Coup de Grace

Whew, so I’ve been rather busy lately.

Last weekend was the Chorister Trip to Atlanta. We sang at the Cathedral of St. Philip and All Saint’s Episcopal, one of the oldest churches in the area. It’s a medium-small room with a 95-rank organ! Crazy. But it was a lot of fun. I saw, for the first and hopefully last time in my life, a $26 bowl of cheerios on the menu. Wow.

Today was contest! All three Free State choirs received straight 1 ratings from judges who, the previous day, had given straight ones to just one choir in the entire KC metro. DO WORK. We ended up singing Timor et Tremor by Poulenc (one of my new favorite composers), Whitacre’s Sleep, and Tambur by some guy whose name I can’t remember.

I have a lot of friends in Concert Chorale this year, and the best part about the whole thing was their reaction to Sleep. They couldn’t be there to work with the man himself. They didn’t have the chance to sing it in a circle in a completely dark room, where we just went by breathing and gut. They didn’t have the chance to sing at all. But to see the smiles on their faces after the performance…wow. Those are the kind of things that mean the world to you, and it’s a reminder of the kind of humility you always have to have. They could be totally jealous and not even talk to us about it, but they not only talked, they were like, ‘OH MY GOSH, I STOPPED BREATHING HALFWAY THROUGH. IT WAS SO GOOD. TEACH ME.”

That, my friends, is what I’d like to call coolness. Because there’s a better word on the tip of my tongue. But coolness works just fine too.

So, again, I come to that seemingly unreal day before school starts.

I have had a fabulous summer.

End of story.

So, as I have been sitting inside avoiding the heat these past few days, I’ve been kind of bored. Ya. In my boredom, I was looking at Harry Potter stuff. For those who don’t know me, I am a huge HP nerd. It’s kind of sad, but I don’t deny it; I’m a fan.

I was looking at one of the magical objects that always interested me most: wands. If I was to find out that I was magical, the wand would be the first thing that I bought. Easily. In my boredom, I decided to look around at the whole wand concept.

The first thing I decided to find was the wand that I would pick, not the wand that would pick me. I decided on either a Holly or Ebony wand…Holly is the strongest defensive wand, and Ebony is the most powerful wand wood…a combination of the two would be great. I would like a phoenix flight-feather as my core. I would probably pick a wand that’s about 12 inches.

I took some quizzes online, too, to see what kind of wand I’d want.

Here’s some good links:

http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=5113933298354864703

http://www.unfading.net/wsinfo.html

 According to the first website:

9 3/4″, Phoenix feather core, Oak…oak signifies wisdom, endurance, protection, and authority.

According to the second website:

Cedar and Dragon Heartstring. Cedar wood “keywords”: generosity, fairness, noble origin, prosperity, steadiness, wise ruler, respect, and recognition

 Call me a total nerd, but I think it’s kind of cool. I have a certain interest in one-of-a-kind objects, and these certainly qualify for that.

School starts tomorrow. I think I mentioned that already. My schedule is as follows:

0: Adv. American Lit I (Herschiser)

1: APUSH (Grinnell)

2: AP Music Theory (Fillmore)

3: German III (Strecker)

4: Chamber Choir (Morton)

5: Adv. Physics (Olson)

6: Precalculus (Newlin)

ya.

Whew. So there’s been lots going on the last few weeks.

 Of course Camp Wood was first on the adgenda for my summer of fun. All you need to know from camp is that

a) it’s a really cool experience to pray for people during a healing service,

b) wind does not make walking up huge hills any easier,

and c) starry skies are really cool. Especially at camp.

A few days later, we boarded Midwest flight 100 to New York LaGuardia. Sweet. I had never been to New York before…and, well…it’s just so huge. Massive. We toured in Manhattan for a day and a half, and I honestly can say that I will never live in a big city. They’re cool to visit, but eeechh, too big and too dirty. We saw the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Lion King on Broadway, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and some other stuff. It rained really hard…my shoes were wet for a loonng time.

We then travelled to JFK Airport. Now, my parents had stumbled across some all-business class airlines that only fly from NYC to London. We got a really good deal on one of them: MaxJet, a carrier that goes from London Stansted to JFK and also Las Vegas…imagine, a flight from London to Vegas…AHHHH kill me now. We got to hang out in our own private terminal with awesome food, go on a plane with really huge seats and lots of legroom, and reallllly good food.

Even with 3 dramamine in me, I didn’t sleep.

After sitting on the tarmac in JFK for almost 5 hours, we left for London. We got there about 2 hours before our appointment in Ely with Paul Trepte, the choirmaster at Ely Cathedral. We got in the rental car (yes, backwards everything), and set off. Honestly, I don’t remember much of the trip…Katie, Mom, and I were completely out all the way there.

So now, because I’m tired of typing, I’ll just briefly describe all the places we went to:

Ely Cathedral: Huge Norman cathedral. Really cool organ. Big. Big. The octagonal tower is really cool. Ely is a cute little town, too.

Lincoln Cathedral: this is either my favorite or my second favorite. You can see Lincoln from about 20 miles away, as it sits on top of a huge hill. It is amazing inside…the facade is really something too. The choir was excellent here…the two head choristers wear these copes (yes, copes…they look like hooded capes, except fancy). I totally want one…that would be soooo cool. The town of Lincoln was my favorite town. Outside the cathedral, you can walk down Steep Hill road and eat in some really cool restaurants or shop in nifty local stores. They did some awesome music there, too…I can’t really remember what they did, but I remembered that I knew it. How sad am I? Or cool, depending on who you are…

Coventry Cathedral: Ok, so this cathedral was really, really, really different. The original building burned down in 1941, I think, after a German fire-bombing session destroyed most of the city of Coventry. The new cathedral doesn’t look like a cathedral. It is reallllly cool, though…their windows are cool, the bapismal font is really cool…and the ruins are really cool too. This cathedral, out of all of them, felt the most like a church…an active, living community, not just a museum.

Lichfield Cathedral: Ok, so this one has a rather unfair advantage in that our family knows the choirmater pretty well, and he knew we were coming. More precisely, he knew Katie and I were coming, and knowing that, he planned a Howells-based service, with the Collegium Regale Magnificat and Nunc dimittis. Sweet mother of all that is good and pure, I love that service. They were excellent as well. The building itself is really cool- it doesn’t have much of an acoustic, but it has lots of pretty reds and greens. The reredos are amazing. The buttresses were nice, too. This also felt like a real church. The town is really nice, too.

Worcester Cathedral: Ron Cooke’s home, for those of you who know the guy. Worcester was the original home of the Three Choirs’ Festival, a coming-together of sorts for the choirs of Hereford, Worcester, and Gloucester. Their choir sang the double-organ Vierne mass (I know this too), which was quite nice…but, their organ in having work done, so they had to use two electronic organs. …no comment. It was nice, though…they used something very similar to Rite II, so I knew pretty much the whole service.

Gloucester Cathedral: We really didn’t spend too much time here, as it was towards the end of the day. Gloucester has these AMAZING scisor arches. I can’t really describe them very well…kind of like huge, huge, curvy X’s. It’s just amazing that they built them about 900 years ago. We missed evensong because of some investiture thing…according to many a choirmaster, Gloucester’s choir is one of the best in England right now. They have realllly cool cloisters here.

The Cotswolds: quaint, cute, picturesque English villages. With reallllly good Sunday roasts.

Wells Cathedral: Wells is a nice town, much like the others. Wells Cathedral is massive. They, too, have some scisor arches. They have really cute cats here as well.

Salisbury Cathedral: Wow. Wow. Wow. They have a massive tower, about 404 feet tall. It’s early English gothic, with these amazing painted ceilings in the quire. They house a copy of the Magna Carta here in the the Chapter House, along with the cathedral silver collection. All the cathedrals have silver collections…I saw these, and they were really intricate and so old! They also have the oldest working clock in existence, dating from at least 1386, but possibly earlier. They also have a really cool baptismal font.

Winchester Cathedral: Buh-duhm CHH. This is the longest cathedral in Britain: it is huge. Massive. Giant. The ceilings in here are so cool! Such intricate stonework for being so high up. Jane Austen is buried here, along with tons of other people, of course. The choir here is excellent. Andrew Lumsden did the RSCM King’s course last year, and he is probably the best clinician I have ever had. They did some very nice Byrd, Tallis, and the Stanford “Beati quorum via,” which is on my top 15 anthem list…haha.

Chichester Cathedral: This is one of the smaller rooms we saw. However, it is just as intricate as the others. In the mid-20th century, the Dean commissioned tons of new artwork for the cathedral. Wow, it’s pretty…the high altar is brilliant with color.

Canterbury: Well, it’s amazing, actually being there. It, too, is massive…but this one has a huge stone screen in front of the quire. You have to go up a flight of stairs just to get there. I won’t spoil this one for the canterbury kids, because it’s that cool.

Ok.

So.

I’ve just been running and learning music lately. They approved our waiver for bypassing the RSCM Bronze award, yay. So, I have KCDA All-State Women’s Choir tomorrow and Friday and we leave for Pennsylvania on the 20th. Then, it’s CHOIR CAMP!!!!!!! Then, Happening, then, school.

Ugh, it goes by fast.

Today, while eating at Munchers with Alex, Haley, Katie, Haley asked the fabled “what will you do with your life?” question. The one I have tried to answer so many times. What will I go to college for? I have so many ideas. I love the science of flight and airplanes. I love music. I love finding out random information about clouds and rocks and taking photographs. I love working out the logistics of a school schedule or finding out the correct subway route. I love helping people.

AHHHH!

So many things I could do with my life.

The careers I’m considering:

1) Aerospace engineer. I love planes, the science behind them, and just the idea of flying. (Now actually flying…not my favorite activity, but it’s not as bad as it used to be

2) Music teacher. This can be generally inferred.

3) Meterologist. I love weather. And clouds.

4) Geologist/Astronomy teacher or professor. Space and rocks are interesting…you really have to think about this one

5) Architecture. I didn’t realize how much I liked it until I went to England and saw all those cathedrals.

6) Music composition…if I want to live in a box.

7) Logistics planner. I want to design subway systems or other means of mass transport.

8 ) Civil engineer. Building subways would be really cool.

ADVICE PLEASE.

Possibly pertinent information:

I’m pretty good at most kinds of math, but not logic. I am a good problem solver, though, and if you give me a point in the right direction, I can solve most puzzles.

Seriously…I started my PSAT test prep today, I realized how important it is to have some idea of what I want to do.

So today I was at Borders, reserving a copy of the 7th HP book, buying Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow…and I was looking at the bargain books section.

I came across a book called Weather. Oh, boring, right?

WRONG.

Oh my gosh. I have never been this curious and excited about learning stuff since Raintree. This book is just like your regular non-fiction/field-guide-ish thing. It has a background about the history of weather-watching, understanding how weather works/happens/etc. It has a section about amateur weather-watching.

But the best part is the section about the clouds.

It has all these awesome pictures, descriptions of how different types of clouds form, are they dangerous to aircraft/producing precipitation…it’s just so cool. They also have sections about the different types of storms and visual effects- the aurora and the rainbow, etc.

So am I a nerd or what? I think clouds are cool.

But so would you if you saw this book.

So, umm, it’s been a while.

Life is crazy. But summer’s almost here.

Yaaaaaaa

Tell me did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated
Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the Milky Way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you’re wrong
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me

…aka (some of) drops of jupiter by train                                                                                                                                                    

My new favorite prayer.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
         Christ behind me, Christ before me,
      Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
         Christ to comfort and restore me,
      Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
         Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
      Christ in hearts of all that love me,
         Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.