Thoughts on the Circle of Fifths.

I believe it was just a couple weeks after we started dating. I was probably out of soccer practice and our classes and dinner done. We headed out across campus for a walk and Kathy was so excited she couldn’t sit still.

Right on the big lawn in front of the music building she started to tell me the most amazing thing. She had waited all day to tell someone, anyone. She just couldn’t believe what she had learned that day. It was stunning, amazing, stupendous, incredible.

You make a circle see? Imagine a circle. Now, right her at the top is the key of C, no go back one. That key where the 11 would be on a clock is F. Then she went around the circle. See, to find out how many sharps in the key of C, (there are none), you just count and….then you……the F sharp key is then the key with ……

I was amazed that music could be so consistent, so logical, and so mathematical. But, of course, she had no idea that I knew so little about music. Oh, I knew that you held some notes longer than others. You had to sing in the right time. The higher up the note was the higher you sing. I am not sure I even knew what an accidental was. But, she was so excited. If she never learned another thing in college she would have died happy and considered the thousands that year at Judson cost her to be money well spent.

Her eyes were so blue outside in the setting sun. Of course, it was easy to see them with the magnifying glasses she had for eyeglass lenses. The glasses had plastic frames that were not exactly blue and not exactly brown, but mostly not blue.

She has told me thousands, scores of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of such little facts over the past 37 years since. She always has some bit of something that she has just learned about something, that somehow just needs sharing. It’s fascinating.

I like a few very special bits of knowledge. I know a lot of detailed trivia about pocket computers, computer processors, cars, and campers. The Periodic Table of Elements is my favorite scientific discovery in history.

When we were in perhaps the eighth grade our science class learned some chemical names and it must have been spirit week for a football game. A nerdy guy, named Micheal Stagger dressed down in a simple way. He rolled up his T-shirt sleeves. (It must have been part of the outfit for the day, because we were not allowed to wear T-shirts or blue jeans to school. No shorts either. Never.) Then he slicked back his hair like what we called “a greaser”. He marched around all day quite proud of the look. When anyone looked at him he piped up, “Michael Stagger! The WONDERS OF H20!”

Mike never did fit in much at Bad Axe High. He went to the city and became a nurse. This did not seem unusual to me at the time because I had an uncle who was a nurse. My uncle went on to work at GM making cars. At the time he was a nurse he said, even though it was an unusual choice for a man to be a nurse in those days he made a lot of money. It seems some women preferred that their husbands be cared for by male nurses. The wives were suspicious of the female nurses.

Anyway, I heard later that Mike was gay. He was perhaps the second or the forth person from our class to pass away. We were around 30. The first to pass away from our class was Rod Grady when we were perhaps 22. There were two guys (Pat Binkley and Ted Gage?) who died before or after Michael in a car accident just like Rod. Then I heard Michael died of AIDS. It must have been early or mid 1980s. Sadly, Mike and Rod were probably teased a lot. Rod because his family was very poor. Michael because he was just odd. I’m pretty sure no one in high school thought Michael was gay. Maybe he didn’t know himself. Maybe I was just out of the loop on such information. I have never been one for gossipy stuff like that. I don’t know why I bring all that up now, but the way Michael was just so excited about, “The WONDERS OF H20!” just sticks in my head whenever I think of him.