I had 18,000 pieces of paper in my living room this weekend. The number is slowly dwindling as the volunteers come to get their share. They're going out, in neatly labeled stacks, making their way from trunks of cars to school secretaries, to teacher's inboxes, to kids' backpacks, and home, to parents.

Parents will get one more piece of paper, telling them how they can sign up for after-school violin class. And pay $360 for the year for the privilege. And rent a violin. We have scholarships, but not enough. So only well-off kids can play. Only kids whose parents have jobs.

Violin and orchestra used to be free, offered in school. It dwindled and died, death of a thousand cuts over eight years, and now my big, suburban, "good" school district no longer offers violin, or orchestra, or cello. 

I know why. Choir is cheap. Everyone has a voice. Bands march and play at halftime, and while we still have football (which we do), we will have bands. Violinists don't march.

The irony is that in first grade, my daughter's school had an assembly, where a man came and played violin. Regular violin, and electric violin, and she was transfixed. At the age of six, she decided "I want that!" She learned about the violin in a school that no longer teaches it, where music is fast becoming something to listen to, not to do. I volunteer so she'll have an orchestra to play in. She'll likely never set the musical world on fire, she's a decent middle-of-the-pack player. But I want her to have a pack to be in the middle of.

I volunteer so some kid whose family isn't musical might get a chance to find her voice. Most of the parents who sign their kids up for our classes are the ones who would have anyway, the focused, driven, involved parents who run the PTO and cart their kids to soccer, piano, tae kwon do, and chess team. Those kids will be fine. They always have, they always will. My daughter is one of those kids.

What about the others? The ones whose parents don't speak English? The ones who need a dentist, and shoes, and dinner? I know our program can't reach them. The flyers go to those schools, and I know they go straight in the trash. Rental for an instrument or food for an extended family living together in an apartment?

But I keep at it. Year after year. We expanded into two more schools this fall. The fliers come to my living room, fall and spring. My car is full of lawn signs. I have a board meeting next week. We hired a new cello teacher. I've learned about 501c3 accounting. We got a tiny grant from the county. We overfilled the auditorium for our year-end concert last year, and we need to find a new venue. The stage was full of beginning violinists, their arms just so, bows going up and down, a pint-sized orchestra playing Twinkle twinkle little star...

I plug away, so some kid will put a bow on a string and think yes.