Faithfully

Are you prepared to take the oath?

Yes.

I, Beckie Sheffield, do--

I, Beckie Sh--

--Do solemnly swear.

I, Beckie Sheffield, do solemnly swear.

That I will execute the office of English Teacher to the 10th graders at Granger High School faithfully.

That I will execute...?

---Faithfully the office of English Teacher...

The office of English Teacher to the 10th graders at Granger High School faithfully.

Faithfully?

Faithfully, sir.

Faithfully execute the office, or execute the office faithfully?

Both, sir. So, help me!

I hope you all saw or heard Obama's Oath of Office this morning, as well as his address to the nation. Otherwise you won't understand what the heck I've been talking about.

It is so---what's the word? fitting? ironic? pleasantly, slightly symbolic?---that our new president was sworn in for his new job the same day I signed the contract for mine.

Yep, starting Monday, the 26th, I will be responsible for teaching 6 classes of Sophomore English at Granger High School. The former teacher was also the school's football coach who took another job coaching at Taylorsville High. Instead of hiring me to teach AND coach, though, which surely would have proved disastrous, the school has hired another coach and I'm taking over the missing English classes.

It's a hard thing, to take over in the middle of a year, but I had a pleasant realization as drove from the school to the district offices this morning. I heard Vice President Biden sworn in, and then enjoyed a pristinely beautiful new musical arrangement of the Quaker hymn "Simple Gifts" by John Williams. (I told you I loved that man! He's simply brilliant, proving it yet again!) How would it have been to be one of those performers? Up there with Itzak Pearlman and Yo Yo Ma. Here's what the clarinetist had to say about it. And they performed flawlessly.

Then Obama came on.

The first time I'd heard his name was two days after I got home from Chile in July 2007. It seemed everyone was talking about him on the news, and I remember looking one of my siblings (Anna? Or Thomas?) and asking, "Obama??" And the response was, "Yeah. They've already made every joke about it." Little did we know!

And then today John Roberts and the oath of office. Does it really matter where the word "faithfully" goes? Should the modifier go before or after the subject and verb? Aren't you excited to have many lessons on adverbial order and misplaced modifiers after this event?!?

Then we'll move on to studying Obama's speech itself. What kind of persuasive elements did he include? How did his use of parallel sentence structure make the message more powerful or memorable?? To what effect were his uses of pathos and ethos in his rhetoric???

From a new English teacher's perspective, I love our new president already. And I'm glad he got his job the same day I did.

I hope he will do his job faithfully, as I, faithfully, do mine.

And if his last name is Williams, I will marry him.

I've discovered anew my love affair with Williams... Both John and Ralph Vaughan. Let me refresh your memories:

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Early 20th century English composer of symphonies, choral music, and arranger of traditional folk songs. You may remember him from such LDS hymns as "I Saw a Mighty Angel Fly" (#15) or "For All The Saints" (#82). More famous ones include "All Creatures of Our God and King" (#62) and "If You Could Hie To Kolob" (#284).

Let's tangent onto that last one. Vaughan Williams wrote a piece for string orchestra and harp called "Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus." It's like 13 minutes long but extremely poetic, lush and gorgeous. I had the privilege of playing it at the Solo and Ensemble Festival in Olympus High's orchestra my senior year.

So what are Dives and Lazarus? It's from a lesser-known parable in Luke about an extremely poor man named Lazarus and an unnamed rich man ("dives" is apparently Latin for "rich man") who make opposite choices in life and end up in opposite places for the afterlife. The beggar Lazarus barely even eats the crumbs from the rich man's table (shades of a U2 song there?), but nothing is shared. When they both die Lazarus is carried up "into Abraham's bosom" (which I assume means paradise) and Dives to...a very warm place. A fascinating story, if doctrinally incomplete. Look it up.

All I wanted to say was the song is beautiful and even if you don't like the "Kolob" rendition you should love Vaughan Williams for it. (There's also a Christmas version here.) And I haven't even mentioned "The Lark Ascending," which is 17 minutes long and yet you never want the violin solo to end. And "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is a string masterpiece. It's featured in the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and I remember the Oscar orchestra playing it every time that film was nominated for something that year. Apparently the theme from the song is also a hymn that I would love to hear sung in church someday. (Let's ask Robert Cundick if he'll arrange it for us!)

So Ralph Vaughan Williams, I love you. And apparently you have a great last name, because I also love John Willams. (And if you really knew me you would know that already.) Remember how in the summer of 2003 I made a 5 CD John Williams tribute? I sorted tracks from his film scores into categories of Themes, People, Quests, Spirit, and Flight. For example, in the last one I noticed how many songs he writes about people flying:

"Flight to Neverland" from Hook
"Flying Theme" from E.T.
"Main Title" from Superman
"Cadillac of the Skies" from Empire of the Sun
"Fawkes the Phoenix" from Harry Potter 2
"Suite" from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
"Journey to the Island" from Jurassic Park

And since I made those CDs he's written a dozen more film scores. It's not only that his music is technically brilliant, it's the pervasiveness of his fame that astounds me. People worldwide can recognize the themes to Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park. Every two years we hear his Olympic Themes without realizing that he did them. Within two measures you can feel the imperial power of Darth Vader; within two notes you can feel imminent death of a shark attack from Jaws. The man cannot be overpraised.

Side note: In my Wikipedia searchings, I discovered that John Williams's son Joseph Williams is also famous: for a while he was lead vocalist for the band Toto, author of one of my favorite guilty pleasure 80s anthems "Africa" (here is a link to their hilariously hideous music video); and he was also the singing voice of adult Simba in The Lion King, heard in "Hakuna Matata" and "Can You Feel The Love Tonight." Ha!

Well, now you know more about these two Williams, more than you thought you'd ever know, and you can never un-know what you've just known. Aren't you glad. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go listen to "The Asteriod Field" track on The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack - one of the greatest action cues of all time. Mmmm mmm mmm!