Apace of Change

by Damian Bariexca, Ed.D.

Archive for the ‘Fun Stuff’ Category

2015 By The Numbers: Books

In an effort to stave off some of the malaise referenced in my last post, I made a conscious effort today to do absolutely nothing.  Perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration, but I certainly didn’t do anything strenuous, and I only left the house to pick up Chinese food for the family for dinner.  It was beautiful.

Part of my recuperative process was to spend some time this afternoon reading.  Ian McEwan’s Atonement has been on my “to-read” list for the better part of a decade now, and I finally got around to starting it today.  As I often do, I popped into my Goodreads account to add it to my list.  I don’t know if this is a new feature or I just haven’t noticed it, but under My Books, there is a link called Stats, that slices your logged reading habits a number of interesting ways: by books read in a year, number of pages read in a year, and books read by year of publication (my re-reading of Dante’s Inferno really skewed that cluster).

Turns out I read 11 books in 2015, which averages out to a little less than one per month.  I’ll take it, but I think that moving forward I’d like to get at least 12 in per year (for comparison’s sake, I had 12 in 2014 and 16 each year in 2013 and 2012 – that’s as far back as my stats go).  I was a precocious reader, reading by or before my third birthday, and voraciously so – very few things in my entire life have brought me as much joy, entertainment, knowledge, or peace as reading.  I am a regular patron of my local library, both for myself and for my kids, and while I don’t particularly like to spend money on books (because I’m cheap frugal no seriously totally cheap and that’s what libraries are for), once a year I treat myself and load up my Kindle Paperwhite with about $100 worth of books to read on our annual family vacation.  Perhaps a conscious, deliberate effort to read more needs to be a part of my personal restorative process moving forward into 2016.

In no particular order, these are the books I read in 2015:

As for 2016, I’m starting strong with Atonement and Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez’s Invent to Learn.  Also in the mix: a sci-fi classic that I had to put down when school started and I never got going again – Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Feel free to check out the neat infographic Goodreads put together of my year in review, and if you have a Goodreads account, I’d love to see what your year in reading looked like as well.

Spam? A Lot!

This post is blatantly and shamelessly ripped off inspired by Steve Wheeler’s recent post “I blog therefore I’m spammed”, in which he dissects some of the more nonsensical spam comments his blog receives.

I receive spam comments at a ratio of approximately eleventy jillion for every one legitimate comment, so I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the crap I have the joy of deleting every time I log into my blog.

Do you care if I put part of this on my site if I post a link to this site?

That’d be great, but since the URL attached to your comment seems to be a bootleg Ray-Ban site, I don’t think your audience would find much value in my blog.

as well as fads, there are actually clipon various, there are actually those which have awareness vikings jerseysavoid doing it this is certainly. This idea could have been discussed so much it new business. A business relationship when nurtured can and will lead to long term success.. She alhoy nos d?vert?remosEl aic?onado al fútbol, por suparte, está encantado de haberdescub?erto a un equ?po que

They don’t think it be like it is, but it do.  Also, has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?  In conclusion, #awarenessvikings

I’m really impressed with your writing skills as well as with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Either way keep up the excellent quality writing, it is rare to see a great blog like this one these days.

Aw, flattery will get you everywhere.  Except for me to publish a trackback link to your spammy knockoff sneaker site.

???? ?????? ? ????? ?????????? ?????, ?????? ??? ??????????? ??? ?????? ?????????(??????????? ??? ?????????????? ????????????? ???????) ? ????? ??????????

That parenthetical aside really clarified things; thanks for that.

Xanax Xanax Effects Xanax Wine U2 Bono . Xanax Vs Lexapro Panic Attack Xanax And Methadone Abuse Xanax Australian Ld50 Xanax Withdrawl How Much Ambien Is Fatal Dose Xanax Xanax 0.4 Mg . Xanax Side Effects Without Prescription Lethal Much Xanax Xanax With Cipro order xanax no prescription

Sorry, we #TeamValium over here.  And leave Bono out of it.

I have bden surfing online more than three hours today, yeet I never found any interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough for me. Personally, iff all site owners and bloggers made good content as you did, the internet will be much ore useful than ever before.

Thanks, “pretty worth enough” is how my wife describes me, too.  “Ore useful”, too.

cialis 40mg

( ._.)

The #Quartweet Project

Last time, I wrote at great length about the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing a multi-building project to fruition.  Now that we’re officially after the fact, I can speak a bit to what exactly that project was.

Late last school year, Marc Uys, Executive Director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, reached out to one of the elementary music teachers in our district, Dan Beal, to gauge his interest in participating in a project with the German group Signum Quartet.  The SQ was experimenting with something they were calling “quartweets” – short arrangements for string quartet of no more than 140 notes (to parallel a tweet’s 140-character limit) – and they were soliciting quartweet submissions from their fans via social media.  PSO and SQ asked Dan if they could partner with our district to workshop and perform quartweets written by students.  SQ would work with violist/educator Jessica Meyer to flesh out the students’ original compositions, which would be recorded by the quartet and published via social media, and also performed twice: once at a concert for district students, and again at a free evening concert for our community.

Dan brought the idea to me and explained the parameters: the Signum Quartet would only be here in the States for a limited period of time at the end of September, so if we were going to do it, there was no room for discussion about the time frame.  Keep in mind it was after Memorial Day when we first started discussing this, so between then and the end of the school year (about three weeks hence – you know, when nothing else is happening) we had to:

  1. identify participants (after some discussion, we decided to focus on rising third graders in all four elementary schools)
  2. roll this out to the other music teachers and enlist their help in identifying potential participants
  3. contact participant parents/guardians and secure all necessary permissions for publishing their work online
  4. help prep the students to work independently on their compositions over the summer

After school let out, all we could do was wait until September and hope the students didn’t lose interest in the project over the summer.

Fast forward to September…

Not only did the students not lose interest, they all completed their works and submitted them to their teachers.  On September 29, Jessica Meyer and the Signum Quartet conducted two workshops with our seven student composers to flesh out their pieces and bring them to life.

signumquartet

It was such a pleasure to watch Ms. Meyer work with our students.  While she is clearly a very accomplished musician, she is also a teacher who has a knack for helping students determine how their composition tells a story.  That, combined with SQ’s willingness to play a piece a million different ways until the composer found the right one, made for an incredible learning experience.

The following day, we bussed all 300+ third graders from four buildings to our middle school, where they listened to the world premieres of seven local, home-grown quartweets by our Lawrence Township composers, as well as other quartweet-ish short pieces by lesser-known musicians (some hacks called Bach and Beethoven).  The culminating experience was the free community concert, held the evening of October 1 at our high school, at which the SQ once again played all seven of the student quartweets as well as other, similarly short classical pieces.  The students even got to sit onstage with the SQ and speak a bit to the inspiration behind their pieces.

SQ2

The experience is now over, but I have to believe that the memories will truly last a lifetime for the young people involved in this project.  I’m very proud of the student composers and grateful to the long list of people involved in bringing this idea to fruition.

You can read local news coverage of the event here (with commentary from Dan Beal and Marc Uys), read about Signum Quartet’s Quartweet project here (with directions for writing and sharing your own!), and don’t forget to check out the hashtag #quartweet on Twitter to hear examples of 140-note pieces from composers young and old around the world!

St. Baldrick’s Day 2015

Told you I was going to do it:

beforeandafter

Shout out to the LIS Brave Shavers, the LHS Bald Buddies, event organizers Drs. Mike and Melissa McCue, host venue Amalfi’s, and all the Lawrence Township Public Schools teachers, administrators, staff, students, parents, and community members who came out to support the cause.  According to the event site, as of 9pm today we nearly doubled the stated goal of $75,000, raising over $136,000 for childhood cancer research, a figure that will undoubtedly go up in the coming days as they count all the cash and check donations not collected online.  The show of support for this event is just one more reason why I am immensely proud to be a part of this community.

Update, 3/16/15: According to an email from the organizers, the current total stands at just a few dollars shy of $140,000, with more still coming in.  This event is now the 18th-highest earning St. Baldrick’s event in the nation and 1st highest in NJ for 2015!

Update 2, 3/16/15: We have officially passed $140,000 raised.

Update 3, 4/15/15: Evidently the donations have kept dribbling in over the month since the event!  The Lawrenceville St. Baldrick’s group announced today via Facebook that they have surpassed the $150,000 mark.  This will be my last update to this post regardless of how much more money comes in, but suffice to say that the donation ripple effect is wide-reaching with this event in this community.

Also, my hair grew back a lot faster than I thought it would.  I already need a haircut.

Shaving for a Cause

I’m in my fourth year working in Lawrence Township Public Schools, and as long as I have been here, students and staff have participated in St. Baldrick’s Day, a fundraiser for childhood cancer research in which participants shave their heads.  I’ve seen firsthand the positive impact the event has on our schools and community, and this year I’ll be joining the fun.

On March 14, 2015, I’ll join the Brave Shavers, a team of students and staff from Lawrence Intermediate School.  I’ve never shaved my head before, so who knows what lies beneath?

If you can spare a few bucks, please visit my fundraising page and sponsor me.  I’m hoping to raise at least $100, but if we can surpass that, all the better.  You can feel confident in giving, as the St. Baldrick’s Foundation has a high rating on Charity Navigator.

Please consider making a donation to this worthy cause.  While you’re on my donation page, you can see my “Before” pic (it’s a few years old but you get the idea); check back after March 14 for the “After”.  Thanks for your consideration!