor. And build a whole set of cupboards. And paint around the edges. I just want to watch them do something in the kitchen that will make a mess and then let them clean up in a timely manner. Like in real life. This is why we have people that do the trades.

Although I spent a lot of time in small towns when I was younger I never became part of the machine known as organized sports. We moved too often and budgets were too limited. It cost a great deal of money to get equipped to play hockey on a small team. So we did the obvious thing we played road hockey. Or ball hockey if you want to give it a seasonal name. Usually we gathered in the parking lot of the local food store where things emptied out quickly at the end of the day and we could have a lovely flat surface to ourselves. We even developed a way to get the ball back when somebody shot it up under the roof. We had learned how to climb up the posts at the back of the lot and get onto the roof roof surface and rescue our precious tennis ball. None of us played tennis of course. Playing ball hockey required a minimum investment. Usually a hockey stick that had been broken and rescued from the local arena. Tennis balls could be head of the dollar store. And so we headed out every evening after supper until it became too cold to stay out any longer. We formed teams on the goal and we played for the fun of it. There were no trophies ever. We tried to follow the rules but in the absence of proper referees we winged that too. I never received a penalty nor a penalty shot. Then playing outside meant that we became instant stars adopting the names of people we knew from TV. Do I miss it? It has been a very long time so no. What I can tell you is that you either played properly or you did not play at all. If you were a brute you were not invited back and cheap shots with a cheap hockey stick could see you end up in a proper fight. We became very sportsmanlike and we develop skills that served us much later in life. Nothing to do with hockey. We understood that the people that we played with might have been on the opposing team but they were still our friends. Our buddies if you will. Hardly no girls ever joined those games because even though it was ball hockey on a parking lot it could get rough. You learn to sort that part out too.

According to those around me the postal system is up and running again. After more than a month. Puts a real bend in the cord that brings all those curds to my door. You know, the ones we hang along the mantle or used to. Anyhow the first item in the restored mail service seems to be a calendar. For recycling. With the dates carefully marked for the upcoming year on when I should put the bins out to the road. This is an important calendar because I have two different bins and the people in the truck only want to see one. If I bring the wrong one to the road the truck will just go right on by and then I get to wheel that cart back in and tried to remember the next time around what the colour should be. I realize this is binary but I am not good I’m remembering from one week to the next what I brought out the week before. So getting the calendar is a plus. I do have to ask if the people preparing the calendar use recycled materials. There are so many other things that we do on a routine basis that depends upon the actions of others. Can you imagine if our snow all went away because someone decided to take it in a truck to another site rather than recycling it locally. A complete breakdown in that cycle that brings rain I think. And as I watched them cutting down all the broken trees from the last few storms I wonder what happens to that would. Does it get recycled as firewood or are they plowing it into the ground at the bottom of the fields. Locally I think it is the latter. What else gets my goat? For the record I do not own a goat nor do I plan to but there is a species that understands the recycled cycle. We do tend to reuse in this part of the world. If you try watching TV at certain times of the year all you will get is reruns which is technically recycled content. Our library is doing well with a large dependence on books that are given by patrons. Recycles content. And as I listened to the playlists for this time of year on my social media I can point out that most of the songs are recycled. It is been a long time since I heard anything new in the month of December.

The weather forecast does not always forecast the weather. Yesterday we had our first little storm of the winter. Not enough to cause any serious difficulties but we did lose the electricity. I say the electricity because there is only one with multiple sources. For us, the generator came on line just the way it was supposed to and hummed quietly in the background for the next six or seven hours. The forecast had not even given that as a possibility. I tried to imagine life before Jenny. Back in the days when the weather would come up and the lights would go out. Our houses depend more an more I’m being connected to the grid. You will lose your heat and your cooling and your water supply and who knows what else unless you have a Plan B. Right now our electrical utility is campaigning to buy a new generating source. I have heard numbers like $500 million which is a cost that would be borne by the user eventually and I have to wonder given that there was no word of this storm coming up and no forecast of a long term outage, was this more of an advertising benefits for the utility? Was this their subtle way of telling us that they are still very important. When all was said and done the lights came back on and the snowfall was of a minimum amount. But the utility people are not going to talk about that when six months from now they go back before the legislature to protest that they do need us to pay for them. What kind of generator do they want to buy? Ours cost nothing near that amount. In fact if they bought a new generator for everyone here on the island they still would not meet that $500 million threshold. Is this the kind of dream that comes up in a shareholders meeting? I want to know more.

Most musicians will agree when you play solo it is as if you were naked in front of the whole world. On a sound basis. Hopefully you kept your clothes on. So I sat here for a few minutes trying to remember 3 or 4 moments that I have never forgotten. One early one involved the first time that I had to record a drum fill. In a stage band or jazz band context. But the performance was captured to tape and placed on a record album that was sold to all of my acquaintances. Not a long solo but for me unforgettable. Another moment was my first tuba solo while performing a piece by Holst. One of those situations where everyone can hear you because you are the first one to perform in the piece. Not long but you have to get it right. There is no do over. And from the first note until the last you are centre stage. In an audible context. The third moment would be when I stood up in a full auditorium and performed a solo on flute. By that point I realized that most people have no idea what they’re listening to. Some cannot even identify the instrument much less the piece of music. Still you want to get it right the first time. No do overs. A fourth one would be my loudest performance. Not something I had intended but I got caught up in the moment it has our pit orchestra finished our run on Oklahoma I hit the drums solidly loudly enough so that I broke a drumstick which is something I have almost never done either intentionally or by accident. That was a long time ago but the moment is still with me. So what about you? Do you have moments that you can say I was in front of the world. It happens and if you only play as part of a band you may never have those moments but when you are in front of the band you have to be on your best behavior. In passing I did have a teacher tell me that I could go ahead and play more loudly on a regular basis because I was one of the quietest tuba players he had ever met. As he explained it was all in the air that came out of the top of the instrument not the air going into it.

At the end of another year I have to reflect. I doubt that again this year I will be added to that list that people refer to as the elders of society. I checked my birth certificate and I have enough years of seniority but somehow I lack one crucial ability. I am unable to teach anyone else some of those finer points of our culture specifically the ones dealing with myth and legend. I checked and I have no myths or legends to pass along nor do I have any real folk songs. My quiver is empty. Many societies around the world depend upon the more aged in a group to teach the younger people. I have taught but only what was considered to be the material judged as apt. What does this mean going forward? I guess I’m going to have to learn some folk songs and this end legends and then get out there and beat my drum so that others will know that I too have learned the foundational elements of my culture. This could be difficult. I checked the historical record and in this area only a couple of centuries have passed since my group arrived. For me to try passing on the legends of those who were here before would amount to cultural appropriation and I am not ready to go down that bumpy road. I could, I suppose make up some folk songs. Put the author down as anonymous and then assured that the tune is a catchy one. One that will be passed along to all who hear it in my area. I will be fulfilling my role as a teacher and beefing up my creds as a senior. An elder. I do not particularly want to have another badge on my sleeve but it would be interesting to be introduced to others as an elder of my society just a thought overnight we received a light layer of snow. There is more on the way apparently. And the man on the weather station says that this will probably stay with us through the holidays. No sudden melt in view. This does not really matter other than as an entry in the almanack.