Chocolate in hot milk is way better than chocolate in hot water.

High ceilings keep you cool in summer and unfortunately, cool in winter. (Yes I'm running the ceiling fans upstairs, thank you very much, but ceiling fans make me a little jittery, do you know what I mean?)

We cast The Wizard of Oz. Not my pick for a show, but hey, it makes the musical director's job easy. The hardest thing about doing a musical is facing the fact that the drama class kids, who are pretty expressive on the whole, can't sing a lick. Oddly, you'd think the chorus kids couldn't act a lick, but while that is true for some of them, others are the best actors we saw. How did they get that way?

Dorothy: Ellen S. my superstar junior
Scarecrow: Grant S. junior (this pair starred together in the 8th grade in Music Man).
Tin Man: Karl S. senior (Who would think this was possible? He was such a quiet kid in 9th grade.)
Cowardly Lion: Mark E. junior. He just looks like a lion when you think about it.

The witch and wizard are non-singing roles and we gave them to drama kids.

Kids love being in plays. Why is that?

I like birds. We've had a flock of finches, perhaps a gaggle of gold finches on the feeder this morning. Who could count them. Sixty or a hundred. After a rest there in the yard they took off up into the sky. How do they find my feeder when they are winging their way northward? It totally blends in with the landscape, yet they spot it and know what it is.

Working on music for the choral workshop, coming up in a few weeks with guest conductors. Dr. Caldwell from GA Southern will be up to work with combined Chamber/Varsity Glee/Chorale in a 100 voice ensemble. They are doing: Faure/Movements from Requiem--Introit and Kyrie, Agnus Dei; Palestrina/Exsultate Deo (motet); Brahms/Von Ewiger Liebe, arr. by Alan Raines, and Moses Hogan/Ride On, King Jesus!

Dr. Alan Raines from GA State University will be leading Singers, in David Willcocks/Psalm 150; Imant Raminsh/Palsm 23; Alan Naplan/Schlof Main Kind; Dr. Raines unpublished arr. of Toujours by Gabriel Faure; and Z. Randall Stroope/Homeland.