At the End of the first Week

I have had a wonderful and productive week here in Lexington, SC. Never having written a book before, I wondered how I would respond to the daunting task of actually sitting down and writing a book, but I started by making a file for all of the chapters I already had a sense of (which was added to during the week as my mind became completely focused on marimba pedagogy). I managed to write two chapters completely from scratch and I edited another chapter based on something I had written to a former student on how to wrap marimba mallets several years ago and I also made good progress editing an article I wrote for the Journal of Percussion Pedagogy in 2008. So it has been an amazing week - and I have enjoyed it a great deal. There were several days when I didn't even go outside because I was so into what I was doing, but by the end of the week, I started to relax a bit and give myself some down time.

I drove to Charleston, SC - a two-hour drive - on Saturday and spent a lovely day there. I had never been there and it was fun to walk along the water in the older part of the town. The weather was gorgeous - around 70 degrees and completely sunny. I walked quite a ways and took lots of great pictures - unfortunately I didn't bring the cable that will get my pictures from my camera to this blog, so that will have to come later. It was neat to see the style of Charleston - different kinds of homes, in a variety of colors on quite narrow streets - some of them cobblestone. I walked past a French Hugenot Church and heard the guide (who was leading a small group of people in a carriage pulled by a horse) that this particular church was the last French Hugenot congregation in the country. It was a beautiful church and just down the road from an old Episcopal Church that had several cemetaries, where there were graves from the 1700's!! I found the section of Church Street that was the inspiration for "Catfish Row" in the Dubose Heyward story "Porgy" (this story later became the basis for George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess"). I also wandered through the market place but didn't find anything I had to buy. A quick stop at Whole Foods and Trader Joes on the way out of town (all TJ's and Whole Foods are at least 100 miles away from where I am staying!) made a perfect end to a wonderful day.

After attending a non-denominational church this morning, I decided to take advantage of another beautiful day and walked a couple miles on the dam. There is an almost 2-mile dam on Lake Murray - a very large area lake (I was told it has almost 500 miles of shoreline with all the inlets and fingers on the lake), and there is a nice wide path for the "dam walkers," people who walk or run this stretch along the lake. I went halfway - one mile - and then turned around. It was a great time!

Then I came home, did some cleaning and a load of laundry, and then some baking and cooking during the Denver-Eagles game. After that I realized that I had a completely non-work weekend - a Sabbath - that I rarely get during the school year!! So my goal is to continue to work diligently during the week and explore on the weekends! What a novel idea!!

School starts tomorrow and there is a part of me that is going to miss my students and my teaching, but the other part is delighted to have this wonderful opportunity!