Quotable Quotes

The National Honor Society at THS is doing a project that includes making a gift for each teacher. It's a name plate to go outside our classroom. It will have a picture of the teacher, their name and subject area, and a quote. Today was the deadline for submitting the quote, and I had a tough time choosing. Here are my top 3:

"Without music, life would be a mistake." Friedrich Nietzche

"Alas for those that never sing, but die with their music in them." Oliver Wendall Holmes

"The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best." Henry Van Dyke


So I had to pick. But I'm not going to tell you which one I picked. I think you should guess--or tell me which one you would have picked. :) It was very tough and I love them all, but I picked one for a specific reason. Good luck!


Also--I had an awesomely fulfilling musical experience tonight. I was rehearsing for a concert I'm performing in tomorrow night. It's a benefit concert being held to institute a scholarship in the name of Syd Riggs. Syd was the drama teacher at Orem High School when I was a student there. She passed away suddenly almost four years ago. Syd was the one that got me involved in playing for musical theatre--jumping in head-first with West Side Story as a Sophomore! I could write an entire post (and then some) on Syd and how she changed my life and inspired me to become who I am--and I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. But for now I'll leave it at that. :)

Anyway, I was rehearsing for this concert. Most of the numbers use tracks, but there are a few that we're using live music for, including the selections from Rent. So we pulled together a combo with piano (me), bass, guitar (a student of mine), and drums. It's been a little crazy pulling it all together and tonight was our first rehearsal. We started rehearsing the set from Rent--beginning with Seasons of Love. It starts really simply and builds to the end. By the time we got to the last chorus we were really rockin'! The musicians in the combo are really fantastic!

I was trying to sing along to help us stay together--but I could barely sing because I was grinning so much. It was so much fun to play with such wonderful musicians. And it made me think about Syd and how much I'd learned from her and how it was pretty great to be playing a song like that, in a group that includes one of my own students, for a concert to honor her.

Life is good. And pretty cool sometimes. :)