Southern Kind of Life

I’m still writing up my experience as an election judge on Tuesday. I hope to have that done and up by later today. In the meantime, however, I just got an e-mail today from the National Weather Service about the fact that our current weather patterns are looking suspiciously like the weather patterns 2 years ago before Mother’s day. If you recall, the NWS issued 65 warnings that one day, had nearly 100 reports of severe weather including hail up to 2 inches in diameter, 1 F1 tornado, 3 F0 tornados and straight line wind damage. It wasn’t a really good day weather-wise. So, it seems that our local NWS is trying to learn from the past and is concerned that things are heading that way again. With Mother’s day celebrations and graduation at local universities, this could be problematic. So, they’re trying to get the word out for people to be on the lookout. The presentation they’re sending out is here.

If you’re interested in severe weather, you might want to look into joining Skywarn. Our local skywarn program trains people to recognize severe weather and report it. Why do we need this when we have radar, you might ask? Well, radar signals are well and good, but they travel in straight lines and the earth is curved. So, radar can’t tell you what is actually happening on the ground and that is where skywarn comes in. Skywarn is very valuable to the NWS and can use all the trained spotters it can get.

After working 14 hours as an election judge today I’m now home and utterly exhausted.  I’ll write up my thoughts on the process tomorrow, but until then, here’s a photo of someone who stopped by my precinct (well, outside it) and who’s hand I got to shake.

Full set of pictures here.

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!

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

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.

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.

The Durham Symphony Orchestra starts rehearsals tomorrow for their series of pops concerts at the end of April/beginning of May. The concerts will be April 20 at 5pm in Trinity Park, April 27 at 3pm in Cameron Park, and May 3 at 6pm at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion in Durham Central Park. All the concerts are free and open to the public.

These concerts should be interesting as they are the first ones since Conductor Emeritus Alan Neilson retired. The Durham Symphony plans to host guest conductors until a replacement for Maestro Neilson is found. Up first will be Andrew McAfee who is the Music Director/Conductor for the Triangle Youth Ballet and Durham Intermediate Youth Orchestra and Adjunct Instructor of Horn at UNC. He was also formerly the principal Horn for the North Carolina Symphony from 1992 to 2007.

Maestro McAfee has started off by e-mailing the orchestra a complete schedule down to the minute of what he expects to cover during our rehearsal on Tuesday. This is actually the first time I’ve ever had a conductor do that and I find that I actually like it quite a bit. It lets the instrumentalists know what the expectations are and doesn’t leave us wondering how much more we need to cover in the rehearsal. As to whether the reality will actually fit the schedule, that remains to be seen, but I am hopeful.