Geek Out On This

My daughter has been playing at the Cotati Accordion Festival for... oh, a number of years now. Up to now, she's always played stuff that she's learned from going to her accordion lessons. You know, traditional stuff. Polkas and tangos and things like that. The kind of stuff that people automatically associate with the accordion and gives the accordion the reputation it has.

Which makes me want to go off on a tangent about Weird Al, whom I love and is probably the most well-known accordion player ever. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what he's done with his accordion playing has helped legitimize the accordion as a modern musical instrument. Which it totally should be, but I'm not going to go off defending the accordion, right now. Anyway...

This year is the first time my daughter has picked up music to learn outside of what she does in her lessons, and she's done all of this on her own. Needless to say, I love her choice of music.

Music of the Spheres (pictures I like)

Look Into My Eyes (pictures I like)

Accordion Absence (a local color post)

We just had the 25th annual Accordion festival recently, but I don't have a lot to say about it this year.

The Great Morgani was, of course, there, but I only got pictures of him in this one costume, this year.

But I managed to get one of him with my daughter and her accordion teacher, so that was cool.

Speaking of my daughter, she did play again this year. I have a video. Actually, I have two, because she played two songs. I'll try to get them configured or something so that I can make them available on the blog.

Other than that, though, we didn't listen to much music. Not actively. My family mostly hung out together and my daughter accordion shopped. This year was the first year for that! We almost even bought one, but that's a story that I'm not going to tell, right now, mostly because it would be anti-climactic.

At some point after we were home, I said to my oldest kid, "I feel like we went to the festival, and I didn't listen to any music," and he said, "Yeah, me, too." Because most of what he did was watch his young cousins. He did, however, listen to the German guy who played some video game themes on his accordion.

So, anyway... The accordion festival did happen; I just don't have a big write up about it this year. I'm sure I'll do a better job next year. Because the only way I could do it worse than this year is if we don't go next year, but that's not actually very likely.

I Hate Homework!

I'm going to come right out of the closet and say, "I hate homework." Is there a closet for that? If there is, I'm coming out of it. If I was ever even in it. Actually, I didn't mind homework so much when I was a kid but, then, I almost never had homework. Not that I didn't have homework, but I almost always made sure that I finished it at school or, at the latest, on the bus coming home. Because, other than reading, that's what the school bus is for.

We don't have school buses here.

Not that we don't have them -- there are some -- but they aren't for busing kids to school like they were when I was a kid where I was from. They are mostly short buses, here, and the regular long buses seem to be used only on special occasions for field trips and stuff. But I digress...

Homework!

There's a lot of conflicting data out there, right now, about the amount of homework kids are doing today as opposed to a few decades ago, too much so for me to wade through for a blog post. However, my experience tells me that there is more homework today. Or, maybe, it's just my kids' schools. Or, maybe, it's just that my kids do their homework whereas most kids don't, which is why the overall amount of time kids spend on homework doesn't seem to have changed much in the last few decades. But I'll get back to that in a moment.

What there is not a  lot of conflicting data about is the efficacy of homework. Most of the newer studies indicate that homework is only effective in rather small doses (except for reading); beyond that, the effect of homework becomes more and more negative the more there is. The problem is that not all kids do homework the same way, so what might take some students 20 minutes to do, others take an hour to do. That, of course, is more and more compounded as you add other classes to that.

Do you want to know the biggest drawback of homework?
It makes kids hate school.

We've had issues with and around homework with each of our kids. Not the same issues but issues nonetheless.

When our oldest was in middle school, he just wouldn't turn in his homework, which we could never figure out. Why spend the time doing it if you're not going to turn it in? But he didn't know the answer to that then and still doesn't know it now. Fortunately (for everyone involved), he got all of that figured out by high school and had a successful high school career. The thing is, though, by high school, he just did his homework, even though it meant hours a night doing it. He would go to his room and take care of it. Later, when he was involved in all kinds of after-school activities, he did it all at school, and it was never an issue. Never an issue beyond the loss of family time, that is, which we weren't having anyway since he wasn't home. Him not being home, though, was more of the issue than the homework.

The younger boy has had escalating issues with homework. Actually, he's a great example of how homework damages kids. For the last many years, he has come home with hours of homework every night. This started before middle school with him. There's more to be said about all of this, but I'm going to sum it all up by putting it this way: For years, the entire family has been held hostage to his homework. Not only does it continue to interfere with us doing things as a family, but it has caused him to miss events because he just has too much homework.

Granted, part of that is because he's meticulous, which makes him slow, BUT...

The youngest, my daughter, started middle school this year. She's like I was when I was a kid and, until now, has never had much homework. Anything she could do at school, she did at school. Sixth grade changed that and, suddenly, she was coming home with two to three hours of homework everyday. Now, my daughter is very active. She likes to be out doing things. She plays softball and the accordion. Between homework and accordion practice (which is only half an hour), she quit being able to go out and play. There have been days when she has come home and broken down into tears over the amount of homework she has. To her credit, she would then go do it, but I'm worried that she's going to start hating school the way  her brother does. She has always loved school.

And, see, it wasn't just my son being slow with his work, because my daughter is quick.

I hate homework! I hate it for them, and I hate it for what it does to our family.We spent a huge part of Thanksgiving break overseeing homework, and I'm not really okay with that. Okay, I'm not at all okay with that. I'm tired of my family being focused all the time on whether homework is finished or not. It's too much, and it's wrong. I mean, how many adults do you know who would be okay with going to work and, then, coming home with two to three (or more) hours of more work for which they weren't being paid? Sure, there are some but not most of them.

And this is the part where I want to go into a larger rant about the education system and how the system is broken and mired in tradition -- face it, possibly more than any other system we have (except, maybe, the Republicans), the education system believes in doing the same thing over and over again (only harder and faster) while it waits for a better result -- but this post has gone on long enough, and I'm going to leave all of that for some other time. But expect something about math soon, because math is stupid (with respects to Tina Downey). Okay, not all math... You'll just have to wait for me to explain.

$120/hour (an IWSG post)

So let's talk jobs that make $100 an hour or more. According to CNBC at any rate. Well, okay, I'm not really going to talk about them, just give you an example of some of them.
1. Underwater Welder
2. Anesthesiologist
3. Commercial Pilot (the best ones, anyway)
4. the best Tattoo Artists
5. the top Arbitrators
6. half or more Orthodontists
7. the top 10% of Freelance Photographers
8. the top Interior Designers
9. Hand Models or other "parts" models. So, yeah, if you have an exceptional "part," you can make pretty good bank showing it off.
10. Life Coaches. Seriously.
11. big city Massage Therapists
12. Political Speechwriters.
13. my daughter playing her accordion

Let's talk about #13.

Back during October, my daughter got asked to play her accordion at an Octoberfest function. It was just 20 minutes of accordion playing. 20 minutes isn't much. I mean, she practices more than that every day. For her 20 minutes of playing, she made $40. That's $120 an hour! It's kind of sobering. That's more than I've made from my writing for the entire month of November, November was my best month ever.

There are times, evidently, when it really pays to be a cute, 11-year-old girl. Literally pays. At the rate of $120 an hour.

I don't have a real point with any of this. I'm proud of my daughter. She's really good. Her accordion teacher (who's been teaching for... well, let's just say a long time) says my daughter is one of the best students she's ever had. I hope one day she proves you really can play accordion in a rock-n-roll band.

For the moment, though, it's just a little unsettling to be outperformed by a sixth grader.

Well, except at video games.

The Invasion of the Accordions (a local color post)

It's that accordion time of year again, the time of the Cotati Accordion Festival, the 24th one. That's The Great Morgani in the picture above. This year, I managed to get pictures of 3 out of 4 of his costumes. More of those in a moment.

For those of you not in the know (and for those who have just forgotten), my daughter plays the accordion, for a number of years, now, so we've been going to this event for a while. In fact, you can see my previous posts about it, and the associated pictures, at the listed dates:
2011
2012
2013
They're worth checking out just for the pictures of Morgani (except the 2011 post; I didn't have my camera with me, I guess).

As one might guess, the accordion festival is largely populated by, shall we say, an older crowd. I get that. It's not like I grew up with any ideas about the accordion being in any way cool. But it is cool. My daughter has taught me that. It's a wonderful and complex instrument, and I love to listen to her play it. But I digress... What I was going to say is that this year there was a much larger younger crowd. I don't know if it's because the accordion festival is becoming "something to do" or if, maybe, hipsters have decided accordions are cool. Or something. It was nice to not be among the youngest people there, though.

Here are some more pictures of Morgani:

The most impressive part (to me, anyway) is that the accordions are also "in costume" but he is able to play them anyway. After my daughter played this year, he came and told her what a good job she'd done and that she'd be taking over for him any year now.

My favorite performer this year, other than my daughter, was Vincenzo Abbracciante.

He was pretty incredible.
My wife liked Alicia Baker.

At just 22, she sang amazing opera while she played.

You can't have an accordion festival without accordions!

And things playing accordions!

Also, I just have to add, you have to appreciate a festival which keeps naked ladies on its stages! You can see them on the stage with Alicia Baker, above, and here are more.

The Cat Stands (Stays) Alone

My wife and I had a disagreement. It wasn't a huge thing; there was no yelling or fighting or anything like that; it was a just a disagreement. It all started with the cat. Remember him?

Yes, he is walking on the back of a chair. No, I'm not sure what he's doing with his eye. Aiming his deathray? It's always hard to tell with him. But I digress...

Two years ago when we went camping, our cat didn't have us. [Yes, I could say "we didn't have the cat," but, clearly, the cat decided that we belong to him, not the other way around. He did move into our house like a little, furry squatter.] We took the dog with us and there was no problem. In anticipation of the camping trip last year that didn't actually happen, I bought a leash for the cat.

The leash was so that we could take the cat with us, but we didn't go, so the leash just sat around and I never bothered to train the cat with it. He acts like he's dying when you put it on him except when he's walking backwards, which is what he's doing in the below picture.

One time he walked backwards right up the wall and only stopped when he was looking straight down at the floor, then he just stayed like that, like he was lying on the wall.

So, when we started talking about camping this year,

I resumed my plans to take the cat... right up until my wife let me know that she didn't want the cat going with us. The conflict spread to the kids at that point, because they, also, wanted the cat to go. There was a lengthy debate. Well, sort of. It wasn't a debate that happened all at once. It was spread out over about two weeks with occasional comments that were always interrupted by one of the kids saying, "I want the cat to go." That always ended the discussion, because we didn't want the kids getting involved in the decision since they wouldn't be the ones to be taking care of the cat.

Long story short: The cat stayed (because, man, who wants to have to lug a litter box with your camping gear?) at home. Alone.

Now, before anyone says anything about the cruelty involved in leaving the cat locked in the house for a few days, I didn't just decide to do that. At some point, I had done some research about cats and what to do with them when you're going to be away from home, and I found that this is what a lot of people do, just leave the cat at home. They are, after all, pretty self-sufficient and, before Jack (the cat) came to live with us, he had lived alone outside for a long time.

Still, it was not without some trepidation (and anxiety) that I did it. Going off and leaving your pet, unless it's a fish, locked in your house is no small thing. [And before you start giving me options, I considered them. (Especially the one about having someone come in each day, but Jack is an expert at waiting just inside the door and hopping out as you come in -- sometimes without you even knowing he's done it -- and I didn't want to have to deal with a missing cat while I was not home and able to deal with it).] But I made sure he had plenty of (dry) food (there was still some left when we got back, so I did okay on that), what I thought was plenty of water (that was almost gone, but I think that's because he normally gets wet food, so he drank more water to make up for what he wasn't getting from his food), and a big pile of fresh litter.

When we got back, the first thing we noticed was that the house was still here. That was a positive, because I wasn't sure the cat wouldn't box it up and run off with it while we were gone. Heck, that could have been his plan all along (that cat definitely has some kind of plan). I went into the house, first, and the cat met me as I came in the door and was actually more interested in seeing me than in hopping out the door (he saved that until a few nights ago to do to my oldest son as he was coming home from rehearsal). So all is well, and the cat has been way more affectionate this past week than he has been in a while.

And, hey!, the house wasn't even booby trapped Home Alone style when we got back, so I guess the cat really does like living with us. Or something.

Still, I'm going to keep working with him with that leash. Either I have to get him to go forward, or I have to learn to walk him backwards. That could be interesting. I'll have to try get some video footage of that.

* * *

In other news, I have a new thing that I'm finishing up. The draft writing, that is. It's all in notebooks (because that's how I write when I'm off at softball practices or accordion lessons or whatever), so it still has to be typed up and all of that. Why am I telling you this? Well, as I have been doing, I'd like to add a bonus story by some other author to go with it, so I am officially taking submissions. Or requests. Or something. Look, if you have something that's, oh, say, around 5000 words and you'd like me to put it in with my new thing (which I'll tell you more about later), let me know. Or if you want to WIP something up. You still have time. Just leave me a message or email me or whatever to let me know you're interested.

Lies Writers Tell... To Other Writers (Part Five -- It Shouldn't Be Work (Or "Waiting for Your Muse")) (an IWM post)

Those of you who have been following my blog for any length of time will know that my daughter plays the accordion.

In many ways, she has a love/hate relationship with it. She loves playing. She loves performing even though she doesn't like to admit that. She doesn't want to give it up. However, she hates practicing. She hates getting new, more difficult songs. She hates the work of it.

Now, let's go back to the beginning:
Learning to play the accordion was her idea. It would never have occurred to us to suggest to any of our kids that they ought to learn to play the accordion. I mean, who does that, right? But my daughter decided that she wanted to learn to play it. Of course, that meant that she had to learn to play it and that's work. Playing the accordion is not just picking one up and jamming it in and out.

At first, for the first year or so, she hated going to lessons. She also hated practicing, but the real issue was that she hated going to lessons. She wanted to play the accordion, but she wanted to be able to do it without putting any work into it. [How many of you know that feel?] Eventually, she got over hating her lessons and dislikes when she has to miss them. She still hates practicing. Well, not always, I suppose, but there are days when it's a huge ordeal to get her to sit down and put in the half hour. It's work.

* * *

And, once again, here's the part where you have to hop over to Indie Writers Monthly to find out the rest. Of course, I encourage you to do that.

It's Time For More Accordions

As I have mentioned (though not in a while), my daughter plays the accordion. She's closing in on three years of playing and is busy practicing her Christmas music right now. It's kind of driving her brother crazy as he is somewhat offended by the need for Christmas music in September. But, at least, it's not like all of the Christmas stuff that will soon start appearing in stores. If she wants to be able to play Christmas music this year at Christmas, she has to practice now. But I digress...

The 23rd Annual Cotati Accordion Festival was back in August, and my daughter played onstage there for the second time as part of their Future Accordion Stars segment.

It's not a long set or anything, but, still, it's playing in front of a crowd. She was a little nervous, but she did a great job. And, well, hey, it just makes me proud to watch her up there playing.

Beyond the Future Accordion Stars, however, the acts, overall, were not as good this year as last year. I feel confident saying that since we were there for huge chunks of time both days this year. For instance, there was a guy that played for a full hour right after the Future Stars, and he just did what I'm calling free-style accordion playing. I suppose it was somewhat akin to jazz, but, mostly, it just sounded like a lot of noise. To me, at least. A lot of people seemed to like it. There seemed to be a lot of that kind of stuff this year, which really didn't appeal to me.

But there were some good acts, too. For instance, my daughter's aunt's band played (yes, that would be my sister-in-law, but I'm framing it as "my daughter's aunt" because it was her aunt that inspired her to want to play the accordion (completely on accident)), and they're really good and have played private parties for the likes of Coppola. They put the lie to "If you admit you can play the accordion, no one will hire you in a rock and roll band."

Also, there was this band called Sweet Moments of Confusion (great name, right?) that was really quite good. They played all original music based on various folk styles. I wish they had been playing instead of the other dude that wasn't playing anything that had been composed.

And, of course, returning for his 14th year at the festival was The Great Morgani. He really is just a lot of fun. Like last year, I only managed to get pictures of him in one of his costumes (although we did get to see him twice, this year (and the costume for the show I didn't get pictures of was hilarious)).

I don't think I'll ever understand how he can play in all of these elaborate costumes, but he does. Even when his shoes start to "sink," which his monster shoes did. He had to warn us that the foam was settling so that if he suddenly fell over backwards we'd know why. Here's a picture of him walking around in the crowd after playing:

My official opinion is that the accordion is an under appreciated instrument. It's too bad, because it can do a lot and requires a lot of talent. People think it takes a lot of work to do something like play the piano, and it does, but my daughter is just picking up the piano as a side-effect of playing the accordion. You can't just pick up the accordion as a side-effect of the piano. I'm glad she's chosen an interesting instrument to play, something that stands out, even if getting hired in a rock-and-roll band becomes more difficult.

One last picture of a band whose name I don't remember:

(It took me a while to get that the red and green was about the Italian flag and not Christmas. heh)

Cat Angst

I've taken ownership of  the cat.

As you can see, I've got him all packed up and ready to go. Actually, no, that's just the cat taking ownership of my daughter's accordion case. Anything that looks like something he shouldn't be in is something he decides he wants to be in.

But back to my original statement: I've taken ownership of the cat. Not that I know what I would do if the technical owner showed up at my door tomorrow and said he wanted the cat back. I suppose I could say, "Let's leave it up to the cat" (because I'm sure the cat would pick me, since,  in effect, he already has), but I don't know if that's a thing with pets like it is with kids.

See, although the cat clearly wants to live with us and has been living with us for quite some time, it still fills me with angst knowing that there's some guy in the neighborhood that is the technical owner of the cat. The fact that he could, theoretically, knock on my door and break my daughter's heart fills me with all sorts of angst over the whole cat issue and what we should do about  the cat. But no more.

As of today, I'm declaring the cat ours. Sort of like planting a flag. See, now, I've had to spend money on the cat, real money, and if I'm going to have to take the cat to the vet for medical attention, the cat is mine. That's just all there is to it.

Let me explain:

A few weeks ago as we were walking out the door to go somewhere, the cat came limping up with a swollen left shoulder. It looked rather like someone had stuffed an orange in  there, but that wasn't the first time the cat had hurt himself, and we had somewhere we had to be, so we let him in and left. The swelling had gone down by the time we got home, so that was good. We did see, at that point, that he had some kind of wound in his shoulder.

There's an orange tabby cat in the neighborhood that is the neighborhood cat bully. He likes to stand over other cats making this horrible meowing, pinning them down. He does this without actually touching them, but I've had to rescue Jack (my cat) from him several times, and I've seen him keeping other cats hiding under cars or against walls or whatever. We don't like this cat, and I think it and Jack may have gotten into a scrape that resulted in Jack's wound. That or the dead gopher Jack left as an offering for us (and, yes, they are actually offerings) managed to bite Jack before he partially skinned it.

But Jack didn't "belong" to us, so I decided to just keep an eye on the wound in the hopes that the actual owner might show that he was still keeping an eye out on the cat and do something about it. But that didn't happen.

Still, the wound seemed to be healing up just fine. Jack quit licking it all the time, and it had closed up and everything. Until a couple of days ago.

This may be coincidence, but Jack and The Orange (my name for the bully cat) had another go at it. The Orange was making his horrible noise, and I went out to see what was going on, and The Orange had Jack trapped up against the gate to our backyard. I got in between them, and Jack took off toward the car (where he often hides from The Orange), but The Orange went for him, and Jack turned around and took a swipe at him. Good for him, right?

So, maybe, the cats went at it, and Jack's wound got reopened. Or, maybe, it was just itching because it was healing. We don't really know what started it, but Jack started licking at it again and licked all the hair off of it and the surrounding area. It was pretty gross, but the wound was smaller than the nail on my pinky finger, so, again, I thought we should just keep an eye on it.

Today, though, something changed in all of that. The wound broke open, doubling in size, and was actively oozing. I don't know if he scratched or licked it open or if he got into another fight or what. It was fine when he left the house this morning, but, when he came back in around 2:00, it was a mess.

That was the end of the angst. I took ownership of the cat and took him to the vet. He got all kinds of shots (both immunizations and an antibiotic) and a couple of staples in his shoulder.

I figure for $300, the cat is mine. Especially since he has to go back in two weeks and again in four weeks. The good news is that the vet said he's a strong, healthy cat. In fact, everyone was admiring him. The cat has got some charisma is all I can say; after all, he got me to like him. I mean actively like him, not just kind of like him in that way I like most animals.

And here's the allegory:
A lot of things in life are like Jack. There are these things out there, situations or whatever, that someone else should have responsibility for. However, for whatever reason, those people won't take responsibility for whatever it is. Maybe, they just don't care. Or care enough. Or, maybe, there are some sort of extenuating circumstances. Who knows. In the end, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that, if it's something you care about, you take responsibility for it. Just do it. Don't wait for someone else to step up to the plate and do the job. Most of the time, if you're waiting for that happen, you're just going to be disappointed.

Let's look back at the situation with Jack:
Initially, it was apparent that the cat was just out on his own nearly all of the time. He wasn't really being cared for. That included being fed on a regular basis. Whether this was the fault of the cat not going home to eat or the fault of the "owner" not providing food, doesn't really matter. Now, we didn't know if the cat had an owner at the time, so we started slipping him so food, but, even after we found out who the owner was, it was clear the cat was still going unfed. Eventually, it was also clear that the cat only ever stayed at or around our house. We took on the feeding responsibility because the cat was (is) important to my daughter. It was something that needed to be done, and no one else was doing it or doing it adequately. All of that lead to us taking care of the cat's wound. Because someone had to do it. The person that should have been responsible didn't do the job. Because we care about the cat and don't want him to die from something that is completely preventable, we took care of it.

And that's kind of how life needs to be. People need to pick up the responsibility for the things they care about and quit waiting for other people to do it. Even if those other people are the people that ought to be doing it. Sometimes, those things are even our things. Things that we ought to be responsible for, things we say we care about, but we're too busy waiting around to see if someone else will come along and do them for us. Those things can cause all sorts of angst.

It felt good to actually say, "You know what, I'm taking responsibility for this cat. This cat is now mine." No more angst. So, if you have a Jack in your life, pick him up and take responsibility for him. Scratch him under the chin and listen to him purr.

The cat also plays the piano.

It's Time for Accordions

This last weekend was the Cotati Accordion Festival. It was #22. In some ways, that astounds me. 22 years of festivals. I mean, the accordion is not the most popular of instruments, although I do think it's highly underrated. I have to blame the monkeys and their little cups.

Those of you who have been following for a while know that my daughter plays the accordion and, now, the rest of you know, too. I love that she plays the accordion. I mean, I really love it.

This was her second accordion festival. Last year, she only played in the group performance of "Lady of Spain," which she really didn't know very well, but she could get away with it, because it was just a mass of people playing it, and, probably, half of them didn't know it, either. This year, though, she played on stage!

She was part of a group of "future accordion stars;" that's her teacher in the lower left of the bottom photo. She played the song "Over the Waves," which is her grandfather's favorite. And she had her very first interview.

I'm not really sure what the interview was for, but, still, it was cool. She even got asked for her autograph.

The Great Morgani was there. He played four times and in a different costume each time. Unfortunately, we only got to see him once. His costumes are amazing! (Last year, he had one of a big, green butterfly (but I don't have pictures of that one.))

You should definitely check out his website.

My daughter also got to meet and have her picture taken with Santiago Jimenez.

He's kind of legendary and has been Grammy nominated three times. We didn't get to see his actual stage performance, but we did get to hear him play at his tent.

There were also the Accordion Babes, but I was busy buying food for the family while they were playing, so I didn't really get to see/hear them other than to note that one of them was dressed up in some Celtic warrior outfit with a leather miniskirt. They have calendars.

They debuted this calendar at the event, but you're seeing as much of it as I've seen, which is this picture of it. They announced that this year's calendar is kind of racy, but I don't know what that means. At any rate, I'm sure they'd love for you to buy one, if you're so inclined.

I'm sure there was a lot more to see and hear, but we were only there for half of Sunday out of the two days of the event. My wife and I are hoping that next year we can actually stay late enough to hear some of the major performers.

Oh, and one other note:
On Friday afternoon, my daughter played for an hour in front of a local grocery store as part of a promotional thing they do every year for the festival. She played for it last year, too, although her song library was much shorter then. Anyway, during that hour of playing, she made over $45.00. This was her third time to go busking. I'm fairly certain her total haul for the, basically, three hours she's spent performing like this is more than I've made off of my book stuff. Maybe, I'm in the wrong line of work? Then, again, I'm not young and cute, so I'm not likely to bring in the kind of money she does.

We're incredibly proud of what my daughter has done in  this past year with her accordion work. Her teacher says she's one of the best she's ever taught, and she's been teaching for something like 40 years, so it's kind of a big deal. Even though we often have to fight with her over practicing, it's really been worth it. I'm not sure if she'd admit that, but she already has an eye for new accordions. She already owns two.
(Accordions aren't cheap... just sayin'.)