All About Strings

Mark has many and varied hobbies. We were talking the other day about how many of them were based on or dealt with strings. Here are a few:

1. Mark has been playing summer tennis through Lehi City for several years. He really has enjoyed it and has gotten pretty good. He is all about the form. He loves to see how much topspin or backspin he can put on the ball. He loves to serve with the proper form as well. He refuses to dink second serves over even if they have a higher likelyhood of going in. Last week were tryouts for the highschool team. Even though he is still in Junior High he qualifies as a highschooler since he is in 9th grade. Mark wasn't sure he wanted to try out because he has a lot going on already. He decided to do it though and ended up making the team. A few months ago he broke the strings on Marsha's racquet. During tryouts he broke the strings on his racquet one day and then on my racquet the next. His last day of tryouts he had to use an older racquet of his that had a broken handle, but the strings were still in tact. Luckily we know someone close by who restrings racquets. We are proud of Mark for making the team and hope has a good experience this year.

2. Mark has been playing the piano since he was eight years old. He loves it. It has been a great emotional outlet for him. He doesn't express much emotion verbally, but the emotion really comes out in his playing. One of the funniest indications of this was a few years ago when we told him he had to do something that he didn't want to do. He disappeared into the piano room and started playing the funeral march. Marsha and I just had to laugh. He has gotten really good and has progressed extremely rapidly lately. We went to a recital where he played a Nocturne by Chopin. We had heard him practicing it, but never heard the whole thing performed. It was absolutely beautiful. Several people commented on how much emotion they felt from the piece. Mark's piano teacher wants him to start playing some concertos. They require a lot better action from the keys than our piano has. We are in the process of upgrading our piano. We found a nice used grand piano that we should own this week. Mark and Marsha have been having a good time trying out all types of pianos. We will keep the piano from Grandpa and Grandma Lindsey's house for the time being. If anyone is interested in it, however, we would be willing to let you have it (if we can figure out how to get it to you.) Note: Since I wrote this, we actually purchased a grand piano. Here is a picture of Mark playing it.

3. When mark was in sixth grade he had to decide if he wanted to play an instrument in the school orchestra, sing in the choir or be in drama. Not a hard decision for him to make and he decided that he wanted to play the violin. We were able to borrow a violin from the Ogborns. He started learning how to play through school. He also wanted to take private lessons. This year he has been playing in the Junior High advanced orchestra. He made first chair right at the beginning of the year. He says he doesn't like it because he is a section leader and has to tell people what to do. He also said that he would only be first chair for a month and then they would rotate. Every time tryouts for first chair come up, he retains the chair. He tried out for Chamber Orchestra at the high school for next year and made it. When his friends come over, they don't just come to hang out. They actually break into a string ensemble. The picture is of Mark and his friends Davis (also on the violin) and Sam (on the bass.) Mark's violin teacher says that he is progressing quite rapidly on the violin too. She says that he has about outgrown his current violin - not the size, but the quality. After we recover from the piano, I guess a violin is next on the list of things to buy.

4. The first three items above are pretty obvious in their string connection. This one may be a little less so. Another thing Mark likes to do in his spare time is write computer programs. He has been taking programming classes at school. I have also been teaching him C#. He is always bugging me to write some requirements for him to program up. He has written some pretty useful things. He wrote a program that lets me keep track of prayers and talks for sacrament meeting. I can sort on who gave the prayer the greatest amount of time ago so that I don't call on the same people too often. You may wonder what this has to do with strings. There is a string data type that is very common in computer programming.

5. This one has nothing to do with strings, but Mark is also on the Knowledge Bowl team for Junior High. Knowledge Bowl is similar to accademic decathalon where a team of people from one school compete against teams from other schools. They are asked questions worth a certain amount of points. The first person to buzz in gets to answer the question. If they get it right, their team gets the points. If they get it wrong, the other team gets a chance to answer to get the points. The competition takes place on March 14th. Mark has been going to practices for that a couple of times a week. Two other member of the team are Sam and Davis pictured in the ensemble picture. (The competition actually happened yesterday. Mark's team took first place after two come from behind victories on the last question. Pretty exciting.)

6. Mark has also been learning Chinese. He took it for two years at the charter school. He has picked up on it fairly quickly and was one of the better speakers in his class. Some of you may have seen the news segment related to speaking Chinese that he was in last year. He wasn't able to take it this year since they don't offer it at the Junior High School. They do offer it at the High School, however, so he is signed up to take it again next year. He has been anticipating going to Chinese camp at BYU this summer. It is a three week immersion course where they have classroom instruction, activities and cultural experiences to help with language proficiency. The only obstacle we might have is that it might conflict with the family reunion. The dates aren't set yet, but the tentative dates are July 20 through August 12.

7. In his spare time, Mark is working on his Eagle Scout project, attending his YM/Aaronic Priesthood meetings and maintaining good grades.

We love Mark and are glad he is part of our family.