It has been a wacky season around here.

Case in point: Several years ago my mother gave us a nativity set. It is one of those lovely hand-carved wooden ones she bought at a Beyond Borders kind of market. I am happy to own it, and love to get it out each December. However, every year there is drama around this nativity scene.

When it first arrived, I unpacked it and was setting it up when Yun-Sun (who was then just a kitten) jumped up and grabbed a lamb and went scampering off delightedly. All month it was a battle to keep the little figures out of the cats' mouths. Another year, I thought I had gotten it high enough to survive a season with the felines, when we came home to find the scene in a disarray: sheep toppled over, cows turned upside down, and Mary---the Queen of Heaven---nowhere to be found. Since nothing else in our house was touched, clearly we had not been robbed, this was simply another case of a cat getting her paws where she didn't belong. "Godiva!" I hollered, knowing it was probably her. Mary didn't appear until the following summer when I was moving furniture during a painting project. Instead, for the remainder of the season, Jesus was watched over by Joseph and a stray Shepherd, giving new meaning to the concept of a baby having two daddies.

This year, the nativity mischief continues. For days I have been walking by the chest in the sun-room that houses the manger and noticing all kinds of strange behavior: a cow sitting on a wise man's head, a sheep standing in the cradle.

I have tried blaming Matt, thinking he was playing games with me, but he has denied any wrong doing. My students would be the next suspects, except it isn't clear who, day after day, is doing this since I see different kids every day of the week. The cats? While they lack opposable thumbs, they have been known to do unbelievable things. It is totally possible. In the meantime, it is simply a mystery.

Truth is, Christmas season is always a bit strange around our house. Like many musicians, my work can crescendo this month due to numerous extra rehearsals, recitals, juries and other odd gigs. But usually, about ten days before Christmas my work falls off, suddenly--subito--leaving me with unfamiliar gaps and holes in my schedule. Likewise, my teaching grinds to a halt about the same time. The final week of the teaching semester occurred mid-December and was followed by a much less busy make-up week. (My students are never sick. I appreciate this come make-up time, as I have few lessons to teach, but I'm less fond of this mid-semester when I can go weeks, months even, without a cancelled lesson).

My husband, on the other hand, makes his living in church music, which means his life accelerates all the way up to Christmas Eve. This means he has more rehearsals and more performances to deal with in the ten days before Christmas, just as my life is slowing down. Early on in our marriage, this juxtaposition bothered me, as I was left alone to my own devices in the days before Christmas. I remember one year in particular when Matt, in typical procrastination fashion, spent Christmas Eve working on his bulletins and I spent the day home alone. At the time, I was upset that he couldn't have planned better; today, I'd welcome the solitude--the gift of a day to myself.

This year the pattern continues. I am done teaching my final lessons and have a blessed two weeks of vacation ahead of me. Matt has been up to his ears in work, most nights not coming home till 10pm or later after an evening of choir rehearsals. I have welcomed these quiet nights more than ever, because for the last month I have been fighting one sickness after another, clearly because I am exhausted. Of course, I have been teaching through it all -- no doubt the root of the problem -- but that is water under the bridge at this point. Anyone looking back at the past would see a pattern of December colds, flu, and general exhaustion in my life. I recognize this is not the best way to keep Christmas.

But other yearly rituals help counter these bad tendencies. Besides the manger, the house is decorated in full spirit---stockings hung; icicles dangled from windows and chandelier; beads draped across the fireplace; crocheted angels, bells, and strands of cranberries on the mantle. Of course, I have added collections of stars wherever possible, turning our home into a virtual galaxy of sorts. There is a star collection hanging above my piano, another decorating a dining room corner, and in my latest creative burst, I hung cookie cutter stars above my kitchen sink, making a Milky Way of shadows on the wall. "Ooooo...." said the 12-year-old girls from Matt's youth choir when they came for cookies and cider after an evening of caroling. "That looks soooooo cool." At least my decorating is a hit with the pre-teen crowd.

I wish on lots of stars these days, sending my prayers for peace and happiness across the universe. As we approach a new year, I am ever hopeful: I am hopeful about this new administration coming to Washington. I am hopeful that these enforced changes on our lives due to economy will usher in a gentler, more authentic world, less driven by consumerism. But still I wish, and still I pray, finding stars to direct my thoughts. "I was out for stars . . ." Robert Frost wrote. These days, so am I.

I am a pretty decent sight-reader, and I have always prided myself that my students' reading is better than average. In the past, this has probably has made me lazy about doing specific sight-reading work on a weekly basis, both in lessons and in the students' assignments, but in the last few years I have mended my sorry ways.

In addition, I have started a sight-reading library of music. (This has been an expensive thing to get going, involving me buying hundreds and hundreds of dollars of method books and pedagogical literature so that my library is big enough -- and the levels accessible and varied enough -- to be helpful.) Each week, all my students--with the exceptions of the very beginners--check out a sight-reading book. Their assignment is to play each piece in the book once and to bring it back the next week. Then I allow them to pick something that they liked from the collection to play for me, after which I choose something for them to play (thereby lessening the possibility that they actually only played at home the one piece that they then picked in the lesson). This whole ordeal takes a life-sucking amount of time. Me: "Did you play your sight-reading book?" Kid: "Yeah." Me: "Great. Pick something to play." Minutes go by while the kid picks something to play me. I try not to act impatient, fully realizing that just because I move at the speed of light, not everyone does. "I want to play, 'Frogs on a Log.'" "Fantastic." Kid plays. I then say, "OK. Now lets hear the first three lines of 'Minuet.'" Kid plays. Then the kid checks off his name from the sight-reading library sign-out sheet, signs the back of the book and then puts it away. More life-sucking minutes go by while the kid chooses a new book, usually verbally describing how he feels about each one as he browses through the basket. "Have I done this one? Oh, yeah, I signed the back already. But I don't remember it. I want to look at the music to make sure. OH! I loved this song. Could I just play it again really quick?..." Need I point out that this proves the kid likes to play the piano and has generally warm fuzzy feelings about the whole sight-reading process? I have the books labeled and organized by level to save time, although I laugh as I type that sentence because NOTHING about this process saves time. In fact, it is all I can do not to rip the book right out of the kid's hands, file it away myself and grab a new one.

So why do I bother with this waste of probably 8 minutes every lesson? Because although I can't begin to list them all, I think that all sorts of life skills are being developed and self-suffienciney encouraged when I let the kids do this whole sequence themselves. I see too many examples of parents doing things for kids to save time, and children as a result are more helpless than they need to be. So that's one reason I sacrifice lesson time. Another reason is that students are free to have uninfluenced opinions about this music with very few cues from me about whether or not they "should" like something. Because they read through an entire book every week (at least that's the goal), there's lots of music going through their lives and under their hands. Some books they love, and beg to be allowed to take home again. (Mostly I say no to this request, so that when I do agree, they think I am absolutely wonderful. I know, I know, cheap psychological trick.) Other books they hate, and are quick to tell me all about it. I think this is great in every way. Mostly I teach music I love and kids are quick to pick up on this fact. (Life is too short to not teach the music you love. Besides, as pianists, we are blessed by never being able to exhaust our repertoire so there is no reason to teach bad music.) I have an easy rapport with my students, so most of the time they wouldn't think they were hurting my feelings if they didn't like their assigned repertoire, but still that music has certain expectations that their sight-reading books just don't, so they are free to love or hate their sight-reading books at will. The final reason is simple and profound: since I began this six months ago, my students have leaped forward in their sight-reading skills. They read way above their levels, they learn their assigned music faster, they are more confident about starting new music and tackling new assignments on their own. This has been one of the biggest win-win pedagogical things I have ever done. The only drawback is the time involved, and honestly, that's just me and my own impatience.

But the whole concept of sight-reading has, from time to time, led to some misunderstandings. There was the time with Yun-Sun (not my cat, but my cat's namesake). Yun-Sun was probably five at the time and a pretty precocious reader already. Her mother had a masters degree in piano performance, but English was her second language, and so occasionally we had communication issues when discussing practicing. For some time, I had been assigning Yun-Sun to "sight-read" through such and such pages, and then one day in the lesson discovered that she and her mother had taken this to mean that Yun-Sun should say out-loud every note on the page. No actual piano playing was happening, jsut verbatim "sight-reading." More recently, I have discovered that even kids who have been speaking English since birth misunderstand "sight-reading". I had been writing "Play your SR book" in their assignment notebooks only to find out that some of the kids thought this meant "Play your silent reading book". (How they were translating this assignment to piano playing I have no idea, but those kids are nothing if not flexible and creative.) Last week, I stumbled upon Richard Chronister's term for sight-reading: sight-playing, which is wonderful and accurate in every way. However, I tried renaming the assignment with one kid only to have him whine, "But I like sight-reading. I'm used to that." You can't win.

Several weeks ago (or was it longer? I am completely losing track of time around here), I wrote about a new 5-Finger Position idea that was inspired both by an Alfred little ditty and the rain that we had been receiving in the desert. It hasn't rained since, which probably has to do with the fact that we had part of the roof repaired---nothing like a nice roofing bill to ensure that it will never rain again. There has, however, been plenty--and I mean plenty---of raindrop-inspired 5-Finger Positions around here.

I only have a few students playing 5-Finger Positions these days, most of my students having moved on to scales and arpeggios and such things. (And yes, I have as many ways for playing scales as I do for pentachords, much to my students' dismay.) But the ones that are in the 5-Finger Position world are struggling mightily with these damn raindrops. It's an interesting thing to watch and think about pedagogically, for some of the kids who are having the most trouble are the ones who have successfully been playing these patterns for a while now. But what I notice is that the act of alternating hands makes all the gaps in their skills show up. Just this morning little Annie was demonstrating her positions in her lessons. When she started playing I was writing in her assignment notebook and not watching her, and they sounded fine---notes jauntily sharp and staccato, all the notes of every major key correct. But when I looked up and watched her, she was sliding her fingers all around the keys, not adhereing to the correct fingers on each note, but instead skipping over weak fingers and using 2 and 3 of each hand whenever possible. Now, Annie knows better than this, but clearly the challenge of managing this pattern was enough to make all of her good habits go out the window. (Ah! I can sympathize with this in a million areas of my life--the idea that under stress we fall apart and all our good behaviors disappear.)

And so, we continue to tackle our raindrops, being vigilant about not letting the notes slide into one another, not letting our fingers slip out of position, and making sure the staccatos are nice and pointed. Although it is hardly worth saying, the original Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do pattern would not be the only option. We are also doing some "doubles" where each hand plays the same note twice: LH Do-Do, RH Do-Do, LH Re-Re....etc. (and, of course, the reverse with the right hand leading). After mastering the singles and the doubles, lots of other patterns in both major and minor keys could be used (see Recipes for Technique for more ideas).

It is the driest part of the year around here, humidity levels dipping into the single digits. The pitch on all of the pianos in this state is falling as I write this. We could easily not see rain again for months. But, roof intact, we are playing up a storm around here.