This is a picture of our initial rehearsal with Christopher O’Riley on March 24th.

Sophie and I were selected to appear on NPR’s From the Top at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine and were asked to write about our experience.

On Tuesday afternoon we drove to Portland for our initial rehearsal with pianist and From the Top host Christopher O’Riley. We met the rest of the musicians and staff members and all played for each other in a master class kind of setting. Everyone was so nice and encouraging and the atmosphere was relaxed, contrary to what I was imagining.

On Wednesday afternoon we had a dress rehearsal and pre-taping of the show. It was extremely laid back and full of humor and smiles. Then came the final taping and show! It was a lot of fun to play at Merrill Auditorium. The acoustics were very much in our favor and the audience gave back so much energy!

This afternoon Sophie and I went to play at Learning Works in Portland. It is a program designed to help underprivileged students get their GED. It felt so nice playing for this audience. They asked questions and brought up points about music and the violin that I had never considered. This was the most rewarding part of the three days.

I was surprised to learn that From the Top does far more than their radio tapings. Now that we have been on the show, From the Top is essentially our advocate and support network if Sophie and I want to start an education program in the future.

The past few days were unbelievable. We had so much fun and are still trying to “come down” from the concert last night and the whirlwind experience. Music is a powerful beauty! Special thanks to everyone who came to the concert. Your support means so much to us!

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for
human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.

The students listened to panels on the Death Penalty and Guantanamo Bay. They also
participated in a Student Organizing Workshop for new groups. Despite the torrential downpour in Boston on the fourteenth, the students acquired skills in group organizing, and grew more informed

At the conference

about Amnesty International as a whole, and some of the specific areas that it is working to improve.
By Fiona Boyd

Discussing the issues

All three of them have made enormous progress in their levels of fluency and are now reading short stories and political commentaries written by and for native Spanish speakers. They have been practicing reading articles and developing well organized arguments about important and relevant topics in the Spanish speaking world such as immigration reform, media censorship, democracy, and U.S. foreign policy.

Their semester project requires them to write a six-page essay in Spanish on the topic of their choice using multiple Spanish language sources and proper citations. We’ve also been taking advantage of Google Documents to allow for real-time, live updating, where students can share their work with each other and with me, as we make corrections and give feedback in a collaborative way. Each student can see all the other students’ papers, as well as make comments on them, and see the comments I have made. We’re still experimenting with the possibilities and limitations of Google Documents, but for anyone interested in the process, or in practicing their Spanish… You can check out all three students’ papers at the following links:

Thomas’ Essay in progress
Josie’s Essay in progress
Sophie’s Essay in progress

That rain needs to pour. Clouds thicker than mud, thicker than your brother’s skull crush every living thing around. Humidity. Baba demands to sit on the balcony. That damn balcony that clings to her apartment building, on the alley that goes no where and sees nothing. This fragile wrought-iron balcony is like an ivy vine grasping a cement block. Useless. And yet, this is where Baba demands to sit.

Doctor is keeping her away from gin-and-tonic. Unbearable. You want to throw yourself off that damn balcony, but seeing as it’s only the third floor it probably wouldn’t kill you. And Baba’s such a cow she wouldn’t bother calling for help. No. She’d wait for you to melt into the pavement, melt like a kid’s dropped ice-cream cone from Giulio’s down on the corner. Oh, what you’d give for a cone from Giulio’s down on the corner. But you’re trapped on that damn balcony. Stuck like a freaking Rapunzel. The witch is already with you.

You wither down the railing, leaning against it and scrunching your eyes like a raisin in the sun. No, grapefruit. Not that you’ve seen a grapefruit left in the sun, but you just know that’s what your face looks like. Baba took the only chair, a green plastic one. You’re suddenly seized by the fear that you look like your grandmother. That you will look like your grandmother. That you’ll shuffle her path, be the same, end up old, angry and keeping your obnoxious teenaged grandkids that don’t give a shit about you hostage on some balcony in the Bronx. Your response to these thoughts is to scrunch your face more, which frightens you, causing more scrunching. An endless, vicious cycle.

It’s not that you’ll grow up to be like her, even. It’s that you’ll stop being you. The life you lead is already so lost, so ‘cliché,’ so unremarkable, that it wouldn’t take much. What makes your life more interesting, valuable, livable, than anyone else’s? You fear you won’t do anything to change. To be someone. You’ll just be wrinkled like a grapefruit in the sun, not listening ever, to anyone, especially those without the same opinion. People will hate you, but since you’re old, they won’t admit it. Or maybe you’re will be so unimportant that they don’t have time to realize they hate you in your oldness. But they will.

Being devout didn’t save Baba from that, did it. No. You don’t see the point in religion. Baba says you’re going through a ‘rebellious phase.’ Stupid. Makes you feel more lost, ‘clichéd,’ unremarkable. You stop listening to her, just like she did years ago. Vaguely you realize that makes you like her, but you’ll stop it. You’ll open your ears to other people. Just not her. Old, unable to do what she wants. You’re told Baba was a beautiful dancer. It’s why you don’t dance. One less thing to lose when you’re old, inflexible and miserable like Baba. One less thing that makes you like her.

“Book on Head,” Baba crunches. She doesn’t say, or rattle, or snap, she crunches. Old teeth grinding words you’ve always heard. Book on Head. Your body straightens, you’ve been taught well, trained well, the family collie.

Baba is asking you about Sonny DeMarco’s kid. If he goes to church anymore. You have no idea. You haven’t seen Sonny DeMarco’s kid since fifth grade when you would tackle Lina Patil’s toy poodle and tell her that you were going to cover it in glue and wine-bottle corks. Why corks? They had been Sonny DeMarco’s kid’s idea. What was that kid’s name? You aren’t even sure if that was the kid Baba had asked about. You weren’t listening. Too busy waiting for rain.