Life in Labrador

Alea iacta est. Agens, facio quid saepe putabam. Hodie crasque.

It's July 5 and only 7 Celcius degrees. Windy too. Cloudy and dull. Still, it's the summer holidays, so who can complain?

For first learners of the tenor trombone, I'd recommend playing the following major and melodic minor scales and arpeggios one octave in quarter notes with the metronome set at 88:

E-flat, C minor.

B-flat, G minor,

F, D minor,

C, A minor,

G, E minor.

Having mastered that sequence, you can add A-flat and F minor at the beginning, and D and B minor at the end of that same sequence, setting your metronome at 60 and playing in quarter notes, as before, and eighth notes. You may add a chromatic scale beginning on B-flat.

Having mastered this second sequence, add the remaining five keys to the sequence with the metronome set at 60 and playing in quarter, eight and sixteenth notes:

(continuing past D, B minor)

A, F sharp minor

E, C sharp minor

B, G sharp minor

F sharp, D sharp minor which is the same as:

G flat, E flat minor

D flat, B flat minor, which brings us back to:

A flat, F minor, and

E flat, C minor, and so on.

After this sequence is mastered, add the harmonic minor scale in all keys, as well as the chromatic scale beginning on any of the twelve notes.

This gives you four sequences of increasing difficulty which will bring you gradually to a solid high school graduation level.

OK, I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10, called Intrepid ibex. The nicest surprise is that my wireless now connects to the internet, seamlessly. That allows me to move my laptop to the warmest room in the house: important today, as the windchill here is minus 45 Celcius. We are expecting the same weather tomorrow. Strange, yesterday it was a mere minus 5 C.

Our snow is drifting like sands in a desert. Quite beautiful.

November jam advenit, sed nix advenit abiitque. Hodie +VIII Celcius.

"Querelas verbaque in casum sero?"

Non ego!

The concert was today and it was pretty good. Wow. The kids enjoyed themselves and showed a wide variety of excellence in their young talents. Nine grade 1 and 2 girls sang a couple of songs from the Royal Conservatory list, The Circus Clown and The Ferryman. Eight grade 4 girls played Suite I from the Oxford Books of Recorder Music. One of them played a guitar solo, another played a piano solo. Grade six girls performed solos on bells, keyboard, and recorder, with a quartet on recorder. Two high school boys closed the show with a guitar duet, Labradorimiut, for which all the people stood up, the flag of Nunatsiavut held as a backdrop, a perfect moment. To think of how these boys a few years ago could not play at all, and now they can, and how they gradually developed in our school's guitar program: wow, success. Only the classroom teacher remembers the daily struggles, how past inabilities were turned by hard work into today's abilities. Congratulations, boys and girls. You did it.

Every so often you have to take the plunge into the unknown and upgrade to the next level of your operating system. I mentioned earlier that I bought an upscale Linux Laptop. It was running Ubuntu 7.04 and last weekend, after finishing a second online course this year in special education, I felt adventurous enough to upgrade to 7.10 - everything went like clockwork, but one of the original settings was changed in the shuffle and I was unable to login as root. Of course, most folks never login as root and do everything with the SUDO command. I wrote to the company that sold me the machine and true to form they replied with a succinct solution: edit the /etc/gdm/gdm.conf file from RootAllow=False to RootAllow=True which I did, rebooted, logged in as root and full of confidence upgraded AGAIN to Hardy Heron 8:04 LTS. So now I am as up-to-date as can be. Little by little we learn the part of Linux that we need to know, a very special education indeed.

I walked to the airport to collect a parcel at 10:30 AM. It was quite cold. I got a ride half-way there, on the back of a skidoo, but had to walk all the way home, about 15 minutes, this time facing the wind. It was REALLY cold. I thought that if it had been a school day (we have Easter week off) recess would be held indoors. I checked the weather report when I got home: -20C with a windchill of -35. Definitely an indoor recess day.

It's Ember Day, the last Wednesday in the season of Autumn. A boy in Grade 8 came to me in class and said, "Teach me chords." I pulled up a chair a taught him the eight chords: four are unique, four are useful in forming bar chords. He applied his new knowledge to this town's song, and the bell went. "That was simple," I thought.

Basketball bouncing:
Thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud, thud,
In the room next door.

Now, where do you suppose the music room is in our school? Next to the gym! Hence the basketballs thumping in the next room. When the elementary school kids get twenty or so basketballs going at once, the sound is - LOUD, so to speak. But who can complain? It's a gym.