Talladega

A year ago I was in a field in a tent with about 200,000 other people. It is Talladega weekend. This may be the last true frontier left in the USA. You have to go to really understand. Talladega is the largest racetrack in the world and the drivers obtain speeds of over 200 mph but that is only one small part of the story. You see it is literally miles from nothing. There is no city at the racetrack like most others. It is in the middle of the mountains of Alabama. You pretty much have to camp to really see the race. There are no hotels. You must bring everything in with you and get this...It is free to camp! You just claim a spot and set up. As far as you can see in any direction are campers and tents. It really is like something out of an old war movie. I just looked at the weather radar for their area and they may be in for a rough day. It looks to be a stormy day in Alabama. None the less though, they will have fun. I just hope the weather does not get dangerous for them. I should know. I have been there when tornados were coming through but then again that didn't keep us from having fun.

Favorite Part

I don't get to see this time of the day often especially during the week. It is so cool to just watch the world become colored little by little. Right now I can bearly see the outline of the leaves in the trees but with in an hour everything will be in full view. It is a nice morning. I don't even know what this day has in store for me yet but then isn't the part of the fun. So many people sleep through this part, not me. Mornings are like that. They give us a chance to start over even if just for a day. No matter what the day before had or didn't have, today is new and I get a chance to make it mine. It is 6:00 a.m. on my day off and couldn't imagine sleeping in.

The Show Reveled

The show was reveled at the meeting last night. It is the 2000 Boston Crusaders show Red. This show is a great fit for us. It lends itself to a lot of visual and musical ideas. Our bright purple uniforms should look great with shades of red accenting them. The interest seems to be high for the marching band this year. The band will be successful and only question...who will chose to be a part of it? My favor movement so far is the third movement, Passion. What a great moto for the year.

Another Hint!

Think of a major Northeastern city.

The Show!

Do you want to know the 2008 competitive marching band show? You will just have to come to the meeting on Tuesday night! Hear is a hint: The key of A major.

No Posts Lately

There really is not much going on lately so there have not been many posts. Just working and getting things together. I hope spring really arrives soon.

Working in the Yard

Today's task was simple or so I thought. Just dig up some bushes and clean out the flower beds in front of the house. Sounds pretty easy. The problem was that the bushes had probably never been trimmed and their root systems were huge. They might as well been in concrete. I considered blasting but the neighbors might not like that. I dug them up. It was terrible. In my younger days I could work in 100 degree weather all day and never even sweat. I was very tired after only two of the bushes but did finally get them all. I took a full truck load of old mulch to the dump too. I have to admit that it was rewarding work though. My flower beds are now ready to be edged and planted. We went to the rock store and picked out some edging rock too. Hard work never hurt anybody and I saved a ton of money too.

An the Rating is...

An excellent. This was not the goal and I am pretty disappointed. I am not disappointed in the how my students performed or behaved though. They were great. I am not really sure what the judges were listening for today. I thought our stage performance went very well. I did have a problem with the sightreading. One of the pieces was just too difficult and long to be discussed and performed at a superior level. I have to put some of the blame on myself for today's excellent rating. We have a fairly small group and perhaps two grade V compositions were just too much to prepare. Last year we performed a grade IV and a V and received a Superior. It just stinks to work so hard and not get the rating we wanted. I tried my best. It just wasn't good enough today. On a brighter note, I was really happy to see the amount of people that went out of their way today to come listen to us perform. It means a lot to me. I bet we had more spectators than any other group. Let's make this a habit.

Concert Festival

Tomorrow is the day we have been working towards for quite a while. We play at 12:00 noon. We are playing a grade 4 warm-up march and two grade 5 concert pieces. I strongly feel that concert festival one of our biggest challenges of the year. It is graded very strictly and only a few bands will get Superior ratings. It is also my favorite event of the year too. It is the only event in which I and the students get to perform together. In the other events, I train and teach the students and then turn them loose to perform. Not at festival. We get to perform together so good or bad, we will all receive our rating tomorrow. In my heart, I know we have already received our Superior. Tomorrow is just our chance to show everybody else how much we have improved this school year. Of course, there are always things that can happen to hamper a live performance but that is why I love band. You just never know.

This is a Warning!

So I bet some of the kids had a good laugh today on their way home from school today. I was on the side of Hwy 6 with a state trooper! Oh boy! Yes, I got pulled over. Luckily for me the trooper understood the importance of good quality educators and gave me a warning. I was trying to get home to meet the air conditioning company to service the A/C units on the house. So be warned, do not speed on Hwy 6 between Swansea and Lexington. You can bet I will not anymore!

Internet Censorship

I sure surf the net a lot. I like the information and the somewhat instant news source that it has become. When I first started using the Internet, it was something of a luxury and a toy of sorts. Not many people had access at home and you would not even think of paying bills and doing on line banking, make reservations, or blogging...Heck, we did not even have that word in our language at the point in time. All this said, I have noticed a rather disturbing trend of some users of the net. They tend to think that everything and comment should be positive and labeled as to who put what up on any board. I do not feel this way. If you notice, you are able to put anonymous comments on my blog. I try not to delete comments unless they are just obviously destructive in nature or mention students by name. Neither one of these will be tolerated. Some people just feel the need to be destructive and that won't work here but just about anything else goes. I have even used some of the comments made on this blog to help me with certain aspects of my teaching. So don't be afraid to post or if you just like to read that is OK too. There are ways to block users from accessing this and any other site from the webmasters end. I have never done this and if you have ever made a comment that has been removed, you may have noticed you are still free to view and post comments to this site. That is the way it should be. My suggestion would be to only post things that you would say to somebody in person. This does not mean that all posts have to be credited because sometimes it is ok to just post without being identified. With that being said, be aware that there are numerous programs that can make identifying anonymous posts rather easy so just remember if you do decide to flame somebody in a destructive way, there are many options to find out who is that poster. Luckily this has been the exception on this site and not the normal.

Stay dry today it looks like a wash out but we still need the rain. Any rain we get this time of year is just going to help us through what is sure to be a hot summer.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Yep, I have been pretty busy this week. Today I will go with the 8th grade band to concert festival which will keep me from rehearsing the Symphonic Band this afternoon but I am needed so I will go and help. I really wish there was some way to get the Symphonic this morning but things like that just don't work at a high school. I am sure they do some places but not here so hopefully the students will do what they are supposed to do. The next few weeks are some of the busiest in my field. Things seem to come all at once but at least I have been doing this long enough to know that. I feel sorry for the teachers that 1. Have not been teaching long enough to know this or 2. still don't know how to anticipate the rush and freak out. At least spring seems to be here although I still think we may see a cold spell yet to finish out winter. Eight more weeks of the school year left. That is a good feeling but nothing like the feeling of coming home and knowing you get to do you own thing for at least 4 weeks!!!