Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

I created this in honor of a little discussion on my dad’s blog. You can make a magazine cover, too.

Today, I went to Square Foods for lunch, armed with a camera. It was my last day at the Exchange Club (I can tell you the name now that I’m gone), and I wanted to see if I could catch Sheri for a chat and a picture. She got there was after I did, but she did arrive. She saw me, walked up to me, and asked me if I’d seen the sign out front. I told her I’d already taken a picture and showed her. She wanted me to take her picture in front of the sign, and I meant to, but then we got to talking, and by the time I left, I’d totally forgotten. I did get a few nice pictures of her though. Here’s my favorite:

She doesn’t go online much, but she said her husband does. "Hi, Sheri’s husband!"

Do try to make it on Saturday, and if you can’t, they said they’d put out a little jar for donations on the deli counter in the back.

OK. Well first, there’s the, the…

Yesterday, I got this e-mail:

Hi Abby,

Congratulations.

Your submission has cleared all of the necessary checks and will be delivered to UMI. If you have questions in the future about the status of any orders for printed copies or the publication status of your manuscript, please contact ProQuest/UMI Customer Service.

Your official graduation date is August 31, 2005 and your degree will be posted to your university records on this day.

The Graduate Recorder

Today was the final luncheon honoring all the interns in my program. We were warned that we were going to be "roasted," but it wasn’t too harsh. I was given several gag gifts, including Boston Baked Beans, Grits to remember the South, a little ribbon for participation, since I lived in Midtown and actually saw the city while I was here, a picture of a slum since Boston is so expensive, and some crime tape to remember the little incident that happened across the street. Kinda cute. I also got my certificate of completion. It’s really big! I know this is dumb, but I wish it were smaller, so I could just stick it in a file. I’m not hanging this massive thing on the wall! I’m still proud I got it though.

I have two more days of work, which will mostly be finishing up paperwork and logs. Then I have four days here hanging out with kind of nothing to do except pack. Then Aaron gets here, and we can play a little for about five days before we head out.

I got my Oberlin Alumni Magazine today. I’m in the alumni update section, picture and all. What’s also weird is that there is this article about how for years, Oberlin has graduated more future PhD’s than any other college in the country. It’s funny because I’m not even getting my PhD in an area I studied there. It was just a really good place to become a curious, life-long learner. I think they also recruit that type to begin with. I was lucky to go there. My mother was the one who insisted I visit, and after seeing the hippies chopping broccoli in the co-op and the hundreds of Steinways in the practice room building, I was in like Flynn. I’m glad she dragged my ass up there. At the time, I was like, "I am NOT going to the middle of Ohio for college." But in the end, that’s what happened. I’m so glad it did. Not only that, but my parents paid for it. (No, none of those insane loans have anything to do with undergrad!) Not only was it a great place to learn, it was groovy as hell (see Fury and the Sound for more on that).

Maybe it’s nerdy to be so into where I went to school. I don’t care. Many Obies are too cynical to be boosters like me, but that’s just my way. Doesn’t mean I’m giving them any money or signing up for the freakin’ planning committee or anything. I just liked it. It was a good place to be. Lots of grads end up in NYC, Boston, Chicago, Portland, and SF. I’ll be around a ton of them in my new neighborhood. I’m pretty excited about that.

And I’m VERY excited about being done with this PhD thing. It’s been hard as hell!

My Supervisors

E.J. is playing tonight at Murphy’s, and he posted a track of him singing (Pardon the hotlink, EJ. I didn’t have the space, and I’ll take it down soon if you want). It’s so cool to hear the singing version of a person’s whose speaking voice you already know. E.J.’s voice is lovely, and I am very excited about hearing him later on. Hearing his voice got me thinking about the singing part of me that lay fallow all year. For those of you who only just met me, I was once an opera singer. Yes, an opera singer. No really! I didn’t mean to be that. I just was. I sang from the time I could talk. In the 4th grade, I began a 6-year stint with the Young Singers of Callanwolde, an experience that honestly shaped me as much as school. I traveled all over the world with them. In high school, I attended a magnet school for performing arts and sang with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus (ASOC) with Robert Shaw my senior year. After that, I got a degree in Vocal Performance from Oberlin Conservatory, where I studied with Daune Mahy, a completely wonderful woman who "got" me and my voice. While I was there, I was basically pushed into opera, when my real love was always choral music. I like the collaboration of a chorus, and solo singing always made me feel really lonely. I can recall singing the lead in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera one time, and none of the chorus people treated me as an equal. They acted like I was untouchable, and I hated it. I was very different in personality from the other singers at Oberlin. I always lacked the diva drive, and while I love being near the center of the action, when all eyes are on me, I just felt pedestalized, weird, pointed at, different. I wanted to be WITH people, not FOR them. I have this overdeveloped pity for celebrities on the cover of gossip magazines, because they must feel so unknown by others. Anyway, I digress. After college, I spent a summer studying with Marlena Malas at the Chautauqua School of Music, then attended the New England Conservatory in Boston. I attended NEC for only one semester. I was so miserable there. I studied voice with Helen Hodam (who had once taught at Oberlin), an old diva with VERY clear ideas about every aria I’d be singing, what I’d be wearing, etc. Ugh. Dreadful personality match.

It was in Boston that I freaked out, left school, met the man that was to be my future ex-husband, temped, and eventually moved back to Atlanta where I rejoined the wonderful ASOC for four more seasons. I took 10 classes in Psych at Georgia State, worked a number of different jobs, lived in my parents’ basement with my ex, then didn’t, then did, worked with kids with ADHD, got married, applied for grad school. But the point is that ASOC was what I loved. Being back, I had 4 more years with Robert Shaw (some of his last), got to sing at Opening Ceremonies and at Carnegie Hall twice. Got to be on lots of recordings. It was choral music I adored then and still adore now. In Bloomington, I was able to be in some great choirs, sing some solos, and some of it was recorded. That’s the kind of singing I like to do now. That plus old Queen, Throwing Muses, and Soundgarden in the car… and Ella. There’s always Ella. Oh, and Joni.

My year in Memphis represents my first year NOT singing in some organized way since I was 4. It’s been weird. I will upload a track or two, and you can see if you can match my speaking voice to my singing voice. You might be surprised.