When I was kid all squirrels were grey. Then one day we went up to visit my cousins in the suburbs outside of Toronto and we saw something new: a black squirrel. It turns it was a mutant strain, but a successful one, and over the years the black squirrels have spread out across the northeastern part of North America, to the point where now in the 21st century, they are common in Westchester County, NY. We have a champion elm tree in our front yard, and in it lives a family of squirrels. One Saturday morning a few weekends ago I was sitting on the couch sipping my morning coffee when the new family of young squirrels came out to play. I called the kids over and they were knocked out by overwhelming cuteness of all those squirrels frolicking in the trees, on the power lines and on the ground. I counted nine of them, some black and some grey. Then I saw something new I\u2019d never seen before: a black squirrel with a red tail!<\/p>\n
I was out rollerblading earlier this week and I saw another one. That\u2019s two. I wonder if this a new variety of squirrels, and if it\u2019s going to become common in a few years.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Last Friday was Lizzy\u2019s spring band concert. I\u2019m happy to say that the school band is getting a lot better and Lizzy in particular is sounding quite good. This is important to me as a parent and musician, because school band was a big part of my early musical training and experience. Two years ago (Lizzy\u2019s first year in the band) the teacher quit at the end of the year, and about half the band graduated the school. So last year it was a new teacher and a ragtag group of beginners. So as you might imagine, they sounded pretty rough. But the teacher, Mr. Quinn, was quite dedicated and patient, and the kids have been steadily improving. This year was a dramatic both in terms of the material they could handle and the level at which they played it. This year they did a dress rehearsal at the school, which by all accounts was a big success and instrumental in recruiting new kids into the band.<\/p>\n
Lizzy had a solo too, the Hunter\u2019s Chorus by Weber, and I\u2019m happy to say she nailed it. And at the end of the concert the band director told me he\u2019s inviting Lizzy to join the honor band next spring. This is a band formed from the best players from a bunch of schools in the area. It\u2019s made up kids in grades 6 \u2013 8, and Lizzy is just going into 6th grade next fall, so that\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
This is the time of year when the evenings are really long. This kids are all excited about summer vacation and me, well, I have a couple long weekends coming up. Lizzy had the end of her gymnastics class last weekend, complete with a demo competition. It\u2019s something she\u2019s been working to master, so one night this week she was out on the lawn doing cartwheels back handsprings and asking me to spot her. Michelle was out too and as it started getting dark the fireflies came out. Firefly season is always special since it’s so short and only comes when the evenings are long. The kids caught a bunch of fireflies and but them in a jar, although I persuaded them to release our little glowing friends when it was time to go inside. It was a nice shiny moment of serenity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was kid all squirrels were grey. Then one day we went up to visit my cousins in the suburbs outside of Toronto and we saw something new: a black squirrel. It turns it was a mutant strain, but a successful one, and over the years the black squirrels have spread out across the … Continue reading “Squirrels, Concerts, Cartwheels and Fireflies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness","category-general","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}