Colombia

I just returned from a fantastic week in Colombia. Yes, that Colombia. I participated with a choir from our university in an international festival of sacred music during Holy Week. It was fantastic. I will not give an extensive travelogue at this point - I will only say that there are two Colombias: the one you see on CNN and the one I visited. They hardly resemble one another. The people were completely warm and welcoming, and for most of the journey, I felt completely safe. Also, some of the beautiful Latin people I visited expressed similar sentiments - we as people did not reflect what they knew of the United States as a whole.

All people are children of God, and this was confirmed to me in a land where U.S. government employees are forbidden to ride the bus.

Related article (including a blurry picture with me in the background): http://www.areacucuta.com/?module=news&file=news&news=4428

cultural arts segment: how to tie a cherry stem in a knot with your tongue

This is the season for Christmas parties for work, school, family reunions, and whatever other reason people can concoct to have everybody over for dinner or those tiny little appetizers I can never spell the French word for. Here on fluent in mumble, I like to give my readers a variety of useful, culturally relevant subjects. This is one of those. It's only good at really boring or awkward dinners. Sometimes when everybody else has booze and you're sipping a Shirley Temple, it's nice to have a way to stand out besides your engaging conversational style. Take this as my gift to fellow teetotalers around the globe.

Here is my method to tie the stem of a Maraschino cherry in an overhand knot:

1. If possible choose a longer stem, especially if you are a beginner.
   
2. Be sure to practice before you actually try this at a dinner.
   
3. Plan for if you ignore step 2: If you are desperate to do this before you have mastered it, just get a drink with lots of cherries, discreetly tie one of the stems under the table in a believeable overhand knot and slip it in your mouth unnoticed. Wait a few minutes, then make a show of putting another straight stem in your mouth, contort your face a bit (be sure to give it enough time that people will believe you), then spit out your pre-knotted stem elegantly onto a spoon.
   
4. No, that wasn't the WHOLE plan. If you want to do it for real, the secret is that successful cherry-stem knotting involves as much teeth as tongue.
   
5. First, bend the stem into a "U" shape with your tongue - the ends up, the curve down, right around the gumline of your bottom front teeth. I forgot to mention that this post may be considered graphic by some readers. Proceed with the utmost caution.
   
6. Next, cross the arms of the U. Arm A over arm B, so arm A is nearer to your tongue and arm B is nearer to your teeth. Which is on which side doesn't matter.
   
7. Push arm A (the one near your tongue) over arm B and through your slightly opened teeth. Then hold the top of the resulting loop to your top teeth with your tongue while gently sucking the end of arm A through the loop.
   
8. Hook the end of arm A with your bottom teeth and pull it through by biting it gently and allowing the rest of the loop to be carried in the opposite direction by the movement of your lips.
   
9. Tighten. This can be accomplished by biting an end and moving the rest of the loop away from that anchor point. Be sure to tighten enough to make it secure, but leave it loose enough that people can tell it is an overhand knot. Just a bump in the middle of the stem is significantly less impressive.
   
10. Spit it out and impress people.
    
11. Leave a comment on my blog and let us all know how it went.

fame and fortune

(By fame and fortune, I mean fortune in the sense of good things happening, not in the sense of money in pocket.) It was a good day Friday. I showed the new arrangement of Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains to my choral conducting professor, who is also the director of the Women's Glee Club at the University. He wanted to use it for his women's choir for a concert on December 3rd. Great!

Yes, great. But he wanted an SSAA arrangement with piano accompaniment. No problem. Finished it this morning. Well, actually, I worked from midnight to 5:30, then gave up and finished it at 10:00 after a class. Those easy little projects never are, are they? But I am thrilled that the Women's Glee Club is going to sing this piece, and the annual Christmas concert is a fairly big one. They also rebroadcast it closer to Christmas on KUNC, our local public radio station, where I do my internship. Yes, I'm living high on the hog in the lavish lifestyle of a choral composer. I think we may even move into a place with a bathtub and a dishwasher next year!

Don't take the last part of that last paragraph as whining. I love my life. I love doing what I do. Money means nothing. I just visited some friends whose new baby is having a bit of a rough start. I am reminded once again of the fragile nature of life and the blessing it is simply to breathe. If you are reading this and you are a religious type, a prayer for little Austin couldn't hurt.

friendship

Recently, I have been thinking about the idea of friendship and how I want to develop it as an attribute in my life. I added as one of my 43 Things "Be a friend like the ones who have changed my life." Here are my thoughts on that:

I do not forward cheesy e-mails that talk about true friendship and threaten certain death if not sent on within ten minutes. I don’t do “just thinking of you, Friend” greeting cards. I want to be a friend of the caliber of those who have found me in my dark times and helped me identify the light I was seeking.

• I would be a friend like those I have had who made work a joy and sorrow a short affair.
  
• I would be a friend who understands that the welfare of a soul is worth far more than a few extra minutes of sleep or a few extra dollars in the bank.
  
• I would be a friend who does not change people, but liberates them to change themselves for the better.
  
• I would become a friend by accident to hundreds of people one by one – standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for a bus, browsing at the library.
  
• I would be a friend to those who blatantly disagree with me. I would be a friend to those who are too much like me. These may be the same.
  
• I would be a lifelong friend, even if not in the sense of face-to-face contact. I would be the friend that old friends could call after ten years of silence and pick up the conversation as if we had never parted.

This is the friendship I would develop as a portion of my character.