Another update
Thanks for your continued prayers for my relative who attempted suicide last month. He was moved from a medical floor to the psych unit a few weeks ago, though he is still on a feeding tube for nutrition. The doctors have changed his medication from antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication to one that stabilizes bipolar disorder. He doesn't have an official bipolar diagnosis, but this medication experiment may prompt one. Some of the literature I've read says antidepressants will make a bipolar patient worse, and he appears to have reacted that way.

The more researchers study bipolar disorder, the more they find a continuum of symptoms, particularly in the manic phase. Not all bipolar patients will behave as if they're "king of the world" while having a manic episode. Some will be agitated, paranoid, unable to sleep or concentrate, or have thoughts swirling like a hamster running on its wheel. The more I read, the more I marvel at the mystery of the human mind.

The best news I've heard yet is that my relative's care team is developing a plan for his release from the hospital that will involve a month of day treatment. Our big fear was that he would be under-treated and sent home too early with no support in place, with disastrous results. The developing plan sounds very promising.

Please continue to pray for his continued progress in therapy and good results with medications. Pray for his wife and daughters to be stengthened and filled with hope.

Delight from Denmark

Last night, Joel and I watched a film called "Italiensk for Begyndere" (Itallian for Beginners). I vaguely remember seeing previews for this at an art house theater back in our pre-kid days. While it was marketed as a comedy for American audiences, the film defies genre classification, as do most films from this studio.

The first character we meet is Andreas, a young pastor sent to temporarily fill the pulpit in a suburban town's Danish national church. The former pastor was removed from his post because he became unhinged after his wife's death and assaulted the organist. Pastor Wredmann continues to lurk around the church, shouting atheistic ideas during services and generally terrorizing the congregation, which has shrunk to a handful of elderly women and the paid staff (verger and two choristers). The verger, a middle-aged woman with a checkered past of drug addiction and robbery, encourages Andreas in his work to revive the ailing church that helped her build a new life.

Andreas stays at a local hotel, where he meets the receptionist, Jorgen and Jorgen's work friends, Finn and Guilia, who work at the restaurant. Jorgen's boss wants him to fire Finn, a handsome but surly fellow who regularly insults customers. Jorgen sees Finn as a lost soul--an orphan with a troubled life--and procrastinates firining his pal. Guilia is young, Italian, and infatuated with Jorgen, though he's too sunk in gloom about his failings with women to notice the woman in front of him.

The film progresses as we see the characters going about everyday tasks. Finn picks up the restaurant's bread order from the bakery, and we meet Olympia, a young woman who's so incredibly clumsy it's funny only once, and thereafter quite poignant. We follow her home to see how she's bullied and cowed by her cranky, bedridden father. Andreas goes for a haircut to Jorgen's hairdresser and we meet Karen, who is also saddled with an abusive, ill parent. In Karen's case, it's a mother who complains of chronic pain and seems to lash out because of it.

Many of the characters converge at a nightschool course on Itallian. When the teacher has a heart attack, the class is in crisis. As they seek a way to continue, the characters' lives become entwined in interesting ways full of love and second chances.

I really loved the non-Hollywood feel of this film. The characters seem so ordinary, doing normal jobs, suffering losses and hardships that are common in life. Strangely, this is what makes them compelling. The drama and tensions are organic, never forced. Only one scene had the potential to be Hollywood-style drama--when Andreas confronts Pastor Wredmann. His confrontation is so peppered with love and grace for his broken predecessor, I know Hollywood would never film such a scene. Why is it in American drama, characters can't resist zinging a few home truths? Both pastors are widowers in this film, but Andreas doesn't even mention that he was able to keep his faith in the very same crisis that shattered Wredmann spiritually. Andreas' faithfulness to his calling as shepherd of the flock is rewarded in satisfying ways.

Even if you resist foreign films, give "Itallian for Beginners" a try. Its quiet charms will surprise you.

Update
Sorry to keep you in suspense. I had the flu Saturday, Sunday and Monday and struggled all week to catch up with work left undone while ill.

My relative had surgery last friday to repair his cheekbone and jaw. The surgery was quite long, but the doctors were relieved to find that his cheekbone was not shattered by the gunshot, but just fractured. They put the bone to rights using plates and pins. He will have his jaw wired for nearly a month so the bones can heal.

Right after the surgery, two of my siblings went to see him and said they were amazed that he did indeed still have a face. He was very puffy and bruised, but far more intact than they expected, considering the nature of the injury (birding shotgun at close range). He wrote notes begging for doughnuts and hoagies and other treats he won't be able to have for some time. The doctors are unsure of whether he will be able to chew again or will need to be tube fed indefinitely.

This week, he was moved out of the ICU and is on a trach that enables him to talk. Meetings with a psychiatrist have begun anew.

Please continue to pray for his physical healing, and especially for emotional & spiritual healing and renewal. His wife and daughters are devastated emotionally and also covet your prayers as they cope with the long-term ramifications of his mental illness.

Despair...and grace

Tuesday, one of my close family members took a shotgun to his head...and survived. I'm still somewhat in shock, but beginning to grieve. It's outrageous. Crushing.

He's got a very significant injury to his face, but not to his brain. His wife found him two hours after the incident, significantly bleeding but amazingly still conscious. He was Med-evac-ed to a large regional hospital Tuesday night and is currently in the ICU, heavily sedated and on a ventilator.

I can't fathom how he is still alive. I also can't even begin to fathom a good outcome from this. Even an emotionally stong person can fall into deep depression from a facial disfigurment, but someone suicidally depressed? How much more despair can he take? He's currently a pastor without a church, and despite being in psychiatric care for some time, obviously has not been improving.

The first round of surgeries to rebuild his shattered jaw and cheekbone are scheduled for tomorrow. Please pray for the family. He and his wife have two daughters in their 20s, the older is rooted in a church family, the younger is spiritually seeking. Pray for us all as a family, especially my widowed mother, who's been very hard hit by this.

He's broken, but he's alive. I don't understand, but I believe God has more in store for him.

Show us your way through the dark valley, O God.

Limited atonement gone awry?

Claire and I were working on a note to Grandma (my mother) today, and she asked why her grandmother is in Texas instead of Florida right now. I explained that she's working in the office of a Christian radio network that broadcasts into Mexico so that Mexican people can learn about Jesus.

"I don't want that," Claire said.

"You don't want people in Mexico to hear about Jesus?"

"No. He's MY Jesus."

"But Jesus loves them and he wants them to love him back."

"I don't want to share. They can go away."

Claire says this sort of thing about everything she likes, from strawberries to her dollhouse. I explained that Jesus isn't like Cheerios that can run out if you give some away. She softened her stance when she began to understand, and decided that it was in fact a good thing for people in Mexico to love Jesus back.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of this strange conversation. Should we be working harder to nurture her missionary spirit? Perhaps. I may be making more of it than what it is--a typical 3-year-old's jealous guarding of what is beloved. It sure beats indifference to our Savior and Lord.

Lookee

I'd complained to Joel that my blog design looked awfully dated, since we haven't freshened the look in more than three years. I was tired of the dark, somewhat busy background and all the boxes.

Silly me. He just went and redid the thing without any help from me at all. He can never resist dabbling in design.

So what do you think? It's for posterity, so be honest.

(If you missed The Princess Bride reference, go watch the film again first, then comment.)

Howatching

As ragweed season drags on, making my lungs unhappier by the day, I've been forced to rest more. What a great consolation reading is in my leaden-lunged state.

Perusing my shelves, I decided it was time to give Susan Howatch's The Rich Are Different a whirl. In the spring I tried another of her pre-Christian books, Penmarric, but found it a bit creepy. I guess one should expect that of a Gothic-style family saga. The Rich Are Different (TRAD) has a sequel called The Sins of the Fathers, which gives an indication of Howatch's growing interest in spiritual things. I'm amazed how often religious topics are touched upon in TRAD, published in 1977 and exploring a man's rise to riches on Wall Street in the teens and twenties.

It's quite fun as an aspiring writer to explore the maturation of another writer's craft. Howatch's characterizations get better and better over the course of her career. I think even she struggled with writing in first person. It can be hard to get inside the head of a person who's really unlike you, but the struggle can be worth it because that character's perspective can be crucial. In TRAD, Howatch provides a rather weak section narrated by a conventional society wife, Sylvia Van Zale, who's wealthy husband cheats on her perpetually. The woman also suffers a long string of miscarriages. Howatch doesn't quite get Sylvia, or doesn't know how to get inside her emotional world. She's just not compelling or believable. By contrast, Howatch does an astonishingly good job with an unloved wife, Rosalind Darrow, in The Wonder Worker. Though I can't quite like Rosalind, I can understand her and sympathize. That's good writing.

I'm about halfway through TRAD, a 658-page tome. I'm curious to see how much more Howatch incorporates Christian ideas and themes. And I'm encouraged that even this writer I admire so much took time to reach her current excellence and improved over time. There's hope even for me.

Imagine!

Last week I picked up a little gem of a book from the library called The Gift by John Prater, a picture book with no text at all. The illustrations depict a brother and sister who receive two kid-sized chairs in a large box. They decide the box is far more interesting than the chairs. They climb in the box, close their eyes, concentrate really hard, and find that the box can fly! They sail over their British city and have a number of adventures in their magic box before deciding to return home.

Claire, of course, wanted her own magic box. Hand-me-down clothes from Claire's cousin arrive the next day, providing not only a big box for adventures, but also a pair of "ruby slippers"--red shoes covered with red glitter, probably from an Oz Halloween costume.

Perfectly equipped, Claire loads up Raggedy Ann and Winnie the Pooh and dons her magic shoes.

"When you're ready to come home," I instuct Claire, "just tap together your shoes and say 'There's no place like home'."

She nods solemnly and hops aboard her magic box. Moments later, as I gather laundry, Claire calls from her room, "Mommy! I'm 'maginationing I'm going to find a pirate ship under the ocean!"

Great days of adventure lie ahead.

Fuelish worries

This news item worried me probably more than it should:
Natural gas prices could increase as much as 71 percent in part of the United States this fall, raising the prospect of higher home heating costs this winter, the Energy Department reports.

I remember the energy crisis of the late 70's-early 80's very well, and the memories are not especially happy. We were living in a house with all-electric heat, which at the time was the most expensive and least efficient. My parents turned down the heat to 50 degrees and made use of alternate forms of fuel to warm us. Our home had a Franklin stove in the rec room, which got put to use quite a lot. I remember Dad spending a few weekends splitting logs until his hands blistered. Electric blankets were key for sleeping. My folks also invested in two kerosene heaters. I remember an elaborate ritual for dressing on winter mornings--wake, run out to the heater in the kitchen to warm up, dash back to the bedroom and hastily grab clothes, drape clothes near heater to warm while eating breakfast, dress next to heater being careful not to catch clothes on fire. Though the kerosene heaters were fairly efficient, they burned somewhat dirty, leaving a sooty residue on nearby furniture and ceilings throughout the house. Whenever I'm tempted to romanticize previous centuries, I just remember those frigid, sooty years and thank God for clean central heat.

If the news predictions are true, this winter will bring killer heating costs. Wrapping ducts, caulking cracks and shrink-wrapping windows helped a little last year, but we're going to need to do more to not end up in the poor house this winter. I'm thinking electric space heaters may be best when electricity is cheaper than natural gas. They're a fairly safe alternative with a small child in the house, now that cool-touch fan models are available pretty cheap.

Best children's books

I've had a fun afternoon compiling a listmania list of some of Claire's favorite books from the past few months. It was difficult to limit it to just 25 books! We're now in the habit of visiting the library every week and picking up 7 or more new titles every visit. Some weeks we pick up old favorites. Most titles on the list have come for a visit more than once (unless we own them). I was surprised to see that most of Claire's favorites are for kids in the 4-8 age group. Stuff for younger kids seem to bore my three-year-old pretty quickly. She likes a balance of illustration and text.

My summer vacation

I hope all my blogosphere friends have not written me off as a complete lost cause. I have had a great summer. May was pretty crazy with lots of houseguests. In June I potty trained Claire (be thankful I spared you the blow-by-blow of this rather gross process). I also received a challenge to return to my first love--fiction writing. A close friend gave a tantilizing assignment: in six weeks, produce the beginnings of something fictional for her to read.

I was frankly terrified to even begin the process. I haven't written fiction in about eight years. As of today, I've generated over 30 pages of material, some quite good, some salvagable, and some total garbage. The two most important parts are done--a pretty good draft of the first chapter and a large pile of plot point notecards written and organized to give skeletal structure to what I write. Yes, you heard me right, "first chapter." I've started on a novel, Lord help me. The protagonists are a 15-year-old girl and her 40-something mother who have recently lost Dad/husband who held the family together. The estranged daughter and mother will need to learn to cope without him--and figure out how to be a family of two.

I've also done some short family trips over the summer to the shore and an amusement park, which Joel already blogged about. Since he has the FTP capability and knowledge, it's not really possible for me to "scoop" him on family news. Begging is my only means of getting to share photos. That's the naked truth.

No news on a sibling for Claire. We're entering month 23 of trying. Doctors haven't found any medical problems to treat, so we stopped the invasive testing back in spring. For now we're waiting on the Lord and asking for prayers. Every day I feel more confident in God's great sense of timing because my suddenly sassy 3-year-old takes more energy than I ever dreamed possible. A 4-year or more age gap is looking pretty appealing right now.

Time flies
Our dear boy Berek arrives this evening. It's hard to believe, but his semester of living with us ended almost two years ago to the day.

I've lost almost 15 pounds since then, and my stress level is exponentially lower. I doubt he'll notice that as much as the changes in Claire. When he left, she looked like this:



She had eight teeth and couldn't walk or talk. She ate baby food from jars and drank formula. Wait till he sees her curls bounce as she runs down the stairs, gives him a toothy smile and exclaims "konnichiha!"

Bad case of...?
What on earth has happened to my poor child's hands?



I think it is a bad case of the naughties. This is what happens when visiting Grandma takes Claire's room and Claire gets to go camping.

So here goes Claire, zipped into her Winnie the Pooh tent for a nap in the office. Does she sleep? Oh, eventually. But first she must explore.

What's this in mommy's desk drawer? Mmmm, chewy little plastic capsules. Oops, those go to mommy's calligraphy pen and happen to be filled with ink.

So some time later, when mommy wakes up her small girl to come for supper, she finds a child who looks like this:



Said child cries when she's sternly asked "What on earth have you gotten into?" She cries harder when I see that her face and legs are also variegated blue, green, red, and call daddy to bring the camera quick.

"Claire! You've been very naughty!" says Joel sternly, supressing a giggle. "What should we do about this?" he asks me.

"I don't think a time out would really do." I tell him. "It seems to me she's been punished enough."

I'm sure she'll think so. Despite today's long bath and thorough scrubbing, she'll have to suffer through the several days of splotchy, colorful skin before the ink completely fades.

Close to you...
In a fit of nostalgia, Joel recently pulled out a Carpenters CD. In an instant, I'm wisked away to my lanky, child self. I'm wearing headphones, floating a few inches above a too-large, lavender dentist chair in a nitrous oxide haze. The Carpenters' mellow crooning makes grusome reality split off, transporting me to a warm, sunny land where I swim though the air, flying with the bluebirds and butterflies.

"Sing, Sing a Song" brings back the spooky way my childhood dentist would sneak that huge novacaine needle past my line of sight, shake my cheek while rotating the needle for too long. "Yesterday Once More," tastes of that sickening, somewhat metalic spreading numbness as the novacaine begins to take effect. "We've Only Just Begun" reminds me of my tired jaw, aching from the dentist levering himself to pry out a particularly stubborn tooth. Stangely, I'm "On Top of the World" while biting down on a big wad of cotton stuffed into the now-empty socket. They can take my teeth, but not my spirit.

If it weren't for nitrous oxide and the Carpenters on the headphones, I don't know how I would have survived years of "pre-orthodontia" extractions. I've lost 13 teeth to professional extractions, including some baby teeth, 4 wisdom teeth and my lower 6-year molars.

My poor kid is doomed to terrible teeth, though perhaps not the big teeth/small jaw issue that plagued me. I've got the perfect soundtrack, however, when treatment begins.

Giving up
At what point do you feel it's okay to give up on a book that just isn't grabbing you? One of my friends has an age based rule. Teens and twenties need to give a book 100 pages to hook them, she says, while those over 30 should be able to tell within 50 pages if a tome is indeed a waste of time.

I fear I may have given up too much of my time struggling with a book called The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. The author's name itself sounds like a snarky nerd joke--perhaps that should have been a clue. The dust jacket description, however, made it sound fun:

"In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career."

Perhaps I've been spoiled by J.K. Rowling, but his attempts at world building are clunky and self-conscious, not fun and flowing like Rowlings'. He also does not even remotely write a convincing female narrative voice.

Hmm, if I'd read what I just wrote in an amazon review, I never would have borrowed this book in the first place. That's arguement enough. Life's too short to waste on books that don't make you feel more alive.

More on Gaskell
Wives and Daughters is a fascinating character study in the effects of different parenting. The heroine, Molly, loses her mother at a young age, yet matures into a loyal, soft-hearted girl. Her foil and stepsister, Cynthia, loses her father at a young age. Yet Cynthia matures into a woman who is unable to feel deeply or make meaningful connections with people.

One would expect the motherless girl to fare worse, but Molly is more fully human. Gaskell’s point is that a child needs loving care, regardless of the sex of the parent who gives it.

Cynthia’s living mother treats her as a burden from the beginning of widowhood, sending Cynthia off to boarding school at age 4. Every school vacation, Cynthia is left in the care of strangers while her mother travels with the great families that employ her as governess.

The net effect of this continued neglect is a vanity and manipulativeness, someone who cannot ever turn off the charm for fear of rejection. Yet Cynthia is apt to reject others, three suitors in all in the course of the novel. She admits that she’s not really capable of love or deep feeling for others. Today I think Cynthia would be said to suffer from an attachment disorder.

Molly, on the other hand, is blessed to be educated at home by a loving governess. She lives in a community where the women watch out for her, take an interest in her growth, strive to keep up a relationship with her. Though her father is a busy country doctor in the age of nothing but house calls, he works to be as available as he can. Theirs is a relationship of nurture and friendship. Gaskell paints their intimacy by showing father and daughter kneeling at the fireside, making toasted cheese sandwiches and amiably talking about the day’s events.

When Molly’s father marries Cynthia’s mother, thinking it will help is “poor motherless girl,” Gaskell makes it clear that it’s far too late for Molly to be helped by a stepmother. Her good character is well formed by age 17, as is Cynthia’s weak character. A great tension of the story is whether either girl will be swayed by the new family circumstances so late in “childhood.”

Unfinished business
My Ireland travel journal sputtered out with a partial paragraph for March 19, 1985, yet another piece of unfinished business that will remain so. Though reading the previous entires jogged many memories, there's no way I can call back the final three days of our trip of 20 years past.

I know that we competed in a concert band competition in Galway, taking first place in our division. At the hotel in Galway, I nearly overflowed the tub when I couldn’t get the water to shut off. I sent my roommate to get a chaperone while I shivered, mortified, in my bathrobe, and prayed one of the adult women knew something about plumbing (alas, several men came with one of the women). We did some sightseeing at the end of the trip, including a drive around “the Ring of Kerry” on the west coast, and a stop at the Cliffs of Moher. But so many details are lost to me now.

Unfinished-ness seems a recurrent theme in my life right now. Last week I read through the "end" of Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, only to find that Gaskell died before completing the book. It's a thoroughly enjoyable read, even though one must use one's imagination to complete the trajectory of the plot. I’d seen a film adaptation before reading the book, and now understand why the film’s ending seemed a little unsatisfying. Andrew Davies did a good job in making the screenplay work for a contemporary audience and the ending he created mostly followed Gaskell’s trajectory. I’m fairly sure, however, that she didn’t intend for Molly’s storyline to wrap up quite so easily. There are inklings in the text that obstacles to her marriage will not instantly disappear, but take many chapters to resolve.

On Good Friday, I sang Mozart’s Requiem with my church choir, a piece he did not complete before his death. From what I’ve read about the piece, several people had a hand in stitching it together. The student who had some of the greatest influence, Sussmayr, was not someone Mozart particularly admired. He merely seemed to be in the right place at the right time when Mozart’s wife Constanze was having difficulty finding someone to complete the piece. The pieces attributed to Sussmyer—-the Sanctus, Benedictus and Osanna—-are perhaps some of the more dull or clunky bits to sing. Purists like Christopher Hogwood of the Academy of Ancient Music jettison the Sussmyer contributions entirely. Despite the hackneyed additions, the piece is extremely moving, a challenge and a joy to perform. Peter Shaffer’s musical Amadeus (later adapted for film) has made the Requiem one today’s best known and most loved classical pieces. (FYI, to hear our performance, go to the archived webcast and scroll down to "3/25/05 - Good Friday Choral Concert")

An odd parallel between the novel and requiem mass setting is the fact that these unfinished works are considered some of their creators’ very best work. Are we to sit and lament the “untimely passing” of Gaskell and Mozart? Perhaps the works they left are an encouragement to all discouraged creators to keep working hard, for even the scraps you leave behind may become beautiful in their time.

Limerick and Knappogue
Part 4 of my travel journal of 20 years past.

March 18, 1985
Somehow, Sue and I managed to completely ignore the wake-up call. I finally woke five minutes before breakfast. To make a short story even shorter, I nearly broke the sound barrier dressing, and arrived in the dining room without a minute to spare.

We got the wonderful news that we had taken a superior award in our division at yesterday’s parade. All the practices really had been worth it!

After a good struggle with instruments and luggage, we boarded buses and were ready to leave when we realized my roommate Sue was missing. I dashed back to the room when one of the chaperones summoned me. I had left my curling iron in the room and there was poor Sue, who had been struggling for a half hour just to get her suitcase closed.

Good-bye, Dublin. To Limerick, forward MARCH!

What started out as drizzle became torrents of frigid rain. After 45 minutes, the rain subsided again to drizzle. Conn did his best to cheer us up with some Irish music, which acted more as a lullaby to most of us, and sleep came easily.

As we crept closer to Limerick, Conn told us why many villages’ streets are so winding. According to ancient superstition, if you were followed by a spirit while on horseback, taking a turn followed by another turn would cause you to lose the spirit. Thus, most cities’ main street into town is S shaped.

The weather in Limerick was, putting it bluntly, the pits. When the buses came to a halt, we were forced to charge across the busy street, then clamber up a narrow staircase (quite a feat for us percussionists) and sit in a tiny classroom and wait and wait. Out on the street, the wait continued. An ill wind blew Matt W’s way [trombone]—he had a bad reaction to a cinder that blew in his eye. Luckily we had Dr. E.; “the show must go on.” Once on the parade route and into the judging area, hats were blown off, flags were blown out of the colorguards’ hands and we were all soggy, freezing and miserable. None of us were too surprised that we didn’t place in the top 3. The only thing on our minds was getting to the nice, warm hotel and out of our wet clothes. Marching season was officially over.

Limerick Inn was, in my opinion, a high point of our stay so far. Sue and I each had our own double bed—nice and firm with a huge, snuggly comforter. Our room was huge and tastefully decorated, perfect for guest who came…and came.

I think Rick [saxophone] and Noel [trombone] spent more time in our room than in their own. I soon found out why. Most of the guys got tiny rooms with huge closets, which are neato, but fairly useless for a two-night stay.

Rick was the first to discover tin whistles for sale in the (hooray) hotel gift shop. Soon several people followed suit, including Noel. The two of them decided to use our room as a practice room, which drove Sue and I right up the wall!!! When they got tired of making atonal screeches, Rick decided to play football with my teddy bear Perky. This was merely annoying until Sue got in on the act and whoops—they decapitated the poor bear. Ah well.

Soon it’s time to get dressed for the medieval banquet. I’m bushed. After boarding the bus, we’re off to Knappogue Castle and a new adventure. Conn started us on a sing-along, which got pretty silly. In no time flat we were at the castle.

Candles flickered in the corners and a few of us huddled around a turf fire. We were greeted by Jerry the butler and the singing lasses, all in costume.

The banquet hall was perfect—the heraldic banners and shields, the wooden tables and long benches, the torchlight. Aaaah! I loved the silly bibs we were forced to wear. The food was magnificent and of an unending supply.

And the entertainment…oh, the entertainment! Singing and playing and dancing—lovely lilting voices, the soothing harp, those dancers with lightning-fast feet! If I could control time, this moment would have never ended. But it did. With yearning regret we left fair Knappogue to make the trek back to the Inn. Sigh.

Conn knew how we felt. Another songfest would cure us for sure. Jeff O. [drill instructor] grabbed the microphone and had us nearly rolling in the aisles with classics such as “Teenage Cremation” and “Under the Boardwalk.” Mr. L [band director] sang “New York, New York” and, yessir, Mr. F. [chaperone and friendly xylophone fixer] sang “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” We were absolutely crazed at this point.

The Inn? Already? Awww!

St. Pat’s Central

More from my travel journal…

March 17, 1985
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Up at the crack of dawn, we dressed and made our appearance at breakfast. Corn flakes and juice, followed by bacon, mutton sausage and eggs became an all-too-familiar breakfast. After loading the buses with instruments, everyone donned uniforms and boarded. To Dublin, Ho!

Conn told us of an ancient superstition about magpies, those huge crow-like birds of Europe. If you see a single magpie and wave to it, you’ll have good luck all day. If you see two, you needn’t wave, that is automatically good luck. If you wave to three magpies, you’ll have a girl child, and waving to four will bring a boy. We got caught up in the amusing Irish superstitions, to say the least—we waved at every big, black bird we saw for the rest of the week.

Entering the city, we stopped waving at magpies and started waving at the magnificent people. Everyone waved back, even some of the dignified guarde (policemen). We really got a kick out of that. With a little coaxing and much waving, we urged a peddler to come over to the bus and sell us Irish flags. Now we had flags to wave, as well as hands.

After lining up, we were in for quite a wait. A group of curious, kilted bagpipers came over to talk to us. They were intrigued by American saxophones, and we were intrigued by their bagpipes. One of the bagpipers challenged John S., and alto saxophonist, to a duel. We called it a draw.

The time finally came to enter the parade route. I swear, Dublin’s entire population must have come out to see us. They were so thick, we had to go single file at times. About 5/6 of the onlookers seemed to be under 18. I almost wished we didn’t have to march the parade—I just wanted to reach out and cuddle some of those adorable children. The little rosy-cheeked girls with ponytails in green ribbon and rosy little naughty boys were just too cute! The crowd seemed to love us too, asking as we passed if we knew their cousins in Pittsburgh or Scranton or Philadelphia.

The cord that suspends my xylophone upper keys [equivalent to the “black keys” on a piano] broke as I played the cadence, while we were squeezed into single file formation. One of the parents, Mr. F., saw my grimace, and thinking I’d hurt myself, rushed to my side. We were now two groups away from the judging stand, and I began to feel panicked. I restrung the bars, trying to keep moving and not swing my xylophone into anyone. Then Mr. F pulled the cord taut and together we tied it, hopefully well enough to make it through our routine for the judges.

At the moment of truth—the Lord mayor’s judging stand—we did our “Thriller” routine with utmost flash and precision. The crowd went wild. They’d probably never seen a drum major in a sequined glove moonwalk while colorguard and instrumentalists alike did a Jackson-esque dance routine.

We returned to Dublin Sport to unload, change, eat and relax. Karen Hearsch and her TV camera dropped in during lunch for some taping to send back to the States. A nice, restful hour after lunch, we boarded the buses as tourists now rather than competitors, and were off to a monastic site in neighboring Co. Wicklow.

The sun seemed incredibly bright because of the clear air, and though it was quite chilly, the day was splendorous. Our stop was Glendalough, an ancient monastic site. The site consisted mainly of a graveyard of very ancient Celtic cross tombstones. There were also some stone buildings—a well-preserved round tower, St. Kevin’s church and St. Kevin’s cottage, where he lived as a hermit for many years.

Conn explained that the Celtic crosses, the union of cross and circle, signified Irish beliefs—the union of new-found Christianity and the ancient druidic worship of the sun. The Irish believe that they must maintain some of their ancient heritage, or it will all be lost, Conn said. Though the modern Irish don’t worship the sun, they fell they should remember and respect the religion which preceded Christianity.

He also told a little about the construction of the buildings. The mortar they used to cement the stones together was made of a mixture of mud, blood and horsehair. Upon inspecting the buildings a bit closer, we found that the horsehair was actually visible in the mortar—even after a thousand years. That was truly mind-boggling.

The evening was spent relaxing a little and packing a lot. Tomorrow’s wake up call is six o’clock, for Limerick awaits.

Reminiscences continued
More from my travel journal that records my first trip abroad.

March 16, 1985
Here I sit on the terrace of our room in the Dublin Sport Hotel. It is a cool, windy afternoon--the temperature is about 35 degrees. Off into the distance is a swell of a small mountain, covered with swaying pines and knotty-limbed barren trees. At the foot of the mountain runs a country road on which tiny cars are driving--on the wrong side, of course. Just before the hotel lies a rippling man-made pond bordered by more knotty trees. Above the pond sits a golf course were several men are playing golf. They are rather tall, of sturdy frame, with Irish brogue rolling off their tongues. In the far distance rolls the almighty sea.

We are here, in Ireland. How did we get here--I mean to the hotel? Our plane touched down in Shannon at about 7:30 a.m. Irish time -- 2:30 American time. After a layover for refueling, we were off to Dublin. After a rather bumpy touchdown, we were really here. The stewardesses elbowed their way out of the plane, the snobs. Then we proceeded to customs, which consisted of telling the agent we were staying for a week and having our passports stamped. We grabbed our luggage, wound our way out of the airport, then hopped aboard the tour buses.

Most slept on the "tour" as the guide babbled on. I, for one, had no intention of sleeping and miss the magnificent scenery. Dublin itself had many identical homes with the only distinguishing characteristic being the doors. We finally arrived at the hotel, exhausted, and tried to settle in. I tried to shower, which was your typical "fry or freeze." Lunch was in the bar and consisted of strong Coke, mutton burgers and chips (what we would call French fries). At four, we went outside to battle the elements and improve our marching. I sure hope it all pays off.

Dinner was a three-course meal of mushroom soup, pigeon and chips, then strawberry ice cream.

At that time we were informed that we would be attending a dance with the Piscataway (N.J.) Band. Ooh! Please have mercy on us! Most of us hadn't had a wink of sleep in 20 hours or more. Those who had been fortunate enough to sleep only gained from one to six hours at the most.

After much prodding, we were herded onto the buses and carted to Dublin. With the guide, Sheila, aboard the other bus, we began to get to know our superb bus driver/guide, Conn. He told us tales of Dublin Bay and sang us songs. Arriving at the hotel where the dance was held, he reminded us that even though we're better than Piscataway, we should be humble about it. From that moment on, every soul on Bus #1 was in love with Conn.

I must say one thing about Irish contemporary music--it isn't very contemporary. Although they are months ahead with British chart makers, they haven't even heard of groups which have climbed and completely descended on the charts in the States. While 50% of the band snoozed in their chairs, the rest of us danced the night away--and regretted it later.

The trip back to Dublin Sport was silent except for the sighs and snores of one pack of exhausted bandies. No one uttered a single remark resembling a complaint when curfew was mentioned. Tomorrow is the big day.