A Man and His Truck (or "why Stephen loves NM")

Rust. It is the bane of the car guy's existence. And New York State is famous among car guys for its 24-hour dry road policy, which entails salting the roads before a storm even begins. The amount of salt used in NY means that no matter how often you wash your vehicle, it is going to rust before your eyes. That's why car guys put away their collector cars in October and don't get them out again until May. But you can't put away your beloved (and very expensive) truck for the winter!

One of the first things Stephen noticed about ABQ is that people are driving around in trucks from the 70's and 80's, and they aren't restored or modified -- they're just trucks. Work trucks! People also drive their collector cars year-round, which is like a NY car guy going to heaven.

Here is a picture of the Silver Beauty in her youth.

And here's what New York did to her:

The floor of the bed had rusted to the point that stuff was falling out of it and the back fenders were gone. A couple of weeks ago, Stephen found a guy on Craig's List who was selling a practically pristine silver bed that he had removed from his truck in order to replace it with a tool box bed. Stephen used the car trailer to pick up the new bed and bring it home. Last weekend he removed the old bed from the truck using a torch since the bolts were so rusted.

Last night when I got home, he was positioning the new bed.

And here's the Silver Beauty looking a little more beautiful. Stephen wants me to point out that he has done all of this in our driveway in January and February, sometimes without a jacket!

Tiny Pretty Things

It's so easy to get caught up in the grand vistas while out walking in the desert and miss what's up close. Today I decided to focus on the small beauties.

School

When the second semester started in January, I began filling a long-term sub position for a middle school band director who is taking a leave of absence to deal with an illness in the family. I have a jazz band, sixth grade band, seventh grade band, and eighth grade band, each of which has an hour of rehearsal every day. Intense!

APS (Albuquerque Public Schools) is like other schools in which I've taught and also very different because of its immense size. Here are some facts:

APS is the largest school district in New Mexico. APS provides educational services to students in Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, Corrales, Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, Tijeras, San Antonito, and Edgewood. Additionally, it serves Laguna and Isleta pueblos, Chilili, Tohajiilee, and the Atrisco Land Grant. Albuquerque Public Schools is also the city’s second largest employer, providing jobs for nearly 11,500 people. We are considered an urban-suburban-rural school district. We also are a widely diverse district, with more than a third of our students coming from homes where the primary language is not English.

Schools: 139
Students: 89,500
Teachers: 6,500
Employees: 11,500

15,000 students in 50 schools are receiving bilingual educations

More than 1 in 10 students are receiving special education services, including 1 in 20 who are receiving gifted education services

Students Eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch 63.9%
Percentage of English Language Learners 18%
Percentage of Students with Disabilities 14.4%
*Total number of students doesn't include charter school students.

Student Ethnicity
Hispanic 66.1%
Caucasian/White 22.7%
American Indian 4.2%
African American 2.9%
Asian 2.3%
Other (Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, etc.) 1.8%

The APS Homeless Project served more than 5,000 homeless students in 2008-09.
The graduation rate is 63.2% (closer to 80% if you count students who take more than four years to graduate).

The school I'm teaching in now is in the East Mountains, and has fewer English Language Learners than the schools in the city, which is helpful to me because I am just starting to try to learn Spanish. The principal is excellent and the teachers seem dedicated and caring. The teachers have laptops and there is wi-fi so you can take attendance and do your grading, but the band room has no smartboard or even a white board, no place to plug in my ipod or even a good stereo system. I forgot how much I hate chalk! The faculty and staff have been very helpful and friendly. And kids are kids, no matter where you go.

One major difference between APS and the small districts I'm used to, is that APS is so huge that it handles everything internally, they don't seem to contract out anything. For instance, I took some instruments to the district instrument repair shop! No kidding. There are two full-time repair people working there. On my way to the instrument repair shop, I passed the glazier shop, the small engine repair shop, the locksmith shop, the electronics repair shop, and so many more that I can't remember! It was amazing.

APS is adopting the Common Core Standards, and New Mexico is instituting new teacher evaluations, like many other states. The schools have Instructional Coaches, who are teachers hired specifically to teach and support the other teachers. There is a three-tiered license system with different base pay for each. Teachers are not required to have a masters degree in New Mexico, but a masters plus experience (or National Board Certification) will qualify you for a higher level license.

I don't know what I'll do when the long-term sub job I have ends. My lack of fluency in Spanish limits where I can teach (I'm pretty sure I didn't get one gig I applied for because of that, since they asked as many questions about language as about music at the interview). I might continue subbing or do something different. But for now, I'm enjoying being a band director!

Recital

I have been teaching piano and flute and oboe lessons at the New Mexico School of Music, just off Central Ave, about a 20 minute drive from our house. I started out by doing some subbing, then took over a maternity leave, and now I also have a few students of my own. The plan is for me to get more of my own students when the maternity leave ends. Most of the teachers at the school have performance degrees, some with doctorates, and are highly accomplished players. Fortunately for me, the school also needs some education professionals who relate well to young children!

The school has an annual Faculty Recital for which I was preparing an oboe piece, but when I started teaching band there was no time to practice, so I bowed out for this year. The recital was today, and I'm glad I didn't try to play without being well-prepared, because the level of musicianship is very high and I will need to be in my best form to hold my own.

The recital started with a non-faculty member. An eleven-year-old student of Tatiana, the director, played Beethoven's first piano concerto to "warm up" for his appearance with the New Mexico Philharmonic next month! After that, we heard members of the faculty perform on piano, voice, classical guitar, and saxophone. Today is Mozart's birthday, so there was a lot of Mozart, which is fine with me. Although I'm not quite sure how I felt about the Overture from the Magic Flute arranged for two accordions. Yup, you can't make this stuff up.

Our Neighborhood

We looked all over the city for the perfect place to live, and also in some nearby communities outside of ABQ. We considered commute time, traffic, the feel of the neighborhood, options for walking/biking, safety, views, and the likelihood of being able to buy or build a large garage for Stephen. Once Stephen "discovered" the Four Hills neighborhood, we kept returning, drawn by all the advantages listed above. At first, we really liked Tijeras, a town in the mountains East of the city, because it reminded us the most of the Adirondacks. But then we were told that they get a lot of snow and that the state simply closes the roads when that happens so you're either stuck at home or stuck at work until it melts. Stephen said he wasn't planning to take his plow to New Mexico, and crossed that area off the list.

Four Hills is on the Southeastern corner of ABQ. It was the "fancy" neighborhood in the late 60's and 70s. There is one entrance to the development, off Central Avenue (Route 66) and you drive through a little valley and across a bridge to get into it. That's one reason it's considered a safe neighborhood, because the one entrance is easy to patrol. There's a lot of property crime in ABQ, and we were told that wherever we lived in the city, we needed an alarm system and would not be able to be casual about locking up the way we were in Schuylerville. That is an aspect of city life that I don't much care for, but everyone we spoke to agreed that it is necessary. There is one security company in Four Hills that patrols in SUVs with armed response to alarms, but we decided that was a little much and chose a more traditional company; the one the previous owners had used. It only took me a couple of days to get used to setting the alarm, and it's easy to use. I haven't set it off accidentally yet!

Since Four Hills is an older neighborhood, it has plenty of mature trees in the landscape, which sets it apart in ABQ and makes it very pleasant. The houses are a mix of styles. There are plenty of modest brick ranches just like you would expect from a development built in the 70's.

And there are a few houses that would look perfectly at home in Clifton Park, NY. Then there are a lot of houses with Spanish style elements or New Mexico style, like ours. There are some that were ultra-modern when they were built, like this artistic design.

And there are some million-dollar mansions like this one that you can look down on from a promontory in the open space.

Our house sits between two cul-de-sacs. This is the gate into our back yard, and our neighbor's house beyond.

This is our neighbor across the street:

At the end of our cul-de-sac is the open space with miles of walking and mountain bike trails.

The open space borders on the Air Force base:

But you can walk along our side of the fence all the way up the mountain.



When you've climbed the hill a short distance, you can look back and see over Four Hills to the city.

On my way to work today, I saw this magnificent fellow chewing on our neighbor's shrubbery. Good thing most of our edible greenery is within the walled-in yard!

Albuquerque Rocks!

It was in the 50's yesterday afternoon so I abandoned the housework and went for a walk. Stephen was out riding his motorcycle. These photos were all taken in the open space behind our house.

A New Year, New Challenges

Christmas in NY was lovely, with snow at just the right time to make the country beautiful, but not to delay our flights. We stayed in Valley Falls for the first part of the vacation, then I stayed in Schaghticoke when Stephen returned to NM to go back to work. It was so great to have the opportunity to spend time with our families!

Our house in Schuylerville is in the process of being sold, and we made several trips there to empty the garage and clean the mess the inspector left in the house. Here are some highlights of the vacation. I kept forgetting to take pictures, so these are sort of random:

The Valley Falls house decorated for Christmas.

Making cookies with my Mom.

Lunch at the Gideon Putnam.

My Mom and I twice wore the same outfit without consulting each other. So funny!

I'm afraid that Stephen's vacation wasn't as relaxing as mine. He needed to load his truck and car trailer with some large machine equipment from the shop, some purchased machine tools for his company, his motorcycle, and various other large and cumbersome things from the garage, such as an engine and a transmission, an engine hoist, etc. The trailer needed some work first, and then it took three days to get the equipment loaded and secured, and THEN it turned out that there was too much weight, so some difficult decisions had to be made regarding what to leave behind. Stephen's friend Ray and his wife Sandy had volunteered to drive the rig to New Mexico, and it turned out to be a long and stressful trip with several stops for repairs along the way.
Debby and I helped for part of one day and lent some levity to the proceedings:

Speaking of stressful days, my trip home with Spike was one I'd like to forget. I brought Annabelle to NM with me when I moved in September, because she is an indoor cat who could live in the one bedroom apartment with us. But our outdoor cat, Spike, stayed with a very kind friend in Schuylerville while we searched for a house. Now that we're settled into a big house with a walled-in back yard, it was time to bring Spike to NM to rejoin the family. Unfortunately, he had developed hyperthyroidism in the meantime, a common ailment in older cats, and one that we only discovered during the week after Christmas. So he spent several days at the vet and had not yet had time to respond to the treatment when it was time to leave. Annabelle was uncooperative at security and noisy during the trip, but Spike was much, much worse. He peed in the soft-sided cat carrier before we even boarded the first plane, and pooped somewhere along the way. He howled and clawed at the sides of the carrier. I went into a self-contained family restroom in Albany airport and tried to clean up, but the mild hand soap was no match for cat pee, which has to be one of the most acrid, eye-searing odors in existence. In case you don't know, airplanes are very small, enclosed spaces without a lot of ventilation. The people around me were, I'm sure, horrified. I tried to explain that I didn't WANT to fly with a cat, and that I had even tried to find a permanent home for him in NY to avoid it, but I'm sure everyone had already decided that I was the crazy cat lady. Thank goodness my flights were on time. That was the only thing that went right that day. When Stephen picked me up, we secured the carrier with Spike in the bed of the truck (it has a cap) but Stephen had to drive with the windows open because I had become so stinky by that point. I'm just lucky he didn't make ME ride in the bed of the truck with Spike. Upon arrival at the house, I gave Spike a bath in the utility sink, then put all my clothes including my sneakers and coat into the washing machine and took a long shower. Ugh. Unhappy cat!

Now, a week later, things are starting to settle into a routine, thank goodness. Stephen still has to go to Oklahoma to pick up the trailer, which only made it that far before requiring an axle. And Annabelle still thinks that Spike is an interloper instead of her brother who shared a house with her for 10 years. But Stephen is enjoying his work and getting excited about projects he is coordinating. I started a new gig filling in for a band director who is on leave, perhaps for the remainder of the school year. I have a middle school jazz band and three grade level bands, each with an hour of rehearsal every day! That's a LOT of rehearsal planning, but I am so happy to have meaningful work to do. I'm still teaching at the studio as well, which means 12 hour work days for me until the end of Feb. when the studio teacher on maternity leave comes back to work. We are in love with our new house and I am particularly in love with the kitchen. The days are mostly sunny and although it's cold at night, it's usually in the high 30's to mid-40's by afternoon. Stephen is thrilled to be able to ride his motorcycle in January.
The excellent adventure continues...