Susan Boyle

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Liza Blue

The first image of Susan Boyle was a frowzy older women quietly sitting eating a sandwich in a room teeming with hopefuls waiting to perform on the British TV reality show, “Britain’s Got Talent.”  She came forward for a quick backstage interview and cheerfully admitted that she was never married, and in fact had never been kissed and lived alone with her cat Pebbles. 

Now picture a women with the physique of a stout pickle striding across the empty stage in sensible shoes, with a ribbon of sorts situated where one could imagine a waist once was.  She was wearing a matronly scooped neck lace number the same color of her pasty skin, and a contestant’s number was slapped haphazardly across her ample bosom.  When the judges asked her where she lived, she forgot the name of her village.  Then the judge grimaced at her age of 47, and in response did a very embarrassing bump and grind, which left both the audience and judges squirming uncomfortably in their seats.

 She indicated that she was ready to sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from the Les Miserables.  She faced three sharp tongued and cynical judges and an audience who presumably harbored a bizarre fascination in watching delusional singers totally humiliate themselves in front of a jeering crowd.  The introductory notes started and there were several moments of tension as everyone braced for some sort of atonal croak.  With a slight furrow of her uni-brow and clench of her double chin, Susan opened her mouth and sang.

 

Within one stanza of the song, the audience was on their feet cheering; her voice was brilliant.  The judges sat in slack-jawed shock.  But it was not so much her stunning soaring voice, but to me what was most remarkable was that it came out of this – let’s face it – total frump.  We rarely experience anything with a single sense, and are accustomed to seeing the visual trump the auditory – a marginal singing talent can be compensated by tarty outfits and makeovers.  Food that smells good tastes good.  Food that smells bad, like steamed cauliflower, can’t overcome the bad first impression unless there is enough butter and parmesan cheese. 

 The other remarkable thing was that her clear, liquid singing voice bore no resemblance to her slightly shrill and squawky speaking voice.  Athletes tend to look athletic so it is not too surprising to see LeBron dunk.  And sports physiologists have drooled over Michael Phelps physique, and have poked and prodded it to show that his arms are the perfect length for the butterfly stroke and his narrow and deep chest is ideally proportioned to maximize his lung capacity.  But with singers, how can you know?  Someone should crawl inside this women’s larynx to document its exquisite mechanics, investigate how it interacts with her lungs, because Susan can really belt it out, how it interacts with her eardrums since she is pitch perfect and then figure out how the whole package is connected to her heart – this woman was singing with effective emotion, far beyond what her limited never-been-kissed life experience would suggest.  A previous show had featured someone called Paul Potts who similarly walked onto the stage in an ill-fitting suit with the improbable dream to sing opera.  He explained that he never had any confidence since he was relentlessly teased as a child, perhaps due to his unfortunate name that prompted potty humor derision, or a comparison to the genocidal Cambodian despot Pol Pot.  Or maybe it was his weird snaggle tooth that made you wince when he smiled.  But as soon as he opened his mouth, like Susan, his singing voice bore no relationship to his speaking voice and he just stunned the audience.

 Susan approached the most challenging part of the song – a series of rising notes that would blow out an average person’s larynx.  But she nailed them.  Now the entire audience and the judges were in rhapsodic awe.  She wrinkled up her pug nose and when she nodded in recognition you could see a bald spot around her jagged part.  She finished with a flourish and when the judges gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up, she stamped her feet in excitement and did a fist pump, which set her kimono arms wagging.   The cynical crowd rose to its feet in appreciation of this triumphant underdog. 

 You also knew that you were witness to the first rush of pure, undiluted joy and saw Susan guilelessly exulting in her performance and her dream goal of performing before a live audience.  The news of her performance spread quickly around the world and the press descended on her Scottish village, she was interviewed on the morning news shows, and there is talk about her appearance on Oprah.  Reporters immediately wanted to know if she was going to have a makeover, do something about her grey thinning frizzy hair or whether she had been fielding marriage proposals – all a patronizing and barely designed cruelty targeting her physical appearance.  Who knows how this experience will change this unassuming and modest person, but I did notice that by the time of his last performance on Britain Has Talent, Paul Potts had gotten himself a snappy new tuxedo, his snaggle tooth was gone, most importantly the element of surprise was gone.

Before she sang, the judge had asked why her dream of becoming a singer had not worked out and she simply said, “Well nobody has given me a chance before.”  At the conclusion of her song you are left with the powerful message that nothing deserves to be casually dismissed and that the hidden talents that surely surround us are routinely squandered.  I am thinking of some sort of unassuming frog who is quietly harboring the perfect cure for cancer beneath his moist and delicate skin.  But his swamp is being drained and his muddy pothole is shrinking.  The next pothole is across the new highway that has divided his dwindling habitat.  With a timid croak he tries to hop across the hot tarmac but splat…

The missing words in the following poems are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop, post, etc.)  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.   One of the anagrams will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.   Your job is to figure out the words based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

Of all our senses, it is the visual that usually ——

 It’s never brains over beauty, the ugly genius complains.

So when the frumpy —— opens her mouth what we expect to hear

 Is an atonal croak instead of a voice that’s pure and clear.

 So close your eyes when you listen, small, feel or taste

 Otherwise we —— ourselves to hidden talents that go to waste.

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Answers:  reigns, singer, resign

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My Brother Charlie

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Liza Blue

My parents were married in 1950 and three and a half years later they had three children, my older brother Ralph, me, and my younger brother Charlie.  When Charlie was around two years old he developed a very high fever and was rushed off to the hospital.  The doctor told my parents he had polio.  Sometime around that time it also became apparent that he was not learning to talk and everyone seemed to assume that even though he no had no other physical problems, his inability to talk was related to polio.  Throughout my childhood and into adulthood when asked about my family I would say “my brother Charlie had polio and that’s why he doesn’t talk.”  I remember my mother saying in retrospect that she was always so grateful that Charlie was undemanding as an infant, and could sit in his own world for hours in his playpen.  Although it seems so obvious in retrospect, I never heard my parents mention the word autistic.  I had been so ingrained in the polio/doesn’t talk scenario that I didn’t realize that he was autistic until several years after I had completed medical school.  The sad truth was I never really thought about it.

Part of the reason that I never questioned Charlie’s polio is that when I was about 8 or 9 Charlie moved to Lochland, a residential facility in Rochester, New York, and there was probably a good 20 year period when I never saw him.  I have very hazy memories of Charlie before he moved out; I don’t recall wondering why he didn’t go to school with me, why he didn’t have friends over, or what he did all day.  Recently we got our old family movies turned into DVDs and I was surprised to see Charlie totally mixing in with the rest of us. (Of course the movies had no audio).  There was Charlie looking for Easter eggs wearing shorts pants, a sport coat and a bow tie, Charlie riding a tricycle, and blowing out candles on a birthday cake.  I cannot even imagine the growing anguish of my parents as they realized that even though Charlie was so normal in many ways, he would require life long care.

For several years when Charlie was first at Lochland he would come home for summer vacation.  This was great because my mother always rented a trampoline for the summer that we could all use.  I remember Charlie jumping by himself for hours, sometimes suddenly yelling the syllable Geee (with a hard G)!! and then laughing at some secret joke. He was also a good singer and could wordlessly sing various show tunes my mother would send him.  This was also the time when we would watch the Ed Sullivan show on TV, which often seemed to feature odd circus acts from Eastern Europe.  One that I remember was a bunch of guys wearing white stirrup pants with suspenders, who balanced spinning plates on the tops of long poles.  Well, Charlie seemed to have the same skills.  He could jump on the trampoline while twirling a wet washcloth on his index finger.  No one else in the family could do it.  He could also do the same thing with a Frisbee, and I think that he was pretty good at a hula hoop.  Charlie was also an enthusiastic eater.  I remember that he would grab a canister of Redi-Whip from the icebox, squirt it directly into his mouth and then laugh.  It was obvious that he had a pretty good sense of humor.

One of the great mysteries of Charlie’s mind was that although he could not communicate he understood everything and was perfectly capable of doing household chores, such as emptying and loading the dishwasher.  One day my mother asked Charlie to take out the garbage.  We had two garbage cans outside; one was an incinerator at the edge of the driveway and the other one was a regular garbage can right out the back door. Charlie seemed to mistake the incinerator for the garbage can and lit the garbage can on fire.  I remember the day distinctly.  I was getting dressed for school, and in fact was wearing a pink and yellow candy-striped pair of culottes that I had made myself that perfectly matched my pink sweater.  I looked out the bathroom window to see the fireman raising an axe as the flames licked up the side of the house.  There were pools of water in the driveway.  My father was wearing his going to work clothes which included his felt hat and my mother was standing in the bathrobe she used to wear while she made us all breakfast.  Although they were standing with their backs to me, I saw their deep sorrow in their slumped shoulders and bowed heads  

My parents then decided that coming home to visit was too disruptive for Charlie.  While they visited him four times a year, I don’t think any of my siblings saw him for decades.  Now I wonder why my parents did not take one of us on each of their visits to Charlie, but on the other hand I am also ashamed to say that I never asked to go.  Charlie moved to different residential facilities along the way and spent some time in Florida.  When that facility collapsed, my parents even tried to set up their own facility in Florida, called “Great Days.”   I noticed these efforts with only passing interest, and I am even more ashamed that I did not pitch in to help on a daily basis.  It was very clear that my parents loved Charlie and that he was part of our family, but I think that my parents were trying not to burden us with his care.  Perhaps they knew deep in their hearts that it would be our turn soon enough.  Ultimately Charlie ended up back at Lochland.  Finally one August about four years ago I made my first visit to see Charlie at Lochland.  It was the last visit for my mother, whose heroic efforts to compensate for her eroding mind were beginning to show cracks.  Shortly after this visit, Alzheimer’s disease overwhelmed her and she never saw Charlie again.

Lochland is housed in a magnificent estate overlooking Seneca Lake, one of New York’s Finger Lakes.   As we walked up the steps, I began to hear odd noises – some yelling, inappropriate laughing and then Charlie’s characteristic Gee!  Charlie came up and hugged my mother briefly saying, “Muma, muma, muma.”  I said, “Hi Charlie, I’m your sister Bobbie,” and gave him an awkward hug, in part because I was startled to notice that Charlie and I are virtually identical twins.  This was something that I did not appreciate in all the photos that we had of Charlie, and it was eerie looking into his faraway eyes to see a sort of warped version of myself.  Charlie was clearly pleased to see my mother since he knew that he would get some treats, but he soon he wandered off, retreating into his own world.  We were left standing in the huge living room of this old mansion surrounded by other residents and staff of the house.

I took a deep breath.  Glancing at my watch, I realized that our visit was less than 15 minutes old and it was already clear that we had to start killing time.  I turned to the woman next to me and struck up a conversation.  I had a such pleasant chat with Cameron that I assumed that she was one of the staff people.  All of a sudden she leaned over to me and said, “Wait right here, I want to give you a present.”  She rushed back and presented me with a load of hangers that she had decorated (sort of) with different colored yarn.  Oops, first mistake, turns out that she was a resident.  There was another sloppily dressed man standing awkwardly in the corner who looked like a resident.  Later on I realized I was making dangerous assumptions when I saw him driving the Lochland van.

That morning I met with Charlie’s psychiatrist and for the first time I formally heard that Charlie was autistic.  Later that day we met Charlie’s “advocate”  a woman named Charlene who was supposed to be especially attentive to Charlie’s needs.  My parents had been singing the praises of Charlene for several years since she would frequently take Charlie to her home for dinner or even on vacation with her family.  Now that I belatedly knew that Charlie was autistic, it didn’t make complete sense to me to change his routine and environment.  Sure enough, Charlene would report that they had a great outing, but that Charlie had broken something, like her computer, and then Charlene would send my parents a bill.  Charlene suggested that we take Charlie out for dinner to the Sizzler steakhouse.  This seemed equally crazy – why would you take someone with virtually no impulse control and an infinite appetite to an all-you-can-eat buffet?  This was my first initiation into the sandwich generation and it was the most stressful meal of my life.  Charlie would continually try to slip out of the booth and hit the dessert line again and again, and then yell when I tried to stop him.  My mother wasn’t sure where she was either; she would get up but then not remember where we were sitting and I would lead her back to our booth.  At one point I was retrieving Charlie when he startled another diner by grabbing his lemon meringue pie off his plate and then laughing mischievously.  Charlene was trying to show off how well she controlled Charlie by continually jabbing her index finger into her forehead to get his attention but this strategy clearly wasn’t working.  It was merely incidental that the food was predictably wretched.

The next day was Charlie’s birthday – I think that it was his 50th birthday.  Charlene had arranged a birthday party at her house, inviting all the residents of Lochland plus a variety of other disabled adults.  Charlene’s husband was one of these enviable guys who could fix anything, but the consequence of this great talent was that his yard was strewn with appliances – there were dishwashers, lawn mowers, cars and an RV all in various stages of repair or disrepair.  Charlene had really gone all out and made many different casseroles, all of which seemed to have mayonnaise as the principle ingredient.  She had laid them all outside and as the bright sun relentlessly beat down I began to see oil pooling everywhere and the mayonnaise getting that nasty gelatinous look.  The yard was now filled with people either in wheelchairs or staggering around, Charlie had no clue that this party was for him and just wanted to eat the dripping and drooping cake that was on display, I had lost track of my mother and I didn’t want to make the same blunder of mistaking a staff person for a resident.

I was utterly exhausted when we finally reached the soothing, relaxed atmosphere of the airport.  We happened to fly over Buffalo and I got my first glimpse of Niagara falls.  I leaned over to point this out to my mother, who only noticed the fluffy clouds and commented that she thought it was odd that there would be so many snow drifts this time of year.  I also saw that when she tried to do the crossword puzzle she just added extra boxes if her word didn’t fit.  I thought about all the times that she had made this trip by herself and how she had somehow assimilated all this sadness into her life, and how she had spared the rest of her children from this burden.  I vowed that I would not view my care of Charlie as burden, but consider it an opportunity to spend time with my brother in a beautiful part of the country.

I have had some missteps in the past five years, but by and large I would have to say that I am learning to enjoy visiting Charlie, if you don’t mind having your heart broken from time to time.  I have discovered a National Wildlife Refuge some 20 minutes away that has fabulous birdwatching.  I took Charlie on a walk there on my last visit, and even though he peed in the middle of the trail, I was actually happy to realize that he was smart enough to know that was acceptable in the woods.   There is a great yarn store in downtown Geneva that I always stop by.  We no longer take Charlie out for dinner, but go to the grocery store and let him pick out something special to have back in his apartment.  One time we made a cake together and he did a masterful job of licking the bowl, then washing it and putting it back on the shelf.  Charlie loves watching the movie “Sound of Music,” and occasionally when he sings you can catch snippets of “Edelweiss.”  One night as we were watching he curled up on the couch and put his head in my lap.  I gave my 55 year old look alike brother a head rub just the way our mother did so many years ago.

(The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams. (i.e. share the same letters like post, stop, spot)  The number of dashes will indicate the number of letters in the word and one of the missing words will rhyme with either the preceeding or following lines.  Your job is to solve the puzzle based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down for the answers)

What’s in a Sandwich

When someone says sandwich, I used to think of peanut butter and jelly,

Or maybe pastrami on rye from the corner – – – -.

Or the Earl of Sandwich who spent – – – – days in luxury’s comfortable lap.

His friend Captain Cook made him famous by putting his islands on the map.

But now mostly I think that sandwich is the generation that I’m currently in.

And I – – – – if I told you that sometimes this doesn’t stretch me a bit thin.

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Answers:  deli, idle, lied

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My Life in Song

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Liza Blue

I have inherited many gifts from my father, both genetically and by example – reasonable looks (except for my fleshly earlobes), brown hair that just refuses to go grey, kindness, loyalty and commitment to family.  But among my siblings, there is one thing my father and I share exclusively – our inability to carry a tune.  While this would seem to be a minor setback, it was aggravated by the rich musical talents that my mother bequeathed to all 5 of her sons, who all married similarly talented wives, so my father and I emerged as real outliers.  This became painfully apparent during the musical skits for family occasions that my mother created for all of us to perform in – family birthdays and weddings, where you would have the additional stress of performing in front of the bride’s family, all of them total strangers.  The skits would typically involve some sort of recurring refrain, like Alouetta, where you had to sing your two lines over and over again.  Both my father and I would struggle mightily – on the first go-round I would sing too high, and then when it came around to me again, I would overcompensate and sing way too low.  In addition to being off-key, family members would comment that my voice was too “breathy.”

I first became aware of my deficiency in grade school; in fact my first formal rejection of any kind involved music.  There were tryouts for the grade school choir, and I marched in full of confidence since I had been told multiple times, “You Browns are such a musical family.”   The teacher asked me to sing along as she thumped away on the piano.  I still remember the music abruptly stopping and the teaching calling for the next applicant.  I was stunned when I did not make the choir, since with a handful of exceptions – me, Kathy Washburne, Emily Clow, Peggy Huber and Nini Swift – the rest of the class was in.

The initial sting of rejection became a scab that would not heal as the choir was consistently shown preferential treatment.   During my childhood in the 1960s, everyone rode their bikes and arrived at school early, a scenario that seems totally improbable today.  The school did not want students entering the building before 8 AM, so they set up crossing guards in front of the entrance, and everybody had to wait until the appointed hour.  It was a seething mass of bicycles, except for choir members who would break free from the crowd and gaily sing out, “I have choir practice so I get to cross early.”  The crossing guards always seemed to be the cute boys who would theatrically open the gate and let the singers cross.  Since the choir was almost the entire 8th grade, I felt like a loser behind the gate with all the younger kids.

Later that year we had tryouts for the school play, one of the social highlights of the 8th grade.  The play was a musical called the Thirteen Clocks.  There were limited speaking parts, so most of the class was housed in the chorus.  I was insulted when the cast was posted and saw that I was assigned to the chorus.  I already knew that I could not sing, so this casting meant that I was a worse actor than singer.  I realized that my role in the chorus was really damage control rather than any affirmation of my singing ability.  I was not housed, I was warehoused in the chorus.  I lip synched throughout the play.

In the meantime, my mother exploited her musical talents to great success.  “I always like to add another string to my bow,” she would say.  She participated in a church choir tour and fulfilled her dream of singing in a cathedral, started a bell choir and a singing group that entertained children and shut-ins, organized and performed in community theater and wrote musical plays for grade-school children.  My brothers had speaking and singing parts in their school plays.  My father and I sat on the sidelines until we were mustered up for family skits.  I was proud of my father’s good humor as he repeatedly humiliated himself in front of an audience.  However, over the years I did notice that he developed a serviceable work-around.  He managed to learn the one tune that my mother always used for her skits, creating some sort of muscle/ear memory so that his singing was not entirely wretched.  I continued to struggle.

As an adult, I tried a different tactic and followed my mother’s footsteps by joining a bell choir.  This seemed like a perfect compromise, since I did not need to sing and was only responsible for four notes.  All I had to do was recognize when to play them.  Fortunately this wasn’t too hard since I was tenacious counter and could usually figure out where we were in the piece, especially since I circled all of my notes in colored coded markers – red for right hand and blue for left.   All the other choir members recognized their notes by sight alone and actually knew the names of the notes.  But this has been a tremendous experience, a great team effort, particularly when we get some applause at the end of a piece.  I was getting just a whiff of the joy and comraderie my mother experienced in her musical life.

But my inability to sing still gnawed at me, in part because I had inherited my mother’s other gift for word play and writing ditties.  For my mother’s 60th birthday, my brothers and I created new words to the tunes of some of her favorite hymns, Fling Out the Banner, Once to Every Man and Nation, Onward Christian Soldiers, All Things Bright and Beautiful.  However, the best hymn was Rock of Ages, which we changed to “A Jock for the Ages” in honor of her athletic abilities.  The evening was a ripping success; my mother loved the irreverent humor, clever word play and singing, but most of all I think that she loved knowing that her talents would live on.

I have used “Rock of Ages” many times since then as part of birthday and family celebrations.  It has a nice steady rhythm, a limited range of notes and simple rhyming scheme that make it easy to adapt.  If I really want to slather it on, a birthday verse could go like:

When you joined the human race

The world became a better place,

On this earth no one’s more kind,

You’d give your eyeballs to the blind.

Your loving friendship we hold so dear,

So raise a toast of birthday cheer.

 But singing remained a problem.  You might ask, why not read it instead?  Yes, that would be the easy choice, but the verse would fall flat.  I have found that when sung, lyrics can be infinitely sappier and cornier than anything that is read, so I go ahead and continue to put my finger in the socket and try to sing it.

All these thoughts were running through my mind as I took one of my brainstorming bicycle rides through the local Forest Preserve.  I thought back to my father who found some success in mastering one song.  “Perhaps I could just focus on Rock of Ages and really learn how to nail just that one tune,” I thought.  I emerged from the Forest Preserve onto the corner of Rte 176 and Waukegan Road and noticed a sign stapled to a telephone phone.  I assumed that it was some tragic plea to recover a lost pet, whose life expectancy would be minimal at this bustling intersection.  Besides, there was no foot traffic here and cars would not be able to read the sign as they whizzed by.  When I looked at the sign more closely, I was startled to see that it was a handwritten sign advertising singing lessons!  I felt that we were made for each other – an atonal singer with a breathy voice and a singing teacher who advertised on a telephone poll.  It was a deus ex machina.

I committed the phone number to memory, but then it took me 1 ½ years to work up my courage to call.  I recruited my friend Marion to accompany me, since this whole scenario seemed a bit sketchy; I didn’t want to be the innocent victim lured into an evil trap on the premise of singing lessons.  Sofio answered the phone, and in a Russian accent that could have come out of a James Bond movie, he asked me if I sang in a choir or was a soloist.  I explained that my goals were much more modest – I only wanted a couple of lessons to get some tips on how to sing one song, and one song only.  I would bring the sheet music.

There was a pause, and Sofio said, “I am professional singer and only teach singers.  I not teach you.”

What? I was indignant.  It never occurred to me that I would receive such a resounding rejection – how could anyone advertising on a telephone pole afford to be picky about his students?

While I am sure that I could find others who would let me pay them, I now appreciate the 45 year symmetry bracketing my singing rejections.  Perhaps it’s time to set aside my loftier ambitions and just go with what I’ve got.  A long time ago I bought a sweater, hand made by some hard working Peruvian.  The tag on the sweater said, “The minor irregularities in this garment are part of its handmade charm.”  I took this aphorism to heart as I evaluated my amateur efforts at knitting or sewing, but over time the saying has become the life lesson that my father accepted many years ago.  The irregularities in my quavering, breathy voice will just have to be part of its charm.

(The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like post, stop, spot, etc).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the words will be at the end of a line and this word will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.  Your job is to figure out the missing words.   Scroll down for the anwswers.)

In my family musical prowess is the talent that ——

In skits, I struggle to perform the multiple refrains.

I am not a —— so no matter how hard I try,

The first verse is too low and the next one too high.

But over time I —— myself to my atonal voice

And accept its irregular charm as the logical choice.

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Answers:  reigns, singer, resign

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When Jesus Walks

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Liza Blue

Sunday our carillon bell choir was scheduled to play during the prelude and the offertory.  The prelude is a snap, since this is when the congregation is filing in, and the noise drowns out any mistakes that might be made.  The offertory is another story.  It is drop dead quiet and all eyes are fixated on the choir, standing in the front wearing these ridiculous royal blue robes.  The robes are made out of some sort of dense unbreathable polyester concoction, so that you are essentially trapped in your own escalating body heat as all eyes are upon you.   In addition, the mature age of our ladies’ choir guarantees that at any moment several members could erupt in a torrent of hormone-induced sweat, which cannot be discretely addressed since both hands are gripping the bells.  At one particularly suffocating moment, I likened these robes to the memorable coat of gold paint in the James Bond movie, Goldfinger.  The poor starlet died because they did not leave a space at the base of the spine for the skin to breathe.   

For the offertory, the choir director had selected the piece, “When Jesus Walks.”  Apparently this is an established hymn, but the composer had turned this into a jazz piece, and for the entire 5 months we rehearsed this, I never did hear the tune.  I only had 4 bells to play, the low E and F and the accompanying sharps and flats.  The rhythm was very wacky, abruptly switching from 4/4, to 2/4 to 3/4 and then to something called 5/4.  In general, I am most comfortable with a good stolid march, like Onward Christian Soldiers, so this was bewildering.  Also you were supposed to hit the bells differently at different points in the piece, some rung normally, some muffled into the foam pad on the table, some struck with a mallet, some waved in the air, and this was more than my unmusical mind could process.  And in the first two measures I was the only bell that played, where I was responsible for establishing the pace and rhythm, and in the last measure, I had a little solo run.  So my focus was on the beginning and the end, and I figured that any success over the seven middle pages would be just gravy. 

When I first started playing the bells, I diligently tried to play all my notes, which I carefully circled in different colors on the sheet music.  But as time went on, I realized that I did not have to play all the notes, particularly since I was assigned to the low bells that do not carry the tune (however, in this piece I could have been playing the tune but just didn’t realize it).  I could judiciously delete a few notes here and there without telling anyone, and have a stress free experience.  How does the saying go about the slippery slope of compromise?   “God grant me the wisdom to play the notes I can play, and delete the ones I can’t and the grant me the wisdom to know the difference.”  

However, I got it in my mind that I was going to nail this sucker, and after we played the prelude, I took the sheet music back to the pew while awaiting the offertory.  Through various hymns, sermonettes for youth, announcements, joys and concerns, etc, I tapped out the beat on my knees, using my palms for the ploink and a closed fist for the doink.  In the background I could hear the minister nattering on about how humans were as dumb as sheep that inadvertently walk off cliffs, or walk into a corner and can’t back out.  I was a bit irked to be compared to a dumb sheep, but I guess the take home message was that we are so lucky to have someone like JC be our shepherd.    

Anyway as the sermon ended, I leapt up full of confidence.  I should have stuck to the original plan.  The first and last measures were flawless, but the middle was seriously lacking in gravy.  Ploinks were doinks, and sharps were flats, and I felt about as clueless as a sheep stepping off a cliff.  The conductor was desperately trying to shepherd us through this nightmare and to her credit everyone arrived at the end at the same time for the final chord.  She managed a wan smile and quietly said, “good work ladies, that was a hard piece.”  In the aftermath between services, I was delighted to learn that everyone misplayed notes.  One women said that when she was frantically trying to turn the page, she grabbed several pages by mistake.  This is actually quite easy to do, since we are required to wear cotton white gloves similar to the ones that Mickey Mouse always wears, and consequently lose any tactile sense.  However, this women turned so many pages at once that she ended up briefly playing an entirely different hymn, and then when she realized her mistake could not find her way back home!

The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, stop, post, etc.)  The number of dashes indicates the number of latters.  One word is at the end of a line and will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poems.  Scroll down for the answers. 

Before the —– of the hymn my nerves jangle and quiver,

 But as the conductor raises the baton, its time to stand and deliver.

 I only have four —– to play but this piece has an odd jazzy beat,

 I freeze up and miss so many of them that my defeat is complete.

 I think I hear a smattering of snickers, moans and groans,

 As the congregation winces at the sound of the dissonant —–.

 Am I the culprit, the mill—– around this choir’s neck?

 Hey – the minister insists we’re not perfect so I say “what the heck.”

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Answers:  onset, notes, tones, stone

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A Wedding and A Funeral

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Liza Blue

I have been mistaken for an accomplished musician two times now, with predictably disastrous results.  It is perhaps understandable since I became the family custodian of my mother’s two octave set of brass carillon bells, which she used in her various musical endeavors, including family bell ringing at Christmas time.  I get calls at holiday times, “Oh, Bobbie, can you and Nick come for dinner, and by the way can you bring the bells, we had so much fun when your mother would help us play Christmas Carols.”  I felt like the klutzy kid who always got to play baseball only because he had a back yard big enough for a pick up game and a freezer full of popsicles. 

But I was happy to supply the bells and music, which my mother had carefully color coded so that even the tone deaf could participate.  I had learned enough at our family bell ringing events that I qualified for participation in a real church choir – but only because I brought my own markers to color my music and because I could count out the measures, compensating for my lack of any intuitive feel for the music.  However, I certainly didn’t know the names of the notes, and had only a marginal understanding of musical notation – arpeggios, formatas, martallatos were all beyond me.  But my rudimentary skills were adequate for after dinner entertainment.  In this setting the only goal was get the mildly inebriated “choir” to produce a Christmas Carol that was vaguely recognizable.

 The Wedding

 Mary Washburne’s request was different.  “Bobbie,” she said, “Do you think that you could play the bells at my wedding?”

 While honored at such a request, I quickly pointed out that I was not a musician, but that I could certainly bring the bells and music as long as someone else organized the group.

 “Oh that’s fine,” she said “One of the ushers is a professional musician, and my sister is very musical along with some of the other guests.  If you can just bring the bells up to Michigan, we can take over from there.”

I readily agreed to her plan and we decided that the “pick up” choir would play “Jubilate” as the guests arrived and “Ode to Joy” at the end of the ceremony.  There were a few disturb points that I hoped would fall into place once I got there.  The first was that the wedding was in mid-June in the upper peninsula Michigan, at the absolute peak of bug season.  Ringing bells requires both hands, and thus there would be no opportunity to shoo away the likely hordes of mosquitoes or flies, or both.  Secondly, the ceremony would be performed along a remote lakeshore.  There certainly wouldn’t be any music stands, and I was worried that the music could just blow away.  I had faced this issue years before when some friends and I had attempted to be street musicians with the bells, playing Christmas Carols along State Street in Chicago.  We solved the problem by pinning the music to each other’s backs and then standing in a tight circle so that everyone had a back to read from.  However, Mary envisioned that our choir would stand around a picnic table.

I dutifully arrived with bells and music but was horrified to learn that the musical usher was a last minute no-show, and that I was his secret understudy.  The wedding weekend was so event filled that we had time for only one rehearsal, where we practiced while wearing the mosquito netting that Mary had thoughtfully provided to the entire bell choir.  Since the dense netting made vision difficult, most decided to risk it and go without.  I was also concerned about the eighth notes in Ode to Joy. I had learned from prior bell parties that the slightly faster pace of eighth notes could really throw people off.  I carefully explained to my choir that if anyone missed a note, they must resist temptation to go back and correct the error, since this could be the flick that would send the dominos falling – everyone would be at a different place on the piece with a resulting atonal chaos.   

The wedding day dawned crisp, cloudless and unbelievably, bugless.  What an auspicious start to a wedding.  The bulk of the wedding party was hiking to the wedding site, but I arrived early by car to set out the music on the picnic table using small stones from the beach to keep the music from blowing away.  There were a few elderly people there who had opted out of the hike, and one asked, “Is this a professional bell choir?”

What the hell, “Yes,” I said proudly,  “we are a bell choir all the way from Chicago.”

The wedding party arrived and my intrepid choir assembled, some of them sweating from the hike.  I raised my arms to launch us into Jubilate, and then realized that I had no idea how to move my arms as a conductor.  But I was relieved to see that it didn’t matter since the entire choir was totally engrossed in their music and any arm waving I did was totally superfluous.  I just tried to keep everyone on track by calling out the measures in my best “I mean it” tone.   I judged the piece a success, primarily since we all finished at the same time.  However, I was still nervous about those eighth notes lurking ahead in Ode to Joy.   

We once again assembled at the end of the service, and immediately got off to a very rocky start.  Ode to Joy sounded like some sort of avant-garde piece with a few clashing notes interspersed with total silence and then another little trickle of notes.  The responsibilities of a conductor weighed down upon me – it was time for a “lonely at the top” type of decision.  I gave the universal symbol for abort with multiple slashing  motions across my neck, “Let’s start again,” I hissed.  We rebooted and successfully navigated the eighth notes.  Aside from the uneven rhythm there were two small glitches.  My brother Tim had the simple responsibility of setting down his F major and picking up the F sharp for one note – just one note – which he did not do.  This wrong note was a grievous error, akin to standing in a group of people and letting go with a major fart, which makes everyone wrinkle their nose in disgust.  To his credit, Tim fessed up and avoided an “he who smelt it dealt it scenario.”  Unfortunately his confession consisted of a very audible “Shit” in the middle of the piece.  My sister-in-law Jill was doing beautifully, the picture of concentration, but all of a sudden laid down her bells and just stopped playing.  Jill was 8 ½ months pregnant and her belly hung over the picnic table totally obliterating the last two lines of music; she thought she had finished.    

I breathed a sign of relief when the piece was over, clearly recognizable as Ode to Joy.  When we played the first piece, the wedding party was filing in and the bells were simply background.  But Ode to Joy was the main show, and as I turned around, I realized that everyone was staring at us in various degrees of amused disbelief.  On a scale of “Wow, what a stunning choir” sliding down to “What were they thinking?” I think we fell somewhere to the right of a charmingly quirky performance.

 (The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams, i.e. share the same letters (list post, stop, spot).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve for the missing words based on the context of the poem.  The answers are at the very end of the essay.)

Mary’s request to organize a wedding bell choir amongst the bugs and the breeze

 Fills me with anxiety and unease but I respond to her —–.

 After one false start, we play Ode to Joy competently and well

 Until brother Tim has a mental —– and plays the wrong bell.

 It sounds horrible, and he wants to apologize for his grievous mishit.

 Unfortunately, the one word that —– to his mind is an audible !Shit!

 The Funeral

 I applied my lessons learned as we planned a memorial service for my mother.  While the choir consisted of family members with some musical ability, I decided to hire a professional director.  I pulled out Ode to Joy again and assigned the part with the eighth notes to Jay, my most talented cousin.  I put my less musical relatives into damage control positions beyond the range of the melody where errors could be easily absorbed.  After all, this is my designated spot in my church bell choir.  Nancy, the director, showed up for one rehearsal and then informed me that she would not be able to attend the service itself.  Once again, I was thrust into the role of conductor, but I insisted that Nancy at least show me the correct way of moving my arms so that I wouldn’t look like a frantic nestling learning to fly.  Oh, “that’s simple,” said Nancy, “just remember, ceiling to the floor and then out the door,” describing an “L” shaped movement. 

 She took over the rehearsal and whipped the choir in shape.  However, I did notice that Jay went absolutely white-knuckled every time the eighth notes appeared, consistently rushing and jumbling them up.  Jay is an improvisational musician, the kind of person who shows up at a wedding with a harmonica in his pocket so that he can jump up and jam with the dance band.  I realized that these enviable skills were probably not well suited to the rigid demands of a bell choir where you have to play your notes as written; there is absolutely no coloring outside the lines.  I think that is why I have found some musical success with bells, I just simply count and follow the rules and am not distracted by any innate musical talent.  By the end of the hour, our bell choir was sounding pretty decent and Nancy wished us luck and left.  We were so pleased with ourselves that we decided to play Ode to Joy twice, once at the brief family-only graveside event and then immediately following at the formal church service.

 We ran into a major glitch at the graveside.  We were short one set of music, so I was in the ridiculous situation of trying to conduct a choir without music.  Even though I could now move my arms professionally, my choir really only wanted me to call out the measures, which of course I could not do without the sheet music.  I was purely a token presence at this point.  I started the choir, and immediately noticed that some of my ringers had gone astray.  There was no discernable Ode to Joy.  The floundering choir members took it upon themselves to call out the measures, but everyone had a different concept of where we were in the music, particularly my cousin Ned who had inadvertently turned two pages at once and was way ahead of everyone else.  I was literally facing the music, actually an ideal position since I had my back to the astonished mourners standing around the grave.  We limped to a staggered finish line.  Fortunately, it was a very forgiving audience, who commented that my mother would appreciate both the heartfelt attempt to honor her legacy in bells and the outright comical result.

We all headed off to the church, hoping that a bad dress rehearsal would make for a good opening (and closing) night performance.  Once again I stood up in front of my choir.  They intently stared at me in nervous anticipation, and the large congregation was deathly still behind me.  The choir was in my thrall, waiting for my signal to begin.  Truthfully it was an exhilarating experience to have such complete control over a moment.  I raised my hands and the choir picked up the bells in unison, and we began.  Over and over I beautifully choreographed the ceiling to the floor, and out the door movement as I whispered out the measure numbers.  I saw Jay clench his teeth again as we approached the eighth notes, but he hit them just right this time, and on we sailed to a triumphant end.  In that brief moment, the heavens shone down upon us and I was a conductor.

As the minister starts the memorial with a few homilies,

I nervously sit in my pew and murmur silent —–,

This song has to be a success because the service will only be complete 

If the —– of our bell choir are both smooth and sweet.

We start and I notice that Jay’s face —– as we near the tricky measure,

But everything goes well, and our hearts fill with joyous pleasure.

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 Answers: Poem 1:  pleas, lapse, leaps; Poem 2; pleas, peals, pales

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Adolf and Me

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Liza Blue
Note this essay is a companion piece to previous essay titled: “Human Pearls,” describing gallbladder surgery.

I returned home from the hospital following my gallbladder removal feeling basically fine, but anticipating a few days of serious recuperation on the couch in front of the TV.  I heartily agree that TV is mostly a vast wasteland, and my TV watching is always combined with another dim bulb activity such as knitting or doing a crossword.  However, my energy level had dipped below multi-tasking so I knew that the TV would have to be my sole source of entertainment.  This called for careful channel selection to find something that I could nap in and out of without losing or caring about the gist of the show. 

 I surfed through my usual hierarchy of shows – Law and Order the flagship show and its spawn, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (referred to in our house as the “fluid in the panties” show).  No luck there.  It used to be that you could find some sort of Law and Order on at all times of the day, but it seems to have dipped a bit in popularity, probably due to overexposure.  Next I checked out sports, looking for either a football or hockey game.  Baseball is just too boring even for low wattage, postsurgical recuperation.  No luck here either.  When I began to check out the networks offering realities shows and 60s reruns, I knew I was slipping down the ladder into tenuous programming.  Bitchy housewives, small claims courts and reruns of Bonanza were the types of shows that you would be embarrassed to be caught watching, even if you had a fresh surgical scar as justification.   I finally settled on the channel of last resort – The Military Channel.  What can I say, I have always enjoyed military history, and I have previously relied on this channel as a toggler to avoid ads on other marginally acceptable shows. 

 The Military Channel was featuring a WWII marathon and my afternoon started with Hitler giving a histrionic speech.   Clearly, the man knew how to manipulate a nation of angry citizens who were in the grip of economic disaster in the aftermath of Word War I.  Rallies, parades and banners are a time honored technique to stoke nationalistic pride.  Even I feel a flush of American pride as I watch our little community 4thof July parade, and I can imagine the effect when magnified a million of time over in the famous Nuremburg rally  of 1934.  The speech was not translated, so I did not have the benefit of his frenzied rhetoric, but even so I would have thought that a commanding physical presence would be necessary to mesmerize an entire nation and create a deified personality cult.  This is where Hitler utterly failed.  He has an extremely plain face and unathletic pear shaped body accentuated by jodhpurs.  His hair is thin and oily and he has a bad haircut.  The Military Channel informs me that he would purposely arrive late at his speeches in order to build up the excitement of the rapt audience, and then when he did arrive he would stand silent at the podium for several minutes before he launched into his speech.  This was designed to further stoke the crowd’s anticipation, but to me, he looks nervous, stiff and awkward.  The speech starts slowly and then crescendos until he is shouting and spitting, accompanied by frantic hand gestures while rocking back and forth on his heels.  He frequently clenches his fists, but does so with slightly limp wrists, so the whole effect is effeminate.  He pauses after a particularly impactful phrase and crosses his arms, but does so with a flouncing movement – again effeminate.  He stops to smooth his sweaty hair, again that limp wrist and again effeminate –  a far cry from his Aryan ideal of a master race.  The show shows images of the propaganda movie Triumph of the Will, and I see the perfect ideal of the master race – bare chested men throwing hay bales onto a truck – think of the messenger boy/boyfriend Rolf in the movie Sound of Music.    All the men are tall, toned, handsome and blond, characteristics that absolutely do not apply to Hitler and his cronies Goring (fat, heroin addict) and Goebbels (short, ugly, gimpy leg).

The Military Channel is very adept and taking war footage and formatting it into different aspects of the war – there will be a show on a specific battle, and then a show on a specific piece of equipment, such as different kinds of planes, or the role of tanks, and then a profile of a specific general.  So maybe they are using the same footage over and over again, but it does seem that there was a camera man documenting every aspect of the war – both Axis and Allies.  There were many crowd shots, both of the army and desperate refugees, and I wondered if  viewers ever spot someone they know in these random shots.  But the one show that I would like to see is one devoted to Hitler’s moustache.  The “toothbrush” moustache is now known as the “Hitler” moustache and is a universal symbol of evil.  All anyone has to do to demonize a poster is to quickly add a couple strokes of a pen beneath the lip and the message is instantly clear – you are looking at a sociopathic despot.  According to one anecdote, Hitler apparently started his army career with a handlebar moustache, which was popular among the army elite, but as a minor officer in the trenches, he was ordered to shave it off because it did not fit under a gas mask.  Hilter then apparently adopted his trademark moustache full time as a rejection of the army elite and a celebration of the common soldier. 

However, as I logged my third hour with Adolf and his mates, I wondered why no on else had adopted this same style – none of his generals had a similar moustache and I never saw another toothbrush moustache in any of the crowd shots.  One would think German citizens would be eager to copy the upper lip of their adored leader.  While Oliver Hardy and Charlie Chaplin may have had Hitler moustaches, the only German that I could come up with who had such a moustache was the character of the bumbling buffoonish Sergeant Schultz in the 1960’s TV show Hogan’s Heroes, a sitcom that inexplicably found great success in making a German prison camp into a comedy.  Many found the show in reprehensible taste.  In response the networks pointed out that the Germans in the show, Sergeant Schultz and Colonol Klink were, in fact, Jews who had fled Germany, with the bizarre implication that this casting made the premise acceptable.  

Although I was committed to the Military Channel as my main focus,  I needed a good alternative channel for the ads.  I was delighted to find that America’s Next Top Model was on an different ad schedule and this became my go-to toggler.  This reality show featured a gaggle of coltish teenagers who are routinely transformed into alien creatures with layers of make-up, theatrical hair do, unrealistic clothes and then asked to assume weird poses.  One photo shoot required them to model jewelry while a tarantula crawled across their face.  Between shoots, the girls make catty comments about each other and talk about “stepping up their game,” and “pushing through;”  many of them did not appear to have a plan B if they got booted off the show.  Unexpectedly, I find myself seriously rooting for Laura from Kentucky, who had a very charming personality and southern accent and also looks like my cousin Serin.    

Okay, back to the Military Channel, but unfortunately there is an ad here also, but this gives me a chance to see who is advertising on this obscure channel, which in turn reflects the presumed demographics of the viewers, and it is clearly not me.  There are ads for wheelchairs, catheters and insurance policies that make you feel guilty about burdening your loved ones with your “final expenses.”  Then there is an add about a coin commemorating the 9/11 attacks, which includes an image of the twin towers. But wait, there’s more, the towers themselves are made from “priceless silver recovered in a bank vault in the ashes of ground zero.”  The ad then claims that the source of the silver is “triple authenticated,” by whom and under what authority is left vague, leading me to believe that anything that requires that type of authentication is probably fake in the first place.  But wait there’s even more – the towers themselves are on a hinge.  You can insert your fingernail under one of the towers just as if you were starting to pick a scab, and voila, you raise the towers from the ashes so that they are vertical.  Hogan’s Heroes is in bad taste, but so is this.

It is now 3 o’clock and thankfully, my afternoon with Adolf has come to an end.  I have discovered that I have entered into Law and Order territory, and am looking forward to a respite from war and sociopaths and enjoying some good, basic domestic violence. 

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like post, spot, stop).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the anagrams will be at the end of the line and will rhyme with preceding or following line, giving you a big hint.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem.  Scroll down for the answers.

In the 1930s the German were frustrated and ——-

Defeated and blamed for the catastrophic world war they had waged,

Hitler stoked the resentments and ——- the crowd,

Restoring national pride was the thing he continually vowed.

Hilter’s rhetoric was like a verbal ——- that created a personality cult

 And an adoring and willfully oblivious public was the tragic result.

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Answer: enraged, angered, grenade

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Human Pearls

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Liza Blue
Note:  The essay titled Adolf and Me is a companion piece to this essay describing the recovery process.

When I walked through the emergency room doors on Tuesday morning, I realized that the next time I walked out, hopefully within 48 hours, I would be without a gallbladder and nursing 4 puncture wounds in my abdomen. I have known for about 4 years that I have had gallstones, but for the most part they have been benignly bobbing about in my gallbladder, producing short lived symptoms when they temporarily block the duct connecting the gallbladder to the intestine. But last week, they snugged into the duct a little too securely, and I knew that a trip to the ER was in order. Although I was grateful to have the opportunity to saunter into the ER of my choosing, I could not help but give a shiver as I entered the complicated, maddening and ridiculously expensive health care system that I dislike so much, and knew immediately that I was going to rip through our high deductible in short order. Anticipating lengthy delays, I grabbed the Sunday NY Times crossword puzzle and a pen to keep me company.

Continue reading →

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Chapter 3: SAT Game Day

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Liza Blue
Note:  This essay is the third and last in a three part series on retaking the SAT test.  Please refer to SAT I and SAT II for the complete SAT experience.

October 9th, 2010 – SAT game day for me. I turn to the chapter in my prep book that gives me very detailed instructions on what to do just prior to the test:

“On the night before the BIG DAY, find a diversion to keep yourself from obsessing about the SAT. Maybe stay home and watch some of your favorite television shows … Or talk for hours and hours on the phone about a subject other than the SAT … In the morning take a shower to wake up and then eat a sensible breakfast. If you don’t usually eat breakfast, don’t gorge yourself on test day, because it will be a shock to your system … Make sure that you bring at least three number 2 pencils and bring the calculator that you are most comfortable with … Wear layered clothing … Bring a fortifying snack.”

I try to follow their advice to the letter; my only deviation is to take my shower the night before. Fortunately, our house is well stocked with No. 2 pencils, since the previous Christmas Nick had broken our vow not to exchange gifts and had given me a gross of pencils to do Soduku with. But I have noticed that some of them have defective leads, and so after sharpening, I test the lead to make sure that it doesn’t jiggle like a loose tooth. Two pencils are rejected on this basis. Next I test the erasers to make sure that I won’t be cursed with one of those inexplicable erasers that produces a smudgy streak, thus tragically despoiling my SAT answer sheet. I eliminate another pencil on this basis. Now for the calculator. Forty years ago there was no such thing, but perhaps we were allowed to bring a slide rule or abacus. The only calculator I have ever used is the oversized one Nick uses to balance the checkbook, so I throw that in my bookbag.

It turns out that the testing center is across the prairie that abuts our backyard, then across the railroad tracks to a little trail in the woods that opens up onto the high school driveway. So the most efficient way for me to get there is to ride my bike, which seems very appropriate for this high school experience. I have to carry my bike across the railroad tracks, and I carefully make sure that there is no oncoming train – a fatal mistake that a student made last year in this very spot. As I circle into the school, I see large minivans dropping students off, but no bike rack. I finally ask a security guard and he looks at me quizzically and says, “Don’t you know, students don’t ride bikes any more, we don’t have any racks.”

At this point I am feeling very silly, and it occurs to me that I could have reduplicated this experience by taking a timed test at home using a practice test. However, I also want to experience the anxiety and energy of the mix of students – those with poor grades whose parents are hoping for impressive SATs so that they can confidently say, “Her teachers just don’t get her – those who need top SAT scores to fulfill their parents’ aspirations for their Ivy League alma mater (especially since an early promise on the soccer field did not pan out) – those whose parents risked stigmatization to identify a subtle learning disability adequate to qualify for extra time – those juiced on juiced Adderall – and those effortlessly brilliant students where the SAT is an unnecessary footnote to an already glittering academic career. But when I walk into the room, I feel none of that. My fellow test-takers merely look resigned to spending three hours on a gorgeous fall morning slogging through irrelevant math problems and tedious passages.

The room is deathly quiet and then the proctor stands up and starts reading instructions in a nasal monotone reminiscent of Ferris Bueller, “Good morning, Welcome to the SAT, where you will have the opportunity to show your readiness for college.” I find it very audacious for the College Board to attempt to position the SAT as an “opportunity,” as if this hated test is a privilege rather than a dreaded imposition. The proctor goes on to explain the various features of the upcoming lock-down mode and then instructs us to fill in the answer sheet with our name and other identifying information. During my practice test, I had noticed my biggest liability was careless errors due to impatience, so I decide that I will practice patience by carefully checking over my name, birthday and testing center. Unbelievably, I find two careless errors. I had spelled my name wrong, by mistaking a “Q” for an “O” in the very faintly printed boxes, and I had keyed in my birthday incorrectly, by assuming that the first number in the grid should be a “1” and not a “0,” thus indicating that I had been born 1058 years ago in 952 instead of 1952. Not an auspicious beginning.

First off we have 25 minutes to write an essay on whether or not funding for the arts should be maintained in high schools. I think of the thousands of students writing on this exact same question and the squads of high school and college English teachers who have to read them all, a seemingly excruciating task, particularly since the essay is graded according to grammar, punctuation and organization, and not necessarily creativity. But I have great faith in creativity. One of our favorite family games is the dictionary game, where a word that no one knows is selected and everyone makes up a plausible definition. A single word prompt like “dapifer” can produce such definitions as “someone who spread rumors on a sinking ship,” an “African parasite,” or an “ex-slave converted to Islam.” While the constraints of the SAT are designed to suck the life out of creativity, I hope that occasionally it can still peek through. If I were grading the essays, I would immediately give a top score to anyone who could rise above the straight laced requirements of the SAT and show even a glimmer of creativity. I decide to write my essay on imagination as the defining element of the human brain, and to dismiss the arts is to squander nature’s gifts of our precious frontal lobes.

And then off we go into the multiple choice questions. I get hit with a math section right out of the box, and about half way through I encounter an inane problem about calculating the total number of hours studied based on the average number of hours studied per week across different years of high school. I recognize that they are really testing me on my ability to read a table and translate average hours per week to total hours per year (factoring in holidays), but I find the context so utterly stupid that I make the executive decision that I am too old for this, and I just skip the question – first time ever that I have ever deliberately skipped a question on a multiple choice test. Then there is a grammar section, where I am given four different options to correct a poorly written sentence. I immediately get frustrated because I I know that I can come up with a fifth option that is much better. At our break, I realize that about 90% of the students taking the test are Asian, and that English is their second language. I am immediately impressed that they can master arcane English grammar.

I am pumped and ready after our break, because I think that my sweet spot – vocabulary – must be next. There are a few vocabulary questions, and then I plunge into reading comprehension – a very long paragraph on some crack pot idea called “Pleistocene Rewilding,” where African elephants would be introduced to the United States as a stand in for Woolly Mammoths. Section after section, and there is only a smattering of vocabulary. I sadly realize that vocabulary is no longer a prime focus of the SATs. Another couple of math sections where I feel very naughty in wantonly skipping questions I don’t like – then finally, “Time’s up, put your pencils down.”

So how did I do? Who knows, particularly since there are multiple possibilities for humiliation. I could have made have additional spelling errors on my last name, misaligned my answers on the answer sheet, could have been reckless and careless, or maybe I naively assumed that I could relearn long forgotten math skills. Maybe I peaked at age 18.

The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like post, stop, spot).  One of the anagrams is at the end of a line and will rhyme with either the previous or following line, giving you a big hint.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down below for the answers.

I had this unrealistic hope that if I stayed focused and didn’t flub,

I could wear the SAT – – – – – – of greatness in the 1600 club.

But careless mistakes have been my undoing and – – – – – –

That have always undermined my most noble intent.

I clearly don’t have the patience to win this – – – – – – game

Particularly if I can’t even spell my own last name.

Mantle, lament, mental

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Chapter 2: SAT Prep

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Liza Blue

 

Note:  This essay is the second of a three part series.  Refer to SAT I and SAT II for the complete SAT experience.

I asked the question as a high school senior and I have tried to answer the question as a parent. “Why do we have to learn this stuff? – I am never going to use it for the rest of my life.” As a parent I tried to explain that Greek history was more a question of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking. However, math stood out stood out as a universal life skill, so I felt somewhat confident as I delved into my first SAT practice exam. The first few algebra questions were within reach, solving some simple equations, and I also dredged up the ability to solve a quadratic equation. But by problem 10, I realized that the Geometry that I loved with its adorable little proofs has had absolutely no part in my life for the past 40 years. None – total disuse atrophy. Who among us remembers that alternate interior angles are congruent, or that the sum of the angles in a polygon are 180(n-2), where n= the number of sides? I found myself rummaging through the deep recesses of my gray matter in a flailing attempt to revive long forgotten skills. It reminded me of the ending of the first Indiana Jones movie, when the curator puts the box containing the magic stones in a vast and dusty warehouse.

At problem 13, I experienced a reflexive collective clench of various anatomies – heart, throat and points south. Word Problems – and these appeared to be unchanged over the past 4 decades. There was the cyclist overtaking the runner, the one about two people working at different rates, and the question is how much time it will take them to finish the job together, the one about how much time it will take to fill a leaky swimming pool, and recipe questions about how to dilute a solution using ingredients with two different concentrations. The only novelty of these questions was the SAT’s nod to cultural diversity. Instead of featuring Tom, Dick and Harry, now there were ethnic names, such as Ahmad, Miguel, and D’Shawn.

My SAT prep book tried to convince me that the SAT was not out to trick anyone, but I’m not buying it. The multiple choices always included the most common wrong answer, playing on students’ comfort in finding answers that matched theirs. And then the other little trick was to add a sneaky extra step to the problem. For example, if the crux of the problem was to solve for “x,” brilliantly wielding multiple mathematical principles, the problem would then, as an afterthought, ask for the value of 2x. Of course you can bet the “x” value would be among your options. Okay, I’ll agree that this is nothing more than reading the question correctly, and I certainly wouldn’t want my airplane pilot to forget to multiply by 2, but I found this just really annoying, especially since I fell for this trick (2x+1)n times.

On to the reading sections. I felt more confident here, especially since I regard my vocabulary and general trivia knowledge as one of my most valued possessions. On the standardized test for medical school admission, there was a section called general knowledge, presumably to make sure that potential doctors were not total geeks. I distinctly remember a question about Sol Hurok. I did not exactly know who he was, and was not exactly sure what an impresario was, but was completely sure that they were one and the same. General knowledge was the only section I did well on and I appreciated the fact that it was culturally biased in my favor – going to school on the east coast and reading the New Yorker were a definite advantage. As I hit the vocab section, my confidence soared further when I discovered that the SATs had eliminated the dreaded analogies section, where you not only had to know the definitions of four words, but also the relationship between words in the absence of any context. They have now replaced this section with sentences that are missing a pair of words. I sailed through this section, though I think that the word “treacly” only lives on in the SAT or maybe in some Jane Austen novels.

The sections on grammar were more problematic, since there is no possible way to reduce the living organism called English to grammar rules. Here is a helpful tip from the SAT prep book:

Use the past perfect for an action begun and completed in the past before some other past action.

Example: “The foreman asked what had happened to my eye.”

Explanation: In this case, ‘what happened’ would be incorrect. The action asked and the action had happened (past perfect) are used because one action (regarding the speaker’s eye) is “more past” than the other (‘the foreman’s asking’).”

So, you really need to rely on the sound of the sentence, but spoken English is a chasm away from written English, especially since the reference point for the SAT is something called “Standard Written English.” The idea behind SWE is that uniform usage among all English speakers will avoid any misunderstandings. Now that is one ambitious agenda, and the shadowy arbiters of SWE seem to be frozen in time. The prep book states that according to SWE, the word “mad” can only mean insane, therefore, “I am mad at you” is incorrect. You need to say “I am angry” and then there are other rules about whether you can say “angry at,” “angry with” or “angry about” depending on the target of your wrath. There is another section that provides a “draft” paragraph that you are supposed to fix. The samples were so wretched that I just wanted to scrap them all and rewrite them from scratch. One thing I know about myself is that I would much rather fix my own mess rather than someone else’s, a point most vividly illustrated by my revulsion in changing another kid’s diaper.

Finally, I reach the reading section, and nothing has changed. The paragraphs are as relentlessly boring as I remember. The SATs try to find topics that nobody is familiar with to create an even playing field, but the result is that the paragraphs are so boring that you want to cry out in agony. One paragraph did happen to discuss the potential causes of Alzheimer’s disease, which I happen to know something about, and I must say, the questions appeared to be written by someone who didn’t know what they were talking about, which may be a more general problem. Over the years of reading medical literature and writing reports, I have found that one of my study skills is the ability to stay focused, so you would think that I could manage this reading comprehension section. However, the key difference is that I have been lucky enough to be interested in what I read, which is a very different skill than staying focused on a topic that I couldn’t give a shit about, like the elements of a Corinthian vs. Doric column. The ability to maintain focus in the midst of utter tedium – that is the skill that the SAT evaluates. However, I hope that this is not a necessary college skill – if you pick your courses well, college should be all about intellectual curiosity and not dreary boredom.

I recall an envious comment about the newsman Walter Cronkite, who in the early days of TV, could broadcast hours and hours of presidential conventions through the mind-numbing details of caucuses, platforms and stump speeches. “Walter has a good ass for conventions.” Perhaps the same should apply to the SATs – you’ve got to get your ass in the seat, settle in, stay calm and go on to the finish line, and perhaps there will be a reward beyond the SAT, like becoming the “most trusted man in America.”

But if the SATs are mind-numbing, that means that going through the prep courses is repetitively numbing – more than the average person can bear. Maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. I am working on a scheme to teach basic math principles (once I learn them) and reading skills using more relevant material; these skills could then be transferred to the real test so that you would only have to be tortured once. My product will be titled the SexAT – hopefully a title like than would fly off the shelves, purchased by parents who will do anything to motivate their children. Last week the Wall Street Journal provided a list of the most common reference books purchased in the US. SAT prep books were listed at number one – a $214 million dollar market. If I could get just a piece of that …

Here is a sample math problem from the SexAT:

For his 18th birthday, Billy’s grandmother, who still likes to talk about her experiences at Woodstock, gave him a bag of condoms. She said with a wink, “You are a young man now, so whatever happens, just make sure that nothing happens.” Billy had made a vow of abstinence at his church group with Agnes, and so he gives 5/6ths of the condoms away to his friends Rex, Ace and Primo. He keeps the rest for himself, because years of boy scout training have taught him to always be prepared. Today at homeroom, Agnes intimates that she would be willing to break her vow during prom weekend, but when Billy looks in his bureau drawer, he realizes that his brother Rod has taken the four that he had been saving.

Question: How many condoms did he give away?

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e share the same letters like post, stop, spot).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters in the word.  One of the anagrams will rhyme with either the previous or following line, giving you a big hint.  Your job is to solve the puzzle using the context of the poem.  Scroll down below for the answers.

Ah, geometry was my favorite, I loved each and every – – – – –

And I knew never mix a metaphor or let a participle dangle.

But that was 40 years ago, and now I must be a diligent sleuth

In the dusty recesses in my mind where I can – – – – – geometrical truth,

I will try to draw on life experience to enhance my atrophied smarts

But I will still need the patience of an – – – – – to endure the reading parts.

Answers: angle, glean, angel

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Chapter 1: SAT Do-Over

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Liza Blue

It has been almost exactly 25 years since I last heard, “Time’s up, drop your pencils.” I was taking the final pathology boards, marking the end of my 9 years of medical training. As I put down my No. 2 Ticonderoga, I promised myself I would never take another standardized test. I had endured the multiple choice questions of the PSATs, SATs, ACTs, MCATs, and four different sets of medical boards. In addition, throughout medical school, all the tests consisted of multiple choice questions. The dubious goal of my medical school was not necessarily to train insightful physicians, but instead to train us to pass the medical boards on the first try, since a high success rate was apparently a sign of educational excellence.

Therefore, every test in medical school exactly duplicated the boards – an endless parade of the evil variant of multiple choice questions – the multiple/multiple choice questions where you essentially had to correctly answer four questions in a row to score one correct. I can still remember the answer options, A: 1, 2, 3 above; B: 1 and 3 above; C; 2 and 4; D 4 only. Later on, I was the author of continuing medical education material, and somewhat vindictively decided to use the same question format. I soon got a call from the editor who said, “Will you quit the multiple/multiple choice questions – everyone hates them – just make the questions as easy as you can so that everyone can pass!”

I was always a pretty decent student based on hard work and good study habits, but I carried the burden of not being a good test taker. This didn’t really matter in medical school since once you got in, all you had to do was pass. But the MCATs and SATs, these were high stakes affairs. I was always jealous of those classmates whose SATs scores exceeded their class grades. I don’t remember what my scores were exactly, but I do know that they devalued my class grades. It was pretty obvious why – my general impatience meant that I tried to answer the questions to the dreary reading passages without reading the material.

I was pondering these ideas as I was wandering through the movie store, and spotted a homemade flyer offering SAT test prep from the “Ivy Insider.” Based on his email, which ended in “brown.edu”, I guessed that this was a kid leveraging his status as an elite Brown student. In the 1970s, the SAT was certainly considered important, but I don’t recall any frantic prepping. The only things I did were to make sure my pencils were sharp and had a good eraser, that the alarm was set, and that there was somebody around to give me a ride to the test center. Now parents invest money and egos in prep courses and individual tutoring in the hopes of skyrocketing SAT scores. As I contemplated the offerings of the Ivy Insider, I wondered what the effect of 40 years of life experience might be on the SAT test – was I smarter than I was at 18, or would a 40 year hiatus of math and grammar doom any efforts? There was only one way to find out – sign up and take the SAT again.

I went on the SAT website, thinking that a college degree might disqualify me, but that was not a problem. I was asked what grade I was currently in, and the options included 7th-14th, but there was a box that said, “not currently in high school.” This seemed like an honest answer so I checked that. In a separate part of the form they asked when I graduated from high school and 1970 was nowhere to be found. I called the help line and a nice young man walked me through the process, never asking the obvious question of why a 58 year old was taking the SAT. My husband, in fact, said that he would rather have a root canal, but then he actually did have a root canal and found it relatively painless, so he revised his thinking and said that he would rather have a rope burn. Given the high stakes of the SAT, I was expecting some elaborate form of identification, perhaps involving a fingerprint or retinal scan, but for $47 dollars I was given an admission ticket and told to show up with a picture ID.

My next step was to define the ground rules for this experiment, specifically what type of preparation would be permissible – would I go in absolutely cold, do a little self help, or call on the services of the Ivy Insider. The SATs have been continually criticized for being biased (both culture and gender biased) and not predictive of students’ college performance, but regardless the SAT persists as a standard hazing ritual for high school seniors. Additionally, critics point out that prepping or coaching undermines the point of the test by teaching test taking skills so that students can “game the system.” Well, here is where I disagree – if there is one thing that I have learned in the past 40 years, it is the importance of understanding process, “gaming the system” if you will, and I would argue that this is a basic life skill. Starting as a freshman in college, you need to understand the system to get the best classes, negotiate for better grades, or work the lottery system to get a decent dorm room. When I was a freshman, I found a junior who was taking a semester abroad. I asked her to participate in the dorm lottery with me as her roommate and then tell the school that she would not be returning. The plan worked perfectly – after she announced her departure, I got the preferred room of an upper classman, and then was able to select my own roommate.

Gaming the system is an essential strategy for everyday things – like buying airplane tickets. You need to know the airline pricing strategy before you can develop your purchasing strategy. The pricing strategy makes sense once you understand the airline’s agenda. Specifically, there is a golden window of reduced airline tickets about 4-6 weeks before the flight. Before that time, the airlines know that they have the anxious traveler who will be willing to pay a premium. After this time, they have the last minute traveler by the short hairs, and they can charge outrageous prices. In the golden window, the airline company realizes that they have empty seats and start to lower the price, and all you have to do is monitor the situation for the optimal fare. One time I had to fly from Chicago to Minneapolis for a last minute business meeting. The cost of this round trip ticket for a 1 hour flight was more than the price of the round trip ticket I had recently bought for London.

Before I start any project at work, I stop to consider what the process is – who the players are and their individual incentives. Otherwise, it is like sending a batter up to the plate without telling him that he does not need to swing at every pitch. The SAT should be no different. If prepping is considered gaming the system, then bring it on. Why shouldn’t the SAT reflect how well students can apply testing strategies? The format of the SAT suggests some very basic strategies. In each section, the questions go from easy to difficult, but each correct answer has the same weight. So the first basic tip is spend more time on the easy questions – you don’t want to muff these questions in a rush to spend more time on the more difficult questions. The second basic tip is that easy questions have easy answers, and the hard questions are often more difficult “gotcha” questions, where there is some twist in the way the question is worded. Therefore, in the hard section, if the answer looks too easy, it is probably wrong. I would argue that real bias is that the SAT does not publish these testing strategies for everyone to understand to create a level playing field. However, the profits of the prepping industry are difficult to ignore; on the SAT website, one can purchase the “official” SAT study guide for $81.94.

So if I am assuming that my life experience counts for anything, I will not take the test “cold,” but allow myself some prepping to understand the testing strategies. (The ulterior motive here is that I don’t want to totally humiliate myself.) I will forego the Ivy Insider, but will self-prep with a SAT review book. My test date is October 9th, plenty of time to dust off moldering algebra and grammar skills. As the SAT website says, I had better “hop to it.” (Is that a cliché, simile or metaphor?)

The missing words in the following poems are all anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing anagrams will rhyme with either the preceding or folliwng line.  Your job is to fgure out the anagrams based on the above rules.  Scroll down for the answers.  In this poem, there are two sets of 4-letter anagrams, one noted by asterisks (*), the other with dashes (-).

Every fall is a * * * * of passage that the College Board holds – – – –

It’s the SAT that students must take their senior year.

It’s high stakes for those who aspire to colleges in the top * * * *

Because they only accept students scoring in the stratosphere.

So the following are some testing strategies to help you succeed,

First keep your focus when you have all those boring paragraphs to – – – –

Second, don’t muff the easy questions, so double check the answers you chose,

And don’t worry if you * * * * out in the hard questions, you can skip those

Third, beware, the SAT will – – – – you to make the easy pick,

But always be on the look out for a sneaky “gotcha” trick.

Answers: rite, dear, tier, read, tire, dare

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