Happy Bike to Work Day! 🚲 It’s Friday, May 15.
Last night I went to my last middle school orchestra concert. Well, my 8th grade daughter’s last middle school orchestra concert. School concerts and musicals are among my favorite events of the year.
The community comes together. Familiar faces. Our neighbors’ children, now taller than me. Toddlers meander among the folding chairs. A young one adds mid-performance commentary: “Violin!”
The evening was a journey through our children’s musical development, from the beginning to third-year orchestras, with smaller ensemble performances in between. We’re reminded how our kids’ instrumental lessons start. Then we see and hear clearly … oh, how they’ve grown!
The beginning orchestra performed the first piece, “Pepperoni Pizza” — a repetition of four shorter notes (“pep-per-ro-ni”) and two longer (“piz-za”). As I listened, I remembered how just a few years ago, I was so proud of my daughter for simply holding a cello and sounding a handful of notes in a group.
The concert pieces got progressively more complex. The third-year orchestra — my daughter’s group — played a portion of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. I marveled at how our teachers got all our children here, to this moment.
My daughter and two of her friends played an extra song — one they chose after spending weekends over the past several months binging all five seasons of “Stranger Things.” They found the right arrangement and taught themselves Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill.”
My last middle school concert — I embraced it from beginning to end, and I beamed.
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📰 News around the DMV
NAACP asks US Supreme Court to overturn Virginia redistricting decision (Virginia Mercury)
Former housing nonprofit director found to have diverted funds for six-figure bonuses (Washington City Paper)
📷 Your joy
(Chris Montone)
Chris Montone — whom I met in March when I gifted him a puzzle that helped me through stress — captured this image late last month during a walk with his wife around their neighborhood in Kensington, Maryland.
“We came across some beautiful rhododendrons, and I just had to stop to take a few pics to share since they were stunning!” he wrote.
Share your photos of spring life across the DMV here. Enjoy the Bike to Work Day pit stops around the region.
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