Carson Daly, wisenheimer television host, just characterized bloggers as "a weird community of people out there."

He also said that people under 28 know what blogs are, and people over 28 do not.

How does he get a major network to give him any on-air time at all?

I'm having some quiet time at home, hiding out from the rest of the world, and there's a PBS pledge drive on television.  The station is using a travelogue about the beauty of Germany to encourage people to send money into the station; there are a lot of people of German descent in this area and some of them will certainly be moved towards their checkbooks by the beautiful scenes and a nationalism a generation or two removed from their actual birthplace.

Now, the person who should be watching the show, steeping up information and enthusiasm is young Jean, who has to be at her most German-enthused tomorrow at noon.  We are traveling a couple of hours north to Lawrence College where she will face a panel who are in a postition to give her a trip to Germany next summer.  She scored very well on an American Association of German Teacher's exam about a month ago and qualified to apply for the trip.  It's her second try; she also did well a couple of years ago.  She yearns for, burns for a chance to travel and learn.  As I see what she might be able to see, I yearn and burn as well.

But Jean is at the mall with her great good friend Sarah and won't be able to namedrop the city known for its wonderful violins or her eagerness to view the Badensee from a zeppelin, as its beauty seems to melt into the distant mist on a hot, hot day.

I'm not sure how I should feel about this.  The trip is a long, long shot to begin with and there's a point where enthusiasm would teeter and instead of being an asset in the interview, would be a liability on the long drive home, when she could be even more disconsolate than she might already be.

It's snowing.

I'll be leaving in a few minutes to meet one of my good friends so that we can hide out from responsibility for a while, and eat a leisurely breakfast and catch up on each other's lives.  Well, actually it is always more like catching up with each other.  Our rather similar lives could take over, but we prefer to to focus on the women who are being run by the people and service that take up most of our time.

It's Friday and I'll be doing the thing I've done for so long--no meat on Fridays during Lent--and looking at Connie's breakfast plate with some envy.  Although in so many other ways I do things differently and think differently than I did in my more organizedly religous days,  I'm holding on to the abstenance practice and for a different reason than you'd think although maybe when the guys who thought things up thought this one up, it was part of their plan:

I really abstain because it's a form of identifying myself to myself.  It's part of who I am, ingrained too deeply to be discarded because logic first tells me it's a practice that doesn't serve the function it used to.  Long ago when most people did hard physical labor all day, it was a real sacrifice to do without a satisfying food source--meat and it wasn't the Friday only practice it is now.  Now meatless days often mean going out for a fish fry or pizza, a treat rather than a sacrifice.  Still, even in doing this, a person has to stop and put something in front of their first impulse, their usual practice, their business as usual sleepwalk through life.

So it may serve a purpose for me after all, the same purpose those guys might have had in mind.  I know that their are other "fasts" and "abstenances" that would do more good in the world; things like giving up my car, or giving up my drive to be in control of situations, and hardest to think of, giving up coffee and letting someone else use the money I spend on it.

The meatless thing doesn't prevent me from doing any of those things, of course,  and it reminds me that it's time to remember that there are more important things in life than satisfying my own appetites.

Happy Friday.

Jean spent the morning at the state music association's district competition, playing her well-broken in Mendelssohn Concerto for E Minor for a hyper-attentive judge, and being rated on every aspect of her playing.

At this event, people can be in the room during the performance, although it's not like attending a concert.  For this event, the door opens in between performances and small groups of people, usually only two or three, or maybe four, rush in and out of the door, mindful always of not irritating the all powerful judge, on whom everyone's success ultimately rests.

There were five of us listening as Jean zipped and lingered through the piece, and if you don't know it, you might want to listen to it, not once, because it won't make sense to you the first time you hear it.  There are a lot of things going on in the piece, and not all of them sound beautiful until you get the story the music tells in your heart.  Then the music, sometimes sounding excessively expressive--what could possibly need all of those notes, dynamics, and bowing styles?--will satisfy you somehow, at least if it speaks to you the way it speaks to me now.

In this room, I was probably the least intent listener.  I've heard Jean play the piece hundereds of times.  First she played it in bits as she learned it, both enthralled and frustrated by it.  It is difficult and long, would she ever be able it learn it?  She was both afraid of it and excited by the possibility that she would indeed be able to speak it on her violin.  And in the past month, she has grown tired of playing it.  It peaked more than a month ago, when she and the piece really spoke with the same passionate voice.  Nothing could beat that, she thought.

But the calendar of musical events wasn't going to let her leave Mendelssohn behind;  he kept dogging her practice hours and her attention, as every note and rest had to be perfected, then played perfectly, and then had its perfection maintained for performance at other contests and recitals.

And Felix's beautiful piece will be following her into April, although she's really ready to bury it in a snowbank.  She got a top rating today, and will be trying to be at the top of the select group playing at the all-State event next month. 

You would think I would be tired of the piece too, sticking mental fingers into my ears to plug the sounds out.  I'm the lucky one in all of this though;  I love each note each time she plays it.  It's my mental Muzak, my station of choice, the tune I hum when I'm not thinking. 

End of the day and the list of To Do's are To Did's.

Shuffling into the house, exhausted by the racing around.

Glance at the mail, not much there.

A clutch of bills, some ads, one letter from the place we went to last Saturday.

They saw ten people, but "there was something special" about my Jean.

She's made it to the next round, whatever that might mean.

Eventually it may mean a long trip to Germany, all expenses paid.

Shufflng in a joyfilled, hopeful slouch now.