VoxHumanae

Yesterday’s edition of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette spotlighted a local business that engineers large mixers that are sent to the thriving country of China.

MUNCY — A lot of items on store shelves are tagged “Made in China,” but one local company manufactured two large pieces of machinery and is able to proudly say “Made FOR China.” (Williamsport Sun-Gazette)

I think that a little delving into would be wise when it comes to this story. Here is a mock interview of mine using responses from the interviewee in the paper.

Me: I saw your article yesterday in the Sun-Gazette, would you tell our readers what you sell to China?

Yellow Shirt Guy: “It’s a master batch mixer”

Me: Wow, that sounds impressive. How big are these things?

YSG: “The mixers are 900 cubic feet. The largest we have ever made is 1,200 cubic feet (capacity)”

Me: Huh?

YSG: “110 inches tall, 9 feet wide and 25 feet long. They can handle about 30,000 pounds of material.”

Me: Oh… How much power would these need to run.

YSG: “The mixers each have 125-horsepower drives and the mixers are made out of 304 stainless steel”

Me: Thanks, but I didn’t ask what they were made of… that was my next question. Let me check that off. Alright, moving along… Now, without anymore beating around the bush… When you said, “30,000 pounds of ‘material’“, what kind of “material” did you mean?

YSG: “For two of those, the cost per order is about $1 million.”

Me: Now now, Yellow Shirt Guy, don’t skirt the issue. Please answer the question.

YSG: “The mixers are used to mix powdered materials”

Me: The mixers mix… can you explain further.

YSG: “In this case materials that will be used for making plastic products — polypropylene, specifically. “

Me: Thank you… The prosecution rests.

Don’t get me wrong. Industry is essential to growth in any community. Having wonderful companies with smart and cutting edge engineers also helps. Having schools like Bucknell in your backyard doesn’t hurt either.

The paper, however, was boasting of the success of our local industry. Yay, look at us. We sold two giant plastic mixers to a country that we are trying to put in its place for making all of the cheap plastic things that we use! We are SOOOO sticking it to China!!!! MUAA HA HA HA!

This is a joke. How many plastic things will one of these “masters” make? 30,000 pounds worth of plastic in a day? In 12 hours? In four hours? If this company were smart, they would also develop a device that stamps “Made in China” for the things that their “batch mixers” make.

Since this past summer I have been blessed to have the opportunity to work for the East Lycoming School District as the Assistant Band Director of Hughesville High School in Hughesville, PA.

During band camp my students started to call me MC Ketchup because for whatever reason, I have many, many Heinz Ketchup shirts. (my family started buying me shirts and all of a sudden I was collecting Ketchup stuff? honestly, it was never my thing… but now I don’t mind.)

Fast forward to what I do now…

I direct a jazz band there. Every Monday and Wednesday morning from 6:45 A.M. till 8 A.M. I have rehearsal. We unofficially call ourselves MC Ketchup and His Packets.

One enjoyable part about these is having my children (3yrs old and 1yr) at the rehearsals with me. Things are NEVER boring for rehearsals. There are usually a couple of students there that run around with thim.

The picture below shows my daughter in one of the tuba cases. I didn’t see this happening, but find it mildly amusing.

As for my son, I am thinking that he is going to be a percussionist.

I am hoping that my children will grow up enjoying these experiences and we can talk about how much fun we had doing all of this fun stuff.

As stated in a prior post, I have the wonderful job of singing at funerals.

Today, for an individual named “Mary Baker”, I sang what would just be just another funeral in this long wintery season. But like all other funerals that I participate in, I tried to learn something about this individual as well. Through the eulogy of a family member, I realized that I had a unique bond with Mary. She was a musician.

Mary was a “professional pianist.” She went to business school in NYC and met her husband. She decided to give it all up to raise her children. She was smart, accomplished and had nothing to prove to the world. However, she had everything to give to her family. Mary passed when she was 93 years old. She lived through the lives and deaths of her parents, siblings (8), husband, children and many, many friends. She lived through wars and saw some of the most incredible accomplishments in the sciences, ever. Yet, she lived for one thing… I was completely inspired by her life as explained during the eulogy.

If all the things that Mary did and of all the respect shown by her family wasn’t enough to completely be humble in her presence. It was her loving care of her family and disregard of self that so inspire me today.

What a blessing to die during holy week!  She dies and is risen with Christ at the perfect time!  She is most definitely with our Lord.

Thank you, Mary, for making the world a better place.

Since having children, I can count the days that both my wife and I have had away from them on two hands.

So, being that this past week was “Holy Week” we decided that Saturday night would be a sleepover at grandma’s house.  The Easter Vigil mass, one of the most beautiful and sacred of the liturgical year is defiantly the longest mass of the year.  Long, but very enjoyable; There are many of our favorite readings and songs.  I even get to sing the Exultet.

Fast forward.  That evening.  Denise and I alone.

11pm we start making peanut butter eggs and start our favorite past-time…  scrabble.

Scrabble is what we do when we have a moment to just “veg.”  I can count the number of times that my wife has beat me since we have met on my two hands.  For several reasons she lacks the ability to beat me, the far more inferior of the two intellectually and lexicon-ally.

What is that magic that flows from my mind during the game that she should just clobber me in?  The first reason and most important factor is strategy.  I ooze strategy in scrabble.  While  Denise is engaged in trying to create that “perfect” word.  Chrysanthemum or something of it’s likeness… I have already created go, got, gotten, forgotten, unforgotten (all in triple word score).

The other reason that my wife fails miserably at her favorite board game…  she lacks the desire to squash her opponent into dust (hmm, squash to dust? how about puree… yeah, puree).  It is not that I am a sadist, per se, but the purpose in most board games that I am aware of is to come out in capitalist manner as the triumphant winner.

I deserve a trophy for my accomplishments.

Ah… I feel better.

Words that I heard from someone very close to me.

“Michael, you are too critical.”

I in no way consider myself to be a superior being. When I am with my church choir we have one goal in mind… to serve to the best of our means. Absolutely everything that I do with the Lourdes choir is housed within that statement.

Flashback to thus said previous post about being professional and having a touch of the mediocre in you…

Now…”Michael, you are too critical”

People in a professional atmosphere trying to be artists do not need to swallow the pill just because someone gives it to you. I am critical of choral music because I have experience in singing, conducting, and researching the area. I am in NO means a nationally recognized person for doing any of this, and I don’t seek that kind of life as well.

Recognizing what is good and what is not in the choral arts has become relatively easy for me over the past several years (I know that it is the culminating result of the many more years of active participation in the art-form, however).

Am I Critical?

Yes. As an expert in a particular field one should draw from past experiences and compare with the current trends. I’m not saying that someone can’t be kind to do this, but, it is essential that experts criticise their peers for the good of not only themselves but for the good of their peers as well.

If an engineer knew that a colleague of theirs, along the process of doing the math before hand, didn’t quite look as thoroughly through what they were doing (bad example, but anywho)… in-spite of everyone’s praises and pats on the back, is that engineer doing the right thing for his colleague? Sure, one can be tactful about the way that this information is relayed to the colleague. When one is tactful one is somehow trying to beat around the bush. I’m not saying that you should splay the information out for all to see so that the reputation of the colleague is tarnished…

I am honest and respectful to my church choir. I am also very critical of what they do. I pick music that is accessible, yet challenging and I always try and meet the needs of the group.

I am honest and respectful to the other ensembles that I participate in. I am also very critical of what they do.

Maybe, the original remark was to point out some type of cynicism…
A cynic, I am not. I give praise when praise is due.

I will not be part of the sheeple that exist. I am a breathing, living, thinking human being.

‘Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.
~Benjamin Franklin

The other day I posted about experiences that I’ve been having with some local ensembles.

The mediocrity continues.

I know for a fact that R. Shaw did not have his singers count sing absolutely everything that they worked on in practice. For the same reason that you don’t have professional symphony musicians play through all pieces in some ridiculous manner.

I counted more than two handfuls of bad cues. At one point during one of the pieces (that we were count singing) we were stopped and talked to about how “everyone needs to know exactly where this is going harmonically.” The piece was RV Williams The Cloud-Capp’d Towers. The conductor went around the room triumphantly reassuring all of the parts of what the interval that they would need to remember. Enter Tenor Ones,

C- How about you Tenors?

T1- Unison

C- It is a minor second, not a unison change.

T1- Bb and A# are enharmonicly the same

C- It is a B to A#

T1- Look Closer

C- Oh… right.

T1- I win. (exact words)

End of dialogue.

I’m thinking that I would have ended the interaction in a different manner had the conductor not been smart with other sections during rehearsal. The C (Conductor) is very knowledgeable and wants to bestow on us the wisdom that the C has been granted. So when the C tells the choir to get pencils handy we comply. We write what the C has to say. But the C doesn’t give the choir enough time to let the graphite dry and gets angry with the choir when the C wants to move on. Never-mind when the miscues mess us up… it is our fault too.

The piece is amazingly beautiful, but under the crutch of a piano and count singing… beauty is stripped bare and technicality is left. It was cheesecake without any cheese.

Once again, we will spend this entire season trying to fix our flubbing on count singing and spend very little time on the actual music making portion. Get ready for another bland concert.

Another interesting observation…
We are singing a work by J. M (name withheld)… from 4 Shakespeare Songs: Double, double, toil and trouble.

The work of music is particularly expensive to purchase (more than 10 dollars a pop in the US).

So… Here is our question of legality…

Is it legal to loan copyrighted print music?

My sources point to no. Teacher’s Guide to Copyright

You cannot purchase an arrangement for your choir and then sell or loan it to another choir. Without the express written permission of the copyright holder.

The composer of the piece has also made a point on the subject. Search through and see for yourself how legal this process is and how it steals from the composer and plays into the benefit of the ensemble in the short run. This is as illegal as pirating mp3 in a P2P network.

So… how professional is an ensemble that endorses this practice?

more than two weeks ago we started building the hype.  not having tv really limits what one can do to hype up a popular television show.  we chose the route of books that had been donated to us.

so, sesame street live came to town.

for the second year, i was transported to a world of dancing, jumbo-sized (i would say life sized, but they are much smaller in real life) singing,  performing muppets.

in both instances i was struck by the consumerism that exists at these things.  i thought that the candy isle at wal-mart was bad (j/k my kids actually don’t even know what the stuff is)… but seriously…  you are introduced to the show, everything begins, fanfare, dancing, singing, confetti guns (very frightening, air propelled portions of confetti shoot into the air with amazing dynamics), and intermission…

the world of elmo balloons enter…  down the isles two large bundles…  i’m talking 75 to 100 balloons enter grabbing the id monster eyes of every child in attendance.  parents better be ready to shell out for these.  so… you get both of your children balloons, like good parents should, right?  and then right before the show starts as the kids are just starting to enjoy their newly purchased gassy gold… big bird, “parents, please place balloons under the seats so that everyone can see the show.  thank you.”  get ready for bedlam.  and it was like rows of trencheon warfare around us.  kids screaming because THEIR balloons were being taken away… stolen, and placed in a subterranean prison.

then it was tune out the other kids and back to the show.

well… consumerism?  I bought 6 tickets.

Having been exposed to many of the different schools of thought that dominate this topic of choral music. Any given choir that takes this form of expression seriously tends to fall somewhere between the technical and emotive areas. Very few choir are able to truly blend the two together.

My point is this…

What is the difference between art and craft in choral singing? What makes someone a professional? Craft is skill. Craft is applying intelligent skill and techniques to create a product. Craft is dependable. When you are crafty, you know what the end product is going to be. Art is about exploring emotion; Art is clarifying, discovering, and understanding.

If a person, director, or choir has the end product in mind beforehand, they are creating craft. People that interpret music by singing words, articulating appropriately, executing dynamic contrast, and performing with rhythmic accuracy are only craftspeople. There are some ensembles out there that sing with such musical accuracy that they complete all of the prior criterion without flaw. If one were to follow along in the score of the performed piece, one would find the ensemble to be without error. However, these ensembles lack one thing… EMOTION.

And here is the rub… This ensemble may be able to convince others that they are being artists. The performance may be indistinguishable from that of an artistic group in appearance. However, the choir that sings and creates and even convinces itself of what it is singing is the artistic group.

Lately, I have been participating with to two very different ensembles and opposite schools of thought. It is hard not to compare the two. Two different, yet, respected and recognized national conductors. After performing in concerts under both conductors I have recognized many differences between the two. One conductor is truly craft, the other is truly art.

I acknowledge that technique is essential to creating art. The greatest artists/musicians went through craft to get to art. Mozart was very crafty as a child, but it is in his later works that we can observe Mozart the artist.

When working with a group of “professional singers” is it completely necessary to focus entirely on the technical and less on the emotional? (I hate rhetorical questions.) Of course it isn’t!

Some examples of the crafty ensemble.

1. Learning pronunciation of a language a week before the concert. (French, German, Spanish, Latin, Italian would be fine! But, Creole…Haitian…Portuguese? How can the singers correctly emote to the audience if there is so much concentration spent solely on pronunciation of words!? I’m sure that the Creoles appreciated it though.) That is only pronunciation. How can one truely emote, if one doesn’t understand the text.

2. Conducting the basic four-pattern. (Rarely seeing anything but a basic four-pattern gets absolutely NO emotion out of an ensemble. Rodney Eichenberger says it best, “What they see is what you get.”)

3. Crafty singers with egos out of control. (when ego gets in the way, music suffers…especially in choral singing. Trying to sing as one group cannot happen when someone is always trying to one-up someone else.)

As I am thinking about my sister’s situation and remembering my own.  It seems like when you aren’t married the deeper that you get into your life the more you get that constant nagging about your own plans for your future.

I have a simple plan of action to get them to stop.

THIS IS HOW YOU CAN STOP OLDER FAMILY MEMBERS FROM BUGGING YOU ABOUT GETTING MARRIED

I’m sure (well not actually, but anyway) that if you are single and you have been at weddings with some frequency… Some of your “family” or even the elderly around you have been poking you in the side and chortling with with some comment like, “You’re next!”

The next time you are at a funeral with them… do the same.

Well…

This past week, I had my first OMG moment with the kids.

It was necessary of me to step away for 5 minutes to collect neccessary information so I could get financial aid straightened out for school.

(wait, i have to set this up)

Aidan seems to be addicted to getting baths… more appropriately, he is addicted to playing with his toys in the bath tub. He had been bugging me all day to get a bath, albeit he had already taken one earlier that day. My repeating responce was “not anymore baths today, I’m sorry.”

Aidan has been potty trained for at least a year now. In that time, he has only had an accident in his pants very rarely. Jump to the other day.

I step back to the room *4 or 5 minutes had passed* Aidan’s pants are off.

“Daddy I need a bath, I went poop.”

Me… “Aidan where are your pants.”

Aidan… “I went poop. I need a bath.”

Me. “OMG”

To my horror BL was covered in mess but Aidan did not have a drop on himself. I took Gabrielle to the bath tub and to Aidan’s torment did not bathe him, only her. He was spotless. She was … yeah.

Cue my grandparents… they show up. The house is a wreck, the one child is fecally covered.

Grandparent E “What’s going on, here?” (spanish inquisition…)

Me… “watch aidan i have work to do.”

I cleaned BL and went to the play room to see the damage done to the room. Not much to the room… only to a new laptop of aidan’s that he got for his birthday. He, apparently, did not want to make a mess and didn’t want me to find it, so he did it in the laptop. And closed it. All sources point to the idea that BL was watching where he hid his mess. She found it.

1 day 2 children 3 tylenol 4 baths that day 5 thrown out toys 6… can’t think of anything else… my bed is calling