A440

I've been somewhat busy lately, so the posts have been less frequent. Full-time work takes up more of my time than part-time work did (believe it or not). I went on a retreat with the staff at work for three days last week too. It was fun, but I ran out of extrovertedness by the end. I drew a fun picture of God, it was a pencil drawing of a burned-down forest and then there was a fireweed (in coloured pencil) growing in it. It was about Hope. The Bible says God is Love, but I think Hope is just as good a name for him. All is not lost.

At work today I planned a night of laser tag for the teens. I made an appointment with a high school guidance counsellor to get her help in recruiting more teens to our programs, and she sounded really friendly and positive, so that made me feel really friendly and positive. Plus, I got to help a girl with her grade 12 physics homework, and I got really excited and happy about that too, because I'm a geek. I can still do it!

Finally, I would like to share a fascinating piece of trivia that I learned from my dear friend Liz today. Did you know that when musicians play Baroque period pieces, they tune to an A that has a frequency of 415Hz? Nowadays it is standard to tune to an A that is 440Hz. So, I had two questions about this: 1) How does anyone actually know that that's how they tuned back then? and 2) Why would we bother to tune down to play period pieces today? And the answer to both questions is organs. The old Baroque church organs that still exist in Europe are tuned to an A of 415Hz, so that's how we know what frequency their A was back then. Also, if you still want to play Baroque music in a big cathedral with a baroque organ, you're obviously going to tune to the A 415 organ because you can't re-tune the organ. Liz says that when music turned more romantic, musicians started tuning to higher frequencies because it sounded cheerier, and that trend has continued so that today some musicians even like to tune to A 442. INTERESTING!