The shadowy origins of the Easter Bunny finally explained
After truly gorgeous weather last week with temperatures regularly around the 20 degree C mark, it grew suddenly colder over the last couple of days, and we had snow yesterday afternoon, and more overnight. This morning the lawn was completely covered with white, and so the reflected light through the back windows was lovely to see as we ate breakfast. So far today the weather has changed every ten minutes, between snow, wind, dark clouds, and bright sun.
During the warm days last week, I bought some tomato and pepper plants, but I'm happy that I decided to keep them inside in the back verandah, because I'm sure the near-freezing temperatures would have done a number on them.
It's now Tuesday, so we've been off work since late last week. After all of the stress of the last several weeks it's been nice to not have to think about school at all! It's been incredibly tiring for me to have to try to keep on top of the different classes, and juggling the priorities of classroom, private teaching, and music directing, and the administrative parts of the job.
And all classes are not the same. You might think that there's not a huge difference between classroom management techniques for grade 6, 7, or 8 music students, but you would be wrong: the energy is completely different in each one, and the level of self-discipline and participation in classroom activities can vary widely between the age groups.
Up until now all three grades have been occupied with tasks related to the musical "13", including memorising text, learning their harmony parts, preparing an audition video clip, and auditioning for the roles. What is great to see is the change in confidence level for all of them: when I took over music last November a very large portion of the students were horrified at the idea of auditioning in front of more than one person, and many were totally freaked out by the prospect of auditioning in front of their peers. But over the weeks and months of singing together, then singing in alternating sections, then in smaller and smaller groups, pretty much all of them were ready to audition for roles.
There were lots of surprises: as the kids are always masked in class, and singing in groups, we didn't always have the sense of the skill of every singer before we started solo auditions. Some of them are my private students, so I at least knew what they sounded like, and some of the others were standouts in group work so we had a good idea that they would audition well. But auditioning on the main stage with lighting and their masks off, you see a whole different side to them. There were a couple of big surprises, and we were really scratching our heads to try to figure out who to put in each role. We could have cast this show several times in the 8th grade alone, so it was inevitable that there would be some disappointed actors.
After the creative team made our collective decisions, I had a couple of free periods, so set out to print out and assemble the cast lists, and managed to get them posted on the hallway bulletin boards by our planned deadline, Friday the 26th of March. While I was in a private lesson I could hear the shrieks and OMIGODs from behind the closed classroom door as the students came to see the results. Very exciting!
To be truthful, the whole experience was a little bit anticlimactic, as the preceding Wednesday we had received news of a tightening of restrictions by the health authorities. This meant that the Saturday rehearsal (meant to be the first real rehearsal after auditions) was cancelled, and furthermore the next week of classes would be held via teleconference.
For us that meant a return to the tedium of online instruction, with each class starting with a reminder that video cameras needed to be left on to ensure that the students were actually attending. Interestingly I came across this "Betty" cartoon from 1997 that more or less predicted online classes almost a quarter century ago. Notice the sign saying that the video monitor has to be uncovered?
Another consequence of the tighter restrictions was that the St. John Passion that I had been asked to perform at the Cistercian Monastery in Ottignies (very close to Bryan and Kiana) was cancelled. It wasn't that surprising to me, since the number of cases had been rising by double-digit percentages weekly for at least a month.
One of those new infections is Malcolm's room-mate Antoine, who, while asymptomatic, tested positive late last week. That meant that Antoine couldn't return to Paris to be with his family over the vacation, and also Malcolm needed to stay in Boom and quarantine until he received two negative tests. The first one came in negative on the weekend, and we should know by next weekend if he continues to be clear. That meant that we had to have Easter dinner over Zoom...
I wrote earlier about the nice weather, so thought I would show you some photos of the many flowering plants that we've been enjoying.
Johannespassion in Amsterdam two years ago
What else is going on? Well, I sold one of my Fender Princeton Reverb amplifiers to Jonas, a lutherie student friend of Malcolm's. And I found an inexpensive acoustic guitar at the Cash Converters around the corner: this is a Godin "Seagull" cedar top acoustic, made in their factory in La Patrie, Quebec, in 2003.
In the meantime I'm really enjoying getting to know this very light and bright sounding guitar. It's obviously been much played, which given its balanced and very pleasant sound isn't surprising: if you find an older guitar that has no signs of wear, then maybe it's a dud. I have to wait my turn sometimes though, because Duncan seems quite keen on playing it. He's waited a bit longer than Malcolm or I did to take up the guitar (I started at 14, and I think Malcolm was maybe 15 or so) but he's learning pretty quickly.
Maggie has been working on a new bed quilt for Duncan... here's the top mostly completed.
p.s.
We heard about a new programme that lets people get on an early vaccination list. It would seem that in Flanders and Wallonia they want to minimise spoilage of open vaccine vials, so have asked people to register with their availability. That way if there are open vials near the end of the day, one can be contacted and come and get an injection that would otherwise be wasted.
It seems to be popular: I opened up the application at around 11:00 this morning... so far there are still about 125,000 people in the queue ahead of me, and in the five hours since I joined, they have processed around 12,000 people per hour. Unfortunately that means that I might have to make a guess and set my alarm for... 2:30 am? If I miss the ten-minute window then I would have to start again... what to do?
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