Southern Kind of Life

I went to the Obama rally at UNC last week and had a great time.  Unfortunately, it went very late and I didn’t get to bed until 2am which wiped me out for basically the rest of the week.  Obama is a fabulous orator and really knows how to work a crowd.  As a Christian, I was a bit disappointed that the event started with an extremely long prayer.  I’d much rather see him upholding separation of church and state.  But, that’s not enough of an annoyance to make a big difference.

Last Tuesday evening, I went to the meeting about the future American Tobacco Trail bridge over I-40.  Architecht/Engineer Steven Grover showed off a bunch of designs that were rejected and then 3 that were still in contention: a truss bridge like the one in Raleigh, an arched bridge, and a cabled stayed bridge that I really like.  Everything on the cable stayed bridge evokes triangles and for a bridge in the heart of the Triangle I think it’s really appropriate.  I hope that’s what we go for.

This weekend was the Strawberry Festival for Central Park School for Children.  I spent the morning scooping strawberries onto shortcake and then wandered around with my son until heading home to change into a tuxedo and pick up my double bass for the Durham Symphony Orchestra concert at the farmer’s market at Durham Central Park.  We had a very large crowd and except for a bit of wind had a good concert.  I’m really looking forward to the fall when the symphony starts back up.  We’ve got a good slate of guest conductors for the upcoming year and I’m really looking forward to see what they will do.

Tonight, I helped setup the polling place at the school of Science & Math.  I’ll be there tomorrow from 6am until at least 7:30pm as an election judge.  If you have already voted, great!  If you have not, please make sure to go vote tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter who you vote for, but please do go vote.

Assuming I’m not completely wiped tomorrow night, I’ll have more information about how tomorrow goes.

After a small mix-up Thursday night where I was late to the election ballot training, I managed to make it on Friday and am now trained as an election “emergency judge”.  Also, I got my assignment.  The republican judge in precinct 4 cannot work the election so I will be filling in for them working at the School of Science & Math.  Everyone please go vote!  It doesn’t matter who you support, just go vote.

It looks like over 7000 people have voted (early) so far (warning: pdf file).

From Valerie over at We Love Durham, tomorrow there is a Voting Exhibit created by Central Park 5th Grade Students and hosted by Kids Voting Durham.

And, finally, the Bull’s Eye lets us know that 17 year olds are allowed to vote in a primary in NC.  Mike Ashe, Durham BOE director made a point of this in our training.  Since a primary is simply picking who you’ll get to vote for and not an actual election, NC lets them vote if they’ll be 18 when the general election rolls around.  So, get out and vote!

Barack Obama will be in the Triangle area in Chapel Hill on Monday evening.  I hear there are long lines at Moorehead Planetarium to get tickets, but it appears there is no need to line up.  Tickets can be found online.  I just signed up and it prompted me to e-mail something to my “friends, family, and neighbors”.  Instead, I’m going to post the suggested e-mail (with all it’s information) here.  Even if you don’t support Obama, I think it’s useful to go see what the candidates have to say.

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I just signed up to attend an One-Stop Early Vote Rally with Barack Obama.
You can RSVP here:  http://nc.barackobama.com/chapelhill
I thought you might want to come. Here are the details:

The University of North Carolina
Dean E. Smith Center
300 Skipper Bowles Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Public Entrance: Entries A and B
Monday, April 28th, 2008
Doors Open: 7:00 p.m.
Program Begins: 9:30 p.m.
*Tickets are required

Learn more about getting a ticket: http://nc.barackobama.com/chapelhill

I’m starting to recover from the whirlwind week I had last week where I spent around 25 hours total just playing the double bass at the Savoyards rehearsals, shows and even one Durham Symphony concert. This weekend I also went through election official training with Durham BOE Mike Ashe (who is a trip!) and election equipment training. Tomorrow evening I have ballot training and then a 1-on-1 interview with Mr. Ashe, all in preparation for being an election “Emergency Judge” for the primary on May 6. I’ll have more to post on that soon.

Until then, I’ll just leave this one picture that refers to a previous post. A good friend of ours from DC was down this weekend for a show and since she’s a very accomplished balloon artist, she created for us, on basically the spur of the moment, an octupus, a dwarf and a snake so we could take it to the last performance. The official line spoken by the character Colonel Fairfax, in response to the question “what was that”, in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard is “an arquebus, fired from the wharf, unless I much mistake.” However, it’s easy to mishear it and so that apparently gave rise to the line, that the singer actually had the guts to use in the first rehearsal with the orchestra, “an octopus, sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake”. So, here is Steve, who played Colonel Fairfax in Yeomen next to the octopus, dwarf and snake.

Two things start today:

1. Early voting starts
2. The Durham Savoyards production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard starts tonight.

I encourage everyone to avail themselves of both options.

On Saturday I start training to be an election judge and hope to have some interesting posts from that.  Until then, take a look at some pictures that were taken Tuesday night at the first dress rehearsal for Yeoman of the Guard.

This evening I was at the 1st dress rehearsal for the Durham Savoyards production of Yeoman of the Guard (at the Carolina Theater this Thu-Sun).  We have another dress rehearsal tomorrow night and I’m very glad we do.  The orchestra could definitely use another night to tighten things up and fix all the mistakes we made tonight.

Still, we did pretty good.  This was the first time I’ve seen any of the dialogue, and even though the only part of the stage I could see was the very front when people wandered up there, I did manage to get a good sense of how the story went.

So, please come out and see our show!  Thursday night is a preview night and all tickets are $10 with no reserved seating.  Then Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, general admission is $15 and reserved seating is $25. Evening shows are at 8pm and Sunday afternoon is at 2pm.  This is your only chance to see Gilbert & Sullivan in the triangle until next year!

This past weekend on Saturday afternoon we had the first orchestra run through of Yeoman of the Guard.  It went pretty well.  Most of us have had the musical scores for a while now and the main problems were making sure we were together and blending well.  Then on Sunday, we had both the orchestra and the chorus together.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable run-through of all the show’s music and definitely the first and only time I’ve ever heard someone sing this post’s subject. (Extra points to anyone that can a) tell what the original quote was and b) where in the score it can be found!) As a musician, I had not really been clued into what was happening with the chorus except for the few queues in the score and what my wife has told me after her stage chorus rehearsals.  So, it was fun to see that part of the story.  I’m really looking forward to Tuesday night where we’ll be all together in the Carolina Theater and I’ll get to see the full show in the first dress rehearsal.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard, the Durham Savoyards will be performing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard at the Carolina Theater on April 17-19 at 8pm and April 20 at 2pm.  Find out more information at the Savoyards website and please come see our show!

Following up on the previous planning meeting for designing the pedestrian bridge over I-40 for the American Tobacco Trail, it looks like there will be a new meeting on April 29 at 7pm in the 1st floor City Council Chambers at City Hall in Durham.  This is to discuss the concepts for the pedestrian bridge over I-40 for American Tobacco Trail - Phase E that will also include paving the ATT all the way to the Chatham county border.

I rode my bike from south Durham up to the first meeting and depending on my schedule I hope to go to this upcoming meeting.  I really want to see this bridge built as I think it will be very good for promoting bicycle and pedestrian travel between downtown and southern Durham.  There were quite a few people at the last meeting and I hope more people come to this one so that we show city leaders that this is an important project.

A friend of mine mentioned a new online site to me called mync.com that is supposed to be “from and for the Triangle Community“. Curiously enough, though, their definition of the triangle apparently includes Wake, Orange and Johnston counties but Durham is nowhere to be seen. Now perhaps they’re just in beta and will get to Durham at some point, but it makes no sense to me to say something is from the “Triangle Community” when you don’t include one of the corners of the Triangle.

My son’s elementary school has just started up a weekly program where the entire school, on Wednesday mornings, takes a walk around the block.  It’s playfully called the Feelin’ Good Lap Club and it’s a good chance not only for the kids to get out and get some exercise, it’s a good chance for the parents to walk with the kids and get some exercise too.  The walk takes about 20 minutes.  Since rain has effectively shut down most mountain biking in the Triangle lately, it’s good to do something to get out.