Hi, Richard!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

RW>  Still remember working in the studio, guy brought in
RW>  his own drum kit.  AS I'm wrapping some hardware to
RW>  silence its rattles he hits a rack tom right next to
RW>  my right ear.  


          To the ears & the brain focused on subtle nuances the effect
is like that of dropping a load of bricks on a scale intended for measuring
the weight of a SnailMail letter or a fistful of granola.  Not everyone
understands.  :-(



[re the jazz lounge piano gig]
RW>  Mr. Manager and I had a couple of discussions, and he
RW>  found out that my study in college was hotel restaurant
RW>  management.  HE asked me why I didn't work in the
RW>  industry, and I told him that when I did I found out I
RW>  didn't like 7 day weeks, sometimes 12 hour days.  tHen
RW>  I pointed it out to him as I'm selling his cashier $100
RW>  worth of small bills one night during Mardi Gras, which
RW>  came from my tip jug .


          Nice work, if you can get it!  Your comments have brought up so
many memories of various catering managers etc. I hardly know where to
start.  :-))



[re different styles of music]
RW>  I found there was something from all of it I liked.


          Same here.  I might even have realized I liked it sooner if I
hadn't been surrounded by people who complained about how they'd had a
miserable time at the symphony concert because Bobby Corno played a wrong
note in the twelfth bar of the third movement & by people who
apparently used AM radio to fill the empty space inside their heads.  I
couldn't relate to either or to the general music teacher I had in junior
high school, the one who introduced her class to the MOONLIGHT SONATA with
the expectation that we'd imagine a bunch of fairies dancing around &
draw a picture.  It wasn't until much later that I understood the technical
distinctions between absolute music & program music.  But I know now
that I'm not alone in enjoying a sonata differently from a ballet....  :-)



RW>  being born blind my parents wanted me to get literacy
RW>  and other skills that I'd truly need my entire life,
RW>  and did it, in spite of the system I hate to say.


          Seems to me you & your parents had very clear goals in mind. 
That's important when you're dealing with others who have different
priorities and/or who think they know better regardless of what's going on
in your life....  ;-)



RW>  at the period of time I began my education there was
RW>  a lot of experimentation going on, not all of it for
RW>  the better for the children.  That's another story,
RW>  and another thread if anybody's interested >


          Yeah.  The idea of the least restrictive environment has its
merits, but what often happens is that the school for the blind (e.g.) is
closed & the support system we were assured of never materializes... or
if it does it's one of the first things to be axed as soon as there's
another budget cut.  I could go on at length about that too.  But IMHO
there's more to be gained by putting the emphasis on where we've succeeded,
despite forces beyond our control.  :-)



RW>  A lot of opportunities to learn about various styles
RW>  of music, and good ear training.


          I imagine as a blind person you would have had to develop your
other senses more than sighted people generally do.  When I was growing up
it seemed to be taken for granted that Mother Nature endows blind people
with supersonic hearing... but you worked at it, just as I did.  By the
time our daughter came along I was ready, willing, and able to learn that a
20% elevation in the rate of a child's breathing may... in the absence of
any obvious reason... indicate s/he has a fever.  To a musician a 20%
increase in tempo is quite significant. To a lot of non-musicians, however,
it seems like a black art even if they can see the wall clock nearby
measuring the elapsed time in seconds... [wry grin].




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+