Hi, Richard!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

RW>  Still remember working in the studio, guy brought in
RW>  his own drum kit.  AS I'm wrapping some hardware to
RW>  silence its rattles he hits a rack tom right next to
RW>  my right ear.  


          To the ears & the brain focused on subtle nuances the effect is like
that of dropping a load of bricks on a scale intended for measuring the weight
of a SnailMail letter or a fistful of granola.  Not everyone understands.  :-(



[re the jazz lounge piano gig]
RW>  Mr. Manager and I had a couple of discussions, and he
RW>  found out that my study in college was hotel restaurant
RW>  management.  HE asked me why I didn't work in the
RW>  industry, and I told him that when I did I found out I
RW>  didn't like 7 day weeks, sometimes 12 hour days.  tHen
RW>  I pointed it out to him as I'm selling his cashier $100
RW>  worth of small bills one night during Mardi Gras, which
RW>  came from my tip jug .


          Nice work, if you can get it!  Your comments have brought up so many
memories of various catering managers etc. I hardly know where to start.  :-))



[re different styles of music]
RW>  I found there was something from all of it I liked.


          Same here.  I might even have realized I liked it sooner if I hadn't
been surrounded by people who complained about how they'd had a miserable time
at the symphony concert because Bobby Corno played a wrong note in the twelfth
bar of the third movement & by people who apparently used AM radio to fill the
empty space inside their heads.  I couldn't relate to either or to the general
music teacher I had in junior high school, the one who introduced her class to
the MOONLIGHT SONATA with the expectation that we'd imagine a bunch of fairies
dancing around & draw a picture.  It wasn't until much later that I understood
the technical distinctions between absolute music & program music.  But I know
now that I'm not alone in enjoying a sonata differently from a ballet....  :-)



RW>  being born blind my parents wanted me to get literacy
RW>  and other skills that I'd truly need my entire life,
RW>  and did it, in spite of the system I hate to say.


          Seems to me you & your parents had very clear goals in mind.  That's
important when you're dealing with others who have different priorities and/or
who think they know better regardless of what's going on in your life....  ;-)



RW>  at the period of time I began my education there was
RW>  a lot of experimentation going on, not all of it for
RW>  the better for the children.  That's another story,
RW>  and another thread if anybody's interested >


          Yeah.  The idea of the least restrictive environment has its merits,
but what often happens is that the school for the blind (e.g.) is closed & the
support system we were assured of never materializes... or if it does it's one
of the first things to be axed as soon as there's another budget cut.  I could
go on at length about that too.  But IMHO there's more to be gained by putting
the emphasis on where we've succeeded, despite forces beyond our control.  :-)



RW>  A lot of opportunities to learn about various styles
RW>  of music, and good ear training.


          I imagine as a blind person you would have had to develop your other
senses more than sighted people generally do.  When I was growing up it seemed
to be taken for granted that Mother Nature endows blind people with supersonic
hearing... but you worked at it, just as I did.  By the time our daughter came
along I was ready, willing, and able to learn that a 20% elevation in the rate
of a child's breathing may... in the absence of any obvious reason... indicate
s/he has a fever.  To a musician a 20% increase in tempo is quite significant.
To a lot of non-musicians, however, it seems like a black art even if they can
see the wall clock nearby measuring the elapsed time in seconds... [wry grin].




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)