Who's In Charge?

Here we go again. Same chaos different Holiday! This time around, the singing adults consisted of the Sunday 6:00 choir and the children were from the 11:00 children’s choir. It is an awesome idea to combine the choirs for one of the Christmas masses so that the children will feel appreciated by the congregation as well as the adult members. Of course there is a BUT here!

Our music coordinator was not very coordinated in my opinion. Please humor me while I justify how I believe I’m able to give my opinion and someone actually believe in what I say and not think I’m only whining. I have been part of many different bands and choirs for the past 33 years. I have played trumpet throughout the United States and Europe in concert and jazz bands including 1^st chair and soloist. As an undergraduate, I also played flute, clarinet, and piano. I have also been part of concert choirs, madrigal choirs, church choirs, and community choirs as a soprano including being a soloist as an undergraduate. My education in music was as a performer and not as a teacher, but my experience gave me the opportunity as a child to work with adults, and as a young adult (Rochelle’s favorite words!) and adult to work with children. Many of these roles were considered professional, others were volunteer, and of course those as a student.

Now, as a child or student working with adults, I was challenged with music slightly above my level of play, but within reach. The music I read was clearly at my level of musicianship. I do not remember feeling out of my realm when it came to reading the music or understanding the music lingo therefore causing me to just give up. As an adult working with children, I remember the musical numbers performed were always those most common so that the children recognized the melodies and felt that they were able to perform their very best.

Back to the present. Practice tonight for the Christmas Eve mass was extremely frustrating for all participants. The children were out of control. They didn’t have a leader to follow. There were many adults telling them what to do (including parents), which was very confusing. The children didn’t have all the songs that we were going to perform, and the ones they had were out of order. These children were not old enough to be given general directions and be expected to follow them. The majority of the children needed hand held. The adults were extremely thankful that our choir director (not the music coordinator) took it upon himself to have folders with the songs we were singing ready for us. Please keep in mind that rehearsal began at 6:00pm and we didn’t actual start rehearsing until about 7:00pm. By this time the children were so restless that there really was no way to bring them back to reality.

During each song, the music coordinator did his job by explaining tempos, repeats, codas, and so forth, but if you do not have an education in music, you will not understand this language. This is like a foreign language and must be taught in steps and not just thrown out there and expected to be understood. Well, the adults were ok, but the children were lost. Many of these children are in kindergarten or first grade and are having a hard time reading much less understanding some of the Latin terms our leader was using. These children had no clue what was going on. They gave up and starting acting out to remind us that they were there and needed attention. As I mentioned before, these children needed taken by the hand and lead through the songs. This didn’t happen and the kids were lost. How unfortunate for these children to lose what could be a very valuable experience for them. What was even more disturbing to me is that this coordinator is actually the choir director for the children’s choir! Yikes.

I personally believe that our coordinator has been brainwashed by a couple of the Sunday morning choir members and he believes that he must show that he is better than or knows more than the Sunday evening choir. Ok, I’m evil! We are a volunteer choir and the experience and music education varies amongst everyone, but when put together instead of pitting against one another, we are awesome no matter which choir we belong to.

Our choir can only be as good as it's leader, and as long as this coordinator is going to lead…….I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

I guess I can add a ps…..the instrumentalists didn’t know that they must transpose their music. I'm not sure how far along they are in their school program or what grade they are in, but someone needs to do that for them. My guess would be the coordinator needs to take responsibility here. I did notice that our (6:00 choir) director did ask them not to play when he noticed the problem. I thank him for that.

Group hug everybody!!!!!!

Work Ethics

Hmm? According to the American Heritage Dictionary, work ethics is a set of values based on the moral virtues of hard work and diligence. What has brought this on you ask? Let me tell you!

I received a telephone call from my neighbor about 8:30 one morning. She asked if I was aware that a truck was parked on the side of our house (we are a corner house) blocking our RV gate. Our neighbor was concerned because this particular street seems to be a chosen drop off place for stolen vehicles. I called crime stop to report an abandoned vehicle so that it could be towed away. I also called my dear hubby because he was on duty (he is a police officer) and hoped that he could use some type of professional courtesy or something like that to speed up the process. I know, very tacky of me but I did it anyway. I’m glad I did!

A police officer showed up within 30 minutes which impressed me because this is a low priority call and I wasn’t expecting anyone for a couple hours or so. During this time, my husband messaged this guy and asked him to call because he knew that this officer was known for begin lazy and not wanting to do anything that required some type of effort on his part. My husband had to convince him to do his job! This officer didn’t want to do anything but put a red tag on the window and after so many days if the owner doesn’t claim it the truck would be towed. Well, according to dear hubby this could be reported as a possible stolen and the truck would then be impounded thus taken off our street.

I, as the citizen that reported a possible crime, wanted the result of my complaint to be the removal of the truck from my street. To accomplish this type of result and make the citizens this officer works for happy, he would have to do some paper work which would be somewhat time consuming, but part of his job. This officer actually told my husband that he was just a lazy man and didn’t want to do any extra work! Needless to say, within 2 hours after I made the original call to crime stop the truck was towed.

This officer and those people in other customer service professions that choose this work ethic need to understand they need to conform to the elements of the environment they work in, or transfer to an environment that envelopes their beliefs. This is the person that is always asking why they are passed up for that promotion, or why the majority of complaints concern them.

I have had this type of experience dealing with offices that are from both the private sector and the public sector, so we can’t blame this on being a government employee!