2 Quavers for a Crotchet?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by cmbaa

Like many of my fellow 2011 graduates, I spent last spring wishing time would slow down. Looking back, my four years at UVA seemed to fly by, and even extending my time in Charlottesville by staying for the summer after graduation didn’t do much to

quell my anxiety about entering “the real world.” I chose to put off the real world (more or less) and spend a year volunteering in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne,

England. One of the hardest aspects of this decision was knowing that I wouldn’t be able to come back for any of the home football games to see the band. I even thought about bringing my trombone but decided there was little chance I’d actually use it. After the earthquake hit while I was packing, and then Hurricane Irene was scheduled to hit DC the day of my flight, I struggled a bit to convince myself that unusual natural disasters were not, in fact, bad omens, and set off for London.

When I got to London I spent a few days sightseeing on my own before heading up to Newcastle to meet my flat-mates and fellow volunteers, one from Brazil, the other from the Philippines. A week or two after arriving in Newcastle I learned about a community band in the city and emailed them on a whim asking if I could join (and if they had a trombone I could use). Surprisingly, they said they did have one and invited me to come and play with them the following week. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to keep up for the 2-hour rehearsal after not playing all summer.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting when I walked into the first rehearsal, but I’ll admit I felt a little out of place when I realized I was the only girl in the low brass section — and I was about 40 years younger than everyone else. In the weeks since, though, I’ve come to really enjoy playing in the band and look forward to Tuesday nights. It’s definitely not what I’m used to — in typical British fashion every rehearsal includes a tea break (yes, everyone stops to drink tea and eat cookies before going back to playing) and half of the time I’m not quite sure what the director is talking about because they have different words for things. I’ve figured out that “crotchet” and “quaver” are “quarter note” and “eighth note” but I’m still not sure which is which. I’ve also learned that “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is only popular in America because when it came up in one of the Christmas medleys we’re playing, no one else knew it. So now the director asks me every time we play it

whether he has the correct tempo and if it sounds ok. I don’t even think I’m the only American in the group but somehow I’ve become the resident American Christmas song expert and I’m ok with that.

The rest of my time I split between working at an afterschool art center for kids and a center for people who have come to the UK to avoid being persecuted in their own country, known as asylum seekers. While I really do enjoy the work I do both with the kids and with the asylum seekers, there are a lot of times where I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. My economics degree just didn’t prepare me for leading a session in woodwork with a bunch of kids wielding saws and drills who are looking to me to help them build a go-kart out of wood. So though I’m embracing new experiences and learning all I can from them, there’s something very comforting about the familiarity of sitting in band rehearsal each week. In fact, while you are all celebrating Thanksgiving I will be at my first Newcastle Community Band concert and I can’t imagine a better way to spend my first holiday away from home.

~Kathleen Gardner

Hej from Umeå!

Posted on November 29, 2011 by cmbaa

Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation and the Swedish Research Council, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to spend the last few months collaborating with a professor in the Epidemiology and Global Health program at Umeå University i

n north-central Sweden. This marks my first extended visit to another country and, as others have written in this newsletter before, it’s been an amazing experience. Perhaps Sweden is a little “easier” to visit than many other spots on the map because it’s part of the developed western world and the people are incredibly willing to speak English, but the adventure has been enjoyable nonetheless. I still remember my first visit to the grocery store at the end of August trying to figure out which carton contained the milk in a dairy section full of identically-shaped white cardboard

boxes.

Some of the similarities between Charlottesville and Umeå have been fun to notice. For starters, the towns are nearly identical in size—roughly 100,000 people in the city and surrounding county. The university here is the focal point of the town, as true back home, and there’s a large hospital that accounts for much of the workforce. There is a nice mixture of restaurants and pubs in the “city center,” including one that hosts a Wednesday night trivia game (although it’s music trivia…in Swedish). There are also some very visible differences, including the reliance on biking as a main mode of transportation for students and townspeople alike, sometimes shockingly high prices (65 kroner for a beer at the pub…), and the “fika” tea and coffee break that everyone takes at 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. each weekday.

As a climatologist, I’m obligated to report in on the weather. Umeå is just a couple hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, so when former drum major and current Ann Arbor, Michigan resident David Knight joked with me about a competition to see who would have the first snowfall, I was sure I had the upper hand. It turns out we were both tricked, as the late October Nor’Easter gave Charlottesville and the mid-Atlantic the gold medal in the Daves’ race to first

snow. It is my understanding that Ann Arbor took the silver medal on Nov. 10, and the forecast is clear of any snowflakes here until at least November 20. Temperatures have been very mild with only a few frosty mornings so far. Of course the most noticeable difference between here and home is the amount of daylight. It’s getting light around 7:30 a.m. this week, but the sun is completely gone by 3:30 p.m. As I write at 4:30 p.m., it looks like the middle of night outside. And there are still 5 weeks to go before the solstice! The people here embrace the snow because it makes everything brighter in a place without much wintertime sun.

Looking forward to seeing the 2011 CMB live at the VPI game on November 26. Hope to see many fellow alumni there.

Best,
Dave Hondula
(Trombone/DM 2004–2006)

In Support of Joe Paterno

Posted on November 27, 2011 by cmbaa

In what many are calling the biggest scandal in college sports history, Joe Paterno and his Penn State Nittany Lions have been catapulted to the forefront of worldwide media for their involvement in the cover-up of allegations of child sex abuse b

y former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky.

Sandusky, a long time defensive coordinator, retired as a PSU coach in 1999, but continued to have access to all of the athletic facilities until recently. He often brought boys from Second Mile, an organization he founded for at-risk youth, to use the facilities. According to the grand jury findings, in 2002 then graduate assistant and current assistant coach, Mike McQueary, witnessed Sandusky raping a 10 year old boy in the Penn State showers. McQueary made no attempt to stop the attack, but immediately called his parents, who told him to inform Coach Paterno and the athletic department.

Upon hearing the news from McQueary, Paterno informed Tim Curley, the Penn State athletic director, and Gary Schultz, Senior Vice President who oversaw the Penn State Police Department, of what McQueary witnessed. Neither Curley nor Schultz informed the police, but instead agreed with Penn State president, Graham Spanier, to order Sandusky not to bring any children

from Second Mile to the football building. No further action was taken until Sandusky was arrested in November 2011.

Since then, both Curley and Schultz have been charged with perjury and failure to report the abuse. Sandusky has been indicted on 40 counts for various sex crimes against eight underage boys over a 15 year period. Recent media reports estimate there could be as many as 20 victims.

After the release of the grand jury findings, Penn State cancelled Paterno’s weekly press conference, inadvertently launching the scandal to a national stage. Since then, the 84 year old Paterno has been vilified by the media for failure to personally contact the police when the University failed to take action.

Although Paterno stated he would retire at the end of the football season, the Board of Trustees fired both Paterno and President Spanier on November 9^th.

As a PSU law student, I have witnessed the collapse of JoePa’s legacy first hand. Once a demigod and symbol of the cleanest football program in NCAA history, Paterno is now looked upon by many with shame and disgust. But while the nation has criticized the winningest coach in Division I football history, the public seems unconcerned with Sandusky himself or the cover-up by Curley, Schultz, and Spanier. Perhaps most disgusting of all, Sandusky’s victims and their suffering has been overshadowed by the blame placed on Paterno.

That being said, I would like to offer my reasoning as to why I have supported Paterno throughout this horrifying ordeal and why I believe the media and the public has vilified the wrong party.

I would be amiss if I did not say that while Paterno did everything that is required legally, as a man renowned for his integrity, it is easy to jump to the conclusion that he violated his own moral code. However, hindsight is 20/20. Upon looking at these events, it is easy to say that Paterno should have contacted the police from the beginning. Paterno himself has stated that had he known the full extent of the allegations and if he could relive the situation, he would have acted differently.

However, while any rational person thinks they would have contacted the police if they were in Paterno’s position, the situation is not that simple. Paterno heard the information secondhand from McQueary, a then grad assistant vying for a coaching position. After hearing McQueary’s report, the decision to report it to an appropriate higher authority, expecting they would handle it appropriately, was a reasonable, human decision. Even so, when Spanier, Curley, and Schultz decided not to take action, the public and media believe Paterno should then have contacted the police. Completely ignoring the fact that Schultz had control over the police department, Paterno would have had to go over the head of the University president, who had already determined the allegations were baseless. This is assuming that Paterno was not naively blinded by the fact that the allegations were against a fellow coach and close personal friend who appeared to dedicate his life to helping children. Before November, Sandusky’s face was painted on murals around the University and the Penn State Creamery named an ice cream flavor in his honor.

From a legal perspective, even had he wanted to take further action, Paterno’s hands may have been tied. Universities are notorious for requiring all employees to take care of issues internally. Schultz, who for all intents and purposes was the head of the PSU police, personally spoke with the alleged victim, and decided, along with Spanier and Curley, not to take action. Had Paterno gone to the police or the public, not only would he be opening Penn State to a massive libel suit by Sandusky, further action would have been a direct act of insubordination. Unfortunately, this all must be viewed through the eyes of a college football program, where any misstep could mean millions of dollars of losses for the university by damaging recruiting and alumni support. This is why football coaches are required to report such incidents to personnel with the training and responsibility to deal with criminal acts and contact the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

Even so, the most disturbing aspect of this entire scandal has been the media response to Paterno’s actions – who as evident by the grand jury report is not even a key player in the investigation. As apparent in all aspects of the media, the vast majority of the business has lost sight of the true goal of reporting – informing the public – and instead focuses on what catchy headline or scandal sells the most papers. This story should be about the violent abuse suffered by Sandusky’s victims, but instead the media has made it about football. And you know what sells more than football? The downfall of a football legend that has spent 60 years building a football program and a university by avoiding the controversies that have plagued various college programs throughout the nation. If Penn State had been coached by a no-name, the stories would be about the victims and the men who perpetrated these heinous crimes, not a football coach.

If you turn on any news station, the headline is about Paterno. Based solely on the news coverage, you would think Paterno was the person raping children. Sandusky’s name has been all but forgotten, and the men responsible for the cover-up – Spanier, Curley, and Schultz – are unknown to the general public. The

focus is on how Penn State (and their football program) will survive, not on the lives of the victims. Instead of doing their jobs as reporters, the media has condemned one of the few men that took action.

For those of you that are not convinced, think of the student that tells his friend not to drive drunk, or the teacher that tells the principal that her student is getting bullied. When the friend kills another driver or the bullied student kills himself, tell me where you should place blame. Nothing like hindsight to make your realize you should have done more.

~Amanda Galloway