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Happy reading!

Our little lady loves being outside.  I mean LOVES it.  She'll wave at squirrels, squeals at dogs, and climb playground equipment without fear.  Unfortunately, we don't like being outside, at least in the summer.  In fact, we kind of hate the heat.  And by hate, I mean anything above about 74 with slight humidity is too much for us.  As in, we hibernate in the summer, not in the winter.  As in, I'll walk to the store in a foot of snow in freezing temperatures at night because that's nice, but won't walk down the block in the summer.  You get the idea.  I won't go to the pool because it's too hot.  Warm sandy beaches... forget it.

I digress.

Our tiny, however, doesn't seem to mind the heat so much.  How?  I have no idea.  But this is getting to be a bit of a problem.  She's getting smart enough that she'll desperately try to put on her shoes, will point at the door and say, "bye-bye."  She wants to be outside all the time and we want to be outside none of the time.

With any luck, by the time next January rolls around she'll have gotten this all figured out.

I can remember being amazed by her life when I was in high school, and somewhat sad that the story of her death was somewhat diminished by the passing of Princess Diana shortly thereafter.  To see a woman who worked so tirelessly for the poor, who seemingly loved without abandon... it was something most everyone could admire.

My Uncle Pat, a Jesuit Priest, even got to spend some time with her when he was in India.  What an experience.  I'll have to chat with him about it more sometime...

Selflessness is difficult, no?  But isn't that what love is?

Sorry, I know this post is all over the map, but I've been meaning to put it out there.  I don't remember what prompted me to add that book to my Amazon wishlist a few Christmases ago, but I'm awfully glad I did.  I'll just end with two quotes, the first by our subject.

"Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness."

The second is by Pope Benedict XVI, echoing the words of Pope John Paul II.  It seems very fitting considering the life of Mother Teresa.

"If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ - and you will find true life. Amen."

Still, here's how long it took:

2505 Days, or 6 years, 10 months, and 9 days.

Avg hits/day 19.96.

Oh, and the lucky 50,000 viewer hails from Mesa, Arizona, a PC user (booo!) using XP and IE7 (booo!)

See, if you visit my website there is at least a 0.002% chance that I will mock your computing decisions.  :)

As a side note, this has reminded me that I've been blogging since before I started dating Carrie.  Weird.

That is all.

Also, here is Yoda dressed as a pirate.  Your arguments are invalid.

What struck me about their story, though, was the friends that they made along the way, and the artists who, while certainly not all famous now, they got to know and appreciate.  This made me then think about the state of classical music.  I'm only now just starting to perform works by living composers, and even those aren't completely obscure.  That isn't to say, though, that I'm not starting to collect a bit myself.  I just contacted composer Anthony Genge, whose music was recommended to me, and (perhaps with the aid of my job title) he was very forthcoming and agreed to email me PDF's of his scores.  (I haven't received them yet, but I only just began the communication with him.)  It was very easy.  I've also done that with many other composers, most of whom were more than willing to send me scores or PDF's, to the extent that I have many, many programs worth of music lying around my house that most people have never heard of before.

And that's what we should be doing, darnit!!  We as performers are all collectors and curators to some extent or another, and, sorry to say, but the overwhelming majority of us aren't going to be making a living playing Beethoven.  That isn't to say that there is anything wrong with playing Beethoven (there's a reason you know his name), but perhaps most of us should be looking in other directions.  I for one hope to be a useful curator, and hope to perform great music that I enjoy playing.  A few composers whose music I perform may become more famous in the future, but most will not, and that doesn't mean that their music isn't worth playing if I find value in it, does it?  Moreover, I'll have hopefully made friends along the way, friends who share a similar passion, and in the end that's more valuable than anything else, isn't it?  I mean, Beethoven's been dead for a loooooong time, no?

It has also been interesting getting to know a little bit about the ordinates' stories via the Catholic Key.  We have Deacon Phillip Luebbert who will be ordained at the age of 60 and had actually entered seminary in his 20's, but had to drop out due to a battle with depression.  My favorite quote from his story is that he said he, "took a 32-year sabbatical."  Due to his age, he had difficulty finding a diocese that would accept him as a candidate, and even went so far to petition Pope John Paul II for help.  To cap things off, his mother, at age 86, will be there tomorrow to witness his ordination.  What a powerful story.

Then there's Deacon Matthew Benjamin, who is a former Marine.  He was really struggling, trying to decide if marriage or the priesthood was his vocation and while waiting in line at a movie theater he asked for a sign.  To quote the article, "I was literally standing in the popcorn line going 'priesthood, marriage, priesthood, marriage.'  Then I turned to my left and saw Archbishop Wilton Gregory standing there!"  He said, 'When are you going to come and talk to me?'"

Finally, there is Deacon Evan Harkins, who also was in a bit of a special situation as he won't be 25 for 2.5 months, which is technically the minimum age for ordination.  He first considered the priesthood at age 14 and even went so far as to attend a seminary high school (which I had never even heard of before).  Seems to me he's been pretty sure of his calling for a while now.  I loved this quote of his from the article, "To me being ordained a priest is to be sent out in to the world to give God to people and His gifts of joy and truth. I think that's awesome; there is nothing beyond that I could want."  

Let us pray for these men as they prepare for tomorrow's ordination and a lifetime of service to the Church.

That's only to say, though, that I think I may have inadvertently started a different tradition in which I read Stephen King's Dark Tower series over the summer.  All seven books, that is.  I first read them in the summer of 2008, and then did the same thing last year.  I wasn't very surprised, then, when I found my mind turning to Roland Deschain and his adventures.  So for my birthday I decided to order all the books in paperback (I had done it via the library the last two years), and they are currently sitting in my living room asking me when I'm going to begin.

My first thought was that it was craziness.  I have WAAAAY too much stuff going on this summer.  And then I thought that while much is going on, I actually do get to sleep in three days a week, and a little bit of reading at night seems like a great way to relax after a productive day of practicing and writing.  So I think I'll get started again.  Maybe even tonight.  (Hey, I wrote 3.5 pages today...)

Actually, it's going well, if agonizingly slow.  No, instead I'd rather talk about my OTHER summer projects.

First of all, I'm getting all of William Duckworth's Time Curve Preludes up and running.  I've already performed half of them (selections can be downloaded at http://randrewlee.com/), and going back and working on the other half has been amazing.  I'm consistently amazed by the different effects and moods that Duckworth is able to create, and I really hope that since I've been thinking about and playing these pieces for a while that I can really bring something to the table.  What's somewhat interesting is that I've actually met the two men who have recorded it, Neely Bruce and Bruce Brubaker.  As I've gone back and listened to their recordings, though, I've noticed that I have a different take on the pieces than either of them, and hopefully I'll have the opportunity to present my decisions to a variety of audiences as I try to make a little tour of it next year.  There's another reason I'm practicing them, but I'll just have to let you know what's going on a little bit later.

The other project is Tom Johnson's An Hour for Piano.  This is another piece that I've performed several times before, but am going back to it once again.  It's been a while since I really sat down with the piece and went through it section by section and debated how I want to interpret things.

Yes, my summer projects include a dissertation and working up two hours of solo music.  So maybe that's not everyone's typical summer, but it sounds really great to me.  :)

The next year I tried for a marathon again, which should have perhaps been better with some experience and a much earlier start.  That ended with me doing a half marathon, which went fine, but trying to do another half within about a month was a terrible idea.  The shin splints sidelined me for pretty much the entire winter, despite my efforts to keep things going.

That brings me to last year, where I had just a half marathon goal, and I even threw in much more cycling, which was fun.  Of course, in September I got going with my new jobs at Avila and St. Teresa's, and all running went to the sidelines.  I didn't even race last year.

So now I'm starting again.  No goals at all, in fact.  I'll just see if I can stick with it for longer.  I think I'd like to do more 10K's, as I really enjoyed that distance.  The 5K's just felt agonizing, while the 10K seemed more like a strategic race, which I enjoyed.  Half-marathons can wait until I'm consistent.

Who knows.  Maybe this year things will be better.  My expectations have lowered considerably, which may be good or bad.  We'll see.  If you'd like to follow the more tedious descriptions of my runs, you can read my running blog (which got a facelift) at andy-lee.com/running.

See you on the road.