Legacies

Maybe it's different for people with children -- they have built-in legacies. But, I'm noticing a trend among some of my childless peers. With statistically more days behind than ahead, they're starting to think about what they will leave behind.

It's something Spouse 1.0 has been thinking about for years, though he hasn't used the actual word "legacy." He wants to leave something behind of lasting importance. Some written work.... some change in how people think about technical documentation.... something.

Childless friends who have done a fair amount of short-term mission work and overseas teaching did use the word "legacy" when describing how they want to leave behind lasting changes in people's relationship to God.

Other childless friends have dedicated their entire working lives to leaving behind Bibles translated into three languages, literacy, and changes in how Bible translation is done.

Notoriously passionate coworker "X" hasn't explicitly said anything about legacies, but another coworker explained: This project is her legacy.

Oh.

Wow. No wonder she gets a bit worked up about it. This isn't just a task the corporate gods are paying her to do. It's... well, her immortality.

That's what legacies are, when it comes down to it. Your chance for some part of you to live on when you're no longer alive. Immortality -- at least of an earthly sort.

In 2007, when I was interviewing for department transfer, one interviewer asked me to describe a portrait that I would leave as a legacy to my descendents. I didn't bother telling him there weren't any descendents. It was irrelevant.

This was harder than the "What do you expect to be doing in ___ years" question.

Oddly, I've never expected any part of me to live on when I'm gone. Certainly, I like my work and try to do my best. I like helping improvements happen. But, I don't believe that any change I could usher in would ever be of lasting significance.

Maybe my legacy-indifference is because I'm not yet 50. When you're 40-something, you double that, and you're still under 100. Living into one's 80's and 90's is not unusual nowadays. But, 100 still is a rare age. So, at 50, you really do have to start accepting your mortality. And, from there, seeking your earthly immortality.

Screaming

My voice coach is always trying to get me to yell, scream, get loud. He says that's the only way my system will learn to produce certain notes.

I have full faith in him. In my head, I know he's right. But, wow, do I ever hate screaming.

I hate doing it most likely because I hate receiving it. I truly hate being in the presence of screaming. And, I really, really hate it when raised voices in my world can be heard by my neighbors.

The only thing worse than making a scene in public is making a heard in public.

I was on the receiving end of screaming recently. Fairly publicly.

(No, it wasn't David.)

Once the reverberations in my skull subsided, I was able to wonder: What must it be like to be inside that person's skin? I can only try to imagine.... Her world can't a be a very pleasant place.

If it were, she wouldn't be screaming.

Reelin' in Saint Anne

At this point is sounds more like St. Anne's Dirge than St. Anne's Reel, but it feels just plain good to be learning a new tune again. And, it's going relatively well.

Banjo Bob and Fiddlin' Susan have been wanting to add this one to our Thursday lunch menu. But, distracted as I've been by household and health, I've been holding out.

Funny how, when confronted by a bunch of notes running wantonly around on a page, learning even the simplest and most beloved tune can feel like a chore. But, finally, I'm starting to approach learning new tunes as one would properly approach a coding a project.

No decent software developer is going to sit down at the computer the moment she gets the project overview and start banging out code. (Lots of indecent ones do, but that's another story.)

Both with code and with old-time fiddle tunes, it helps to think in an object-oriented way. Fiddle tunes are very object oriented. When you understand what the tune's objects are, learning it gets a lot easier.

For example, the 2nd and 3rd phrases of the B part is usually the same object as the 1st phrase. The 2nd phrase takes n-1 as its input parameter, where n = the starting note of the 1st phrase. Easy!

Years ago, my dulcimer instructor told me to look for "repetition." But, of course, she didn't use words like "object" or "module" or "input parameter." So, somehow, I've made tune-learning a lot harder than it needed to be.

Just like those silly developers who start banging out code without planning their projects.

Surviving Another Mother's Day

The google logo has changed, and it is therefore now officially Mother's Day -- at least on the east coast and in the Midwest.

My mother's dead. She's been dead for nearly 30 years.

We have nieces who are mothers. Some of these nieces weren't even born when my mom died. She died when she was four years younger than my current age.

I am now four years older than my mother.

Spouse 1.0 always takes Mother's Day harder than I do. His mom's only been dead 22 years. Plus, he didn't live his entire childhood with the expectation that she'd die. He didn't have as much of a chance to get used to the idea.

So, he'll want to stay home. Stay in bed. Avoid any and all media that would try to get him to buy pink carnations, sentimental necklaces, and/or lacy lingerie for the assorted mothers in his life.

I won't want to stay home. Hunkering down and trying to avoid the day only makes it bigger, more important, more obvious.

So, tomorrow we'll get up, shower, dress, and go about our normal Sunday business as best we can.

At Starbucks, the nice young man will smile and say, "Happy Mother's Day." I'll just smile back and say, "Happy Mother's Day to you, too." He'll look a little startled (they always do), and then he'll pour my venti decaf, take my money, and wish the next customer a Happy Mother's Day.

I can handle that.

At church the pastor will have all the mothers stand. He'll tell them how wonderful they are for being mothers. He might preach a sermon on how to be a great and godly mother.

I can even handle that.

After church, we'll go to lunch at the usual place. A perky young lady will be at the door handing out pink carnations. She'll say, "Happy Mother's Day." I'll smile, shake my head, and say, "I'm not a mother." If I'm lucky, this year's designated flower-pusher won't insist. I really won't want to destroy her cheery mom-friendly mood by growling, "I'm not a mom. I don't have a mom. And I really don't want to be forced to take a damned pink carnation to remind me of the fact that my mom's been dead for thirty years."

The insistently delivered pink carnation: That, I don't handle so well.

I used to think that Mother's Day wasn't so hard on the motherless people who have children. Then I discovered that my sister-in-law (who is a mother and has both a daughter and a daughter-in-law who are mothers) loathes the day.

Tonight, I don't look forward to tomorrow. But when tomorrow actually arrives, I'll be fine. I'll get up, have my breakfast & my coffee. Read the newspaper. Maybe even start working on St. Anne's Reel. We'll go to Starbucks, church, lunch. We'll go to the Byron Berline concert.

But, just for the next 24.5 hours, I think I'll avoid google and its pink carnation logo.

Pastor Pleads Guilty to Abuse

You've seen that headline over a thousand times. Somewhere around the 1,742nd time you see it, you just get a small pain in your gut, murmer "how awful," and go on to the next news story.

Then, on the 1,743rd time, the pedophile is someone you knew. Your age. A peer. Someone the church you grew up in hired after you'd left for college. Someone you saw when you came home for holidays.

A young man who helped your church acquire a magnificent pipe organ. A gifted musician. Someone who played the hymns at your mom's funeral.

Someone you ate dinner with at Clyde & Alice's house.

A good actor. No doubt about it. A great actor. An actor who spearheaded your church's effort to stage "A Christmas Carol" as a gift to the community. And, what a staging it was, too! He transformed your sweet but ordinary fellow paritioners into such convincing actors.

Someone your good friend had a bad feeling about. Ah, but he was such a good actor. Nobody listened to her. How could she be so suspicious of this wonderful young man?

A man who eventually left your church under something of a cloud. Someone who never should have been allowed to work with kids again.

The 1,743rd time you see the headline, you weep.

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/693302.html

Volume

The music was too loud at church today. It may have been too loud last week, too, but we showed up too late to know.

While we were looking for a church, a lot were disqualified because the sound guys just had things cranked up tooooo loud.

For instance, when we visited Church X, we took three steps into the sanctuary, did a U-turn, and politely and regretfully informed the usher we couldn't stay. We didn't think it would be good stewardship over the two perfectly fine ears God had given us.

Our neighbors attend Church Y. He's an audio engineer. He knows about decibels & stuff. Surely their church would be a safe haven for our ears. So, we visited their church. Once. Our neighbors later said they were able to use our failure to return as a concrete example when talking with their elders about the music volume.

So, after that, we jokingly referred to our walking out of deafness-inducing churches as our "ministry."

And, maybe it is. We were told today that Church X has done a few things to mitigate their sound. They've re-equalized, installed some sound barriers and sound absorbing materials. Too many people were complaining about the music being too loud.

Unfortunately, the guy telling us about Church X's sound mitigation didn't mention the cheapest, easiest, and most effective solution: Teaching the sound guy to rotate his wrist counterclockwise while gripping the volume knob.

We've offered to help the church we're attending buy a decibel meter.