Lower the bar

Number One Son will be playing with the Seattle Youth Symphonette for a third year. Make no bones, he is not pleased and tears were shed. He had hoped to advance to the Debut Orchestra, but his audition didn’t stand up to the stiff competition. It is a difficult thing to not be able to protect him from this kind of pain, but I know this is the kind of life experience that will give him an opportunity to grow. The adults in his life have made it amply clear that just giving up is not an option. So he will play, and we will make sure he has many opportunities to play in chamber groups and solo as well.

And then I read a couple of newspaper articles: one about airlines’ miserable on-time performance and this morning’s offering about the FDA’s newest labeling proposal. If airplanes are coming in late, we simply make the day 30 minutes longer (how many times have you wished you could do that!) so that the company doesn’t get dinged when the Federal statistics come out at the end of the quarter. And yes, these same airlines have to raise fares to pay for it, sorry.

And now the FDA is looking into whether symbols on the front of labels will make people pay attention to what they eat, thus ending the obesity epidemic. I know that common sense isn’t the government’s strong suit, but this is utterly ridiculous. If people really want to loose weight, the label is the least of their worries. It takes far more effort to eat consciously than is exerted in turning the package over to read the nutritional information. Right now, these symbols can be found on things like diet Pepsi and baked potato chips. I would propose the radical suggestion of reserving “smart spots” or green lights for wholly unprocessed foods, but I’m afraid my comments would fall on deaf ears. And of course, the whole label smokescreen does not address the issue of consuming fewer calories.

That’s right, when they fail, the answer is to lower expectations. But this does not apply here. Where I live, if we don’t get what we want, it means we have to work harder. So I’ll be driving my kid to rehearsal every Saturday morning. If you’d like to see the results of hard work, tickets are available at http://syso.org/. And you don’t need to lower your expectations: the cello section will be sounding pretty darn good.