Learning the flute

I have always been enamored of the etherial sounds of the flute.  It’s such a basic musical instrument that it seems to have been invented by every culture.  

I’ve never had music lessons, as I grew up in a family that was not so well to do.  My parents threatened to enroll me in accordion lessons once, but nothing ever came of that.  My mother had an electric organ in the living room.  I remember that it was a really big deal when it arrived.  Mom took lessons and played it with enthusiasm and skill.

Out of curiosity, I sat down at the organ and played with the keys, and read some of the beginner books, and thus became familiar with sheet music.  I picked out some Beatles tunes with the right hand, but that was the extent of my musical education.

I have always envied friends who could play musical instruments.  Some friends can play multiple instruments. A couple of my friends are professional musicians.  My youngest son plays a half dozen stringed instruments.  I always figured it would be too much effort and too much money to learn an instrument myself.

But a strange thing happens when your children leave home — you suddenly find that you have a lot more time on your hands.  My parents responded to this by watching a lot of television, going to bars, getting drunk a lot, having affairs and getting divorced.  Now, I love my parents dearly and I refuse to judge them.  However, I could suggest that this was not the most beneficial or healthy way to spend their middle-aged years.

 I responded to this by learning a lot of new skills, including the sword.

Well, it might be time to put the sword on hold.  In order to continue in my education of that martial art, I’ll need to invest in armor and start competing.  This doesn’t appeal to me so much.

My spouse and I were talking about music last week, and I mentioned that I have always wanted to learn the flute.  She said, “What’s keeping you?”

A very good question.  After doing some research via the telephone, I discovered that the local music store will rent me an instrument for $25 a month, and that lessons are $30 for half an hour.  We stopped by that music store on Saturday, talked to the owners for an hour or so, rented a beautiful Armstrong flute, and made arrangements to take lessons.  The shop owner also gave me a beginner’s book and a DVD with some instructions.

I was warned that forming the embouchure is a difficult skill to learn, but I figured it out in about five to ten minutes.  I believe the reason it’s considered difficult is that most students start learning it when they’re 10-years old.  I have a much more experienced mouth.  Perhaps being an old dog can be an asset when learning some new skills.  And speaking of old dogs, I’ve heard that learning music helps prevent Alzheimer’s.

Using the book and the DVD, I have learned the F Major scale.  I don’t play it rapidly or with any facility, but at least I know it.  While I practiced, my spouse dusted off her old alto recorder that has been sitting in the closet since college, and we managed to make some music together.  I wouldn’t call the cacophonous noise from that session a “jam” but it’s a start.

I hope I’m ready for the first lesson tomorrow.  In the meantime, I’m off to watch some Jethro Tull videos on YouTube.

 

Star Trek: eXtreme

(Spoiler Alert: Eva, this means you.)

In spite of the plot holes big enough to fly a starship through, the newest Star Trek movie, which basically re-invents the franchise, is a fun romp through Federation space.  The movie was intended to bring the 1960’s idea into the 21st Century, thereby attracting a whole new younger audience.  There was even a tag line, This is not your father’s Star Trek.

To that extent the movie was successful.  J. J. Abrams achieved this by ramping up the pace of the movie to warp speed.  The action, the space battles, the bar fights, the incredible stunts and even the jokes come at the audience in rapid fire phaser blasts.  It gets slightly repetitive, though, as Kirk seems to spend half the movie hanging by his finger nails from one precipice or another.

Abrams also achieved his goal by performing a frontal lobotomy on the philosophical side of Star Trek.  One of the hallmarks of the original show is that the crew slowed down enough to discuss the ethics of what they were doing.   Abrams could have gone a long ways towards keeping the original audience of the show by deleting just one of those cliff-hanging scenes and replacing it with a philosophical discussion on the ethics of time travel or some other aspect of the plot.

So while the movie is faster and more fun than most of the previous 10, it’s also dumber.  This is exemplified by Kirk’s cheating of the Kobiyoshi Maru exercise.  I always imagined this event to be something much more clever, and we are, in fact, advised that Kirk is “genius level” by Captain Pike.  But instead of something clever, we get “in your face.”  Instead of intelligence, we get self-absorbed belligerence.

And for this, it is implied that Kirk deserves, and indeed expects, to be promoted from cadet to commander of the fleet’s flagship.  Kirk is rewarded for jumping first without thinking about it at all.

That’s not the Starfleet I came to know and love.  My children’s generation is welcome to it.

2009 Pacific Traditional Rendezvous

Pacific Traditional Rendezvous

Regarding the pin displayed here:  yes, I know that Rendesvous is misspelled.  It doesn’t do any good to tell me.  I didn’t design the pin, and San Francisco Archers isn’t going to spend the money to redo the pins just to correct the spelling.  Any comment that’s left to tell me that the word is misspelled will simply be deleted.

On Sunday, April 19, 2009, the San Francisco Archers hosted the Pacific Traditional Rendezvous, a competition for  traditional archers to show their stuff.   I heard that there were 110 participants, which means that there were easily 200 people when you count supportive family members and those who crewed the kitchen and registration booth and other support services.

I arrived at about 7:30, still a half hour before the sun rose above the hills in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  The archery range is generally the coldest place in Pacifica, a village which is renown for a cool and moist climate.  The weather people told us it would be “warm during the weekend” but we have learned to take their prognostications with a pound of salt.  The pre-dawn temperatures probably hovered about 10° C, and most of us were dressed in layers of clothes.  As soon as the sun poked over the peaks, people started shedding cloths as the thermometer started climbing.  And climbing.  And climbing.

I was too busy with the competition to note the high temperature, but we ended up wearing the minimum amount of clothing that’s prudent for walking around the forest shooting arrows at 3-D targets.

We shot two arrows at each of 42 targets, including the Flying Pig and Running Rabbits and the mammoth.  I suspect that we walked about five kilometers over sharply inclined terrain while battling mosquitoes, hot weather, and severe Spring allergies.  We started at 9:00 in the morning, and finished the 42nd target at 3:45 in the afternoon.  I managed to lose only one arrow when I misjudged the distance to a moose who was standing at the banks of Broadhead Lake, and the arrow sailed into the brackish water.  The ducks laughed at me.  I learned that I really need to practice judging distances with larger animals.  Please note that the second arrow went through his foam heart.

I also sorely misjudged how long it would take to get through the course, so as soon as I shot my last arrow, I had to rush home to help get dinner started.  I had no idea what the results where until my friends, Bea (Pictured above) and Estel came for dinner, and informed us that I had taken Second Place for Adult Female Recurve.  And before you think to ask:  Yes, there were more than two of us in that division.  There were either five or six.  I don’t remember which.  The woman who took First Place beat me by 80 points.  That’s okay: she beat me by 100 points, while seven months pregnant, back in September, so I’m catching up to her.  She’s a very hot archer, and there’s certainly no shame in taking second place to her performance.  Congrats, Trish!!

Also, Congrats to Estel for taking First Place in Adult Female Longbow!  Woot!  I don’t know any of the other results yet.

The Age of My Life

I really hate that I qualify for this event.  The city of Sacramento, California is sponsoring a program called Sports for Life!  The tag-line is The Sports for Life! Series aims to provide many of Sacramento’s 50+ athletes with an opportunity to continuing pursuing the sports they love.

Ach!!  50+ Athletes?!  Yes, that refers to age, not the number of participants.  I’m over 50?!  Gack!!  I can’t be that old!  I was just in college … well … thirty years ago.  But that was just last week!

When our oldest son turned 21, we told him that was enough.  He’s not allowed to have any more birthdays because we aren’t old enough to have kids his age.   To his credit, he has made every effort to comply, but he turned 27 in March.

But hey!!  Look at the program of events that the City of Sacramento is sponsoring:

Tentative 2009 Series Schedule

March 28 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament, Hotshot and Free Throw Event (Leonardo Di Vinci School)

April 25th & 26th Soccer Tournament (Cherry Island Soccer Complex)

May 9th Archery Tournament (Discovery Park)

September 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament, Hotshot and Free Throw Event (Leonardo Di Vinci School)

Basketball, soccer and archery.  It’s not like it’s chess and contract bridge.  This blog is being written by a senior woman who has scars on her hands from swords and wrenches (I repair airplanes for a living), and callouses on her fingers from archery, and I wear them as a badge of honor.  This is not our parents’ retirement!  During sword sparing class last night, a young man in his thirties commented, “You’re kicking my butt in the endurance department!”

Still, there’s that psychological reaction to one’s half-century birthday, and that was a few years ago.  Is the Senior Olympics next?

It’s time to embrace the age of my life and enjoy it.  And by enjoy it, I mean kicking whipper-snapper butt with sword and bow.  I know where I will be on May 9th (The Flower Moon).  Heading for Sacramento with a banjo on my knee.  Where will you be?

The differences between Pacifica and Oak Hills

We currently live in Pacifica, California, which is a small town on the coast.  Before we moved here so that I could take a new job, we lived for 20 years in Oak Hills, California, which is an unincorporated rural area in the Mojave desert.  These two locations could not be more extreme without moving to some place like Antarctica.

In Oak Hills, the weather varied between -5° C in the winter – though snow was uncommon – to 45° C in the summer.  The wind was merciless during the Spring and Autumn, and we were always replacing shingles.  Gusts to 130 kmh were not uncommon.  There was dust EVERYWHERE and the average humidity was about 15%.  Also, we couldn’t go anywhere without getting in the car and driving for at least twenty minutes.  Nothing was close.  Our nearest neighbor was 1/2 km away.  This was good, because we had an archery range in our back yard.  I had to drive 60 km each way to work.

In Pacifica, the weather varies from 15° C in the winter to 25° C in the summer.   The air is always moist and usually cool.  We can walk to the community theatre and grocery store, ride a bike or take a bus to the Big City.  My office is only 15 km away.  The average humidity is about 85% and we get a lot of fog. And by “a lot” it should be pointed out that Pacifica has an annual Fog Festival.

Oak Hills was a great place to raise kids until they became teenagers and got bored.  There was plenty of elbow room, and our children grew up being familiar with agriculture and wildlife.  All our neighbors were politically conservative and went to church, but nobody bothered us for being “the weird neighbors.”  Everybody was friendly, and land was cheap when we bought it.  I very much miss the easy mortgage payments.  We were the only esperantists within 150 km.

I’m sure that Pacifica would have been a good place to raise kids, too.  Though our youngest son would have spent all day and all night surfing.  In Oak Hills, he spent all his time on a skateboard, and now has problems with his knees.  All our neighbors are liberal and are either Buddhists or Wiccans or Universalist Unitarians, or atheists, but nobody bothers us for being the “weird neighbors.” Everybody is friendly and welcomed us when we moved here.  We have found that the best way to meet neighbors in an suburban environment is to take your dog for a walk.  You meet all the other dog walkers.  The problem with this is that I can remember the dogs’ names, but not the humans’.  Instead of a desert, we are surrounded by California redwood forest.  The yard is too small to build my own archery range, but there is a very nice one only 3 km away.   There are about fifty esperantists living in the region.

I don’t like or dislike either location more than the other.  They each have their unique challenges and rewards, but my skin is very thankful that we moved to a cool, moist environment.

La Tria Paŝo

La Tria Paŝo 

… estas la rakonto de Stella Santos, arkpafisto kaj novula ĉasisto, kiu tre perdiĝas dum sia unua ĉaso.  Ŝi renkontas strangajn homojn, kaj eĉ plistrangajn bestojn, kaj devas vojaĝi trans la vizaĝo de planedo por trovi sian lokon en la kosmo.

Klaku ĉi tie por komenci legi la rakonton

Traditional Archery in the Forest Primeval

I am very lucky to live about three kilometers from a beautiful outdoor archery range set up in the California coastal redwood forest.  The range has a practice area with target butts set up at five yard intervals from 10 to 50 yds, a couple of long distance ranges, including one set up in metric out to 90 meters.  Then there are three walking courses, designated by the colors red, white and blue.  There is also a club house, kept warm by a wood burning stove, a pot of coffee, and the camaraderie of the brothers and sisters who follow the way of the arrow.  The Wisdom of the Arrow – La Saĝeco de la Sago.

The White Range is set up so that the first 14 targets can be used for the International Field Archery Association Field Round, and the second 14 targets can be used for the IFAA Hunter Round.  The White Range is where I spend most of my time.  

The monsoons have past, and with Daylight Displacement Time, the sun doesn’t set until about 19:30, so there is just enough time after work to do a little practice at the practice range, and then do either a Field or Hunter Round. 

The Field Round takes you over a creek and past Broadhead Lake, swollen with the recent rains.  The combination of those rains and the recent sunshine has turned the redwood forest into the Forest Primeval.

I will try to remember to take my camera next time and get photographs and post them here.

Things not found in the Free 10-Lesson postal course

Esperanto-usa offers a free 10-lesson postal course which does an excellent job of getting people started on their esperantic journey.  But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the postal course doesn’t cover every aspect of Esperanto grammar.  Yes, there are only 16 rules, but applying those rules is not always trivial.  Yes, Esperanto is the easiest language in the world to learn, but it’s still a living language and cannot and should not be treated trivially.

An example of Things you won’t find the in the Free 10-Lesson Postal Course is an adequate translation of the English phrase, “I would have [done something] to it.”  The [done something] can be any any verb.  I’m going to specifically use the phrase, “I would have noticed it.” because it’s a line from a story I’m writing, and about which have had numerous conversations with both “experts” and lay people, and I most definitely count myself among the latter.  (Just in case you’re wondering, it is a hole in the ground, which the protagonist fell into.)

There are two tenses of the verb that need to be dealt with.  It’s both conditional and in the past.  Several people insisted that the best translation should be simple, “Mi rimarkus ĝin.”  But that doesn’t put it in the past, though these same people argue that it’s unnecessary to do so.  I respectfully disagree.  Why have all all those participles that we sweated over so long if we don’t use them?

The next attempt at translating the phrase yields, “Mi rimarkintus ĝin.”  While technically correct, and is allowed by the rules, I am told that turning a participle into a verb “just isn’t done.”  It’s evidently the equivalent of saying ain’t in polite company.  You can find the word in the OED, but that doesn’t mean you should make it part of your vocabulary.  Don Harlow once advised, “… tiu uzado estas evitinda.”  Conversely, E. Williger  feels that this usage makes the speaker sound “snooty” as if to advertise, “I know more esperanto than you do!”

This is where Bertilo Wennergren comes in.  After completing a basic esperanto course, every student should be required to get his book, Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko, an online version of which can be found at his website.  This book has settled many an argument over esoteric grammatical points.

Looking up the section on participles, Mr. Wennergren gives an example, Li estus leginta libron, se… That is, he would have read the book, if …  

There is a rule that you don’t use the accusative when the verb is esti.  Yet, here is an apparent violation of that rule.   Never the less, everybody who reads the phrase knows immediately how to translate the idea, and agrees that the primary activity involved is not esti but legi, even if that verb has been turned into an adjective by the participle.  We find an explanation for this on page 123 of Mr. Wennergren’s book.  The expression esti [participle adverb] acts as a kunmetita verbo.

You can find the passage in question in the Pages section of this blog, titled La Tria Paŝo – Parto unu.

Stanford Archery Results

Last week, I wrote to a friend in the UK, Veronika, that we were going to do archery English style: In the cold rain.  California has been hammered by severe storms for the last week, but that didn’t stop the dedicated from showing up an at “informal” archery competition at Stanford University.  In spite of temperatures less than 10° C , rain that was sometimes hard enough to hurt and gusting winds, we risked hypothermia and rust for a chance to participate in the FITA-900.

I’m sure that the groundskeepers did not appreciate that we slogged across their field, which was under 4 or 5 cm of water in many places.   Some arrows were also lost in the muddy grass.

Still, one of the most difficult tasks was keeping the scorecards dry enough to write upon without tearing them.  In spite of hiding the scorecards under jackets and rain panchos, the paper just turned into pulpy globs before the day was done.  I did not even bother to try to add up my score, which I’m sure reflected the dismal weather.

In spite of the conditions, everybody insisted that they had a great time, and that they’d do it again.

I have to ask:  Does this make us dedicated, or masochistic?

Responses

I overheard a conversation yesterday that went something like this:

Woman: You look like you have lost some weight.

Man: (excitedly) Yes!  I have been able to lose 10 pounds so far!  I gained so much weight after I quite smoking that I decided I had to watch my diet, and begin a new exercise routine!

Woman: Oh! Men lose weight so easily!  My husband can lose five pounds watching a sports program.  Women have to really work at it.

Wrong answer.  How many women really believe that it’s that easy for men to lose weight?  If it was that easy, they’d all be skinny.  Take a look at the men around you and tell me how many of them are skinny.

While it’s easier for men to lose weight than for women, that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  The man above made major changes to his diet and lifestyle in order to live a more healthy life, and the woman dismissed it with a joke.  The correct response is something along the lines of, “You’re looking great!  Keep up the good work!  I wish you the best with this!”

The response given by the woman above did not gain her any sympathy points.  On the contrary, it made her sound like a self-centered whiner. 

Okay, that’s my rant for the week.