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Music in the Mountains and Other Fascinating Bits

Well, I’ve done it again. Slipped back into old habits.  Taking a full month to post something new. If I’m not careful, they’re gonna give me back my old title – World’s Laziest Blogger.

If I have a defense, it’s simply this: I’ve been busy.

Since we last chatted, the big thing at the Sterling household has been my wife’s knee replacement surgery. For those of you not in the know about such things – knee replacement surgery is among the more painful surgeries out there to choose from. Essentially, the procedure involves stopping just short of cutting off your leg, then putting it all back together with titanium parts. The recovery is long and slow. And the primary care-giver (in this case – me) is pretty much on duty 24/7 for about four weeks.

We are now in week six (post-surgery). Cindy is doing well. She is allowed to drive herself to PT now – and that frees me up a lot. But God bless her – for about a month, she had me taking care of her. And my spiritual gifts do NOT include patience and kindly charm. (I graduated from the Nurse Ratched School of Bedside Manners.)

While C was in the hospital (almost a week!) I did manage to do another pitch for the Veggie Tales folks. Their response was a bad news/good news thing: The bad news – they went with a competing pitch. The good news: They liked my idea well enough to ask me to spin it another direction for a different pitch. So – we’ll see if they like the new pitch. I gotta say, my degree in music education did not prepare me for writing for talking vegetables.

Somehow in the midst of the nursing duties and the Veggie-pitches, I’ve managed to do some choral writing. (My music ed degree doesn’t really help me a lot in this area, either, for what it’s worth.) I’ve got a handful of new things in the hopper at Shawnee Press and Word/Jubilate. Details to come.

And most recently – I’ve just returned from a few days in the Pocono Mountains, being a part of another Music in the Mountains week, sponsored by Shawnee Press & Hal Leonard Music. Attendance was strong. Everyone had a good time. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I led a couple reading sessions, did a little teaching, and met some new friends. We capped off our time together at MITM with a hymn-sing on Thursday night, accompanied by a small but talented orchestra. I got to hear my brand-new orchestration for “Jesus Paid It All” for the very first time. (More about that at another time.)

My thanks to Joe Martin and the folks at Shawnee for having me back. It was great to get to visit with my fellow arranger/clinicians, and to have a some time to chat with music ministers and choir leaders out there who sing my music.

And now – back to the grindstone. I’ll try not to wait so long before my next entry.

(Yeah – I know – that’s a pretty low standard I’ve set for myself.)

 

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