Independently Speaking

08/22/2025

Number Five has started band lessons.

He brought home his new baritone, pulled it out of the case and blew a couple blasts. Their cat's ears went down and she headed for parts unknown.

I'm sorry, Cat, but it's going to get worse before it gets better, and, here's the thing. It may never get better.

When I was going into the fifth grade, my mother arranged for me to go to school and choose my band instrument.

Both my sisters had musical talent, which my mother loved. I guess it would be a reasonable assumption that the talent would go three for three in the family.

But it was not to be. By the time I was eleven, I had a pretty solid belief that I was without musical talent, and had some pretty solid evidence to back it up, starting with the way the elementary music teacher refused to make eye contact with me during choir practice.

I did not want to be in band. Not at all. Sure, they got to sit on the stage during basketball games waiting for halftime to perform, but as far as I could tell, that was the only upside. My mother was not deterred, so there we were, in the band room talking to Mr. Pierce on a pleasant summer evening when there was literally no place else I wouldn't rather be.

I eyed the trombones and other snappy horns, but Mr. Pierce looked at me and what he saw was a tuba player.

Mr. Pierce wanted a tuba player coming up through the ranks, my mom wanted to do anything to keep Mr. Pierce happy, and I...well, I was only eleven.

I'm not quite sure how we got the practice tuba home, but we did and it took up almost every bit of free floor space in my bedroom.

The deal I'd struck with my mother was that at the end of the summer when students had to purchase their instruments, we’d call the whole thing quits if I still hated it. The fly in the ointment was that because tubas were so expensive, the school provided them. Thus, there was no purchase deadline. As far as my mother was concerned, that rendered the whole deal null and void.

As far as I was concerned, her opinion was bad form - very bad form indeed.

I showed, fairly quickly, that I was the one with the most accurate appraisal of my talent level. Someone once said to me, “If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk, you can sing.” I think that person's an idiot.

If every now and then I managed to play the correct note it was an accident, and more importantly, it was news to me.

I'm not saying I broke the band instructor's spirit, but after teaching in my home town for around twenty years, he fled to a different school system when he’d given me lessons for a few months. The new guy didn't interview me before he accepted the position, so that was on him.

The new band instructor and I weren't the only ones who were miserable. My bedroom was directly over my parent's and my father, for the next six decades, couldn't shake the memory of laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to me practice. For some reason the song I practiced most often was “The Old Gray Mare (She Ain’t What She Used to Be).”

Bum, bum, bum, bum...bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. The notes were randomly different every time, but I nailed the cadence.

After about a year and a half of mutual musical misery, the band instructor gave up on the thought of me ever producing discernible notes and offered to let me take up the drums, in order to fulfill my musical dreams. When I explained that I did, in fact, have no musical dreams, he offered to talk to my mother. She'd been listening to “The Old Gray Mare” for eighteen months as well, and she caved.

My grandson has shown evidence of being far more talented than I, so I'm predicting a better outcome. But, Cat, you may be in for a bad few months.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson

08/20/2025

08/20/2025

08/15/2025

08/15/2025

Some days I need to feel better about the world and I'm always glad when I find some joy just when I need it.

For instance, I recently read about a Polynesian canoe called the Hokule'a. Built in the 70s, it’s 62 feet long and 15 feet wide, with a double hull.

Now, I know about canoes; we've had one as long as I can remember. And, of course, Viking blood courses through my veins, so I know about the high seas.

Here's the thing though. About 1,000 years ago, when my long gone ancestors sailed the North Atlantic, they went from Norway to the Shetland Islands, a couple hundred miles. Then from the Shetland Islands, they headed to the Faroe Islands, another few hundred miles, and about the same distance from the Faroes to Iceland. A few brave souls went on to Greenland, about 700 miles, which was about the same distance from Greenland to North America, although on a trip like that about half the ships wouldn't make it.

On the other hand, around the same time the Vikings were taking baby steps across the Atlantic, Polynesian sailors were traveling 2,500 miles by canoe from Tahiti to Hawaii. It's over 2,000 miles from Tahiti to Fiji, and 2,600 miles from New Zealand to Tahiti.

Keep in mind, this was a culture without steel, without the wheel, and most importantly, without compasses or other navigational equipment. For a long time, anthropologists thought that Polynesia was settled by people from South America who built giant rafts and just floated with the currents until they ran into land, because the thought that those people were sailing with a purpose and a destination seemed so crazy.

The tradition, kept alive through stories passed down through the generations, was that the ancient Polynesians navigated by feeling the currents, watching the seabirds and the clouds, steeping themselves in the world around them. Turns out, the stories were right. Researchers found a man named Mau Pialug who lived in Micronesia. He was one of the very few people who still knew the old ways of navigating and was willing to talk about it. They flew him to Hawaii and he and a crew of sixteen sailed the canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti in about a month.

My Norwegian bachelor Great Uncle Carl's favorite bit of advice to useless teenage boys was, “You gotta observe!” He probably would have gotten along fine with Mau, because that was the key to his navigational prowess. He watched the sun and the stars, the wind and clouds, waves and currents, even fish and seabirds. His system worked well enough that he was never lost. He taught others to the limit of his patience and their persistence. With and without him, the Hokule'a sailed to Samoa, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada. Eventually it went around the world on a trip that lasted three years, covering 47,000 miles and stopping in 26 countries, all without any navigational equipment except for the experience and expertise of its crew.

It's a story to love. Maybe it's because the story is about people who hold onto their culture and traditions, even when they're told those traditions mean nothing. Maybe I'm just a fan of people putting their money where their mouth is or seeing arrogant experts proved wrong. Maybe I can't quite put my finger on why I liked the story. But it makes me feel better about the world.

And that's not nothing.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson