Southern Kind of Life

An octopus sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake!

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Tanner Lovelace

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.

So, now that our reservoirs are full, Durham has moved from Stage IV water restrictions to Stage III. (ref)  Stage III restrictions state that no person shall “[i]ntroduce water into any decorative fountain, pool or pond except where the water is recycled.”  I wonder if the little fountain we have in our front flower garden, that has been sitting idle for months would qualify as one “where the water is recycled”.  You put water in it and then the water goes up and then it comes down.  Of course, it does then evaporate fairly quickly so it’s probably not a good idea to run it.  Also, the ordinance adds that no person shall “[u]se water for any unnecessary purpose” and a fountain in the front yard, while nice, really isn’t necessary.  So, we’ll probably leave it as is, but I did wonder.

When I came out to my car for lunch today I noticed that pollen season has started.  My windows were covered in yellow pollen.  Thankfully I’m not allergic but I have friends who are.  It’s nice to see it finally here, though, because that indicates that the cold weather is moving out and warmer times are ahead.  The weather this week looks a bit iffy, but hopefully the weekend will be better.  If it’s sunny on Saturday my son and I will probably head out to Herndon Park and try to use his new Astrocam 110 model rocket to get some pictures.  I’d post them right away but the rocket takes actual real film (and 110 at that!) and you can only get rolls of 24 so we’ll need to make quite a few flights before getting them developed.

At the Durham Symphony Orchestra rehearsal tonight we had our first guest conductor: Andrew McAfee.  He’s the former principal horn player for the North Carolina Symphony and is now apparently working on his Master’s degree in conducting.  Tonight was his first rehearsal with the Durham Symphony.  Beforehand he had sent out a schedule of what we were going to work on when and by and large he stuck to it.  Since this was our first rehearsal for our upcoming pops concerts, tonight was mainly about site reading the pieces and making notes on what to work on before the next rehearsal next week.  All in all, I think he did a pretty good job and should do very well conducting our upcoming concerts.

Another interesting bit of information that was announced at the DSO rehearsal tonight was that we had apparently received 96 applications (with accompanying DVDs of their work) for the position of DSO conductor!  The search committee has now winnowed that down to 10 and will be looking to reduce it even further down to 4 and invite those top 4 to guest conduct during the next season.  I have no idea who the candidates are but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing who the search committee picks.