Thursday, March 29, 2007

Ah ah ah oh oh oh oh, ee ee ee ee ee ee

I have a new office on the fourth floor of Loras Hall, right across the drive from the St. Paul Seminary. In fact, if it weren't for the seminary, I'd have a knockout view of the Mississippi River. Instead, I see the seminary chapel (which is nice enough) and clusters (flocks? bevies?) of men in cassocks on the sidewalk below.

I like the new office. It's bigger than my old one and faces west (which I like for the cool mornings and beautiful sunsets) and is off the beaten path of the rest of my department. But here's what they didn't tell me before I willingly exited the rest of my colleagues upstairs: the university voice faculty have offices right underneath my chair. Which means their students inflict their screechy scales, arias and the same five bars of a single showtune (something from "Oklahoma!" -- which is just the dorkiest musical ever written) over and over and over, for hours on end. I'm not a great fan of choral and classical vocal music. And bad sopranos sort of give me a headache. So I plug my headphones into my computer speaker and drown 'em out with Dylan or Joplin or talk radio.

OK, now I'm sounding like a crotchety old person. Never mind. Apologies to music lovers everywhere. I tried to like opera, but I got over it.

On the other hand, since the grandkids were born a few years ago I've been revisiting neat songs, books and poems for little ones. This is one of my favorites: "Little Potato," recorded by a group called Metamora. Listen here http://www.starbittrune.com/Jack/littlepotato.html

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I think the proper collective noun is "a mass of men in cassocks".

I didn't come up with that myself, though. :)

Madwoman of Preserve Path said...

Of course that's it! And we had this conversation before, didn't we? Something about a worm of robins? Or am I making that up?

Unknown said...

I blogged about the robins and ended up doing a bit of "collective noun" research. Apparently there's a whole comedy genre out there that I didn't even know about.

Unknown said...

Hooo, and waitasec, Oklahoma is certainly NOT the dorkiest musical ever. Feast your eyes upon "The Pajama Game" sometime, if you will.

Madwoman of Preserve Path said...

It's about time you fussed about "Oklahoma!" I was was laying in wait for you, Shirley.