Drive-Thru Graduation

Rachel graduated from Uintah High School on Friday, May 22, 2020!

...I think.
I mean, I was there, but... Well, it's a story. :-)

This was not at the graduation. This was a little tribute that the transportation department made to this year's senior class.

Because of the covid-19 foolishness, the entire nation kept their school children home for the last semester of the 2019-2020 school year. As they announced longer and longer closure times, and then finally that there would be no return to school this year, the big question on everyone's mind was: WHAT ABOUT GRADUATION?!

Well, Uintah High School decided to have a Drive-Thru Graduation Celebration for the Class of 2020. Families decorated their cars, students donned their caps and gowns, and we all were part of a graduation parade.

First of all, Rachel was going to wear Kaylie's cap and gown, but the cap got ruined in the bad weather at Kaylie's graduation last year. the cap was "her ticket in" (for the procession...although I wonder why anyone who wasn't graduating would want to enter...) I tried to order a mortarboard online, but there was a $60 shipping charge! So I made Rachel's cap. We did order a 2020 tassel, but it still hasn't arrived so she used Kaylie's tassel.

Anyway, on Friday, the 22nd, we went to the store and bought some red, white and black balloons (Uintah's colors)—along with the whole rest of the city of Vernal. And then Rachel did some window-painting on Lindsey's car.

painting the windows
Rachel has a fascination for chimeras; that's what she's painting on the back window—in Uintah colors. :-)

She finished the car just in time to put on her regalia.

the kitchen pre-graduation photo

At 5:00 Bruce, Rachel, Ruth Ann (Rachel's best friend) and I were headed to the high school. Along with a lot of other people.

There's a happy girl.
And there were about twenty cars that looked a lot like that one
in front of us on 500 North, and several more behind us.

Here's the driving route we took at the high school:

We turned onto the east drive to the high school, passed the Seminary, then cruised around the parking lot north of the Seminary. Then we headed west and around to the west (stadium) parking lot, where we did more zig-zagging. There were teachers in both parking lots, waving pom-poms and cheering for the grads while dressed in their graduation regalia...and black medical masks with the Uintah "U" stitched on them.

First we passed the Seminary where all the teachers and staff—and their families—cheered for the grads.

The Seminary teachers rise and shout—the grads are out!

Just after we got through the first parking lot, we had to stop and wait for about five minutes and wait to start the actual "ceremonies".  So I hopped out of the car and took a picture.

waiting to go...

This year's graduation was announced, parade-style, on the local radio station, and broadcast through the local TV station (and to the internet) as well. We had a bit of a wait because we were probably right in the middle of the lineup. We were stopped right by the sheriff, who was radioing to someone out on 5th North somewhere monitoring traffic.

There were a few banners on the way, like this one, which had been donated by previous graduating classes.

I don't know who these two guys are—presumably faculty or school board, judging by the way they're dressed. I guess they are helping keep an eye on the traffic flow too.

We finally started moving—slowly—and got to the west parking lot. As we drove around that lot several teachers recognized Rachel, said "hi", and congratulated her. 

Rachel had lots of opportunity to practice her Queen of England wave that evening.

Since I was sitting in the back seat, I had lots of opportunities to take pictures of her in the rearview mirror... And she took some pics, too. :-)

There was a jumbletron on the west side of the parking lot, so we got to see the grads' names and pictures up on the jumbletron as we queued around.

We weren't actually lucky enough to see Rachel's photo on the jumbletron. This picture was taken by a professional photographer (and I stole it off of facebook).

Here's one of the teachers, in a graduation robe, Uintah High ball cap, and Uintah mask. Waving pom-poms.

I'm guessing this kid is the first in line to get his diploma.
The teacher on the right is Mr. Richins, Rachel's chemistry teacher.

Finally we were on the last leg of the graduation procession!

The visitor lot sign marks the way to the diplomas.
I am of mixed opinions about "worst ending ever"...
The school board (?) ...officials, anyway.

Rachel got her diploma, the photographer got in her face, and the kids at home saw her on the TV!

Now Rachel is famous!

receiving her diploma

She opens up the diploma case and sees...
Not a diploma. It's a coupon for a free drink at the Soda Shack, and a paper saying that she'll receive her diploma at the commencement exercises that will be held either on June 26, July 17, or August 21. That's some pretty solid information right there.

Well, I say she graduated.

But wait. There's more!

We drove away from the school and headed to Main Street, where we waited to start a parade through town.

This truck was in front of us as we waited to start driving.

The parade started at 6:45, so we were only waiting for five or ten minutes. Then we drove down Main Street (not Highway 40, which is also called main street by a lot of  Vernalites...), then to Hwy 40, and we finished at 300 East. All along our route people were parked, standing, or sitting on the sides of the streets. Everyone waved and cheered—honking horns, yelling, "Congratulations!"—for every student, not just their own. I love our town!

We had our radio tuned in to the graduation still going on behind us the entire time. Just as we reached the end of the parade route, at 7:30, they announced the last of the graduates back at the high school. :-)

We took a few pics back at home, but I want Rachel to get back in her cap and gown for more graduation photos. Maybe on June 26, July 17, or August 7...

There's the grad!
She's wearing a medal for finishing with a 4.0 GPA, a medal for Best English Student (9th grade) and a medal for majoring in Life Sciences. She is awesome!

Inside, Lindsey had a little graduation gift for Rachel (wrapped very fancily).

ALL of my kids agree that this is the way to do all graduation ceremonies, every time. I am inclined to agree—it was a lot of fun. Rachel got to sit and chat with Bruce, Ruth Ann, and me the entire time, teachers got to greet and congratulate their students on a one-by-one basis, there was something interesting to see and hear all along the way, and the whole town cheered for the grads. It was great!

But, greatest of all, is that my smart, hard-working, motivated, and super-cute daughter graduated Friday! 

Congratulations, Rachel!

Senior Pics

Well! Rachel is going to graduate this year! 

Theoretically...

Despite the school's being closed since March 16, Rachel has kept up with all her schoolwork, still has a 4.0 GPA, and is still on track for graduation—whenever that will be. And all of this because she is awesome! And a hard worker! And awesome!

So we went out to take her senior pictures last week—at Remember the Maine Park which, apparently, is the place the Norths go for senior pictures.

She'll cross that bridge—graduation—whenever it comes.

When we first got to Remember the Maine, Kaylie said that we were too early—there were no flowers. . I suppose we could have waited a couple of weeks, but Rachel is more of a wilderness girl than a flowery girl, so this is kind of her thing. And, anyway, we were being asked to submit a picture of her ASAP to put on a flag that will hang on Main Street. (They are doing this for all the graduating seniors this year, to make up for... missing out on going to classes?) So it was time to do her pics.

Rachel and the paparazzi

What can I say?
I am awesome!

The river was lower and slower than I've ever seen it so, naturally, the girls had to get as close to it as they could. Not that I blame them. I would have joined them if my feet had been happier that evening.

It didn't take long before Bruce decided the light wasn't good enough at Remember the Maine, so we drove up Yellow Hill to get some pics in the setting sun.

Wait. What?

Soon I got tired of the sunset on the hill pics (and Rachel probably got tired of us...), so we headed back down to the wilderness.

a girl and her wheat-stalk
No. Seriously. Isn't she cute?

Well, Rachel will be graduating. Sometime soon. In June? July? August? We don't know. What I do know is that I am proud of this amazing girl!

Rewriting Mozart

Does he look shocked? Or horrified?
Should he?

Kaylie has been back home from Snow College for about a week-and-a-half. This doesn't mean she was finished with her classes...COVID-19, you know. So I got to hear her practicing her songs for her private vocal class final—which was delightful for me. Unfortunately for her, this whole COVID-19 thing has left her without an accompanist. So she asked me.

She sang The Lonely Goatherd (from The Sound of Music). That music was easy. In fact, because that music included the melody throughout the entire piece, I rewrote it to sound more like an accompaniment than like I was just trying to play the song for my own listening pleasure. So I can also say that I rewrote Rodgers and Hammerstein—or at least Rodgers. Or, really I rewrote someone else's rewriting of The Lonely Goatherd ... But it's pretty much just a boom-chuck song, and it was easy to write and easy to play. :-)

The Mozart was something else altogether. I could not learn the music Kaylie gave me in just a few days' time, so I set about rewriting it—to make it easier—too.

When the work got too tedious, I took a break to post this on
facebook. I love my friends' comments.

In all fairness (or maybe just in all rationalization), I was actually rewriting someone else's work, who took the orchestral accompaniment to Ruhe Sanft (from one of Mozart's operas) and transcribed it for piano, and who tried to leave in the voices of every instrument, and who obviously had ten fingers on each hand.

Now, my rewriting this music might not have been necessary if I ever practiced the piano...
But it might have.

So I spent all day Wednesday, and half of Thursday rewriting, playing, and rewriting again, until I finally got something I thought I could work with. The trouble is that, even though I heard it a zillion times on Wednesday, I was writing on a computer program, so I only played through it on the piano a very few times. I only had one day to learn this piece which, though simplified, was still Mozart and still tricky. And my sight-reading skills are next to none (not in a good way) these days.

Thursday, after spending three solid hours practicing Ruhe Sanft, I thought I was making some progress. Then I had to make some dinner. When I went back to the piano after dinner, it was as if I'd never played the piece before in my life. And Kaylie had to make a video of herself singing it the very next day. So I told her she'd better call Karilynne—who is the pianist for the high school choirs, and our ward choir, and is an amazing sight-reader. I knew she could do it. And, indeed, on Friday evening she came over and played it very nicely for Kaylie's video. I was kind of bummed out that I hadn't been able to accompany her, but I was glad we had a good friend who could. (I did still play the boom-chucky Lonely Goatherd for her video.)

But, there was more drama to come. When Bruce and Kaylie tried to upload the video so she could send it to her teacher, it sounded like she had gargled the songs. Uh-oh! However, recording, video, and fixing technical issues are within Bruce's realm; he was sure he could fix it.

Nope.

Turns out the camera he used was so old that it wouldn't talk to any of our computers. He was able to get it to talk to the ancient TV I've been begging him to get rid of for years...

So he played it on the old TV, and used a phone to make a video of the TV playing the original video. Which is a very cheesy, and not fabulous-looking or fabulous-sounding way to make a video. And then, it would only play Goatherd, and got stuck on the Mozart. (Kind of like me.) :-/

In the meantime, Kaylie had already submitted her gargling video with an explanation that we were having technical problems, and begging for extra time to submit a good video. At midnight Friday (her deadline) she submitted the ...better? ...version of The Lonely Goatherd, with more explanations, and a little more begging for time. It was all pretty stressful.

Kaylie heard back from her teacher Saturday morning, with the good news that she could still submit a video by the end of the day. Whew!

So Bruce spent almost the entire day trouble-shooting the video, and the camera, and the computer, and everything else he could think of. And by dinner time...still no luck. (And we had a late dinner, too!) We finally decided that our only option was to re-record the entire thing—both songs. And at 8:00 p.m. we just didn't feel like we should ask Karilynne to come over again; I was going to have to play the Mozart. So while Kaylie went away to warm up and get dressed up, I practiced Ruhe Sanft. Then she and I went over it a couple of times together while Bruce got the recording equipment set up.

And then I took a deep breath, Kaylie took a deep breath, and we started.

So here's what was going on in the great room last night: I was at the piano...obviously. (I was playing Goatherd when this photo was taken—I can tell by how many pages are on the piano.) Bruce set up the video-camera's tripod and attached two microphones to it using rubber-bands (the big ones that come on broccoli bunches). This is very high-tech stuff. Those two mics are attached to a digital multi-track recorder (he scoffs as he tells me its name...I think he's unimpressed by this machine), which is sitting on the coffee table across the room. He took a speaker from the living room to hold the laptop—which was going to be the main camera—at the right height. We also have Michael's computer microphone hooked directly to the laptop, in case the multi-track recorder doesn't do a good job. Or maybe the recorder was backup for the laptop...? To the right (Kaylie's left) we have my entire set of The  International Library of Piano Music (sixteen books) stacked up on a chest, holding the kids' Chrome-book, which is doing a backup video—just in case.

After all that, it turns out the computer microphone wasn't on when we recorded The Lonely Goatherd, so we had the video on the laptop, but no sound. Bruce was able to splice the sound from the multi-track recorder onto the video, so it was a good thing we had that set up. We did manage to turn on the mic for the Mozart, and after a really terrible and dissonant piano introduction, we started over and got through the piece just fine. (Well, Kaylie sounded fine).

It took Bruce a couple of hours to splice the sound to the Goatherd video—nearly until 1:00 a.m. (He is an awesome dad!) And at last Kaylie was able to submit a pretty decent video to her teachers. It was a heroic effort all around.

If you want to hear our lovely daughter singing Ruhe Sanft, you can click the name of the song.
If you want to hear her sing The Lonely Goatherd (in which I flub the intro...) click on the title.

Kaylie did beautifully!

But maybe I should practice the piano once in a while.

For my friend, Kim, who doesn't talk politics online

A few days ago my friend, Kim Shakeri, posted this on facebook:

"Loralee, remember this? It's not dated, but you write inside that
you and Bruce were "going steady" and Melanie's daughter Stephanie was just born. Does that help with the year?"

(Actually, Kim, that tells me almost the exact date. Stephanie was born on August 18, 1985. I said the 19th on facebook, but I was one day off. Bruce and I had our first kiss the day after Stephanie was born—that was on the 19th.)

The funny thing is that I've been thinking about Kim a lot lately. She must have felt the vibes and started looking through her old stuff, and found this card.

It's also funny that the caption on the front of the card still says it all: "I would have written sooner BUT..."

...but I still just feel like I have nothing to say. I feel that way most of the time. But I'd like to be writing, so today I'm going to talk about Kim and me (...myself?).

I was kind of a lonely little kid for a while. My older sister, Melanie, didn't like me for a long time. You'd think that the baby of the family, the only girl after five boys, who held that prime position for five years, would have been thrilled to have an adorable baby sister to dote on just like everyone else did.
But, no. Melanie wasn't very nice to me a lot of the time, for a long time.

Look how cute they all were!
Notice how none of them can stop staring at their darling baby sister! What was Melanie's problem?! ;-)

The girl I played with the most when I was little was probably Kelma. She lived around the corner from us, was my age, and our moms were friends; it was a predestined friendship until her family moved around the time we were in first or second grade.

I had another friend, Wendy, who was there at the same time as Kelma, but she lived a little further away—around the block which, I guess, was a little too far for me to roam by my six-year-old self. Wendy was an on and off  best friend: there were long periods (probably anywhere from a couple of days to a week!) when she was "never going to talk to me again!" for some offense or other. Little girl drama.

Wendy shocked me one day when we were maybe nine or ten,  and had been on good speaking and playing terms. As I remember it, she asked me who my best friend was; I said she was. Then she told me that I was not her best friend; her best friend was Natalie—who didn't even go to the same school as us! (I didn't even know where Natalie lived; she visited in our classroom a few times that year... Hm. I guess that was kosher back then.) My poor little feelings were very hurt that day.

Still, Wendy was the friend I played with the most. We played at each others' houses, had sleep-overs, caught horny toads together... when we were being friends.

But in sixth grade Kim Shakeri moved into the neighborhood. This was destiny! We had a slow start, but once we got together we were pretty much inseparable. We were both in the highest groups in our school classes, had the same fairy-tale visions of how life should be, and... we just really hit it off. We did practically everything together through sixth and seventh grades. Summers were sad—for me—because she spent them in California with her dad. We wrote each other pretty regularly—not only as ourselves, but as each character of the games we played together. Getting back together in the fall was sweet!

1979
Not just to me, from Kim, but all of our aliases too.
And, a 15-cent stamp.

And then the terrible thing happened: Kim moved to California to live with her dad permanently.

Now, eighth grade is an ugly time. It just is. Kids are growing up enough to try to figure out who they really are, and how they really fit in, but they are just not very good at it. It was a really ugly year for me because I'd literally just "lost" my best friend.

(Fortunately for me, Melanie and I started to be good friends around the time Kim left.)

I had other friends at school, but not a "come to my house and share all my secrets" kind of friend. Well, there was one girl, Rachael, who could have come close...except that her mom thought that a house with five big brothers—the youngest of them twenty years old, and two of them who were sailors!—was not the place she wanted her little girl to hang out. We saw the insides of each others' houses maybe three times in the five years we knew each other.

Even though I adored dance and piano before, I think Kim's going away may have pushed me into full immersion. At the end of that eighth grade year I auditioned to be the ballet pianist at my dance school, and got the job. When ninth grade started I spent every day, from 4:00 to 10:00—from 3:30 to 6:30 on Fridays—at the dance studio. I was either in a class or accompanying one. (I had an hour break on most days, when there was a tap or jazz class that I wasn't in, but it wasn't enough time to run home or go hang out with a friend. My friends at the studio were my two sisters and LeAnn, who was my teacher and employer. Again, I had plenty of friendly acquaintances there, but...)

Anyway, Kim and I were reduced from "inseparables" to "pen-pals." And I was a pretty lousy pen-pal. I know this because I was going through a box of "Letters from Kim" today, and one-third to one-half of her letters to me started with something like, "I was starting to think I'd never hear from you again!" (Sorry, Kim.)

The strawberry stationery: July 21, 1986
"Dear Loralee, Well. So you are no longer among the missing."
Oh, man!

This was partly because I really didn't know what to write about.
"Reading 'Crime and Punishment' in AP English. Worst book ever."
"Went to dance all night. We're doing pieces from Swan Lake again this year; I'm in Pas de Quatre this time."
"Had a piano lesson on Thursday before I went to dance. Learning 'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.'"
...That's pretty exciting stuff right there.

I wasn't super interested in boys yet; Kim was starting to be. I didn't have lots of friends to talk about; Kim did. I hardly watched TV because I was hardly ever home; Kim adores good TV and movies. (Consequently, Kim often asked me what I thought of  this-and-such good-looking actor, and I had no idea who she was talking about.) I listened to classical radio; Kim was talking to me about pop songs and singers. I still loved my dolls and fairy tales; Kim was moving on to real, live people and British literature. I just didn't know what to say, and the longer I went without writing, the more difficult it got.

Despite my own silliness, Kim and I are still friends. She still sends me a Christmas card every year. (I'm crappy at Christmas cards—or any cards...) And she's one of my best facebook friends. I find we are interested in a lot of the same things still—cooking probably taking top spot. She's a little crazy about dogs; I feel a little bit crazy...
 And... She never talks politics online (or COVID-19, these days, which is the same thing). Well, at least I've never seen her talking politics. And I appreciate that so, so much because I am often drowning in it here.

Anyway I've been wondering lately if my life would have been different if Kim had been around while I was a teenager. Kim attracts and keeps friends; I could have been part of that circle. When Melanie, who became my best friend, got married (when I was fifteen) Kim could have been there to still be my best friend. Would I have lived my life in the dance studio, or would I have backed off a little? That's super, super hard to say. It's possible that I would have felt out of place with Kim's new friends, I'd have retreated into the dance studio and, while we'd still be friends, it wouldn't have been the same as before. Who knows?

Kim and her oldest daughter, a few years ago.

At any rate, I'm glad she still considers me a friend now. <3

My birthday request

Day before yesterday (Friday, April 3) I saw so much about corona virus all over facebook—as I do every day. I saw companies taking even stronger measures to implement "social distancing." I heard of a foreign leader telling the police to shoot anyone who breaks curfew—even to kill them if "necessary." (Because that will help the death-toll.) My friends and family posted many (too many) variations of "stay home" which, although the words themselves sound innocuous, have an underlying voice of doom-mongering, imply that we are uncaring and irresponsible, or even go so far as to threaten us with everything bad if we should darken our own front doors.

By the end of the day I felt weighed down, and my mind seemed dark. I went to bed wishing I could cry and cry and cry. At 2:37 I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep; by 5:00 a.m. I was finally able to have that cry. I never did get any more sleep for the night.

Saturday morning I joined with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to watch our general conference and hear the words of our prophets and apostles. Despite being exhausted from a night of very little sleep, I felt the weight lift from me. The world seemed a better place. I gained some peace.

This evening our prophet, Russell M. Nelson quoted Matthew 17:21:  "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." He further said, "I invite all, including those not of our faith, to fast and pray on Good Friday, April 10, that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers be protected, the economy strengthened, and life normalized." 

Most of you, my friends and family, probably saw this same conference session, and heard President Nelson's plea. Many of you are probably already planning to fast on April 10.

For the rest of you, I'd like to ask personally that you do this—as a birthday gift to me. (Yep. My b-day is April 10.)

In our church we try to fast for 24 hours—or skip two meals. During this time of fasting, we pray for whatever blessing is needed (a growling stomach is a good reminder that it's time to pray ;-) ). To make it an even better fast, we use the money that would have paid for those two meals to help someone in need. Instead of donating money, perhaps  you could check up on someone who might be lonely, donate TP or food to a neighbor...

It's up to you to decide the best way to do your fast. The personal sacrifice and the prayer are the important things.

If you can do this on April 10, I would be grateful. If you choose to join the fast, invite your other friends to participate too. I don't need replies, or want any kind of written commitment here. I'm just asking, as a favor.

Thanks,
Loralee