A kid with a Violin case

 

Delivering Elijah to the Middle School I saw a little boy, probably a 6th grader carrying a violin case marching toward the building.  I recall our time with Jr. High orchestra at Churchill in Royal Oak.  Jon was beginning his career as a violist and had a wonderful director named Carl Piccolo.  Mr. Piccolo was a short balding man that played violin in an orchestra during WWII for the US Army.  Some of those youthful performances were painful lo listen to but the kind director forged forward and gave his charges their initial training.  Jon went on to be the principal violist for the Metropolitan Youth Symphony as a senior in HS going on the play on to perform Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and Holst's The Planets among others.  Today these 30-40 year old parents will cheer wildly their young musicians just like we did. Also like Dorothy and Ed listened to my squeaking clarinet in the 6th grade band concerts. Time and the generations march on.

Had a great breakfast with friend Jerry.  Our lives have taken different paths and we were both learning to be fathers and husbands with all the pitfalls and joys.  It is truly a gift that we can have time together after 60 years.  We spent a lot of time discussing the pandemic's cause and effect relationship to education, at home learning, limited real social interaction and more.  We agreed that drivers are getting less patient and pulling stunts on the road that are patently illegal and dangerous. 

Andrew had small incident yesterday morning as he was racing out the door.  His Keurig made a mess and he got coffee sludge on his scrubs.  He shouted out that every minute of his time is budgeted, and that additional laundry was not in the time budget. Think of that concept for a moment.  Everything has to fit into the time budget and there is no time for mistakes. That may be the mantra for today's world.

The Royal Oak schools have a records day today and the kids are off.  I guess they will be listening to Please Please Me from their collections of 45's.  I suspect that their students don't know what a 45 is.  I told Eli of my first car yesterday which was a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle (baby blue).  He did not know what a Beetle was.  I further suspect that many of his classmates don't know what a Beatle is either.

That's it

all for now

stay warm and safe