Category Archives: Beloved

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ajudicator

My experience with adjudicators has been musical.

Did you play an instrument in school? Did you go to the yearly contest where you played in front of a judge? That judge is an adjudicator. I still have my little box of medals, mostly blue ribbbons, from playing my flute at the yearly contest.

When I search on ajudicator, I find a field manual. It’s not about music: https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/AFM/HTML/AFM/0-0-0-1.html. I am having a really hard time with the children separated from parents. Death separates enough parents and children. I feel deeply ashamed of my country.

Centrum’s Voiceworks is a musical and healing week for me. Singing for a week and jamming on my flute and now I have a list of local people who love to sing….

Dawn Pemberton is one of our instructors and wonderful. She is a choral adjudicator, judging choruses across Canada. And one of my choral directors here, Rebecca Rottsolk, is also an adjudicator. For Mirinesse and for Rainshadow Chorale.

My son plays a violin piece as a senior for ajudication in Port Angeles. He is accompanied by Dr. Beatus Meier. The adjudicator is shy and nearly stands up when Beatus enters the room. Dr. Meier, it turns out, was the adjudicator’s professor at Washington State University. Dr. Meier is frail at that point and is now gone.

Blessings on the adjudicators and may we all be judged with love.
Mirinesse: http://www.mirinessewomenschoir.org/
Rainshadow Chorale: http://rainshadowchorale.org/
Dawn Pemberton: http://dawnpemberton.ca/
Dr. Martin Beattus Meier: http://www.ptleader.com/communityrecord/dr-martin-beatus-meier/article_eca9a1ea-69c0-11e8-889a-67013a9fdf88.html

The photograph is from the 2011 Solo and Ensemble in Port Angeles, the chamber orchestra that my son was in.

There will be a memorial tomorrow for Dr. Meier at QUUF from 11-12:30.

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appropriation

From the Centrum Voiceworks conference, Reverend Robert B Jones, Sr’s hands and guitar. Previous post about him here.

He was teaching blues history class in the morning and gospel in the afternoon, linked. One person asks about cultural appropriation. The Reverend says that he thinks songs and history are important. He asked if there are songs that he should not sing because they are “white” songs. He says there ARE songs that he WON’T sing because they are racist or sexist. But that if a white person does not sing a song because it’s “black”, he doesn’t think that makes any sense. And he traces history in his classes of how musicians of many races and genders influenced each other and continue to influence each other.

He and other instructors talk about musical skills and guitar and acoustic instrument skills and singing styles that are being forgotten and lost. We are blessed with recordings and he gave us a four page list of people to listen to…. I knew some, Bessie Smith and Robert Johnson, and others I’ve heard of and others I don’t know at all. Homework for the next year!

Blessings on this day for you and everyone, all the world.

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Music to heal by

Centrum Voiceworks last week. I did not get a wonderful photograph of the Reverend Robert B. Jones, Sr. He was moving and I did not want to use a flash! He did two classes a day, an am blues class and an afternoon gospel class. They wove together. He talked about how the pentatonic scale came with enslaved Africans and met the European music and produced spirituals, praise songs, the blues and gospel. He also spoke about how the early blues musicians were playing acoustic guitar in noisy places, so the guitar was rhythm, harmony and bass, all at once. He traced how the changes in circumstances is reflected in the changes in music in the United States and how musicians of all races and creeds influence each other. He talks about the history of music as healing.

I didn’t get a great photograph of him, but here is another student:

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And here is the teacher, engaged:

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Thank you, Reverend, for your amazing classes, singing, guitar playing and the final blues jam after the concert on Friday night!

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separation

This is one of the most beautiful and saddest photographs I have taken. It is my sister, about a month before she died of cancer. And her daughter, who was 13.

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On the last visit to my sister, she was in kidney failure, dying. We had conversations that were surreal. All I wanted was to stay with her.

One day a friend of hers, another mother and I, were working to make her more comfortable.

“I am sad!” my sister said, and started crying.

“Why are you sad?” I said, “What are you sad about?”

“I won’t be there! I won’t be there when she graduates from high school! I won’t be there for her first date! I won’t be there when she gets married! I don’t want to die!”

By now we are all crying. “You will be there!” I say. I am certain. “You won’t be in this form. You will be in another form!”

“I will?” my sister said, crying.

“Yes.” I said, crying too. “You have to go. You have to transform. You can’t stay. But you will be there for her.”

We cried and held her.

And I know for certain that she is there, she is here, she is with her daughter as her daughter graduates from high school, goes on a date, does all the things that daughters do.

Now and forever.

And the living children must be returned to the living parents. We cannot do otherwise and call ourselves humans.

 

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mother and child

I have a collection of parent and children pictures and sculptures. This is one. A mother ox and her baby. I was born in the Chinese Year of the Ox and so was my daughter. This little sculpture is about 3 by 2 inches, but both my daughter and I love it.

I am so proud of everyone who stood up for children yesterday, and for everyone who is saying, if it was MY child, I would want someone to stand up for them and for me.

Blessing and bring the children back to their parents.

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harmony

Another fabulous Voiceworks class, this with Anna and Elizabeth. As the week progressed and we ate lunch and dinner with the instructors at the tables as well as each other, I felt more and more blessed and impressed. These teachers said, “Come talk to us. We have time. We are here and you can talk to us between classes.” What generosity and blessing.