7 Quick Takes

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7 Quick Takes

June 7, 2018 by Amy Welborn

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Well, that week sped by. I’d intended to write a post about last weekend, but…I didn’t. Or did I?

Goes through archives.

Nope.

Well, you can check out an Instagram post here.

(And guys, you know we’re going to JAPAN soon, right? I’ll be posting a ton from there, I’m sure – so if you’re interested, follow!)

(UPDATE, 6/7 11:00 PM – We are leaving for Japan in less than two weeks and I just received notice that because of a new Japanese law related to homesharing, my AirBnB reservation is…sketchy. More later, but let’s just say that AirBnB is handling this well, and….it will all be okay. It will all be okay….)

Blog version:

My 13-year old and I spent Thursday night and Friday morning at Auburn University. We didn’t need to be there Thursday night, but if we hadn’t gone down then – we would have had to rise at 5 or so in order to arrive on time for his event. So I used some points and we just stayed in the area.

The reason? The Alabama State Music Teacher’s annual convention and workshops. In the world of student musicians, as with everything else these days, competition is a part of life, and my son did well enough in the state level of competition to be invited to play in a master class with pianist and music educator Fred Karpoff.

(Now, the big win would have been coming out on top of the scores and qualifying to play in a recital at the convention. He was a little disappointed that he didn’t qualify for that, but it might have been for the best, considering the rest of the weekend’s obligations. Or not. Because knowing the mess the rest of the weekend was – we’d have been better off just playing and listening to music all weekend. Or would we have? You just never know, because you learn something valuable everywhere. That’s not just a platitude. Okay, it might be a platitude, but it’s not just a platitude. Because it’s true.)

It was a good experience, and we’re grateful to M’s teacher for helping him hone his playing to this point.

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That other activity for the weekend was….

….well…

Now that I think about it, I understand why I didn’t just sit myself down and churn out a post about this on Sunday night or Monday morning. I am still not quite sure what to say about it. Well, I know what I want to say about it, but I am not sure if I should or not.

What was it? The National History Bee. M had competed last year with his school and qualified for nationals, and we went. This year, he competed as a homeschooler, qualified for nationals at the regional competition, and so..we went. I held off registering until about two weeks before the competition because I didn’t know how the piano thing was going to work out – that is, if he “won” there and had a chance to perform at the recital, yeah, buddy – you’re doing that.

And honestly, having been through the national competition last year, I was indifferent to whether he went this year. Competing in the regionals was fine – it was here in Birmingham in February, I think, and preparing for it gave shape to his homeschool history work. As in I could say, “Go study for the history bee” and call it a day.

But he wanted to do it, and when the way cleared, he asked if we could go ahead and register. Sure.

I really don’t want to rehash the whole weekend, and it was no more than 24 hours out of my life, and we did get to see my daughter who’d doing an internship in Atlanta this summer, so that’s all fine and good.

But – wow.

What a mess this was.

I mean – a total, absolute train wreck. Even my daughter, who has done her share of debate tournaments, athletic events, theater events, sorority events and everything else a very active young person might do said, “I’ve been to some disorganized events – but nothing like this.”

Whatever the outfit is that puts this on is nowhere near as established as those that sponsor the National Spelling Bee or the National Geographic (duh) Bee. I am not even sure who they are or what they’re about, really.

But it was a terrible mess. You can check out their Facebook page to see some of the complaints.

The structure was: Qualifying rounds plus a scantron exam on Friday, the total score of which would determine the top 256 who would then start off Saturday morning, and then to the Quarterfinals and so on.

My son did the written exam first and by the time he got to his first buzzer round, they were already running 45 minutes behind. The rounds were scattered in rooms around the hotel, with no notice on doors as to which round was happening. The qualifying results were supposed to be posted between 7-8 on Friday night. They didn’t go up (online) until 10:30. Then a new, adjusted version went up at 6:30 am Saturday, with some significant changes. My son had qualified to move on, but by the Saturday morning count – which no one knew was coming – he’d dropped about twenty places. Still qualified, but not everyone had that same experience. Some kids went to bed Friday night thinking they’d qualified, then woke up Saturday finding that they’d been dropped beyond the cutoff. Other kids had the opposite experience – they went to bed thinking they’d not qualified, revised rankings bumped them up – but they had no idea.

The Saturday morning qualifying round that my son was a part of was….one hour late in starting. Because they couldn’t locate the correct list of what kids were supposed to be in that room. Finally, a frazzled judge came in and said, “Screw it! We’ll just do it anyway – tell me your names.”

So yeah. It was pretty bad. I feel terrible for people who came from a distance and spent money to get there for this fairly miserable experience. My main inconvenience was that I hadn’t made hotel reservations for Friday not – reasoning that if my son didn’t qualify for the Saturday rounds, we could just go home.

There was no running tally during the competition, but having sat in on all the buzzer rounds, I felt pretty confident he’d qualified – especially considering that in most of the rounds, about a third of the kids got zero points, consistently, and M always got at least one – 256 was about the top 2/3 of competitors, I figured we were safe.

But I wasn’t sure, so I thought – well, if we find out between 7-8, that’s fine. With the time zone change, even if we leave Atlanta at 8, that’s like leaving at 7 our time, and we’re home by 9. No problem.

So we sat in the hotel lobby and waited for those rankings. And waited. And waited. Until finally, about 9pm, I gave up, said – we’re staying no matter what happens – and got a room.

But really – if I’d been one of those other families, coming from New York or Minnesota or California – and endured this? I would have no mind left, having given event staff so many pieces of it at that point.

This stuff is not my cup of tea anyway, of course. Competition can be helpful in pushing us forward in anything. I’m not saying it’s not. But there’s a definite academic competition subculture, immersion in which does little to encourage authentic learning or wisdom. My son does enjoy the competition, though – not enough to give much of his day over to studying, that’s true, and certainly not to Master Lord of History Trivia Level – but if it spurs him on to do a bit of extra reading, that’s fine.

But take this as a warning. If you ever hear about this competition and contemplate having your school participate – think twice. Really. Maybe even think three times. This was jaw-droppingly inept. I can’t and won’t ascribe any motivations to anyone. All I know was what we and hundreds of others experienced – and it was unprofessional and honestly, an injustice to participants.

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We arrived back home early Saturday afternoon, having processed The Defeat (he missed getting to the quarterfinals by one question, but honestly – we were glad to be out of there), rested a bit, and then with brother (who’d stayed home by himself because he’s a Working Man) headed downtown to watch the filming of scenes from a movie called Live. It stars Aaron Eckhart, whom my sons know as Harvey Dent from some Batman movie but I know from Neil Labute movies. I enjoy watching movies being filmed – for short periods of time, since there is a lot of waiting…- it’s just interesting to see all the moving parts.

Then Sunday: the boys served at Corpus Christi Mass at the convent, and Sunday evening, we walked over the hill right across the road from our house for some relaxing summer jazz. A pretty busy first weekend of our summer….

Photos from the weekend:

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Thanks, Magical Birth Canal!

This was my favorite thing this week, from Canadian pro-life group Choice 4 2:

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Here’s a 130-year old truth bomb for you:

“When a man only got his letters in the morning he was pretty safe from surprises for the rest of the day; but with the telegraph he has no remission from anxiety and is on the tenter-hooks all day long.” —Philadelphia Medical Times, 1883

— Mαtt Thomαs (@mattthomas) June 6, 2018

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Oh, oh, oh – this.

Remember last week when I told you about our lovely Nature Moments with Baby Birds? So sweet! So picturesque! So…nature-y!

Oh, well:

img_20180605_161209

It happened at some point Sunday night or very early Monday morning. We saw them Sunday night, and then when I went out the next morning – all I saw was the nest on the ground and a scattering of feathers – and a couple legs (which were gone by the time I took this photo the next day). I’m assuming it was hawks. So yes – very nature-y. Serious, blunt force nature.

Here’s the odd thing, though.

The parents stuck around. It was pretty sad when I discovered the carnage on Monday morning – both parents were flying around, landing on the branches and cables nearby, squawking and chirping loudly – warning me, calling the babies, wondering where the heck did they go?

The next day – they were still there.

Also the next day, our yard guys came and for some reason, they set the nest (which I’d left on the patio, intending to take in later) back up on the drain pipe.

Wednesday when I went out to catch some rays – the parents were still there. And what were they doing? Flying back and forth with grass and twigs to the nest.

Are they going to try it again? Do birds do that?

I’ll let you know….

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