This Sunday is the day! We’ll be crafting our SoulBooks by cutting, gluing, sharing stories, and smiling. All the while, we’ll be remembering what’s most important to us. Here’s what Diane, Ruth, and I worked up for our first day: Introductions and setting an intention for ourselves Share exerpts from Braving the Wilderness by Brene… Read more
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Diane, Ruth, and the cats have all been helping me get my SoulBook put together. Here are a few things they’ve taught me: Life is messy. Making a Soulbook requires that I get as organized as I can and then smile when the cats knock over my stack of boxes. (Or at least get over… Read more
Cotton candy can come right before betrayal. Here’s how in Part Two of “East and West.” (Click here to see Part 1 in a previous post.) Rachel, the clarinet player I’d been hanging out with since Ally dropped me, said we should go to the concessions to grab some fries during the third quarter when… Read more
Last year, a video of Sumner and Lincoln High schools’ drumlines in friendly competition caught my ear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h0vZPhz-JM My trumpet-playing teenager stood next to those lines as band members from all around waited over an hour for the 2017 Orting Daffodil Parade to start. The sound of the drums beating and competing their rhythms… Read more
Last night, the director kept stopping us in that annoying way that band leaders have. “We’ve got to get those triplets sharp. Some of you are thinking you can just slip through them at a relaxed pace and it’s throwing us off,” he said. “I am not in a parade up here waving at you… Read more
“It turns out you play clarinet with my mother!” said the woman I see every morning when I drop my son off at preschool. I thought the new lady who took my place as last chair looked familiar at the practices. Last Tuesday, I played a Christmas concert in the Puyallup Community Band at the Liberty… Read more