Second Concert

Yesterday's concert went very well.  I got all the videos and am mostly happy with how I sounded (of course there are a few things that could have sounded better).  The only really gauche thing was that I had to stop to drink water (twice!) during the Bolena duet because my throat got dry and there were still plenty of high notes ahead.  Lately there have been various discussions (online) about the fact that it's a myth that people always need to have water but I know that when I'm singing my throat gets so dry that I just wouldn't make it up to some of those notes without staying hydrated.  So what do the big stars do when they're onstage?  All I can think of is that big opera houses and concert halls have a humidfying system of some kind, which regular venues don't.  And churches are dusty.  And for me maybe it's just my chronic upper respiratory issues.

But I shouldn't dwell on negative things; I am happy with how most of it sounded and I looked lovely in my new dress.  It was a splurge (well, for me; it cost $75 and usually I shop at thrift shops for concert wear) but it was worth it and my last semi-formal concert dress is 10 years old.

I really like the site I ordered it from.  It's called "Rose Elegant" (I can't seem to find a site to link to) and everything comes from (as distinct from having been made in) China so the sizes are odd.  A size 12 maps to XXL, but this fit me perfectly.  Since I have gotten shorter and much bigger around the waist (I attribute some of that to the muscle and fat "donut" that singers are supposed to have around the waist and back) I have stopped buying anything fitted around the waist.  I wouldn't wear a tent dress but there are a lot of dresses like this one that are shapely, but not tight at the waist.

Unfortunately I can't seem to be able to download the videos individually (when I do that there is sound but no picture) but I can see them (and I guess show them to people) by posting a link to the original drop box file.  Maybe the videographer can fix the problem.  I hate to bother her because she never charges me anything; apparently making these videos is part of her volunteer work creating "lasting impressions" for seniors. 

So now I can retire the Bolena for a while and start planning 2020 concerts.  At least three of the places want us back; I just have to pin them down about dates and times.  I think next time we may revisit the "Judgment Scene" from Aida and the "Vengeance Duet" from Samson et Dalila.

I am going to be 70 next year but have no sense of slowing down.  I sing a lot better than when I started at 54; even than I did a few years ago.

To end on a humorous and flattering note.  There is a sustained high A at the beginning of the Bolena duet.  It ends the opening recitative, and after I sang it, the audience here broke into applause.  I have never had that happen.

Videos! A Dream Come True

I got the videos back from my recital.  First of all, if anyone reads this, and you are someone I know and trust, just leave a comment with your email address (I screen comments, so it won't be published) and I will send you some links.

And, before I comment on my feelings about the videos, I want to say that for the past, let's say 5 years, certainly as long as everyone and their dachshund has had a smart phone, I have yearned for videos of me singing.  These were not easy to come by, let me tell you.  My friends with smart phones were not that skilled at using them (they would make a video, it would be too big to upload, they would give up, and I would get tired of nagging them), or they didn't even own one (e.g. my voice teacher), so I was left empty handed.  And this stung particularly because the younger singers I was/am so envious of, seem to have a gaggle of family, friends, teachers, and coaches, always at hand to document their every song.

Recently, I will say, I have found someone at church who is IT-savvy, and he made two videos of me which I am glad to have.  I sounded good in both, but did not like how I looked in one, which was good for me to see, because I can use it as a teaching tool.

The fact that a videographer documented this recital really was just something that fell into my lap.  She has been making a legacy project for my partner, videoing her telling stories, so I asked her how much she would charge to video my recital and she told me she would do it for free, because she planned to use part of it as part of my partner's legacy project.

She is a professional who makes videos as part of her day job, and she knows how to do good camera work, and how to create files that I can store on my hard drive and upload to Youtube.  Did I tell you I have a Youtube channel?  It never had much on it, but now it is filled out with most of the clips from the recital.

All in all, I was happy with them.  Here's a recap.

• O Had I Jubals' Lyre. I was very pleased with that.  Actually I was surprised, because it was the first thing I sang, I wasn't feeling well, and I was a little nervous.  I took a couple of catch breaths in the runs but you can't hear them.
• The Drinking Song.   I was also pleased with that, at least with how I sounded.  The high A was good.  I was not so happy with how I looked.  I was doing something fidgety with my hands that looked a little like I was doing something risque.  Actually I was probably tugging at my skirt.  Next time I will tell whoever is videoing to cut the frame off at my waist.
• Cruda Sorte. Overall the coloratura was good, but I wish I had a plummier sounding lower middle register.  But I looked like I was having fun!
• Moonfall. Really good.
• Mon Coeur.  Probably the best I've ever sung it.
• Habanera. Meh  Not my best rendition of it.  I just wasn't all that engaged with it
• In Betty's/Buddy's Eyes  Not good.  That's too bad because I had hoped to use it as part of the legacy project.  I didn't know it well enough, so at one point I sang a wrong note that was out of tune.  It's such a great song, so I may revisit it at some point.  I never sang it at a lesson, which was probably a mistake.
• Vanilla Ice Cream.  That went really well.  I had fun!  Including with the ad libbing.
• Waltz Me Around Again Willie.  Again, fun!
• Let Me Call You Sweetheart.  Heartwarming.  I invited the audience to sing along, which I had also done last time.  I am going to use this for the legacy project.
• I Dreamt I Dwelt.  Good until the very end, when my throat got tight.  I was aware of that while I was singing.  I didn't post it anywhere, but probably no one except another singer or a voice teacher would have noticed that.
• Home Sweet Home.  Made me cry.  I just love love love that song.  I will use that for the legacy project.

My only disappointment now is how few "likes" these got on Facebook, compared with how many likes I get when I post something about my partner, or even when I post a status update saying I was happy with how something went.  I wonder if people just don't see these videos in their feed?  (I'm still not quite sure what the difference is between a "feed" and one's Facebook Home page; when I want to see other people's posts I go to my home page.)  As I've probably said in some of my less than happy posts from 4 or 5 years ago, the young singers I was mentioning get oodles of likes and shares for all their videos. 

Anyhow, what I should say is having these is priceless because most of them are to cherish, and the ones that are not are to critique, which is what I wish I had had access to all along.

Oh, and in other news, I heard back from the managed care company that is handling my partner's Medicaid recertification, and they said that all the paperwork and financials looked in order, so they are submitting it to the city.  So now I just have to wait.

I'm Still Here

I am not sure where things left off...

My partner is now home.  She has a rota of aides from an agency, paid for by Medicaid.  They are all experienced and take good care of her.

Somewhere during the time she was in the nursing home in Queens my laptop died.  I now have a new one but it took 10 days to get someone to come to the house to set it up.  I am still fumbling a bit with the new touch pad, and had a few glitches (I was told that they are common glitches in the new version of Windows 10), but now know (I think) how to handle them.

I need to make work a priority for the rest of March.

I still managed to practice every day.  I am singing "Qui Sedes ad Dextram Patris" from the Bach B Minor Mass on Maundy Thursday and will have the alto solo line in a piece by Haydn (which I have not seen) for Good Friday.

I have let my opera repertoire lapse, except for singing through the Enzo and Laura duet from Gioconda because if I do a concert with my teacher (it will be based on the material from my birthday concert with some additions and deletions) that would be a nice upbeat bit of opera to include.

I vocalize up to a high C several times a week and my technical progress has held.

Right now the most important thing is making the end of my partner's life as happy as possible.  Devoting oneself to a human life rather than a career or other personal goals does not make one a loser and it does not matter whether the person "deserves" this or not.  That is my bit of wisdom for 2017.  Why shouldn't I devote my time to caring for her?  As long as I can do some singing and enough editing to supplement my Social Security.  It is unlikely that I would devote myself to trying to have an "encore career" (in the sense of finding something to doooo for a living that I just loooove) whether I were taking care of her or not, so maybe it is time to stop beating myself with that.  There are many things I love to do, so I can just treat working for a living as a necessary evil (as generations did before me) and move on.

I probably won't write as much as I used to.  Regardless of how many hardships I have had lately, I am a lot less bored and hence have a lot less "existential distress".

The Digital Divide

I realized this morning how many of the things I desperately want and don't have (back to the subject of photographs again) have to do with the fact that I am basically on the wrong side of the digital divide.  Basically now I see two digital divides.  There is of course the big one (which I am on the right side of), which is "do you own a computer or other device that enables you to use email and the Internet" or even "do you regularly have access to such a device by walking to a library".  And this is not nothing.  My partner and several of her friends either don't know how to use email or the Internet, or only use it at the library, therefore email is not their primary mode of communication.  But then there's a new one that involves do you or don't you own or know how to use all kinds of (prohibitively expensive) gadgets that you don't need to earn a living (or at least I don't) or to stay in touch with friends or conduct simple business, but that make life "fun".

For example I am thinking again of the younger people on Facebook who are constantly posting pictures of themselves.  When I mentioned something about this a woman responded thinking I had said I wanted to meet a professional photographer who would take head shots.  But that is not what I meant at all.  I just meant having a friend with a smart phone who was (and these are my exact words) "part of the document your life as you go" culture.  For starters, very few of my friends have smart phones.  Some of them only just got a no frills cell phone last year!!  I have had a cell phone for almost 10 years.  I got it when pay phones were no longer readily available and basically I use it either in lieu of pay phone (to make calls when I am out), so that people can reach me when I'm out, or to make "long distance" calls, which are prohibitively expensive from the land line.  I keep the land line because the cell phone reception in my tiny apartment (which is as deprived of air as a subway station, practically) is very spotty.  I plan to replace it with the simplest, least expensive iphone when it conks out, but not before.  I consider that an unnecessary luxury, as I'm living on less than half of what I made when I was working full time.  If I want to blow money, I'll blow it on producing a concert.

Yes, I can also use it as a camera, but it is not a very good one.

I also have a digital camera, which my partner bought me probably five or six years ago.  To date, any time I have wanted pictures developed I have taken the little thingummy (which usage dates me terribly!) to a camera store and asked them to make prints.

Once a friend did come over and help me install the software, but it turns out it does not interface with Windows 7, which is what I use on this laptop.  Probably I could figure out how to download a new "driver' (I did this with my printer - something I need for work) but with all I have to do this is way down my list of priorities.

Interestingly, photography used to be a hobby of mine, but my interest in it diminished greatly when the onus devolved upon me to handle the technical end of things.  Previously, all I had to do was have a good eye for choosing a subject and framing a picture and drop off the "roll of film" somewhere.  Other people did the rest.

And of course my friends do not have digital cameras or phones that they use as cameras either.  One friend took a picture of me taking a bow after my performance as Dalila and it took her two years to figure out how to "get the picture out of the camera and mail me a print!!"  And the friends I have with smart phones don't take pictures on a daily basis - only if they are traveling or visiting their grandchildren.  As I said on Facebook, if I went out to lunch with one of them and asked her to snap a photo because I was wearing a drop dead sexy looking top, she would think I was crazy.  In fact I only got the new profile picture that I use  here because a friend from out of state (who had a digital camera with her) came for a visit and I begged her to let me "take five" to go in my tiny dressing area and put on my favorite sexy red lace top.  (And this woman actually knew how to dump the picture into her computer and email it to me.  But then she at least is under 50, if not technically part of the "younger crowd" for whom "snap and document" is as natural as breathing.)

Also, one thing that surfaced in my Artist's Way morning pages (not to mention my therapy sessions) is that I both need to work more hours to make more money and get out of the house more to see more people.  The obvious answer, of course, is to take my laptop into a Starbucks or some such place but I would be terrified to carry my livelihood around with me unnecessarily, not to mention that I don't know what to do with the doodat (another great technical term) that would make the laptop wifi ready.

I think what I really need in my life are some young friends (under 40) who are the kind of close friends who will do a quickie favor for you at your house just in the natural course of events, but of course I'm 62 so my friends are all my age more or less or older, because my partner is 78, and most of them started out as her friends.  I have no family.  And there aren't even really any neighbors in that demographic either because a rent regulated building is by definition a NORC aka "Naturally Occurring Retirement Community".

I wish I could find a way to hold auditions for a "nephew".

Foundations of Training 1 - Prioritizing Learning

I don't know whether or not we had to do a post this week (I've been immersed in writing my paper on Peter Senge and "Organizational Learning") but this learning-related topic has been screaming for a post so here it is.

I see my primary task in Foundations of Training I as learning some theories of adult education and understanding how to put them into practice in a training setting.

That's why our big assignment is not only to write a paper, but to teach the content using techniques we've learned.

I was all excited about this because I think it will be fun (the presentation part, anyhow), but when I heard that we might have to use Power Point my blood ran cold. I have never created a presentation in Power Point, in fact I don't even think I have it on this shiny new laptop I bought at a discount before I left my last full time job.

When I worked at my last job I did a number of presentations that had Power Point as a backup but I provided the content and someone else provided the Power Point version. Yes, I knew enough to make a few changes (not much different from working in Word) but that was it. And as I discussed my subject matter and fielded questions, someone from the IT Department operated the computer so that people could see the slides.

Out of the corner of my ear I also heard people talk about "saving it to a Memory Stick". To be honest, although I have a vague idea what a "Memory Stick" is, I doubt if I'd know one end from the other let alone where to insert it (oh my, sounds risque, doesn't it?). Yes, yes, I know this is probably a skill I should acquire along the way, but not now, please. I need to concentrate on my presentation.

Luckily, we were told in class that Power Point was not a must. Thank goodness. I mean people have been doing charismatic and memorable presentations where some good solid learning occurred eons before Power Point or even computers had been invented.

So right now I have my priorities in order.

There's been a lot of talk about how technology "frees" people, and certainly I think web 2.0 does, obviously, since I love blogging, Facebook, email, and surfing the net. But a lot of the nuts and boltsy types of things just seem awfully onerous. I mean when I started working as a Secretary my hallowed boss didn't even know how to type, but was "freed" to deal with the content of what she was creating.

So my question is: do you agree that there are certain things that it's just not worth learning right now, so you can learn other things?

Foundations of Training 1 - First Post

Welcome new readers!

I started this blog last month, and see no reason not to piggyback my Learning Blog assignments onto it. Since this is a blog about my returning to serious study of classical singing in my mid-fifties, it is a blog about learning. I probably won't make my class blog assignments about singing, so if my regular readers who are interested in my singing posts want to skip the Learning Blog posts, they can feel free.



I found the handout from Tuesday's class very evocative of my past work situation in that it referred to the Scientific Management concept of Frederick Taylor, stating that "his goal was to reduce the skill needs of workers to as close to zero as possible", and then went on to analyze the sequelae of Taylor's work. First Frank and Lillian Gilbreths built on it with their time and motion studies which identified and eliminated "elements (usually human tendencies) that blocked the process" and then their successors continued the process of turning workers into a part of the machines they were using.

In the twenty-first century, much of what has happened with technological advances is that tasks that used to involve interpersonal interactions such as conversation, or written notes, now can be done via spreadsheets and databases that collect metrics, but don't necessarily tell a manager anything about the thought processes of their staff, or how their staff are learning.

When I started working at my last position in the mid-90s I was supposed to be running an indexing department. For people who don't know, indexing is similar to library cataloging and much of it is about reading comprehension and use of language. When I started there we wrote on paper printouts (data was eventually entered via keystrokes by data entry clerks) which probably wasn't the most efficient way of doing things, but seeing handwritten notes from staff (I could always tell who had done what because I recognized their handwriting) helped me, when I reviewed their work, to understand how each person was processing information. The data entry clerks did not need to have indexing ability, but they needed to have a familiarity with certain coded fields and with how we used capitalization, acronyms, and punctuation, and they had to pass a proofreading test.

At a certain point in 2006 or thereabouts, there was a shift, and work was sent to the Phillippines for scanning, after which computer programming would "clean things up". So instead of teaching data entry clerks about our house style, I was now thinking up programming strings that would prevent or fix error patterns. So my job was no longer primarily about language but more about programming.

Indexers still worked their craft, of course, and probably worked more quickly without the intermediate step of using paper, but it was now much harder for me to identify whose work was whose in certain situations and staff were less likely to leave notes about how they had done their research, so it was harder for me to understand the thought processes they were having that led to making certain mistakes.

And the primary focus became on collecting metrics (a harkback to Taylor) on how fast each person was working rather than on who had really learned the nuances of indexing.

Question: What are your thoughts on how technology affects on the job training. What do you see as the pros and cons?