Stratford Street Big Band

The last few months, I've been playing piano in a big band, playing mostly 40's music in the manner of Glenn Miller, Woodie Herman, Duke Ellington, and so on. It's about 21 pieces most of the time, consisting of 6 saxophones (3 alto, 2 tenor, 1 baritone), 5 trumpets, 4 tenor trombones and a bass trombone, and rhythm section (piano, bass, drums, and 1-2 guitars.) I was invited to join the band by my friend Scott Miller. Scott and I, along with a drummer named Don Main, had a trio in high school - The Blue Notes. The previous pianist apparently was a classical pianist who, though a fine pianist, just wasn't used to playing from a lead sheet or in the jazz style.

One of our trombone players, Lee Shuster, provides a lot of sound equipment for our gigs, and recently recorded the band at a dance we did for a church youth fundraiser. Here is a slide show of the band and some of the dancers over our rendition of "Yes, Indeed," a classic from Tommy Dorsey's band. Lee (who does not usually sing) and Katrina Madsen are the vocalists. Enjoy!

Cleaning the Conference Center

On Tuesday night, Vickie and I filled an assignment from church to help clean the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City, across the street from Temple Square. The building seats 21,000 people, with no interior pillars at all. As you can see from the pictures, it looks something like the Starship Enterprise.
Vickie ended up cleaning brass railings for 2 1/2 hours (our shift was from 9:30 pm to midnight!) I was assigned to vacuum carpets in two of the seating sections on the main floor, using a back-pack vacuum. My best guess is that I vacuumed a swath of carpet approximately 3 feet wide and a mile long! Will we do that ever again? Well, maybe...

Arizona Natural History Museum

While Vickie and I were in Phoenix watching grandkids, we decided to take them to the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, which has a great collection of dinosaurs, which are usually a big hit with the kids. It started outside the museum, where they all posed in front of one. Once inside, though, Ivy was absolutely terrified by the mammoth skeleton, and it took her a while to allay those fears. After a while, during which time nobody was attacked by the skeletons, she decided that maybe they weren't so scary after all.
Besides the dinosaurs, a big draw was the outdoor gold-panning stream. As you can see, everybody got to try it - and get a bit wet. The sand was spiked with gold (OK, fool's gold), so that everyone came home with some sparkle.





















Finally, after all this fun, Lizzie, Eli, and Ivy presented us all with a play - so here it is!

Grandparents at work...

Vickie and I are in Phoenix as I'm writing this. We came down to watch Adam and Aimee's three children (Lizzie, Eli, and Ivy) while they are in Costa Rica celebrating their 10th anniversary. Check Aimee's blog for details.

Before Adam and Aimee left, we went to an exciting school carnival.


Later the same day, we also went to the first of three of Eli's baseball games for the week. While Eli was listening to the coach, in the field or at bat, Lizzie and Ivy practiced their cheering. It's amazing how quickly Ivy picks up on the cheers that Lizzie designs. Here is a picture and a video clip for your enjoyment.


Of course, April Fool's Day just happened to fall when we were here, so Vickie and I had to put together a suitable menu. For breakfast, we made fried eggs and bacon on toast. Nothing too unusual there, except that the toast was pound cake, the eggs were whipped cream and half apricots, and the bacon was fruit leather!















Of course, the kids had to take snacks to school, so we sent them off with rocks and wormy apples (rock candy and apples with gummy worms added:

The kids had a relatively unexciting day at school. It turns out that elementary school kids just aren't as inventive on April 1st as, say, high school kids or even older (say 60-ish) semi-juvenile delinquents, so the little ones didn't have a lot to report.

On the home front, though, creative cooking was under way. Dinner was cupcakes (meat loaf cooked in muffin tins and frosted with tinted mashed potatoes, then put in paper cups and topped with a cherry tomato), mixed peas and carrots (from the candy store - unfortunately, the peas were mint flavored!), and fruit salad (also from the candy store, including such fruity things as orange slices, peach rounds, and candy raspberries and blackberries.) They all seemed to enjoy the dinner.










Dessert was a slightly different matter: the menu was dirt, mud, and worms. (Actually, crushed Oreos, chocolate pudding, and gummy worms, respectively - but it looks pretty bad! And the reaction was decidedly mixed, at least until they tried it.

A Fun Anniversary

Vickie and I celebrated our 8th anniversary on Tuesday the 17th. We had been planning to just hit dinner and a movie, but those plans changed markedly for the better. Here's the story.

Vickie is involved with planning a yearly women's retreat. A few weeks ago the ski resort where the retreat has been held for a couple years called and said that they were not going to have a summer season this year, so the retreat would have to find a new site. Slight panic ensued, since the retreat draws about 70 women, and involves meetings and seminars, not to mention meals and a place to stay overnight. So Vickie sent out feelers to all kinds of places, including several in Park City. If you're not familiar with Utah, Park City is about 30 miles from Salt Lake, and was the site of many Winter Olympic events in 2002. It's a terrific and funky ski town. Click here for some more information on the place.

Tuesday afternoon, the meeting consultant for a motel in Park City called and invited Vickie and her committee to come up and take a look at their facility. Vickie said that she would love to, but that it was hard to get the committe together, and anyway, it was our anniversary. The response was, "I've got a hot-tub suite with your name on it if you'd like to come use it tonight." So we ended up taking a quick ride up the canyon and spending a night in the Honeymoon Suite at the Best Western Landmark Inn in Park City.

I don't know if the committee will decide to hold their meeting there, but it was certainly a wonderful place for an anniversary. We first went out to dinner at the Red Rock, a brew pub close to the motel. This place has a great reputation, and based on our meal, it's justified.

After dinner, we went back to the motel and took a tour of the place to see if it would be suitable for the meeting (I think it would be terrific, but I'm not the one who decides.) Then we took out the DVD we brought, started filling the hot tub, and settled in for the night. What a place! Here are some pictures:

Aphorisms - IV (and end)

Here are the last of my collection, for now:

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, but quite another to put him in possession of truth. - John Locke

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon. - Mark Twain

If you add to the truth, you subtract from it. - the Talmud

Judge talent at its best and character at its worst. - Acton

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. - Henry Adams

The primary danger of the TV screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents - the talks, the games, the family activities, and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed. - Urie Bronfenbrenner

You don't always have to solve problems; sometimes technology enables you to bypass a problem. - E. E.David, Jr. , scientific advisor to Presidents Nixon and Johnson

Canned thinking, like canned meat, is not dangerous, providing that fresh thinking has preceded it.

The paradox of time - few people have enough, yet everyone has all there is.

Be sure, when you think you are being extremely tactful, that you are not in reality running away from something that you ought to face. - Frank Medlicott

The growth of wisdom may be gauged accurately by the decline of ill temper. - Nietzsche

We must interpret a bad temper as the sign of an inferiority complex. - Alfred Adler

He who learns but does not think is lost;
he who thinks but does not learn is in danger.
- Confucius

On losing one's temper - It's like a sharp nail that tears the threads of something durable and lovely. We may use every bit of patience and skill in mending it, but we cannot make it like new again. The darned place will always be conspicuous. - Margaret E. Sangster

There is time for everything. - Thomas A. Edison

Those who do the least always seem to have the least time. - Arnold Glascow

No hour is to be considered a waste which teaches one what not do to. - Charles B. Rogers

Tradition means handing on all that is valuable to the next generation.

The obscure we see eventually; the completely apparent takes longer.

Work is a great blessing; after evil came into the world, work was given as an antidote, not as a punishment. - Arthur S. Hardy

Nothing would be done at all if a person waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it. - John Henry Newman

Wisdom is special knowledge in excess of all that is known. - Ambrose Bierce

The wise avoid evil by anticipating it. - Publilius Syrus

Work fascinates me; I could sit and watch it all day. - Mark Twain

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright. - Benjamin Franklin

Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if only we didn't spend half our time wishing. - Alexander Wollcott

There are two things needed in these days: first, for rich men to find out how poor men live; second, for poor men to find out how rich men work. - Edward Atkinson

All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and more pay for not getting it done.

Cease from the folly of metaphysical speculation...and pursue one end alone - how you may do what your hands find to do and go your way with never a passion, always a smile. - Lucian

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily. - Schiller

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more. - William Cowper

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. - Oscar Wilde

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. - Booker T. Washington

If your luck is good, you get credit for wisdom.

True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness. - Whittaker Chambers

Nothing is work unless you would rather be doing something else. - James M. Barrie

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes. - Miguel de Cervantes

Experience has shown that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.

It is usually better to do the wrong thing than to do nothing. - Winston Churchill

There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness. - Robert Burton

Work is dull only to those who take no pride in it. - William Feather

Concentrate on your work and the applause will take care of itself. - B.C.Forbes

My little sayings - III

Here are some more of my aphorisms - enjoy!

If priesthood were perfect, all the world would be converted. - from Piers Plowman, ca 1340, John Langeland

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid for whatever reason to follow the course that he knows is best for the state; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare - I have no use for him, either. - Sophocles, 495-505 BCE

A man need not extol his virtues nor comment on his failings; his friends know the former and his enemies will search out the latter. - Charles B. Rogers

Praise is like perfume: it's fine if you don't swallow it. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pollution is of three types: 1 - Actual, 2 - Political, 3 - Emotional

Essential steps in any program:

1. Wild enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punish the innocent
6. Reward and promote non-participants

Reading with reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke

Unlike the movies, real life provides no musical background to help us recognize the climactic moments.

We are judged by what we do - not what we claim we do. - William Feather

The inevitable law of results: Cheap, Quick, Good - pick any two

Repentance makes a man live longer. - The Talmud

The problem is not shortage of data, but rather our inability to perceive the consequences of the information we already possess. - Jay W. Forrester

If resolutely people do what is right, in time they come to like doing it. - John Ruskin

I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

The real steps of research:

1. Interest
2. Preparation
3. Incubation
4. Illumination
5. Verification
6. Exploitation

We keep saying that Johnny doesn't read because he's deprived, hunger, and discriminated against. However, one of the biggest reasons Johnny doesn't read well is because Johnny doesn't practice reading. - Rev. Jesse Jackson

Children see major events reported in 90 seconds of a newscast. If a shooting war can be covered in less than two minutes, then a 200-page book seems just too long to read. - Dr. Nicholas Long

The price of greatness is responsibility. - Winston Churchill

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been - it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. - Thomas Carlyle

Facts are of slight value unless they are intelligently interpreted. - William Feather

It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications. - Alfred North Whitehead

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. - J.M.Clark

The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians. - Winston Churchill

Reverence for life does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone. Reverence for life does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means. Reverence for life refuses to let the businessman imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. Reverence for life demands for all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. - Albert Schweitzer

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own; a gang is where a coward goes to hide. - Mickey Mantle

One of the charms of the scientific enterprise is how deficient we can be and still play some meaningful part in it. - Robert Oppenheimer

Science has its cathedrals, built by a few architects and many workmen. - G.N.Lewis

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. - Thomas Dekker

Whatever one may call the Creator, his only authentic revelation is the universe. Science is the study of the work of the Creator, a kind of divine service, a search for truth, searched with uncompromising honesty. - Albert Szent-Gyorgi

History shows that, no matter how generous others may be, those who have been helped the most are those who have helped themselves. - William Simon

Man seeks his own good at the whole world's cost. - Robert Browning

Failure is harder than success. Who works harder, the man who saunters down to the train ahead of time, or the one who misses it by 15 seconds after running three blocks? - William Feather

It took TV soap operas to get sex education out of the schools and into the home, where it belongs. - Linda Ellerbee

Seriousness is the final refuge of the shallow intellect.

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves. - Napoleon Bonaparte

The most significant data are the most elusive. - Hugh D. Crone

Science is a process that seeks truth;
politics is a process that seeks survival.

There are seven sins in the world:
wealth without work
pleasure without conscience
knowledge without character
commerce without morality
science without humility
worship without sacrifice
politics without principle
- Mahatma Gandhi

There are hundreds who can stand failure to one who can stand success; the good loser is far more common than the good winner. - Franklin P. Adams

Endurance is the best success insurance. - Arnold Glascow

He who is master of himself will soon be master of others. - H.G. Bohn

Only a few men can be counted on to rise to the occasion. Even fewer know when to sit down.