Archives
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Yesterday in Latin Naomi wrote a sentence on the board and, realizing she had skipped a word, wrote it underneath the sentence with the ^ sign indicating where it should go. Pointing to the symbol, she asked, "Does anyone know what this is called?" "A carrot," I called out. "Good," she responded. "How do you spell it?" "K-E-R-I-T," said the smart-alec in the front row. The next person got it: C-A-R-E-T. "Do you know why?" Naomi asked. We were startled by the question. Why is anything spelled the way it is spelled? On the board she conjugated the verb careo, "to lack", in the present tense to show that caret means "it is lacking." Ah, the disillusionment. And here I had thought all this time that it was a carrot because it is pointy like the vegetable...
Monday, November 11, 2002
I woke up this morning eagerly, reading the notes on my hand: "band room" on one side and "Shamina's clarinet" on the other. Hurried, because I had a lot to do, but for once looking forward to it, in the way that I never look forward to doing Greek or Latin or even reading about hieroglyphics. After class I rushed off to the band room, for the broken clarinet and the rental saxophone, then to Student Activities, to shrink and photocopy a piece of music. This is what I really enjoy doing, I think -- having various instruments scattered around my room: the oboe that hasn't been touched for ages, the trumpet that I'm learning to play for the heck of it, the clarinets to be repaired, the saxophone to be returned. Playing malfunctioning clarinets to figure out exactly what's wrong with them, popping a spring back into place or tightening a screw to make them work again, or at least leaving a detailed note in the case to explain the problem to the repair person. Taking apart a melophone and letting it soak in a bathtub until the decades of grime have slid away, then putting it back together and polishing it. Cutting apart lines of music that are much too big and spread out for a flip folder and taping them closer together for shrinking down on the copier. Fixing things, musical things.
No matter how much of this "education" stuff I get, sometimes I'm sure that in the end I won't be happy unless I end up somewhere doing something with music.
