• From February, Sarabanda from J. S. Bach’s D-minor Partita ( hi-fi and  lo-fi), truncated at the front due to technical difficulties in the sound system that morning
• From August, Brahms’s Scherzo from the “FAE” Sonata ( hi-fi and  lo-fi)

Enjoy! 

Funny, neither of these had actually been in my top 10 choices. This child is fascinated with any kind of weapon. He doesn’t actually have any real weapons. The closest he gets is a water gun. Recently he made some sort of weapon with a collection of his brother’s toothbrushes. So now we can all look forward to sharing whatever germs they have been harboring.

To our dismay, he has been digging around in our knife drawer. I tried to demystify knives by having him help me cut carrots, but since then he’s been mostly more obsessed with cutting various vegetables and fruits.

He’s been a little sad to go to school and I was trying to cheer him up by suggesting, “You’ll color and draw there. Don’t you like to color and draw?”

“No.”

“How about painting and crafts?”

“No.”

“How about cutting and pasting?”

His face brightened. “I love to cut!”

“Great!”

Then he frowns. “But only with knives and chainsaws.”

He told me that he thought it would be better to be a hunter because pirates have sort of a dangerous job, but hunters never go hungry. That is certainly one way to look at it.

The other career option he is seriously considering is that of a violinist. We’re starting him on the “Twinkles.” Aren’t human beings a mystery? 

I hung out in the cold outside for half an hour after the concert and succeeded in getting backstage to meet the Brubecks. Brubeck is an amazing guy. He’s 86 and still pulling off three-hour-plus concerts. He lingered for over an hour afterward to greet fans. When it was my turn I thanked both of them for the music. Then I handed him my copy of Jazz at Oberlin, saying something about how much I treasure the record. His response was, “Oh! That’s one of my favorites, too.” I told him that my dad had seen him perform twice, the two appearances separated by half a century. Brubeck asked where it was that my dad had seen him 50 years ago. I guessed Long Beach. (My dad later told me it had been San Francisco.)

Over Christmas a few weeks ago we were in my hometown of Oberlin, Ohio. Although the historic Finney Chapel was undergoing some renovations we were able to get inside during our last day in Oberlin. Jazz at Oberlin was recorded in this hall in 1953. A fact usually overlooked by history books is that I received my high school diploma on the same stage in 1989. You can impress your friends by telling them the trivia item about how I proceeded to bore and bewilder the graduation audience by playing—while still dressed in my royal-blue cap and gown—a solo violin piece I had written for a girl earlier that year. 

It was particularly meaningful for me to visit John as I hoped for a positive outcome to my friend Greg’s lung surgery last Friday. Greg possess a frank realism, good humor and tenacious love of life that are contagious, even if his stage-four colon cancer isn’t. I am profoundly grateful to God that I can call Greg and Christine friends and glimpse his grace at work in the midst of their suffering. Greg braved some seriously awful hours last weekend as he recovered from his surgery but he’s doing much better.

Let’s keep praying! 

As a peace offering I’ll link up two recordings I made in the last couple months. Both are live performances from worship services at our church: “Meditation (Psalm 19)” ( hi-fi or  lo-fi) and “This Is Food Indeed” ( hi-fi or  lo-fi).

Best to you and yours in 2007. 

I thought I’d share a few glimpses into life at Casa Jonsson. Our three oldest sons have taken after their father as men of deep thought (though our third is also known as our “man of action.”) At parent-teacher conferences last week, I learned that our second-grader has been doing experiments related to surface tension with his class. Apparently, after seeing how many pennies were required to break the surface tension of the glass, he immediately inquired how many would be required to break the tension of an ocean.

Our first-grader is also very interested in science. In the way of six-year-olds, he is highly literal, and takes everything at face value. I caught him in the bathroom about a week ago, spitting on the tile. Mommies do not tend to encourage children to spit on the tile. But I was dissuaded from my rebuke when I learned that he was doing it to see if he could paralyze some tiny ants on the floor, since after all, the saliva of spiders paralyzes its prey. He was convinced that his saliva could also paralyze, but methinks it was just the sheer quantity of it that drowned the little creatures.

During his conference, I learned that they are learning about how symbols can equal other things. For example, the children were asked to put various letters, each of which had a number value, in order, from smallest to greatest. This caused him great consternation. “Does v really equal 28? I mean is v the same as 28?” he was reported to have asked. The response was that just for this exercise, v was equal to 28. “Okay, because just so you know E = mc².” He read a book about Einstein over a year ago, but apparently, this tidbit of information stuck. Be careful what you say around children! They remember everything!

Finally, you might be wondering what Number Three Son is working on. For him, it’s all about the science of comparisons. Velocity: “Our car is faster than their car!” (Our car being a minivan … their car being a Corvette.) Mass: My muscles are bigger than Hercules’s. My muscles are bigger than God’s. Volume: I can eat more than Papi can.

I’m sure over time his experiments will prove that he has some faulty hypotheses. 

Try it, you’ll love it. 

Stay-at-home moms put in long hours

Dear Abby:

I need your help with something. My 16-year-old grandson seems to think that all his mother does is stay at home.

He conveniently “forgets” that she is a housekeeper, gardener, cook, teacher, nurse, driver and mediator.

Could you please print a breakdown of what a stay-at-home wife should be paid?

I would love to have the list so I can pass the “bill” on to him.

Vivian in Colonial Beach, Va.

Dear Vivian:

According to Census Bureau figures for 2004—which are the most recent—there are 36.7 million mothers of minor children in the United States. About one third of them, 10.8 million, are stay-at-home moms.

According to an article penned by Al Neuharth, the founder of USA Today, in its May 12 edition, “Salary.com compensation experts estimate that stay-at-home moms work an average of 91.6 hours a week.”

That’s more than double the number of hours the average office worker puts in.

He went on to say, “That should be worth $133,121 annually.” 

You pet lovers will be amused to hear that, despite our efforts not to give aid or comfort to the enemy, the animal kingdom has succeeded in pulling the wool over our eyes.

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