Since spring is in the air...

Finally, after the long winter of 2007 - 2008 with the ample snow fall that experts say is going to help raise the lake levels in most of the Great Lakes a few inches over what they were last year, spring is starting to show up.

It is quite evident in the fact my tulip and daffodil bulbs are putting out leaves already.  Cursed Ninja Deer already nibbled off all the shoots in one flower bed (no Bambi-san, don't even try to blame it on the mutant squirrels or other non-human creatures in the area... you left your hoof prints in the dirt).  So I retaliated by spraying everything with Patented Anti Ninja Deer Tonic, and for good measure, sprinkled the beds with Anti Mutant Squirrel Seasoning.  By the time I was finished, the beds almost looked like a steak liberally seasoned with McCormick's Montreal steak seasoning.  I'm still watching you... You toucha my flowers, I make-a them taste and smell nasty to ya Bambi-san!  And I'll be doing it again every couple weeks to keep you from feasting on my tulips when they bloom...

It is also quite evident spring is soon to be here in full force because some of my giant hyacinths and a few crocuses are blooming already.  I've never figured out how I can plant dozens of crocus corms in the fall and end up with only a dozen or so that actually fulfill the measure of their creation in spring.  In the pictures in Ideals magazines, it is so beautiful to see the tiny crocuses blooming in snow.  In real life, though, looking out on a Sunday morning in the middle of April to see a dusting of snow and snow falling is far from a beautiful thing.  I don't care who you are.  Even native bred Michiganders get sick of winter after a while.  There is a reason we Buckeyes call this "that state up north", and it is not only because of college football...

And here is one of the final evidences that spring is soon to be here... the ingredients for Michigan Roadkill stew are becoming more plentiful and in greater diversity.  During the winter, it is pretty much limited to Ninja Deer washouts with the occasional ring tailed, masked nocturnal bandito.  Now, we are getting some fowls of the air like robins and starlings, maybe a mallard or two... yes, soon, we'll even get some of them Canadian Geese, eh?  And then there are those crazy critters... the one that 1608 explorer John Smith describing as "hath an head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bignes of a Cat" in Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion... the opossum.  Thems as knows are sure to tell ya it tastes like chicken, but just a smidge gamier, maybe like jack rabbit.

Yes, I know that spring is soon to be here.  See, the other night, I was reminded that God indeed has a sense of humor.  And some of that sense of humor has to be similar to that of a pre-adolescent boy... 

For you scientific sorts, here are the formulas for the worst possible stink bomb imagineable...

I thought God's stinkbombs were gone after the last neighborhood culprit became an ingredient for road kill stew last summer...  But I was wrong.  I smelled the tell tale scent of burning tires wafting in through cracks in the house the other night.  Wanting to make sure it wasn't something in the dryer downstairs, I opened the front door.  And there it was... I was completely choked up with emotion, realizing that Winter was indeed over.  So moved, I closed the door abruptly so no one would see that the wafting scent of Spring in southeastern Michigan had brought tears to my eyes...

Of Fugue Serenades in the Wee Hours

On the not so blunt edge of the universe, I get the singular privilege that I don’t think anyone else in our ward has. Since I drive our daughter to early morning Seminary every day, I nap in the meetinghouse’s lobby while waiting for Seminary to end. This year, the father of one of the freshmen in Seminary has decided to sometimes stay around and practice the organ in the chapel. Saves him gas, as he put it.

This man does not just play the organ. He makes music with the organ. He is a very accomplished organist.

I even caught him fiddling with and playing an antique organ in the chapel at Deerfield Village one Saturday! We had entered the building as he was first starting, and the organ wasn’t sounding right. I thought “My goodness! That sound track recording playing on the intercom sure is garbled and warped! They should shut it off.” Member of the Museum or not, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be behind the ropes in that historic building, and pretty sure he wasn’t really supposed to be fiddlin’ with the workings of that organ. But, he adjusted it in a couple minutes, and it was funny to hear “Come, Come Ye Saints” booming on an antique pipe organ in an old Protestant chapel now in a museum setting. Some other museum patrons entered the building and were probably thinking this was normal to have an organ concert as part of the exhibit. Of course, they had no clue what the music was that was being played. For fun, I snapped a photo of him up in the organ loft. Me, use it for a mock case of blackmail? Shame on you for even thinking that… even if I giggled at the thought when I snapped it!

Anyway, it is almost as if organ music is a part of his soul. I think the man could probably take apart an organ and put it back together!

So, while I nap in the mornings while waiting on my teenaged Seminary student, I am not listening to mere rehearsal of hymns. No sir! This is music that will most likely never be heard in a Sacrament Meeting setting. I am hearing him practice parts of a classical piece he says many in the organist world classify as perhaps the most challenging and difficult of pieces ever composed for the organ.

Some of the sections sound almost like show tunes or what you would have heard by the theatre organ in those grand old theatres. It is hard to sleep when that is wafting through the air getting adrenaline pumping. Some of it sounds like funeral dirge. That is as equally hard to sleep through, because with me laying down in the dark -- all bundled up in my down coat to stay warm -- the mind has to work to remind my subconscious semi-asleep self that I’m not a corpse in a casket in a funeral home. And some of it is sudden starting and stopping, as this virtuoso of the organ writes his own arrangement of certain parts of it.

But, on days I am so tired it is a miracle I’ve driven to the ward meetinghouse with my eyes open, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve learned snoozing through a fugue under construction is much easier and more restful than trying to ignore the occasional teenaged boy squeals echoing down the hall from the Seminary class.