Monday, October 03, 2016

The Green Room at the Camden Opera House is actually green! :-)




12 comments:

  1. Thinking of the downtrodden people of Haiti today, under siege by Category 4 Hurricane Matthew. Haiti is First.

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  2. Hi.

    No, I haven't fallen off the edge of the earth, it just feels that way. Well, actually, it isn't as dire as all that: I've just been feeling tired and not very good company. Sorry to have abandoned my friends though. That wasn't too bright. *wry grin*

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    1. Always happy to see you back amongst us, Catreona! =^. .^=

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  3. All OK, Cat; none of us are operating at 115% all the time. Good to see you.

    Alan

    P.S.: It seems that an early winter storm is passing through Fresno today; no rain (at least so far, and blue sky is beginning to reappear), but it should clear the air nicely.

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  4. The Green Room is very, very clean and very, very basic. Kind of takes the romance out of showbiz, doesn't it?

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    1. Now that you mention it, given the venue I should think Victorian furniture would be more appropriate.

      --Alan

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  5. These are my three Sacred Harp songs to memorize, and then use as a guide to learning how to read the scores:

    Antioch [Click]

    Babylon is Fallen [Click]

    Wayfaring Stranger [Click]

    Having chosen the songs, I will now proceed to make CD's to play in the car on my way to and from work. Also print out the lyrics (often not all verses are sung, but I will memorize them all).

    --Alan

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    1. That sounds great, Alan!

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    2. That sounds like an excellent method!

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    3. I can't see any reason it shouldn't work. Trying to start from reading the scores when one has no training/education in doing so kind of takes one's breath away--the initial reaction is I CAN'T DO THIS! But having some examples memorized to start with is easy enough and cuts the job down to size.

      When I started college (Chemistry major) the method of teaching organic chemistry was undergoing a major change, and I was fortunate to experience both the old way and the new. The old way was purely descriptive--treat compound X with A under conditions B and you get compound Y; as for HOW it happened, you were free to develop any mnemonic device you wished, but were to understand it was simply a way of remembering what happened. The pedagogy had been developed around 80 years before, and worked. The new method was to start from newly discovered information about the structures and interactions of atoms, and predict from that what complex molecules would do under various conditions--something that could reasonably be expected in graduate school, not in lower division introductory classes, where it far too often just confused and discouraged the students. BUT (this was my discovery, although later I found that a few others were doing the same) if you started off with a bit of the old descriptive teaching method so they knew WHAT happened, then added a bit of the new theoretical teaching method so they knew HOW it happened, the students got a handle on it quickly (and more easily than with either method alone), without confusion. Same thing, basically.

      And one of the major lessons of graduate school is how to study by oneself, without someone standing over you with a goad. Not that graduate school is the only place to learn that, or that every graduate student learns the lesson.

      --Alan

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  6. What a strange hurricane! All this time and still no human or computer can say where Matthew is headed. That makes it hard to give people fair warning. But so far it could hit anywhere along the east coast from Florida to Maine.

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    1. Looks like the eye is going to pass between Hispaniola and Cuba.

      Alan

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