I saw this cartoon by Daryl Cagle over on the Daily Dish this morning and had a good laugh.

During the Super Bowl there was an advertisement/story released by the NFL highlighting Chester Pitts, an oboist who was working as a grocery bagger convinced one day by a San Diego State Football player to try out for the team. If you haven’t seen it, I think it’s a great spot because it brings classical music to an audience that contains a certain percentage of people who otherwise wouldn’t know an oboe from a clarinet.

I’m a bit surprised that Patty over at Oboe Insight hasn’t mentioned this in her wonderful blog, but a quick search didn’t turn anything up that I couldn’t find this over at the wonderful Oboe Insight. It was there and I apparently need to be more diligent with my searches!!

In the spirit of my recent “Wienermobile Post” I recently read a rather bizarre article published in last Thursday’s edition of the San Francisco Chronicle about Burmese Giants Pythons (Python molurus bivittatus) that have been colonizing the Florida Everglades. Apparently, irresponsible pet owners have been dumping adult pythons into the swamps of South Florida for quite some time and there are an estimated 30,000 of the giant snakes in the region. USA Today chimes in with a report that Global Warming could eventually lead to these snakes populating the entire lower third of the United States, from coastal Virginia down through the south and Texas and up the Pacific coast as far as San Francisco.

Of course, this will take decades, and frankly I’m far more concerned about other potential side effects of Global Climate Change to worry about these pythons, but the articles did produce a few interesting lines that I found somewhat remarkable. A sampling follows:

At 20 miles a month, a determined Burmese python from Florida could arrive in San Francisco as early as August 2020.

“It would be exceptional for one animal to be that unidirectional in its movement, but it’s mathematically possible,” Rodda said.

The snake’s cross-country crawl would be made easier by the large population of beavers along the way, Rodda said.

“Beavers would be a very tasty treat for them,” Rodda said. “No beaver would be safe from a python.”

The natural enemies of the python are lions, tigers and other large cats. There are few free-roaming African lions and tigers between Florida and San Francisco, the geological survey said. And the absence of alligators outside Florida can only help the snakes on their journey west, although it’s a complicated relationship - while pythons eat alligators, alligators also eat pythons.

It’s good to know that we don’t have many African lions and tigers (Aren’t tigers Asian?) roaming the Great Plains. Very decent of them to point that out for us, though I am deeply concerned about the beaver population…

And from the USA Today:

The Burmese python is not poisonous and not considered a danger to humans. Attacks on humans have involved pet owners who mishandle and misfeed the snakes, Snow says. In Florida, they eat bobcats, deer, alligators, raccoons, cats, rats, rabbits, muskrats, possum, mice, ducks, egrets, herons and song birds. They grab with their mouth to anchor the prey, then coil around the animal and crush it to death before eating it whole.

If you see one, don’t attempt to engage it. Leave the area, note the location and notify the authorities.

Another sage piece of wisdom. I’ll be sure to heed the advice not to engage the world’s sixth largest snake should I run across it during my next (and first) family holiday in Vero Beach.

Of course, I’m being unfair to the journalists and the newspapers as most of these quotes are attributed to a spokesperson from the U.S. Geological Survey.

I am very, very frightened by the dumbing down of science in our country.

The much publicized concert by the New York Philharmonic in North Korea is apparently over, and despite several searches looking for signs of controversy I haven’t really been able to find anything of any significance. I suppose the “Super-Cons” are busy gearing up the Anti-Obama smear campaign and really don’t have time for anything else right now.

I did read that the president downplayed the concert, saying that “At the end of the day, this is a concert.” The simple fact that he was able to identify what an orchestra does should be encouraging to all of my colleagues teaching music appreciation.

I received an interesting and fun email from a former student of mine who is now studying composition at a “big” school. Everything seems to be going well and I was interested to hear about all of the exciting developments (re-living vicariously, as it were) in this person’s young career. I was also asked the following question (and I paraphrase):

What are your thoughts on the struggle between academic atonal and tonal music?

I think it’s safe to say that most creative people have been there and done that to the point where there are books, articles, and countless blogs dedicated to this subject. Some of those blogs are even linked on this page so this entry will represent my (very) quick and (embarassingly) brief answer.

I remember telling this student, in their first lessson, to “write whatever comes to mind, regardless of key and rhythm” and even encouraged the student to intentionally avoid tonal music! At the time, I was never thinking about these deep philosophical issues or about tonality versus atonality. I just knew that this student was writing very square, very boring, and very C Major music and that I needed to push the student outside of their comfort zone. I was operating in my post-student belief system that the true dichotomy is actually between well-crafted music and everything else.

Looking back, I planted the seed for the current identity crisis! But despite what the more cynical readers might believe, it wasn’t intentional. I wanted to push this student outside of their comfort zone and teach them the first of many new ideas to add to their compositional “bag of tricks” not indoctrinate them in the “Church of Modernism.”

In the end, I think this “struggle” in the minds of young composers is a very healthy and normal and part of the growth for a creative artist. At some point in each of our lives we should be wrestling with this issue and the fact that it typically comes in the safe and forgiving environment of school is a good thing and hardly surprising. The constant exchange of ideas in the university setting can be dizzying, and in my own experience, confusing. This is the time when you have to face these issues and make the decisions that will lead you to be a composer or perhaps down a different path.

In my own experience, after leaving the “womb of studenthood,” I took about 6 months where I didn’t write a note of music, or really even think about writing music. I did some teaching, I traveled a bit, and generally recharged my creative soul. When I did return to composing, I found that I felt both liberated by not having to meet with someone to judge my music each week and also a bit frightened to have lost the security net of a teacher. However, I now know that this transition from student to a composer trying to write the music that speaks to my own aesthetic has been the biggest revelation of my professional life. I am now writing MY music and I can draw on many learned techniques from Beethoven to Berio to bebop and I’m a better composer for it.

Of course, it took me a very long time to learn this for myself, perhaps so long that it resulted in an advanced degree in composition, for better or worse.

Apparently Fidel Castro has resigned. I know that recently he’s been in poor health, but is anyone else skeptical?

Another major primary day and another day of intra- and extra-party mudslinging going on between the candidates. My favorite low blow for the day is the video of Michelle Obama with a key word edited out of the audio track to make it look as if she hates America. It is amateurish and transparent. In other words, perfect for the Limbaughs and Coulters of the world.

Speaking of blank looks and drool, I started teaching diminished leading-tone seventh chords yesterday.

I thought I was pretty clever with the lesson, but when I started talking about borrowing the lowered SD6 from the minor, I think I lost them. (Duh!) I’ll try to be more clear on Wednesday, but they should at least be able to complete their homework, which fortunately doesn’t include any fully diminished chords in the major mode. I’ve got to dig into a few recurring problems on Wednesday and start being a bit more firm with my expectations.

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue?

~George Washington, September 17, 1796

Though many of the founding fathers weren’t the saints that we’d like to believe, they surely believed in most of the ideals for which they fought (at least if you were a white male…)

Hopefully president #44 can be a bit more like #1 or #16 as opposed to #43, who has been more like #29 or #18.

As we learn more about the backgroundand identity of the NIU shooter, the story grows even more senseless:

Kazmierczak, 27, who police said shot 21 people before shooting and killing himself, was an award-winning sociology student and a leader of a campus criminal justice group, according to school Web sites.

Kazmierczak was a student about 175 miles away at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, police said, and there “were no red flags” warning of any violent behavior.

His University of Illinois faculty adviser, Jan Carter-Black, described Kazmierczak on Friday as a “very committed student, extremely respectful of me.”

I’m just a music teacher and not qualified to speculate about what causes these types of tragedies, but it is sobering to realize that my wife teaches at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville… 159 miles from Champaign-Urbana.

My thoughts and prayers to the NIU community and families of the victims. I hope this is the last campus shooting that flickers across the news ticker, at least for a very long time. There is no place for fear in a college classroom.

It seems that the Democratic nomination process has reached a crescendo today with today’s suddenly crucial “Potomac” or “Chesapeake” Primaries in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. The sheer amount of noise being pumped out by the traditional media and the political blogosphere about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is absolutely dizzying.

At the heart of the news today is of course the controversial role of the superdelegates and their potential to decide the nomination despite the results of the pledged delegate count. I’ve read and heard several arguments about them and will keep my own thoughts on the matter to myself (at least for now, until we see how it shakes out) but a line from this article by Mark Green in defense of the current system really irritated me:

“Second, if they [superdelegates] should make the margin of difference, it’s not that they’d be ignoring voters but, in effect, helping break a tie because voters themselves are essentially split between two evenly matched and superior candidates.”

There is no such thing as being “essentially split” and the use of it to describe a political process that comes down to a simple majority is inaccurate. As the old saying goes, “Close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.”

The rest of the article is pretty useful, but in my opinion, the myth of the “dead heat” needs to be retired as soon as possible.

In yesterday’s Elmira Star-Gazette, there was a story about an Oscar Mayer “Wienermobile” that spun out on a snow-covered local highway. Fortunately, the “hotdoggers” who staff the promotional vehicle were unhurt and there was no damage to the vehicle.

Though the picture of the incident was mildly amusing, by far the best part of the article was the irreverent writing. The author, George Osgood, obviously had a great time with the story and I think he treated it with almost the perfect amount of humor. My favorite passage from the article comes at the end:

Kurzejewski hooked up and Emily fired up the highway hot dog, and a few well-timed tugs later, the Wienermobile was back on the highway.

For Kurzejewski, veteran of hundreds of tows over the years, Sunday’s experience was a new one.

“I’ve pulled out a lot of vehicles,” he said. “But that’s the first wiener I’ve ever pulled out.”

Priceless!