2008
27
My interest in Barbershop was whetted back in the 70s by a brother-in-law who sang baritone with a couple of championship quartets.
I’ve harbored a not-so-secret desire to sing Barbershop myself for many years so I was in proverbial heaven tonight when I attended my first practice with our local Barbershop chorus. There were only 9 guys present but all vocal positions were represented…3 basses, 3 leads, 1 (quite good) tenor and 2 baritones (myself included).
Practice ran for almost 2-1/2 hours. We performed a wide range of vocal exercises and received extensive instruction about proper breathing using the diaphragm before rehearsing several songs as a group. My favorite part of the evening was the last 15-20 minutes when we randomly split up into quartets and had fun with a variety of tags. Honestly, I was not familiar with any of the songs but picked up on them relatively quickly.
Is it next Tuesday yet?
2008
25
As has been the custom on Memorial Day eve for the last several years, our church ditched the normal 6:00 pm service and went to a local park for games and food.
2008
24
Nothing like a break in the shade after a hard session of bike riding.
2008
21
My Lord…I gasped when I read this.
One of contemporary Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman’s six children was killed this afternoon when she was struck by a car said to be driven by her teenage brother in the driveway of the family’s Williamson County home.
The child, Maria, age 5, was taken by LifeFlight to Vanderbilt Hospital, which confirmed the death, according to Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
She was hit by an SUV driven by her teenage brother, she said. Police did not give the driver’s name.
The teen was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser down the driveway of the rural home at about 5:30 p.m. and several children were playing in the area, McPherson said. He did not see the 5-year-old in the driveway before the vehicle struck her, she said.
“It appears to be a terrible accident,’’ McPherson said.
No charges are expected, she said. The accident was witnessed by two other children; the entire family was home at the time, McPherson said.
Veteran singer/songwriter Chapman and his wife Mary Beth have long been supporters of international adoption, having brought three girls from China into their family. Maria is one of their adopted daughters.
The couple is so active they formed an organization, Shaohannah’s Hope, to aid families wanting to adopt.
The tragedy was announced during services at Harpeth Hills Church of Christ, which the family attends. The young girl had just graduated from the church preschool.
Most of the family was at Vanderbilt children’s hospital after the accident and could not be contacted.
The long gravel driveway leading to the home west of Franklin was blocked off by Williamson County sheriff’s deputies.
“The critical response team of the THP is reconstructing the accident,” McPherson said. “The district attorney’s office was consulted.”
Chapman was in the news in April when he was inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame.
[source article from the Tennessean]
2008
17
2008
16
Already, the survivors of China’s earthquake are putting together their own makeshift families. In the Jiuzhou Stadium in Chengdu, where thousands are being housed, volunteer Melody Zhang says she met a “nice-looking” one made up of a mother, a father, a grandfather and two children—from four different families.
“They just naturally took care of each other,” says Ms. Zhang, the associate director of adoption agency Children’s Hope International, who has been delivering supplies in Sichuan province.
As the focus of the earthquake relief effort in Sichuan turns to aiding survivors, China is witnessing an outpouring of requests by other Chinese to adopt children orphaned by the disaster. The provincial Sichuan Internal Affairs Bureau has set up an adoption hotline and says it has received hundreds of enquires from elsewhere in the country. So many people were trying to call it on Friday that the hotline almost always gave a busy signal.
[Read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.]
2008
15
Got a question for ya’...
What is one thing you’ve never done that you would like to do?
I’ll start.
My father was a B-29 bomber pilot in WW II. The little island of Tinian was captured by the United States in July 1944 and converted into an airbase from which many bombing runs originated including the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dad flew from Tinian and I would love to visit that island.
