I had a former student come back today to visit. That is not big news since many of them come back to sit in the chorus to which they formerly belonged. With security these days it is difficult to get them in. It was Talia. She has recently finished her university degree in music education and she wanted me to see her supervising teacher's assessment of her. She was particularly proud of the teacher's comments about how she was unusually adept at getting the students to produce a big robust tone quality. She related to me what process she used, just one of our old exercises in our choirs, and how astonished both the supervising teacher and the students had been at the results. The teacher went on to say that Talia was going to be successful at what ever she tried to do in life and that she recommended her "very highly" to any employer. I was glad to see her. She is singing well and doing some opera work this summer in New Jersey. I guess the coolest thing was that she went to the trouble to come see me to show me the letter and relate her story. It's good to know that some ears are listening when you teach.

Within the last 24 hours I've signed on Dr. A to work as my assistant director for next year. Hurray. She is supremely qualified and nice. In addition I passed the In-Tech certification test of the Professional Standards Commission on my first try today, avoiding any study for it, or taking the dreaded In-Tech course. Whew. I was nervous about it and had put it off until the last minute.

I've been doing auditions for who knows how long now at all times of day. It is always amazing to see what students have learned in the course of a year. I'm hearing quite a number of excellent girls and not nearly so many good boys. The guys are just not serious enough about learning to read. Disappointing. I'm not putting anyone up that doesn't deserve it. Hearing some excellent readers though. Some aren't missing a note. Little Hannah, wow, what a sound. Singers bound, but she has no idea. I wonder what it is like at home when your daughter comes home and says, "Mom, I made Singers." How does it feel to realize your daughter is in one of the country's premiere women's groups. They amaze me every day.

This is from the New York Times, March 26.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq

I GOT back to Iraq two weeks ago, having been away more than a year. The first story I covered began with a tip that vigilantes had hanged four suspected terrorists from lamp posts in Sadr City, a Shiite slum. The minute I got to the scene, I realized I was stepping into a new Iraq. Another new Iraq, really; maybe even the third Iraq I have seen since I began reporting here in 2003.

Gone were the American tanks that used to guard the intersections. Instead, aggressive teenagers with machine guns and shiny soccer jerseys ruled the streets. They poked their heads into cars and detained whomever they wanted. There were even 8-year-olds running checkpoints, some toting toy pistols, others toting real ones. Whatever they carried, 4-foot-tall militias made me nervous. The streets now had a truly Liberian feel.

The episode was oddly symmetrical with a moment in 2004 when mobs in Falluja swarmed four American contractors and hung the bodies from a bridge. But there were a few big differences. For one, this wasn't Falluja, angry heart of the insurgency. This was Baghdad. And these weren't Americans dangling from rope. They were Sunni Arab Iraqis.

I had thought Iraq might be getting quieter. Fewer mortars were sailing into the Green Zone, where the Americans are based, and fewer suicide bombings were disrupting the morning rush. Even the airport road, the most dreaded strip of asphalt in the world, was doing better. It had been repaved and was flowing with traffic.

But soon I caught on. The violence had not declined. It had just turned inward. No longer was most of it pointed at the Americans, either directly or indirectly, as it had been during the invasion and when the insurgency exploded in 2004. Back then, if G.I.'s were not the targets, their helpers were — the Iraqi police, regional governors, Kurdish leaders, foreign civilians, anyone remotely connected to the "occupiers."

It's true that American soldiers are still dying, but the focus of the bloodshed has changed.

The article goes on. The preznit's spin is "There is no civil war. The violence is declining." This administration looks at the truth and then says exactly the opposite into the microphone.

I see there is a national poll now that says 51 % of Americans favor the impeachment of the president IF he lied about Iraq. I would ask, if he lied which time? About the intelligence? About the cost? About the duration? About WMD? About the reasons to go? About the military action being over?

Couldn't we just impeach him for bankrupting the country? If you had married someone like our preznit, and he took your personal finances from doing well and in the black, extra money each month, into a situation where you cannot see how you'll ever get out of debt and the certainty that your debt will be left for your children to pay, wouldn't you divorce that person?

Why do any Republicans cling to the preznit? Defending their "honor?" Abortion? Gun advocacy? They own an oil company, Haliburton subsidiary, drug company, or logging firm? Looks like the party leaders would get together and say, "George, it's been fun and all, but you should step aside now and let us see if we can get things under control before we get tossed out with you. Baby and the bath water and all. You understand." I mean . . . that is logical isn't it?

My imagery from the beginning for this king has been the same. The emperor has no clothes. You know that story would not exist nor would it have any resonance, except for the fact that these things do happen. People come to power and express an isolated point of view and people humor them and go along out of fear or pride or for whatever reason. What would their Republican friends think of them if they said "I can't see the emperor's clothes. Is there something wrong with me?" They might lose their place in the club.

I'm not for the distraction of impeachment. I want explanations for the war. I want fiscal solvency like we had with President Clinton. The corruption has escalated to the level of a banana republic. Let's talk about that every day. Loudly. Then vote the bums out.

We'll be in NYC in a few days and my students will be singing at the April 2, 10 a.m. service for historic St. Paul's Chapel. Built in 1766, the chapel is a satellite sanctuary of Trinity Wall Street (Episcopal) Church. St. Pauls' was the church of George Washington as he served as our first president. So what will separate us from George Washington? Only time. We'll stand where he stood--and presumably sing were he sang. Mrs. G. and I will be staying after the dear students come back to PTC and listen to this line up of shows we'll see: The Producers, Don Pasquale (Met), Wicked, and the Odd Couple. Quite a spring break I'd say. Going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Bob and Rita on Wednesday too.

Tomorrow is the highlight of the year, the great and wonderful fantasy baseball draft (national league only). New this year, we are drafting instead of auctioning, meaning all strategies from previous years are now useless. There is also a scene change. After many years of hosting by our own Mr. Baseball, our commissioner Mr. A., the scene will change to my house, and we'll offer up our choices in the green mansion. For the uninitiated who think such a thing must be boring, be advised, it is hilarious fun. We laugh so hard while filling our draft sheets with players (30 rounds of selections for 7 teams this year), that we hardly notice that we are getting crappy players. I think the draft format will level the playing field and maybe create a very competitive environment for the game this season. That should be an advantage for my hand's on managerial style.

Aren't you beginning to wonder what banner the Republicans are going to run under in November?

Are they going to call the Dem's tax and spend liberals? (As opposed to being Borrow and Spend, like the GOP).

Are they going to tell us the war in Iraq needs the continued stable leadership of their party to keep things going in the right direction?

After the Dubai port deal, can they sell that they are the party of strong security?

Digby says that there is a poll that shows 20 % of Republicans are in favor of congressional censure for the preznit.

Okay. So it looks like domestic policy and foreign policy cannot be used as issues. So what can we drum up to get the GOP vote out? Repackage abortion issues and make them look critical? But aren't the courts now lined up in their favor? Why would they need to vote about it? Okay back to homosexual marriage. We haven't used that one in awhile. And there has got to be some way to make the people more afraid of those Mexicans that keep showing up on construction job sites, working in the harvests, and shopping at Wal-mart. Shouldn't we be afraid of them?

There is a strong dissatisfaction among the American people with this Administration and the Republican congress that has "rubberstamped" every whim of the preznit, including the illegal ones. It's clear too, that the congress is in the pocket of big business. The drug companies and oil companies are raping America. (Why is it not news that gas prices just spiked forty cents a gallon?).

If the Democrats can think of anything to stand for, or if they have the nerve to stand against anything the preznit proposes, how can they lose? Surely it's time for them to make a move and say something. Thanks to Russ Feingold for his effort. No one it seems has the guts to follow.

I'll vote for censure Russ. Count me in.

Three years. Three years of war. Two thousand three hundred and ten Americans killed. Two thousand three hundred and ten families shattered. Seventeen thousand one hundred and twenty-four Americans have been wounded, about eight thousand, severely wounded, removed from the field with missing limbs, paralyzed for life, blinded, with brain injuries, and other unimaginable horrors. The good news about battlefield medicine is that they are saving more of the wounded than ever before. The bad news is that these people are far more grieveiously wounded than soldiers from other wars. In the past they died. Now they are living with their horrific wounds.

Iraqi dead? Colin Powell was insulted when asked about the enemy dead. He made it clear we would not count them. At a minimum 37,754 civilians are dead. Estimates range up much, much higher.

Everything changed with 911. That is the Republican mantra. Democrats live in a pre-911 world view, they say. What if . . . nothing changed with 911? Ever thought about that? What if we had not invaded a country unprovoked? What if we had not lied to the world about the reasons for the war? What if we had spent 250 billion dollars on improving the world instead of destroying it? Do you think that money would have had impact if spent around the middle east? Could the Palestinians have been uplifted? Could education have become available throughout the middle east? Could new industries and job opportunities have been provided to make their hopeless conditions into meaningful lives? Would the world not have looked at us as the most gracious and significant people in the history of mankind, sacrificing to give away 250 billion dollars to uplift the world? Would other countries have followed suit?

I think that nothing has changed. 911 was an insult to our national psyche of isolation and safety. Immigration is a big issue right now (this election cycle's homosexual marriage), because we aren't quite isolated from poverty in Middle and South American countries. Rather than a change in the world, the reason for the current war is that our cowboy preznit has and Alexander the Great complex. These "rule the world" ideas are not new. Think Napoleon. Think Hitler. Think Hirohito. Think British Empire. Think Ghengis Khan. Think Caesar. There are lots of examples.

Let's go from macro to micro for a moment.
I have two kinds of problems with my auditions for singers every year. Mostly, the students lack confidence. Their fear is in their way a bit. They pull back and use less air or they rush in a panic during their sight singing. But there are rare students with another, more difficult problem. These students sing loudly out of tune, or they crash through the tonal memory and sight singing and say, "well that wasn't so hard." The problem is, they did terribly. They are bad at singing and all its accompaning skills, AND, they have absolutely no idea. I remember the child who could not match pitch who told us, "Music is my life. I'm going to be a professional singer when I grow up." I had a similar audition this week. She is a problem child in class on the days she shows up. She lectured me before we started saying, "Now Dr. G, I don't want you marking me down because you just don't like me. If I make an A choir with my audition, you should be fair to me and put me in an A choir." It was the fourth worst audition of the year, so far. How do you get that out of touch with reality? It is a mystery to me. Same as . . . (zoom out to macro)

Yes, the preznit is such a person. Full of bold (if totally out of touch) vision. He's failed miserably at everything he has done in life, but supported by his father's cartel, he's become the worst president in history, a manical idiot, pushing vain, horrible ideas. His supporters are even afraid of him now because he pushes their causes beyond the breaking point. People are starting to disbelieve their regular line of lies.

And when is there victory in Iraq? When do they come home?

There is never victory. They will never come home. Do you get it now?

We are asking a lot from students and teachers these days. I see kids going to college with these carefully crafted resumes. (I have to write three references this weekend). They include their community service work since the 5th grade. And they move around in their activities. Don't want to do the same community service year after year. They need two or three different sports. You have to be recognized for leadership, you know. But not enough kids were getting honors so we have created more and more honoring organizations. When I was a kid we had the Atlanta Journal Cup for the best all round graduate. This year there are four cups given at our place, including the Journal Cup. We have to have four best all round kids. Thankfully there is still only one valedictorian. When I graduated, honor grads were the top ten percent of the class. Now we have honor grads as anyone who has reached a certain GPA. Thirty three percent of our kids will be "honor" grads. And those pesky D's were messing up GPA's so we've reduced them to only one point. You have to hit 70 on the nose to get a 1.0 thrown into your transcript.

Teachers have another level of paperwork thrown on them by someone every year. Technical certification. Make sure you've had the diversity training and seen the ethics in teaching video every year. Is your portfolio in order. You must have goals for self improvement and be documenting your progress. Are you keeping record of all your parent contacts. Have you documented all your modifications for students with SST's and IEPs? Does anyone look at this stuff? Well no. But we have a warehouse full of paper if someone wants to investigate. Lesson plans turned into department heads on Mondays, reviewed and passed along to administrators. Then we must have department goals that fit in with the school improvement plan so we can show the accrediting bodies how we are improving ourselves. Unfortunately. . . it's all bunk. Busywork. Cover your a** paperwork to present in case of a law suit. It just keeps me from planning for my students. I'm a better teacher with more planning time.

my day

5:50 can't sleep any more. get the paper. read the sorry news and idiot editorials, read blogs, write email, get ready for school.

7:20 wifey out the door to school. gather up things. leave at 7:50

8:00 in the chorus room (don't live far from school do I?) straighten. prepare for auditions. 8 o'clock student has erased her name from list. next student comes in sick, can't talk, much less sing. 8:30 begin auditions in treble choir. continue until 9:40.

9:50 chamber choir, direct student leaders to begin class as I study Orban score, looking for a way to teach the piece. unlock most of it and begin teaching. we are able to sing all but two pages successfully in ever increasing tempi. difficult, dissonant, chromatic, multirhythmic. Students feel empowered by working on it successfully. they are pumped because it is cool. sign college visit forms.

10:55 collect glee club in ensemble room, give them something to do while pulling out individuals to hear second portion of auditions for them for next year. all goes well until county electrical men run me out of the audition room to do electrical work behind me. A bulldozer in the courtyard working on the principals 25,000 dollar landscape improvement (solicited private donation) has severed the electrical to the other end of campus. lesson plan is awry. give out new music to the guys.

11:45 lunch. get in line for milk. get out my salad (thanks wifey) and try to eat. find out an alumni has been turned away from class by administration. walk to the office and make my case to get her into the next class. successful. able to get her back before she leaves the parking lot. miss half of lunch. Jamie is going to school with my nephew at anderson.

12:20 singers. reworking raminsh from last week. long vocal technique session to begin. some success. raminsh takes shape but we do not finish.

1:15 cover class for Cara during my planning. try to read some emails. why do people email so much junk? Cara returns and i remember, luckily I'm late for TAP meeting (miniature faculty meeting). new attendance nazi does 50 mind numbing minutes on how to take attendance. insulting. I can tell the faculty every thing she communicates (except her vitriol) in one sentence. "Mark missing students absent at the end of first period." how do you stretch that into an hour. what a collosal waste.

2:20 wild boys class. get them calm and working on stuff and hear 2nd portion of auditions in the office, watching them carefully through the window to prevent mayhem. hear 6 auditions. very productive.

3:30 begin voice lessons. very successful lessons today. students have all made progress since last I saw them and we have some mini breakthroughs. exciting. everyone is all smiles.

5:15 students come in from Oz rehearsal for musical rehearsal. accompanist is late. we wait and chat informally. I sit on the floor exhausted which makes them laugh and soon they are all sitting on the floor with me

5:35 Oz music rehearsal. make tapes for choreographers. we run over. stop at 6:35. 5 tapes made. good.

oddly, lock my keys in the office. I never do that. can't go home. begin search for janitor. they are good at hiding. leave parking lot at 6:55. home at 7:00. HA!

reheated Partner's for supper. yum. work on baseball draft ideas for a bit. fall asleep on couch at 9:00. Was going to blog and haven't. okay get it done.

10:50 blog won't publish. errors. oh well. off to bed.

The work of the first 8 weeks of the semester culminates in our "choral workshop." It was something of a spectacular and I was proud of myself. Singers at their best on five pieces: Psalm 150/Sir David Wilcocks, Psalm 23/Imant Raminsh, Tojours/Gabriel Faure-arr. Alan Raines (manuscript), Schlof Main Kind/Alan Naplan, Homeland/Z. Randall Stroope. We sang at the Presbyterian church, which is a wonderful location for presenting a concert. The girls are always focused, but were unusually so in this event and so their concert was remarkable. Since I wasn't conducting, there were some things that I would have done differently, but just sitting there listening I heard the sound of a professional choir. How did that group of teenagers get to be such fantastic singers? There is some mystery about it.

They were followed by a very accurate massed choir (Chamber Choir/Chorale/Varsity Glee Club), on Exultate Deo/Palestrina, Introit and Kyrie and Agnus Dei from the Faure Requiem, Von Ewige Liebe/Brahms-arr. Raines, and then the Georgia Southern Chorale joined us on Ride on King Jesus/Hogan, with my tenor soloist (Big day for him. He had 150 back up singers), then the chorale sang their ACDA program. They were pretty sharp.

Dr. C from Georgia Southern conducted the mixed group and Dr. R from Georgia State led my girls. The girls are singing so beautifully this year. Alan pitched a fit to me, saying we should audition for ACDA, but I don’t know. I know one thing, I’m not going to do a third interest session.

Rod conducted the first and fifth movements of the Faure Requiem and we had organ with that. With my hundred or so singers and the organ they really shook the room. It was a good experience for the students I think. I can’t see how it would not make a lasting impression on them.

I wish it were easier to raise money to travel and I wish that parents understood how significant the sound is that we make. Mostly I don’t think parents get it. They just come to the concert and then hurry off to the ball field for little Billy’s game and they rate them both about the same. With all that work, I didn't have a single parent come up afterward and say they enjoyed the event. Kinda sad since it was clearly magnificent. Dr. C spoke to the audience before his final number and called it a "unique" event. I did get one complaint. A parent said to another in my hearing, "He said it was going to be an hour, and it was way over an hour!" She was indignant to be trapped listening to great music for so long. Actually I told the students it was going to be an hour and fifteen minutes and it ran an hour twenty. So sue me for 5 minutes.

The coolest part of the event was watching the second level students, charged with energy, singing their hearts out throughout the program. They won't for get it for some time. A performance like this becomes a milestone. Or perhaps better yet a Rosetta stone. It helps one translate the rest of his or her life.

I'm beginning to get pretty worried that the small group of people that seem to be running our country have decided that it is time to attack another country. The drive to world war continues with dreams of world domination. All the bushies are out on the stump with warnings for Iran. It seems like the same preperatory oratory that they used for the Iraq war. Do they think that that one is going so well that it's time to start something else? Of course, Afghanistan has been a complete success too. Now they are providing 95% or the world's cocaine supply. And the Taliban are out of power, but also just out of town in their hideouts waiting for us to leave.

When will they start to threaten military intervention? As the preznit said a year ago, all options are on the table. If that is the case, why doesn't he git hiz butt over there and have some reasonable conversation with them instead of all this posturing and finger wagging?

My dad is a member of the greatest generation. He ties together a lot of things. He carries pieces of shrapnal in his back that he got in a moment one day in 1944. He was 18 when World War II started. That was pretty bad luck I'd say. He grew up on the St. John's River and before long he was in the Navy. He didn't have a prestigious ship, just a simple LST, the 460. She lies rusted at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He lost about 100 friends in those terrible moments that brought about the ship's destruction. He had not a high rank. An uneducated man, a high school drop out, he had risen only to radioman third class. Dad can still take and send morse code. I've watched him take it down as we listened to someone sending a message on short wave. You wouldn't think any one would send morse code today, but they do.

Dad was faithful to his country. It had done him few favors. His own father died in 1930, leaving his mom with 10 children to face the depression alone. She took in washing. I'd have sung no songs had not Dad made it through those tough times. His family was not much of a family. They were broken and desperate. Five died as children. Dad lived through that Kamakaze plane crashing into them. He did not drown in the ocean he found himself swimming in. Though wounded he was able to climb aboard a passing ship. He finished out the war in hospitals stateside. He married Mom in '47 and they were married 56 years until she went on without us in the fall several years ago. I miss her almost every day, but I can't imagine how much he misses her. Well I can imagine actually because I've been married myself for 32 years. He misses her a lot.

Yet he goes on, with a little dog his only companion. Alone after all these years. Far away from my sister and me. It is impossible to understand him. He is a solitary man. He demonstrates that strength that has built America in the past 75 years.

The preznit's foibles continue, but the conservative press merely mentions them and then let's them drop. Everything goes from the front page to the dust bin in a week. Ho hum. Iraq is on the back burners now that most of the casualties are Iraqi civilians. I remember hearing the preznit say that no one could have anticipated that the levies might not hold in New Orleans. Then they show us the video of him listening to the briefing of the impending disaster. This is the big one Mr. preznit, they say. But he had campaign stops to make out west and couldn't bother thinking about it. Or even think of a question.

I think that a big part of the nation has taken comfort in the kindly cowboy leadership of Ronny Reagan. We saw him in that white hat representing 20 mule team borax for all those years. Then we get little Georgie. Remember how he used to run around the place like a hellion. We'll put the hat on him and let him swagger around on his Texas farm talking tough. The people want an American leader who never looks back, talks tough to foreign leaders and to dissident Americans. "Love it or leave it. Let's Roll. Bring it on. Mission Accomplished. These colors never run. Stay the course." As the policies of the government break windows in household after household, gradually people are questioning the cowboy style leadership. In fact their is no leadership. And while the preznit vacations, the revenue of America is stolen by wealthy corporations and the uber rich. The spin meister on the TV today told me that Harry Truman had 23% approval rating at one time. He was making the tough calls like Dubya he said. Does that mean that the spinner thinks Harry was swell? I doubt it.

It's okay to be pro religion, pro life, pro guns, pro liberty, pro freedom, anti tax, etc., if you get my meaning. It is no longer okay to be pro Bush administration. Everyone must give that up and let's go on to something else.

All State was disappointing in many regards. In addition, there was word that the process, which was already deeply flawed, will be more expensive and more deeply flawed in the future. As it turns out we had the third most students make all-state of all high schools in Georgia. That was a little surprising. I feel like a big dawg. Four of the six groups performed very well.

My students had a good time, despite extremely poor leadership from one of the directors, and despite the fact that two other directors had been called on to lead some of the same students in state wide honor choruses just three years ago. I thought that showed no planning at all. Oops you had the same director three years ago. Well you know there is just no one else out there for us to get for you. How lame.

The middle school also had a weak director.

We are off to All-State Chorus in the morning. It's a nice time away. I get to spend quality time with a select group. We have 26 going. That should put us in the top 5 or 6 schools in the state in number participating. It seems like we should have more, but it is a crazy audition process.

Got a crew of great seniors going this time: Brian, Karl, Anne, Diana, Lauren, all possible music majors next year. Brian is already offered a full ride to LSU, Karl to UGA, still to audition at LSU. Lauren and Diana audition there next Saturday. Anne has backed away from music for the moment, but she could still do it down the line. Eight juniors too.

Heard two great voices in audition today. That's two for Singers next year for sure. They have no idea and are terrified they won't move up. After they sing five notes, I often already know. I remember when Dr. Wilkey said to me one day, "Well, I see you finally learned something." I want to say those words to them.

At UGA last week I enjoyed sitting in Dr. B's vocal studio class and being asked to comment on the singers who performed. I had things to say and they listened. They didn't know who I was, but for some reason they were interested in my comments, even the DMA student. Always helps to hear it from a different angle I guess. I can coach voice students at any level. I guess that's something. It's nice to look at you life and say, "I can do that."