Memories of Maple Mount, Kentucky music camp

It was the summer of 1982, between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Because the schools in my county were then on a 6-3-3 system (junior high 7th through 9th grades), I had only just finished my first year at Henderson County High School, in Kentucky. I'd had a great year in choir and was thrilled when Robert Ellis, the head of all of our high school choirs, took me aside and said, "You're going to summer music camp with me and some other students." Okay!

The two-week camp, I think in June, was on the campus of Mount Saint Joseph Academy, a Roman Catholic girl's school and convent outside of Owensboro. Students would take music theory classes and rehearse choral pieces with the camp-wide choir and also with a select group of older students, both led by Mr. Ellis. Some students would also be in the camp band. Added bonus for me was that two of the HCHS students also going were two of my favorites, Mark Haffner and Randy Wilkerson. We commuted to and from the camp and I laughed to and fro the entire way. I know there were a couple of other students from HCHS but I cannot for the life of me remember who they were (sorry!). But most of the students were from Owensboro.

Here's how the camp was described in 2014 on the official web site of the Maple Mount convent:

Every summer from 1975 until 2006 Mount Saint Joseph hosted the annual Greater Owensboro Summer Music Camp which gave youngsters two weeks to receive music instruction in a relaxed setting. Maple Mount proved to be a perfect venue for students to swim, take walks, play sports and do crafts between practicing and lessons. Originally sponsored by Brescia College (now University), the camp offered talented musicians ages 11 through 22 vigorous training sessions in their respective instruments and the development of mature practice habits. Typically 75% of the students came from Daviess County, but would include students from other parts of Kentucky and the United States.

Swimming?! Playing sports?!? Missed out on that... 

I'm not Roman Catholic. This was my first time on a Roman Catholic school campus of any kind. The Mount Saint Joseph Academy campus was so, so beautiful, all green and covered in trees and feeling like it was out in the middle of nowhere. The chapel in particular was lovely to me. Some of the buildings that made up the campus were first built in the 1870s. The building that was the centerpiece of the academy is one of the oldest buildings in Daviess County. Additions to that academy building were built in 1882, 1904 and 1962. I loved the academy classrooms, even the desks. I love old schools, whether all wooden one-room schools or something vast with bricks and large windows and arched doorways. I like for schools to look like institutions of knowledge, something you should feel honored to enter, something you should respect while there. New schools aren't built like that. I remember sitting in an old classroom doing my music theory lessons in a workbook, surrounded by just a few other high school students. Because I was taking guitar lessons, I had landed in a level by myself - the other students my age were either in intro to music theory or in the advanced class, but we all sat together in the historic classroom, doing our lessons but not taking it all that seriously - it was summer camp!

At one point during the time there, there was a horrible storm, and then a tornado warning, and it all happened while we were in the large choir rehearsal room. It was absolutely black outside. We were seconds away from having to sit in the floor in THAT position, the one you have to learn when you go to school in the South or the Midwest because of the weather. I kept waiting to hear the train sound, and wondering what I would do when and if I did. When I went home that day after camp, I had to get out of the car half a block from my house and climb over a massive tree blocking the street - I was so happy to see my home was okay.  

The day of our final performance at camp felt so elegant. It was one of the first times I had ever gotten dressed up as a teenager. It was the first time I drank champagne punch. Our final musical performances were wonderful, even though I was stung by a bee in the shoulder DURING the performance. I loved looking up and seeing the elderly nuns in the balcony grooving to the little rock band performance. 

I did not want that evening to end. 

I was in heaven about that camp for weeks afterward. 

I never went to that camp again, and that's such a shame - but my family was just not functional enough to follow up the next year on our own, as well as to arrange transportation for me to go again. The only reason I got to go in the first place was because of that connection with Bob Ellis and that other students could take me. I know that he could be a hard man to love at times - but he was so damn good to me. He changed my life, not just with this camp. 

“Music at Maple Mount” started in 1975, and continued for thirty-one years there. It's now the Institute For Young Musicians and is held elsewhere. 

The all-female Mount Saint Joseph Academy opened in 1874. When I returned to HCHS after camp months later, I met a couple of its students at a speech and drama competition held at the community college in Henderson, Kentucky - I liked them immediately. Also, an all-girls school sounded so exotic to me.

The high school existed just for one more year after we were at the camp, until 1983. I heard that there were plenty of students that wanted to attend, but they couldn't find enough nun teachers. I know that graduating classes were tiny - around 15 or less students. There are more than 800 alumnae of the Mount Saint Joseph Academy.

The main academy building became a retreat center. But it closed in March 2020, when the rest of the Maple Mount campus was shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It's never re-opened. 

And I just read that the building will be dismantled - it's structurally unsound. It cannot be repaired.

So sad. 

I have no photos from that wonderful summer camp. I wish I did. And I'd love to go to a two-week music camp again on a beautiful campus - even at my age. 

A year with a piano

In November 2021, I got a piano. That means, as I write this blog, I've had it for more than a year. 

I love it beyond words. 

I have always wanted a piano. As a child, if I went to someone's house and they had a piano, I couldn't keep my hands off of it. I couldn't understand friends that resented having to practice piano. People who played piano were magicians to me (they still are!), and I so wanted to be one of them. I loved watching people, including my Mom, walk up to a keyboard, open a hymnal and just start playing. 

When I was a young girl in the 1970s, my mom got an electric Kimball organ. I think it was called The Entertainer. I remember it as having two rows of keys and a lot of colorful buttons where you could make the keys sound like a flute or a banjo or a harp or a horn or whatever. It had several pre-programmed percussions as well. I think this YouTube Video is of the kind of organ we had. There were color stickers on some of the keys and I think each color was a chord. I thought my mother was amazing when she played it. I enjoyed fiddling with it - I remember playing "The Alley Cat" and "How Great Thou Art" out of a book that came with it: I could play with one finger striking the melody and one finger on one key for the chord and "beat" from the organ. 

My grandmother also had an organ, and I just remember her playing it just one time, and feeling like she was amazing also, just like anyone who could play a keyboard. 

But organs aren't pianos. Organs have such an artificial sound. Pianos sound so pure and simple. I wanted a piano!

I played guitar for a while as a teen. I wasn't very good and too shy to play for anyone publicly, even my family. I also hated how my Dad would start almost demanding I play for him when he was drunk (I never did, BTW). I have started and stopped playing guitar a few times over the years. I'm currently trying again to play. Still not very good. 

But over the years, I still have really wanted a piano. 

Not quite two years ago, it dawned on me that I'm an adult and that if I want a piano, I could get a piano. I live in a one-story house. And we own the house. Getting a piano is not some impossible dream anymore. I forget sometimes that I'm an adult and can do things I want to do. Seriously. I forget sometimes that I am in my 50s and could actually try to have something or do something I've always wanted. I guess we just get so used to telling ourselves over many years that we're too young or too poor or too busy for something that we get used to feeling like we can't have something we want. We also let someone rolling their eyes at us, or outright saying, "That's a really stupid idea," stop us from doing things we really want to do.

The only challenge to realizing this dream was where to put the piano if I got one. I studied our house for months thinking about it. I walked around and sat at different places in the house, over and over, picturing it. Finally, I decided where it could go, and so, in August or so of 2021, I told Stefan, "I keep seeing people online giving away free pianos. I really want a piano. I'd have to pay to get it moved, but otherwise, it would be free. I'd like to take the next one I see." It's not so much I needed his permission, but it would alter the makeup of one of our rooms, and he'd have to listen to me, so I thought it only fair to include my husband in the decision-making. 

It was, like, two weeks later, that a friend said on Facebook that she had a friend getting rid of a piano that she really wanted, but it meant letting go of the piano she, my friend, already had, and did anyone want it? She posted photos, and I jumped on it. I booked Michelle's Piano in Portland as my movers (committed the big politically incorrect act of asking the guy on the phone where he was from, per his very thick accent. He said Egypt and was then thrilled that I'd been there and one of my favorite words is Yalla and we probably talked 10 more minutes than we needed to. But I digress...). Paid just $250 for the movers to go all the way to Canby and bring me my piano from 40 miles away. 

I had imagined I would get a small upright piano, no taller than a couch. But this piano is tall - more than 4 feet tall. It is a Farrand Piano, made in Holland, Michigan. If the piano tuner read the date right, it was made in 1922. So it's 100 years old! Its serial number is 31420. It has a beautiful, rich tone. The middle D key sometimes doesn't play if it's struck too softly. It probably needs some replacements inside. But I had it professionally tuned (thanks, Reverand Dan!). The piano donor passed on some beginner piano books, and another friend sent me the book Piano for Dummies. I also had a book of Beatles songs from my earlier of guitar-playing days that had a wonderful chord chart in the back, and then ordered this really cool book a friend recommended, 101 Timeless Songs Song Leader Book, (again, thanks, Reverand Dan!) that said it has really well-known songs that are simplified for playing on piano or guitar. It was altogether enough to get started teaching myself to play piano. And I started teaching myself almost immediately. 

The first song I played from beginning to end, with chords, was Silent Night, out of the 101 Timeless Songs Song Leader Book. It was Christmas Eve, and Stefan had gone to Germany to spend his first Christmas with his parents since he moved to the USA in 2009. It took forever to get through the song, taking several seconds to find all the keys for each chord with my left hand, then fumbling through the melody with one finger on my right hand. But I thought it was so beautiful, I cried. 

I practised at least 30 minutes a day, five days a week, usually Sunday through Thursday nights - though often, I would realize I'd been sitting at the piano for an hour. By February, I could play Amazing Grace out of 101 Timeless Songs Song Leader Book relatively well and thought, you know, I should record this so my Mom can hear it. And maybe if I practice enough, I could have a piece ready to record every month. If I did that for a year, it would be a great way to push me to learn. 

So, I recorded myself playing Amazing Grace and posted it to YouTube and made the commitment to learn a piece to record every month for 12 months. 

As of next month, I will have met that goal. In fact, I've more than met that goal: some months, I recorded two, even three songs. You can see my YouTube channel music playlist here (not just piano playing though).  

I admit it: I'm proud of myself. It's an amazing feeling to read a piece of music! It's amazing to start off with a piece and think, geesh, I'll never learn this, and then slowly, day after day, start to hear it get better and better. It's wonderful to play a chord for the first time and being startled at how beautiful it sounds. It's delightful when my fingers memorize something before I feel like my brain has. I have laughed out loud and cried sitting at that piano and playing just for myself. It's been so delightful to learn something new, and it's made me remember how much I loved being in high school choir once upon a time. 

I'm sure it seems so silly to so many, me trying to learn to play piano in my 50s. I'm sure people have walked by my house and heard the broken pieces and wrong notes and barely-recognizable pieces and though, damn, that sounds horrible, how in the world does her husband put up with it? I'm sure there have been lots of eye-rolling. My answer: to hell with them. 

I've really struggled, especially since early 2017, with feeling joy. When my contract work dried up thanks to a certain fascist that assumed the Presidency who didn't fill open government positions and refused to submit budgets for any increases for agencies that used to hire me (and for three years straight, tried to eliminate one agency altogether), as well as no one wanting to hire a woman in her 50s, no matter how accomplished she is, I floundered. Hugely. Most of you have no idea just how bad it has been. For years, gardening has no longer felt Zen. Books no longer keep my attention the way they used to. For a few years, nothing on TV was interesting. Only riding my motorcycle or going on a trip gave me any kind of joy. Well, that and losing 55 pounds - that was AMAZING. I felt SO good. I love photos of me from that time. Thanks to COVID and periomenopaus, I gained every ounce back - and more - and that sent me further down this mental spiral.

Playing piano - and also guitar - has given me a daily respite, a daily sanctuary, from thinking about what hasn't worked out, how my career is ending, how I failed to get anyone out of Afghanistan, how so much of my work is completely looked over, and all my many fears. 

I'm going to keep riding my motorcycle. I'm going to keep traveling. I'm going to get back to gardening. And I did find some TV shows that kept my attention (Ted Lasso, Miss Marvel, She-Hulk, Andor). But I need a little something every day. Playing piano, playing guitar, taking language lessons on Duolingo - they are little, simple things that help me get through the day. And I didn't realize how much I was really needing little, simple things. 

Do that little, simple thing you want to do. Don't let fears of anyone thinking it's silly keep you from doing it. Don't let any innervoice telling you "That's a waste of money, you are too old, it's not like you can ever become professional doing that, etc." dissuade you from doing it. You don't even have to tell anyone - just go start taking tap dancing classes or learning Chinese or saving up for that trip to Paris or reading Shakespeare aloud in your home when no one is around. It's YOURS. It's your life. Do it. 

10 years as a motorcycle rider

10 years ago, in June 2009, I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic Rider Course in Louisville, Kentucky, a course delivered by the Derby Motorcycle School. In fact, I signed up for the course months before I had even arrived back in the USA, when I was still living in Germany, because I knew these classes fill up quickly.

I got my license just a few days later after finishing the course, in July 2009.

And I'm still a motorcycle rider.

It's 10 years later and I've ridden more than 43,000 miles on my own motorcycle - almost 70,000 kilometers - almost all of it for fun on vacations and the weekends (rather than commuting). I did it on two motorcycles, actually: my first bike was a 1979 Honda Nighthawk, which I bought in November 2009 and road for two years, and now, my 2008 Kawasaki KLR 650, which I got in October 2011.

Via my motorcycles, I've been:

• all the way up through British Columbia, up to the Yukon via the Cassiar Highway and back down the Alaska Highway
   
• to Jasper, Banff and Kootenay National Parks
   
• Yellowstone, Western Montana and Wyoming
   
• all over Nevada, including Great Basin National Park and, of course, Rachel Nevada
   
• Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef National Parks, and Goblin Valley State Park in Utah
   
• Lava Beds National Monument, Lassen National Monument, Emmets Pass, Devil's Postpile, and lots more of Northern California and everything in between that and where we live in the Portland Metro area.
   
• All Over Idaho - which might not sound like much, but it's one of my favorite trips!
   
• Olympic National Park, Gifford Pinchot National Forest / Southern Washington State - really, and all over Washington state
   
• Steens Mountain, Eastern Oregon, including the Alvord Desert - all over Oregon - like up to Mt. Hebo via Siuslaw National Forest Service Road 14.
   
• And regularly all over Washington, Yamhill, Tillamook, Clatsop, Columbia, Clackamas and Wasco in Oregon, and Skamania and Klickitat counties in Washington state.

My only regret about my motorcycle riding is that I didn't take the MSF Basic Rider Course YEARS SOONER. I looked into it when I lived in Austin, Texas back in the late 1990s, before I moved to Germany, because I thought buying a small motorcycle and using it to get to and from work at the University of Texas would be a much better way of commuting. But I kept talking myself out of it.

Whether someone commutes by motorcycle, does simple cruises on a weekend, goes on epic long-distance trips for weeks or rides off-road, I totally get why people love riding a motorcycle. It's hard to say why I love riding a motorcycle without using clichés. It's so incredibly empowering to ride a motorcycle - it makes me feel stronger and more confident and more capable of handling life. I love how connected I feel to my surroundings on a bike and I love the focus I have on the road and the landscape and the surroundings when I'm riding. I feel so incredibly present when I'm riding, and I do not think about my professional work or cleaning my house or all my many obligations and responsibilities. My mind is completely free of all stress and worries. I'm just riding - turning this corner, taking this curve, stopping at this light, going over this hill. I love the long trips and I love just riding across town and back. I love the challenges: I love doing something I find hard to do, and doing it over and over and getting more and more comfortable doing it - and it may take a few hours or it may take months. I love that the more I practice, the more I ride, the better I get at riding. I love that I'm always improving. I wish everything that needs improving in my life was just a matter of practice.

I love after parking my bike and taking off my helmet and looking up and seeing a group of people staring at me, in surprise or disbelief or awe. I admit that I'd also love it if they frowned or otherwise looked disapprovingly. it shouldn't matter what people are seeing when they see me, but it does, and I like my image as a motorcycle rider - I'm not even going to pretend that doesn't matter. It does.

And I really love meeting people - people are happy to walk up and start talking to my husband and me when we stop on our motorcycles.

Stravaig, which is pronounced straw vague, is an Irish and Scottish word meaning to wander about aimlessly. One goes stravaiging about the roads. Stravaig is probably from an even older and obsolete word extravage, meaning to digress or ramble. I am all about stravaig, both on my motorcycle and in conversations: I love exploring and traveling and I really love exploring and traveling by motorcycle. It is fascinating and challenging and soul-reviving as anything you can experience.  

I don't see how I ever could have weathered the disappointments I've experienced since moving back to the USA, especially professionally, if I wasn't a motorcycle rider. When I get on the bike, I'm not thinking of all the hours I've spent preparing consulting proposals and job applications, hours that, by and large, have been for naught. When I'm on the bike, I'm not second-guessing the choices I've made. It's therapy, it's a mental reboot, it's an oasis, it's a shot of serenity.

Like I said, it's hard to talk about without sounding clichéd.

If you are a woman, I really encourage you to think about becoming a motorcycle rider. I swear it's cheaper than therapy. 

• My advice for getting started as a motorcycle rider
   
• Getting started on a dual sport: my journey (Changing from a cruiser to a dual sport)

To take the MSF Basic Rider Course, you do not have to have even touched a motorcycle, and the classes are available all over the USA (sadly, not in Oregon - they have some other group that does courses - if that's your only option, by all means, do it). All you need for the MSF courses are high-topped shoes (this can be tennis shoes - I used hiking boots), pants (no shorts), long sleeves and any kind of gloves that allow you to operate the controls. If you don't have a helmet, they will provide such. If you study up and take your written motorcycle test and get your permit before this class, you will get your license immediately upon finishing the class and presenting your paperwork to the DMV in most states (otherwise, you have to wait 30 days). Half of my class were women, and at 43, I was not the oldest woman in the class!

There's no obligation to get your license after you take a basic riding course. It's worth the price just to have the experience of trying, I promise. If you don't fall in love with it - if you do it and think, oh, no, not for me, hey, that's okay too! Congrats for trying.

If you do fall in love with it, as I did - see you out on the road.

10 years of motorcycle riding. Here's to at least 25 more!