Yeller Dog 2 blog 6

After the last note escaped from the bell of the horn, I lowered my trombone down to my side. I just stood in that spot completely still letting the echo of the note wash over me; I had done it. I had played the best I had ever or will ever play and I knew Uncle Hack had been with me. After looking around at the faces staring at me, I remembered I had to sit back down so the funeral could continue. I held my trombone so tight that my knuckles were white and my hands shook. I was filled with a queer mix of pride and sorrow. The man who had given me this magnificent trombone was being buried in the cold, hard ground on an even colder day. His name was and is Edwin “Hack” Crouse, but everyone called him Hack; to my cousins, my siblings, and I, he was always Uncle Hack. After sitting back down, I saw that my mother and my grandmother had tears streaking down their face. They told me I had done beautifully and that they were proud, my sisters rubbed my back in approval, and that’s when I finally cried. I cried the rest of the burial, but it was an odd mix of happiness, sorrow and pride. All these feelings had me thinking back to when I had first seen and held this beautiful trombone.
I remember the first time I ever laid my hands and eyes on the trombone. I was getting ready to start fifth grade band and I had been desperate for an instrument that mom and dad could afford. I had the choice between a flute or a trombone. I was a big tom-girl and I didn’t want a girly instrument like a flute, so I went with the trombone. Uncle Hack had a trombone from when he played in Chicago with a jazz band. Grandma Coleman took me to Uncle Hack’s to see if he would let me have his trombone. Hack seemed ecstatic to have someone want to play an instrument he had fallen in love with decades before. He was sitting down to at his kitchen table wearing a grey Green Bay Packers sweatshirt that he always wore when it was cool outside. The poor man had diabetes, liver problems from his prior alcoholism, and suffering from some Alzheimer’s. I sat down across from him at the table and we sat in a comfortable silence while Grandma went into his bedroom closet to get the trombone for me to take home. When Grandma brought it out, I could’ve died with embarrassment at the thought of playing such a thing. It was in a hard black case that had been covered in gold lettering that had started to peel off from age and neglect, the letters spelled out Yeller Dog 2, South Side Chicago, and Hack Crouse on the top and sides of the case. The case was also covered with all sorts of knick knacks: a little plaque on the left side saying “Old sailors never die, they just get a little Dinghy;” a sand dollar on the right side that was now yellow instead of white; a small gold turtle on the left; and the crest of the marines shining brightly on the right side. It was the oddest and oldest thing I had ever seen. I started thinking of how embarrassing it would be to walk in with this trombone case and now I wasn’t even sure I wanted to play the trombone. I looked at Uncle Hack and I could see he was beaming with pride and excitement over the old trombone. I had to smile in spite of myself; I hadn’t seen him so happy since Aunt Jenny died and I didn’t want to ruin that moment. I opened up the case and the smile on my face was no longer artificial. I had fallen in love with this shining piece of brass before me. I opened up the straps that were holding down the pieces and fumbled through putting it together. After I put it together I stared at the master piece in front of me. I found the latch on the slide and tried to move it; it made a horrid kind of grinding sound; so I put the slide back into position and latched it. I started looking at everything else on the trombone. There were dents on the slide down at the bottom and dents on the bell of the trombone, but the dents didn’t hinder its beauty. At the tuning slide I saw a crest of sorts. Uncle hack had put the marine crest on one side and a crest with two skeleton keys with crowns on the head of each key and the keys were crossing on the other side. Then I saw it, Yeller Dog 2, a label that had been stickered onto the side of the trombone’s bell. I remember looking at that sticker and then looking at Uncle Hack, “Uncle Hack, what does Yeller Dog 2 mean?” After I asked he smiled and his eyes light up with an inner fire. He told me about when he was playing up in Chicago in an old jazz band. He had been warming up his instrument and all of a sudden the trombone made a weird sound. One of the men in the band told him it sounded like an old yeller dog. From then on, his trombone was called yeller dog. When yeller dog had finally broken down and he had to get a new one, he named his new one yeller dog 2. He was so proud of his instrument that it rubbed off onto me. We sat down the rest of the visit just talking about his life with the trombone. I knew then and there that he would always have a special place in his life for me.
At the funeral I had played “Anchor’s Aweigh,” and I had put in a glissando just for him. He had been a merchant marine in World War II, Korea, and some of Vietnam. He would never tell me any of the war stories because I was a girl; and the era he grew up in, it was best for women in general not to know the details of the wars. It was weird to know that Uncle Hack would no longer be around. Before he had died he had been put into a nursing home because he needed around the clock care. He didn’t really remember anyone anymore. He did have good days when he did remember everyone, but they were becoming few. A few weeks before he died my mother had woken him up from a nap for a visit and he told her that he couldn’t talk to her long because he was in a meeting with God and Jesus. Even though his memory was fleeting he always asked my mother if I still had his trombone and if I was playing it. I was always remembered because of that trombone and that made me special to him. I loved this man greatly and I still have the trombone. I am saving it for my children so that one of them might play it later in school and enjoy its memory as much as I have.

my first memories of reading

I read somewhere that most children don’t learn to read until they are about 6 or 7 years old. I was reading full books at the age of 5. My earliest memories of reading were mostly in school. I was in a class that was a mixture of kindergarteners and first graders. I was in kindergarten. The school I attended was in Indianapolis. I am not one hundred percent sure of the name of the school, but I think it was called School 67. Some of the schools down there are numbered, like they don’t even have names. I remember standing in front of my class reading books to them. I can’t recall any titles of the books that I read. Since I was only in kindergarten, I imagine that they were fairy simple books. Dr. Seuss books, Clifford, the big red dog books, and other books of the same genre I think was what I read the most. I also remember that I was one of the only kids that could read to the class like that. My aunt worked in the school that I attended and she would work with me a lot to improve my reading. Before I was even in school my aunt would take me with her to work and I would sit in the class with the other kids. I absolutely loved it. I loved the idea of being with the “older” kids and doing what they were doing. The school was located about three blocks from where I lived; I used to walk to school with my aunt and cousins. Three blocks isn’t that far to walk, but I couldn’t get there fast enough. I would skip, run, and dance all the way to school. That was when I was young and thought that going to school was the best thing in the whole world. Now as I have gotten older, I have lost that feeling of excitement and thrill. I wish I had bottled some of those feelings, because I know that they would come in hand on many occasions. I may not have the enthusiasm, but I have the memories, and those will never be lost.

my most important event, so far...

One of the most important events on my life so far was when I took my state board test for my cosmetology license. This was no average test; it required lots and lots of studying. The test was given in Indianapolis in a conference room at a hotel, I can’t remember which one. We had to bring a sheet with us to drape on the floor so we wouldn’t make a mess. My grandma went with me because I had to bring a model to show my learned skills. We stayed the night at the hotel because the test started bright and early in the morning at eight. I had to wear a white, nurses’ uniform, also known as scrubs, and white shoes. The state board test consisted of two parts, a practical and a written test. The written part was the most worrisome for me. It asked a lot of questions about certain chemicals to use, and when and where to use them. It seems that when you are unfamiliar with words, they look the same, so it took me a while to finish that part of the test. After the written part I had to perform my practical skills for the test. Some of the skills included a haircut, where I had to cut exactly one half of an inch, and I had to leave my hair on the floor so the proctors could verify, a manicure, a make-do facial, a set of fingerwaves, which I was very proud of because they are very hard to do, and I had to roll a perm. There were a lot of other people in the room with me taking the test, which made it really hot and crowded. There was one woman who brought her husband as her model; he looked really funny with his nails polished bright red and perm rods in his hair. There were also a lot of guys taking the test. I was glad to see that because I like diversity, and it makes things interesting. I worked very hard to get to that point in my life. I went to school everyday, even sacrificing my Saturdays, and had more homework than imaginable. It was 1500+ hours of job shadowing, homework, shampoo sets on old ladies, and experience. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything though. I made some lasting friendships, and I ended up being the top of my class, and was even inducted into the Vocational National Honor’s Society. However, it wasn’t over until I got my scores. They came in the mail weeks later, which seemed like an eternity. That was when I released my sigh of relief. I was finally a licensed professional.

Memories of my Nana

When I was in the eight grade my great grandma passed away. She didn't die right away, but slowly. She had suffered from a severe stroke. The part of her brain that was effected caused her to be unable to communicate. She had severe expressive aphasia, which means she couldn't talk. A person that has expressive aphasia knows what they want to say, but can't get the words to come out of their mouth.
My Nana, as I called her, would become very frustrated when we didn't know what she was trying to say. Her therapist taught her to write again, so that she could communicate by writing when she couldn't do so with words. Her writing didn't look like it used to at all. Her once beautifully flowing cursive now looked like the works of an elementary student, who just learned cursive. She couldn’t write long, detailed paragraphs, but short sentence fragments that gave us a hint on what she wanted to say.
It was sad for me to see my grandma in this shape. She was a very independent woman. She was a person that liked to go out and do things all the time. Once she had the stroke she was extremely embarrassed to go out in public. Nana cared a lot, sometimes too much, about what other people thought of her. She didn’t ever want to be a burden on anyone. She had to do everything on her own and by herself.
When she finally got to home it wasn’t long before she was back in the hospital. Three or four months after she got to go home she had to go back to the hospital. My Nana now had the pneumonia. It really sucked that she got through her stroke, but was now battling this. I really thought that once she got home she would remain there.
A week passed by, and my Nana was only getting worse with each day that passed. She was still weak from her stroke, and having the pneumonia only made her weaker. She couldn’t fight any longer and I began to realize that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. Her eyes no longer had the will to live, and she was literally skin and bones.
The night she died my parents went to see her at the hospital. They told me that I needed to go see her, but I wanted to go to a friends instead. When they got home they told me that she looked horrible. This was no shocker, because she had been deteriorating for the past week. I didn’t think much of it; I knew that I would get to go see her tomorrow. Or so I though. That night we got a call the she had died. I will never forgive myself for not going to see her one last time. I felt so selfish because I wanted to go to my friends instead of visiting the only grand parent that has ever been there for me. Now she is gone and there isn’t anything that I can do about it.

4. Her name is Marissa

The snow had smothered the entire county a week before. My two step daughters had been on their winter break from school a total of three weeks so far. Everyone was enjoying the snow emergency that had restricted any traveling the past few days. As usual, I was rebellious. My husband was enjoying a rare, mid afternoon nap until I jolted him into reality with a barely audible whisper, "I am in labor." Tharon, my husband, jerked his body into a rigid, upright position. He jumped up and immediately turned looking at me with an expression of confusion. “How are we gonna get you to the hospital? Better yet how are we gonna get you to the car?” he said as he pulled the curtains to the side of the window to look at the dilemma at hand. “I’m gonna call my mom and see what she says.” Was the only response I could come up with at the time that seemed appropriate.
I called my mom to let her know that her second grandchild had picked a snowstorm to arrive in and asked her her opinion in how I should go about getting to the hospital. She suggested I call an ambulance. After getting off the phone I went to Tharon, who was in the bedroom putting on layers of clothing and asked him if he wanted me to call an ambulance. He asked about my contractions and I told him they were mild, however my water had broken and that was my immediate concern. Anything could happen at this point and I did not want to have this baby at home. He returned to the window in the living room looking out to the front of the house. The snow was about four foot deep in the front of our house. It lay parallel with the front step and there was no path to the street. We hadn’t bothered to shovel and the kids footsteps had been long since covered in fresh snow that had seemed to never end.
I called the hospital and told them of my condition and to expect my arrival at some point and asked for their suggestion on how I should get there. The nurse reminded me of the snow emergency and suggested I call an ambulance. After hanging up the phone I did call for an ambulance. They responded in about five minutes to my home. I sat patiently, watching them arrive. I chuckled as I watched my husband struggle to lift boulders of snow with a pathetically small shovel, attempting to make a path for me to get to the ambulance. Momentarily, a backhoe pulled up and began to dig out the snow in a narrow path leading to my front door. Approximately twenty minutes after the ambulance arrived I was on my way to the hospital. Twelve hours later I had a beautiful, healthy baby girl and had a memory of labor to beat all.

My Lesson on Happiness and Fear

Philosophy class is now teaching us about happiness. Happiness is somewhat foreign to me. It's not that I've never experienced a happy feeling, it's the fact that the feeling doesn't last long. We began with Plato's philosophy of happiness being achieved through knowledge and wisdom, which I'm pretty sure that even highly educated people are not guaranteed happiness. According to Aristotle, being virtuous in your choices in life helps us make wise decisions. Of course we are human and we tend to not be as virtuous as we should in every day life. Next we began to study Epicurus, whom believed that happiness can be had by everyone. We don't have to be in constant search of knowledge and wisdom, nor do we always make virtue the main purpose in our lives. We need to try to live a pleasant life.We need to learn to distinguish between good and evil. As humans we associate good with something that brings our lives pleasure and evil with things that bring us pain. This is how decide whether something should be categorized as good or evil. Through philosophy Epicurus believed we can attain a happy life. If we are pursuing pleasure it keeps us from pain, which main components are fear and anxiety. Epicurus does recognize that all pain cannot be avoided such as a death of a loved one. You would of course feel pain. Other pains can be avoided. Humans put unnecessary worries on our own lives instead of concentrating on the good in our lives. Epicurus philosophised about how we fear and worry about the fear of the unknown. People in his time worshiped a multiple number of gods. The people of that time lived in constant worry of angering the gods.They then believed they would be punished, but Epicurus believed the gods didn't meddle in common human affairs, so there was no need to have an anxiety attack about something humans can't control.Another huge fear that we as humans are faced with is that we know we are mortal, but we don't know what happens after we die. Epicurus did not believe in an after life. He thought death was a means to an end, we simply stop existing. He thought we should be more concerned with living and shouldn't fear death because the pain is gone. Epicurus said "while we exist death is not present and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead are no longer". Today you hear people use this same philosophy. Death is an inevitable, we are all going to some day die.If we are constantly obsessing over it our short time spend her will be squandered away on worries and anxiety. I, unlike Epicurus, believe in an afterlife, but I do believe Epicurus would say if I was to pursue happiness in a healthy way I would first have to put aside my fears and anxieties about fearful things. I would have to embrace the pleasures in life, in moderation, and keep pursuing good desires and part with the constant fear of pain and evil.

Relating with Juli Bovard

The essay "The Red Chevy", by Juli Bovard has been written by a women whom has come to terms with the fact she was raped. The calmness in the tone of her writing said it all. So many women have read this essay and can easily put themselves her beside her laying in the field feeling exactly the same fears and confusion Juli Bovard felt. I know more women and girls that have been raped then have not. I have friends that have been taken out for a date and then it quickly becomes a situation of the guy wanting something in return and the girl feeling for some unknown reason feels as if they should comply. During my junior high days I saw naive girls being taken advantage of the fact these girls are desperate for any kind of male attention they can get. Girls usually do not even realize until they grow into women that they were abused. How cliche', I know, but more importantly how true. The worst rape I remember was back in 1994. My best friend and I went to a frat party and even though we were under age no one asked us to leave, but of course it was Wabash. I would love to see a true statistic on how many girls are assaulted on that campus every year. The privileged class can hide things better than the rest of us. My friend and I left the party and headed for our safe haven of our friend who had saved us from past bad experiences. We tried to sleep in our friends room because he kept others from us, like a big brother. Before we got to his dorm my friend wanted to stop off at the Beta House to see a guy my friend had been dating. His room was set up like a bar and the boys eagerly offered to mix us up a couple drinks. I remember putting my coat on to leave, but we never made it out the door. Both of our memories stopped here. The next thing that flashed in my mind was hearing my friend screaming. I kept trying to wake up, I was in between asleep and awake. I couldn't get to her. She was being gang raped by a group of boys she knew, and worst of all the boy she liked turned out to be the ring leader. They beat her so badly, she had ten stitches in her head, a black eye, swollen busted lips and a river of semen running down her legs. The boys had to call an ambulance at this point. They dressed her before the EMTs arrived and said she fell down the stairs. At the hospital doctors found chunks of flesh and skin hanging from her fingernails from where she had tried to fight. The lab report also concluded that both of our blood contained a date rape drug and alcohol. The frat boys had already began to protect their brotherhood by sending affidavits to the police stating that we were told to leave the Beta House and we had refused. The boys involved had all dashed to their places of their alibis, which were mostly from their rich parents. The detectives had all the physical evidence they needed to proceed with a formal investigation, but we were informed that no one in town including the prosecutor did not want to go up against Wabash College after about a week of questioning. Instead, my friend and I were given minor consumption charges and the boys walked with nothing. Privileged or not they will be judged and it will be in the highest court of God.