It was a good day, today.
My parents had tickets to see Peter and the Wolf at the Longy School in Cambridge today. The three of us were going, along with my brother and his family and my parents, of course. It would be Sebastian's first time at a real concert.
As we were heading out the door, I had a moment of inspiration and grabbed The Story of Doctor Dolittle. Sebastian had been absolutely eating it up; we were getting through it at a tremendous rate. There were still a few chapters left, but it seemed like a good idea to read it to him on the way up.
The thing that's great about that book is that there are some lovely pictures, but only every few pages. I can sit in the front seat and read to him, and pass it back for him to look at the pictures as they come up. He laughed and laughed at some parts, and was really enjoying himself.
On the way, in Brookline (not far from where James Taylor lives), we had quite a surprise. Trotting down the sidewalk in broad daylight was a coyote! It wasn't particularly large, but there was no mistaking it: it was definitely a coyote. Sebastian got a very good look at it, and his jaw simply dropped in astonishment.
He used to be scared of coyotes, but now that he's seen one, he's not afraid any more. Or nowhere near as much, anyway.
When we got to my parents house, I literally was on the next-to-last page - and the last page was only 1/3 full. So I finished reading the book before we got out of the car. It's such a lovely story! And the ending is quite touching. I always thought it was, anyway. It makes my blood boil that idiots persist in bowdlerizing the Doctor Dolittle series.
Anyway, we picked up my father (my mother wasn't feeling well enough to come with us), and headed over to Cambridge.
It was surprisingly nice to see Harvard Square again after so long! It's dead to me, in many ways; all my favorite places are long gone, destroyed by a bunch of greedy developers who I frankly think deserve to be suffocated by having their millions of dollars shoved down their throats. But I saw a new used book store that looked interesting, so maybe the pendulum is starting to swing in the other direction.
The parking, as always, was a nightmare. But we were able to find a space about a ten-minute walk from the school. When we got there, my brother and his family were already there; they'd saved seats for us.
The auditorium was much smaller than I'd expected, and the stage was set for five players only. I revised my expectations sharply. The whole place was packed, incidentally.
While we were waiting, Sebastian surprised me by counting the panels on the ceiling over the stage - correctly. There were fourteen of them. He's been surprising me a lot, lately. For one thing, his reading ability is growing by leaps and bounds. He's not totally literate yet, but he can read most simple books and puzzle out most words. Of course, if he thinks he can make me or Teri tell him what the word is, he won't even try. But if we're not right there, we've heard him read quite well - and sound out words. He's also surprised me with his memory for lyrics.
While I'm at it, I can't remember if I've already mentioned it but Sebastian has gone mad for Godzilla lately. His favorite YouTube video is a set of clips of Godzilla to the tune of Blue Oyster Cult's Godzilla, and he sings that song almost all the time. He's full of questions about Godzilla, his many enemies, and Gamera too. Did I mention that I picked up Godzilla toy on sale for him recently? And that he's asking Santa for Mechagodzilla?
Back to the concert. There were, in fact, only five performers plus a storyteller - a professor of anthropology from Providence. To be quite honest, I was a bit disappointed. The kids enjoyed the show, mostly, and the music was rather well-done. But Peter and the Wolf really needs more than a clarinet, a flute, an oboe, a French horn, and a bassoon to be performed properly. And why did they pick an anthropologist? They should have picked a professional voice actor! The professor wasn't bad, but early on Teri leaned over to me and whispered that I could have done it much better. It may sound vain, but I know that she's right. I am good at narration and reading aloud - really very good indeed - and years of listening to the Boris Karloff recording of Peter and the Wolf have given me a very strong feeling for the pace and emphasis of that particular work.
In fact, I found that I'd memorized the whole thing. So I was murmuring the lines as the narrator said them.
They did make a change at the end. Rather than leaving it up to the music to make it clear that the wolf threw up the duck (alive), the narrator explicitly said that the wolf coughed her up alive. I thought that a bit weak, but the five-piece group of instruments simply wasn't powerful enough to convey that point by music alone.
As for the other pieces, there was a short performance of The Teddy-Bear's Picnic which pretty much sailed over the heads of the kids in the audience, probably because there were no words or narration to it. There was also a rather poor modern (1997) performance set to music of one of Aesop's fables, The Lion and the Mouse; rather than use the instruments to represent the animals, the whole thing was a rather chaotic mood piece. Again, I felt that it failed to reach most of the kids. Peter and the Wolf came next, and it was clear that a lot of the kids in the audience were familiar with it. They liked it, but towards the end some of the children were getting cranky, and some very small children (babies, really, who should not have been brought by their parents) were crying. Lastly there was a surprisingly short version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was okay, but again, five instruments really couldn't do it justice. During that last piece Sebastian started getting a little fidgety, and laid down on the coats on the floor at my feet. But he really wasn't too bad.
After that we all went to Bertucci's and had a surprisingly nice meal together. We took my father home, spent a little time visiting, and then drove home. Sebastian was alert for much of the trip, but fell asleep in the last fifteen minutes. When we got home and woke him he begged us to carry him into the house. Teri tried, but he was simply too heavy. By the time we finally got him into the house, though, he'd started to wake up. Teri went to bed pretty early, but Sebastian amazed me by staying up almost an hour and a half past his usual bedtime, listening to me read chapter after chapter of The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle. Unfortunately this edition turns out to be bowdlerized; I'm going to check at the library to see if the original version is available.
Whew! That's the story. It felt like an awfully short weekend, but a good one. Time for me to go to sleep myself! Tomorrow I'll catch up by writing about the results of the allergy test last week. I'd made a voice post, but the auto-transcribe feature doesn't seem to be working any more - even though the post was well under the three-minute limit. I hope to catch up replying to some comments, and to write some comments to posts in my flist. Good night!
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