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The view out of the Library in Milford today.

Thomas gets mail

This is a small sampling of the letters Thomas has been getting since he took the ACT: (He says he's had innumerable emails too. It's made him quite cynical. And it wasn't even a "proper" version because you're not supposed to take them until your senior year in high school.)

First day of Spring

View from Highland Library. Yes, that is a lake, and yes, it is still completely iced over.

It's never going to stop...

Every three or four days we get a peep at spring: the nighttime temp hovers around freezing and the daytime temp rises up to the mid 40's or so. But the days in between slip back into weather we had in the bleakest January: daytime temps of around 10F and nighttime temps of -10F--which is what we are going through today. And tomorrow is expected to be the same. Rumor has it that Wednesday will be warm (though with rain) but then immediately after we are expected to be back where we are now, below freezing in the day and worse at night. Even Frederick has reached his limits. He still goes for walks most days (though not every day--there are days when he refuses to get dressed or leave the house). But some of the walks have become fairly perfunctory.

Long nights, gray days.

Even the snow is sub-par: it's crusty and dirty, can't make snow angels, snow men or have a snowball fight.

...or maybe not.

The Big Melt begins

Meet the percussionists

Thomas had an all-day concert affair this past Thursday.  The idea was that kids from all around the city of Flint and other local areas would come in and attend either a 10:30 concert, the 11:30 concert or the 12:30 concert.  Then, there was an evening concert (which is the one this snippet is from).  Between songs (such as the Barber of Seville overture, a John Williams "best of"--including the theme from Jaws, Star Wars ("Star Wars!  Nothing but Star Wars!!") and other various crap movies, and the theme from Lord of the Dance, which features some blindingly fast violining and drumming from Thomas on the snare.  But, despite the fact that I bought a BRAND NEW, state-of-the-art digital video camera for precisely the purpose of uploading videos of Thomas's performances, Simon refuses to upload anything but this small piece, which was a short intro to musical performance.  This one was for percussion, obviously.  After the next song they had a thing about brass instruments, then during the next break the misnamed "woodwind instruments"  (very few still made of wood--the bassoon is about the only one, it seems), then strings and, just before the end of the show, the "and the rest" which included the piano, harp and electric guitar.  After the show, the conductor, Davin, invited anyone interested in learning about a musical instrument up to the stage to try it out.  Thomas, who was sitting at the timpani then, was flooded with about a dozen small, highly energetic "inner city youth" who wanted to bang on the drums as hard as they could.  Glad it wasn't me.

The next day I was getting our taxes finalized, which included processing taxes for both Thomas and Frederick (they both earned just too much money last year), and the lady who works as a receptionist there looked at Thomas's name on the file and said, "Thomas Cushing?  Was he the one playing percussion last night at The Whiting?"  Yes, that was him.  "Well, tell him I thought he was wonderful!"  So I did.  To which Thomas replied, "Don't be ridiculous.  So a person knew my name from the show?!  Nobody bothers to look at a program, memorize the name of someone and then talk about them later."  Thomas always has found truth stranger than fiction.