Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet
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| And Wednesday. Ah, Wednesday, last day of everything WOO FRIGGIN HOO which was, nonetheless, very long. I saw my three Wednesday students for makeup lessons and also did Yohanan's PhD oral. After which I drove to NEC and parked, walked around a bit in the warm, and took Travis, Miriam and Jeff out to Legal Seafoods in the Pru for dinner. Jokes were told (including one with the punch line "Artie Chokes Three for a Dollar at Whole Foods"), I came back, and here I am today. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working.
This morning I had planned to sleep in. Cammy's idea was otherwise. I got up at the luxurious time of 6:10, had breakfast, did some food shopping, took my bike ride (second Gropius house in West Concord), nagged Maynard Door and Window about the ramp to the shed, and here I am. So it's been a boring two weeks, but there's been plenty of STUFF in them. So there. I want to rub it all over my body. In the meantime -- with regard to the future. I got confirmation that I WILL be writing a piece for a "composers respond to jazz" series at Merkin Hall, and it's for string quartet, woodwind quintet, and piano. Or as I've been saying, "half a Mozart orchestra, and the half that doesn't blend". To that end, I've downloaded a bunch of woodwind quintet recordings from iTunes, and it seems the engineers on those recordings have solved the intractible dilemma of the non-blending nature of the woodwind quintet -- by utilizing tons and tons of reverb. I'm hoping Merkin Hall will have that available. I also have been given the rest of the program (which is May 30, 2009, by the way), which seems to think tango qualifies as jazz (well, it may as well). So that's my big summer project. I want to rub it all over my body. And going through the calendar for the summer, it became strangely apparent that I've got nearly no free days between Brandeis commencement and the first day of classes. Cool. But do know, dear reader, that I WILL, for the first time ever, be attending both big commencement and mini-commencement at Brandeis on the 18th. And wearing that cool black with a few orange stripes robe that Beff bought after her Princeton graduation. Because it is what we do. Now there's something you don't see every day. For tonight, I am having a grilled salmon filet, and tonight I am trying, for the first time, a McCormick's Cajun sauce for it. Kind of as an experiment. If all goes well, it will join the rotation of possible salmon stuff. I also bought some more salmon at Stop & Shop this morning and a lemon-something aioli sauce, for future experimentation. So summer is here, summer is here, summer is here. Excellent, so my nefarious plan is working. So I didn't take any regular pictures the last couple of weeks. So just before starting this -- and just before the sun came out for good after a bit of morning rain -- I took pictures outside. So here's what these EXTREMELY FRESH AND NATURAL pictures are: The kitties out and about, doing the fresh and natural thing; the apple tree sculpture and its current environment; the current state of the rhubarb; the quince bush; some out-of-focus white flowers by the garage; the current state of the asparagus I planted last May (Mindy Wagner asks if it is mutant asparagus -- because it's so tall); and the new computer, as it appears in the computer room. Bye. MAY 27. Breakfast today was lite breakfast sausages with 2% cheese,orange juice and coffee. Lunch yesterday was a few pieces of leftover shish kebab, served cold like revenge. Dinner last night was chicken skewers, broccoli, and salad. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 36.7 and 80.2. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Hayesed and Confused", strangely enough. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TWO WEEKS Filling up the tank, more than $35 now, various shoppingness in Vermont including $5.49 each for 8 bundles of firewood. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I played for the Pirates in Midget League (9 and 10 year olds), and was the starting shortstop. According to the coach, I batted .358. I hit plenty of homers in batting practice, none in an actual game. One time I clearly threw out a runner at first (you heard clop-thud, the "clop" being the ball landing in the mitt, very clearly) but he was called safe. The first base ump who blew the call heard the kids making fun of him and his incompetence, and he stormed away on his motorcycle in protest. Somebody in the stands came in to finish the game umping at first. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: The cats loved walking on the railing in the Vermont place, and never failed to look awkward or pointless. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: pinosco (apparently from the Neapolitan dialect, and it was kind of a wild card word meaning anything from dented hat to deranged wagon). RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST THREE WEEKS: 11. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE My blood type is A positive. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: It doesn't get cold in Vermont when I'm there. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 11,267. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $3.89 in Vermont and $3.89 in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a frayed razor strop, the head of a pin after all the angels have jumped off, a scordatura string, seven of those things you have to put away right now, mister. Without text, masochism doesn't make a world of difference, unless the cat found out where I put the scissors. For you see, there had to be some leeway when we opened the grass seed, and when I gave coffee to the smurfs, they started to realize that branching is what you do when you have a cold. By the way, if I hadn't already made some gastrointestinal calculations, I would have had to find a bird to give my whoopee cushion to, so I'm glad we didn't find the dandelion where the car had been idling for so long. Dear reader, 19 days since the last update, and boy are my arms tired. Spring and summer activity commenced here, including full mowing of all the lawns (despite the brownness of some of it, due apparently to grubs) and weeding of the asparagus -- though there's been no picking of the asparagus. I am waiting until next year to harvest our Mindy-agus, and this year it's just flowering and all that. Indeed, right now the rhododendrons and our canopy-like bushes are flowering, and the lilacs continue to bloom. And our super-mod former apple tree sculpture continues to be in the back yard. I want to rub it all over my nefarious plan. So for many days after the last update, which was also many days after the Lydian Quartet minuet readings, I had those minuets stuck in my head, likely because of the super minuet glue that resides there -- extracting them from the raw recordings and e-mailing the mp3s to the students does that for a fella, after all. Plus, I grudgingly accepted a bunch of late homework, some of it egregiously so, and I didn't get my grades in until Milton Babbitt's birthday. Milton, of course, could have cared less. Excellent, so my body isn't something you see every day. So after finally getting all the grading done, there was the Brandeis commencements to go to -- a full commencement at 10:30 with super-mega projections, etc., as well as a mini-commencement at 1:30 for the School of Creative Arts. I got to wear my full Princeton regalia that Beff owns, and I was durned impressive-looking. CNN guy Bill Schneider gave the commencement address, which ended, "we broke it, you fix it!", and the Brandeis prez had to exit early for his own daughter's graduation in DC. In between the two ceremonies I got a little roast beef sammich from the place next to the Dry Cleaners, and got to watch all of our grads get their awards, etc. And afterwards there was time spent on the driveway outside the theater building with Rachel's family -- apparently Rachel's mom thinks I'm a famous composer, and I love to spend time in the company of people who have that particular delusion. Rachel also gave me a frog-piano type sculpture commissioned to commemorate the time we spent putting her musical into shape. It's now got an honored place next to my bobblehead Schroeder on my office piano. Now there's something nefarious I want to rub. After graduation I got home, we had salmon, and we packed for the next week to be spent at the Vermont place. It's always fun trying to make it look normal to the cats, who always suspect that we're going to put them in carrying cases whenever we seem to be moving a lot of stuff around, and in this case they were right. Once Sunny actually hid in the pump organ for such an occasion, so this time we simply shut them on the porch before putting them in the carriers, we packed the car, and off we went. While it was about 65 and hazy in Maynard, by the time we got to Burlington it was 52 and rainy, and it was not soon to exceed that temperature. Excellent, so my rub is a nefarious plan. The sun went in and out over the first few days there, and we spent most of our time indoors -- in my case with a blanket being worn as a cape -- but when it got a little nicer we took out some bicycles and rode along the Burlington bike path, very nearby. When we first arrived, of course, a lot of the place had yet to be summer-ready, and of course we couldn't find the cat litter box we had left there last August and that meant an immediate trip to Ace Hardware to get a cheap one (and boy was it cheap). Much later in the week we located the proper box, but too late, my friends, too late. And I'm sure the cats were embarrassed to be pooping in a purple box. After that, I took a shopping trip to Hannafords to get our lunches and dinners for the next several days while Beff cleaned and mopped and cleaned some more. Our only night out was that first night, and we went to the Vermont Brew Pub for an early dinner -- I had hefeweizen and Altbier, salad, and Buffalo wings with extra hot sauce. I want to plan to rub it nefariously. And then while weather forecasts kept promising more springlike temperatures for Thursday and Friday, they didn't really come until late Saturday and especially Sunday. Nonetheless, we took more bike rides and walks, played with the cats a lot, lounged, used our computers on what turned out to be very fast wi-fi (even faster than our FiOS, apparently), and goofed off. Beff did do some work on a video and instruments piece, but I didn't do any actual work except to make some handouts for Music 5, which I'm teaching in the fall. Which, in some small way, qualified the trip as a business trip. I usually cooked on the grill outdoors -- pineapple, salmon, chicken, hamburgers, even hot dogs -- and in the morning got to use the ELECTRIC stove. And then it was time to goof off some more. The only trips we took outside the compound were one to downtown Burlington to see what was there (where we got grapefruit paraphernalia, which I believe is legal in Vermont), and a drive to St. Albans, ostensibly to go to Warner's for lunch, but since it was Sunday it was closed. A snack bar? Closed? On Memorial Day weekend? Say it ain't so! We did see a little of downtown St. Albans, which now has a little arch, which brings you into ... a parking lot. Why couldn't I have grown up in a real city? My excellent nefariousness is working all over my body. For the weekend, Beff's sister Ann and her high-school age son Jack came up, which made cooking twice as bulky. Three of us did a Saturday bike ride -- in the SUN! -- and a little chicken cookout, etc. And on Sunday it finally got warm. Into the upper 70s, indeed. And our penalty for that was that while we were getting closer to nature, it was getting closer to us. To wit, in the upstairs bedroom area, where Beff went to practice the clarinet, many flying ants showed themselves -- it being the hot part of the house -- and I personally killed between 40 and 50 of them with my flip-flops. It was a time of desperate need for heroes, and I grudgingly filled those shoes. And our nocturnal adventures included watching a lot of the fifth season of Angel, which I found engrossing -- especially the episode called "Smile Time" in which Angel is turned into a puppet. As Beff kept saying afterwards -- "Stupid hands. Stupid string." My excellent body is working nefarious every day, so! Yesterday was Memorial Day, and of course we had to re-pack, fool the cats into not thinking they were going into boxes again, and we had a reasonably eventless drive back to Maynard, a reasonably eventless bike ride to Boon Lake and back, and a reasonably eventless cooking of dinner, etc. As usual, it was nice to be back with my STUFF, and as usual, I had a pile of letters to write. Still do. Today I already went to pick up the held mail (unimpressive), Beff picked up and went to Bangor for meetings and to meet with a guy doing work on THAT house, and shortly (he shoulda been here by now), our chimney is to be cleaned. Then I'll need to to a bike ride, and to take the car to a car wash -- pollen, dontcha know. And then the summer goes into hyperdrive. I want to be excellent to see every nefarious day. Tomorrow, off to Chicago, stay with Amy, make etude movies (check YouTube to see if I post any new ones). Come back Saturday. Sunday, to New York, give Marilyn the toy piano. Monday to Wednesday, recording sessions. Back Thursday. Friday, Mary and Mike arrive, leave the following Tuesday. Then I might have a day. Then to New York again, back, I become exactly half a century long (timewise), Ken's party, and I go to Italy. Where I might FINALLY get the time to start my piece -- for which I still have no usable or non-usable ideas. So there, smarty pants. Today's pictures include a super-closeup of blossoms on one of our shrubs, Sunny making nice with a BIG piece of asparagus I picked in our back yard (an old asparagus, not a Mindy-agus), two views of the lake from the summer place, various views inside the Vermont place, and the new arch in the city of St. Albans. Bye. JUNE 9. Lunch today is supermarket sushi. Breakfast was orange juice and ice coffee. Dinner last night was salmon fillets, asparagus, salad, apple pie, black and tan ice cream from Ericksons, and much beer. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 42.3 and 92.8. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS A little bit of Mary's piccolo demos, but it had been something else I can't identify. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TWO WEEKS Filling up the tank, more than $35 now, shopping in Chicago $47, various dinners with Mike and Mary, ca. $70, down payment on new siding, $15,741.50. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When the family had a tent trailer, we got into the pattern of camping at the Island Pond campsites every year; in the latter part of this tradition, we had the "extra room" that zips onto the side of the sleeper part of the tent trailer, where we could sit and read while it rained. Every year we went I'd go to campsite 29 and yell to hear echoes and was hoarse the rest of the week. It was at the Island Pond beach where I first learned how to float, and quickly thereafter how to swim -- after having taking a summer's worth of swimming lessons and never getting beyond "rhythmic breathing". NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: With the hot weather, they sleep at the end of the bed and get all stretchy. Sunny likes to jump for dragonflies outside. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: crumbot (origin obscure, but it means the gap between threads on a screweye). RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 7 (Fromm commissions). FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I was once on WVMT radio when waiting to meet Santa Claus in Burlington, Vermont. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Woodwind quintet is easy to write for. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 11,267. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $3.93 in Maynard, $4.25 in Connecticut, $3.97 in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE brass knuckles, a collection of baby pictures that includes a lock of hair, some of the pollen running down the side of the back windshield, the time spent waiting for the next distant clap of thunder. Instead of gyrating with our cupcakes, we found the place inside my head that makes motor oil seem less expensive -- so that meant we could spell the word "intransigence" any way we wanted to, although when we told that to the police they had to scratch their elbows. On the way to the bend, we found some meaning in the way that the Philips head screwdrivers uncorked their big ones, so we stopped and made philosophical pie. Dear reader, I was just at Brandeis, for reasons to be explained later, and I was confronted by one of my colleagues for not having recently updated here. It was suggested that I put in a link to "Nag Davy About His Blog", but I think that's too hard to do with this cheap software, not to mention kind of silly. But one thing is for certain. This is the last update until the end of July, since I will be way, way away for the better part of valor, and for the better part of the intervening time. Which I find to be nutty. Hey, it's even less than two weeks since the last one! So I average pretty goodly here. So what I bain doing? Stuff! Some of it nutty stuff! The day OF the last update, I did my update. Beff went to Maine and conferred with the guy doing work on that house (who also plays trumpet in the Bangor Symphony, and that's something I want to rub over my whole body). Meanwhile, the next morning I up and drove real early to the airport for a 6:30 flight. Alas, by 2:50 I was wide awake, so a bit of cleaning up was done in the dark, and so on, and then I drove to the tune of precious little traffic, and parked at the airport. Then, guess what -- I got on a plane! Yes, an Airbus 320 to Chicago, after which I got on the CTA and got off in the loop at Jackson, where Amy D (Amy B-D, really) picked me up. I was there so we could work together on the 24 toods she was to record the following week. Amy' has a silver Cooper Mini, and I rode in it. The dashboard is futuristic -- or at least it's big -- and in the time I spent waiting to be picked up, I got some packs of giant Smarties at a little Walgreens across from Chicago City Hall. Because it's what I do. Amy had 3 hours worth of piano students that day, of all sizes and abilities, and I was amused to hear a bit of stuff from the Denes Agay Joy of Jazz and Joy of Boogie Woogie books I played from when *I* was a kid ("haul it 'cross the river 'fore the boss comes 'round" stuck in my head). Amy was sort of amazingly energetic in these lessons -- and me? I was in the dining room, web surfing, doing e-mail, etc., on my Mac Book Pro. Amy cooked, and it was all good -- including some pizza with clams and clam sauce. On my second day there, we made a shop to Treasure Island, which was pretty much a deluxe little Stop and Shop that billed itself as America's "most European" supermarket. Which apparently was not the decor, but how far the dollar went there. Rim shot. I got myself snacking pickles, olives, more big Smarties, etc. and even lemon juice. Why? Because I could. I even got Temptations cat treats! Why? Because it's something you don't see every day. Incidentally, it happened that on the way to the supermarket we passed Obama's house. Cool. On Thursday Amy had no students and on Friday just two. So we spent that time video-recording 21 of the toods on the Flip, and I learned the new incarnation of iMovie that ships with Leopard on Intel Macs. The interface was not what I was used to, but this version has options to upload directly to YouTube, and since that was my intent with these videos, that's how I did it. You can see these movies by clicking on the blue links down and to the left (20 on one page, another (Third in the Hand) on the second page). During my time there I bonded with the cats (Ranjith and Reena), who make a few cameo appearances in the videos (especially Rick's Mood, Accents of Malice and Pink Tab). Much of our recording time was actually spent editing the videos and figuring out the "project" format in the software, but lots were up there by the time I went back Saturday morning. Much time was spent with the windows open, so traffic noise and birds are also occasionally evident in the videos. We got up *very* early for my 7 am flight, and even with non-weekday traffic, there was at least one construction delay near O'Hare airport, but otherwise, I was there in plenty of time. My parking cost $84, and I hightailed it out of Logan to home. Geoffy was here when I got back, since he was in town for a gig, and the three of us went to the Blue Coyote in Maynard for lunch. It was very good. It was also threatening to rain, so I up and mowed as much lawn as I could before it started, and it turned out that before the afternoon was done, I got it ALL mowed. That's a big job, especially if you are a chipmunk. Which I am not. That night we had grilled salmon, and what it is, too. Sunday was the next leg of this complicated summer, and after breakfast and packing, I put the older Schoenhut toy piano in the car along with its bench, got in the car, and off I went. To New York. For you see, I was going to New York for the tood sessions, and the first stop was Marilyn's NYU office to give her said toy piano. It was finally quite warm out, and sunny, so it was a good drive overall, though it was four hours door-to-door, once you factored in three stops, including one for gas. Immediately I took a circuitous route back to the west side (circuitous because who knows what's up with those Greenwich Village streets?), got on the West Side highway and was in Bronxville with Hayes and Susan before 5. When Hayes got back from wherever he was, I took them to dinner in Bronxville at an Asian fusion restaurant, followed by a beer at a sports bar (the Yankees were playing, and the game was on two monitors, though about 5 seconds later in one monitor than in the other. That's nutty!). Next morning I up and got on the 7:46 train from Bronxville and went with Susan, we exited Grand Central in the back, and I got me a sandwich and lemonade for $11 at Pret-a-Manger. I was kind of early, so I walked around a bit, then got on the 1, and got off at 157th Street, because we were recording at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Broadway and 154th. I hadn't been in that area since the June '03 sessions, and more is now there -- including McDonalds (coffee) and subway ($5 instead of $11 for lunch), so I made note. Amy was there and ready to roll, and the tuner yielded the piano -- a much, much gorgeous one -- around 9:50. Amy warmed up, Judy Sherman soundchecked, and we started to roll. We started with "Pedal to the Metal" and did several of the easy slow ones that day, ending up with 11 in the can by 4:50 when we quit. During the day, I had to swat at least (actually, exactly) one flie, midair, with my flip flop. Otherwise it would have gotten into the hall and onto the recording. After that I did dinner at Charley O's (must to have Buffalo wings, I said to myself, and then I did) and got back to Bronxville, alas, on a peak train (more money). Then I bonded some more with Rasia and Fritz, the cats with five-letter names. And at night it got strangely cold. For Tuesday, I took the 8:15 train instead, got on the S to Times Square, took the 1, stood in line forever at MacDonald's waiting for coffee, which they put into a paper bag, which broke a block and a half away from MacDonald's, and some coffee got on my flip flops, but most of it got on the sidewalk. Crap. Then I got a roast beef sub at Subway and was ready for Day 2. Which ended by a little after 3 with only four left to go the next day. I had scheduled a dinner with Harold Meltzer that night, and a tentatively also with Mindy Wagner, and when I got downtown to a bar with wi-fi, I had an e-mail from Mindy asking if we were on, and I called her. Harold had already done so, so we were ready. Mindy and I met at Manhattan School and Harold cabbed up to us, and we ate at a new (new since 1994, at least) Asian Fusion place next to Ollie's across from Columbia. And giggle we did, very much, and heartily so. Mindy was very nice to give me a ride back to Bronxville -- which she was glad to do 'cause it meant she got to see her old 'hood from the early days of her marriage -- and when I got back I bonded with Rasia and Fritz, the cats with five-letter names. Wednesday was a short day, and the early part of the schedule was the same as Tuesday's. All that was left was four of the trickiest ones -- including Wound Tight (Judy pronounced "Wound" to rhyme with "tuned") and Absofunkinlutely, and we got them in in record time. Absofunkinlutely had to be saved for last because it is so bass heavy that when Amy ran it on Monday there was no definition in the counterpoint (and yes, dear reader, I am one of those composers who uses counterpoint, which doesn't get me into any bars for free. Yet). So we made it last so that the microphones could be moved closer to get more piano sound as compared to room and echo sound. Meanwhile, I made Flip videos of Absofunkinlutely, Stutter Stab, and Moody's Blues and got Jeanne "d'Arc" Velonis to burn me CDs of the takes I videoed -- those I put together when I got back, and are now the first three in the "New etude YouToobs" page. So when we finished, I simply trained it to Grand Central to Bronxville and drove home, arriving just before 5. We had salmon fillets for dinner, and they were good. And more was yet to come. For on Friday, Mike and Mary were coming. Mike and Mary who, you might ask, and I would have an answer -- the Gli Uccelli people, getting maried in Breckenridge, Colorado this month, I am writing her some pieces, and Mary got a travel grant to come here, drink beer, and show me the cool stuff she likes to play on flute. So anyway, their plane was late, which meant that it was too late for me to meet them for dinner, but they nonetheless had dinner at Watch City in Waltham, and drove there in their CONVERTIBLE rental -- an upgrade they got because Mike guessed the number of peanuts in a jar at the rental car place. And meanwhile, Beff was in New York for an ACA festival. And by the way, feel free to listen to Mike and Mary (and Nathanael May) doing the premiere of Gli Uccelli, blue link to the left and above. So in the absence of Beff, it was up to me to drive to their hotel (Homestead, in Hotel Hell in Waltham) to meet them on Saturday and show them the way to Brandeis, where Mike had to practice (the piano). Then Mary and I came to Maynard, with a detour to Staples and Trader Joe's, to make flip videos of the stuff she so digs playing on the flute, piccolo, and alto flute. And by the way, apparently she only owns a piccolo because I wrote for it in Gli Uccelli. Which is totally nutty. So we made our movies, Mary enjoyed the relaxing apparatuses we have, including the Adirondack chairs, gazebo and hammock, and we also took a short bike ride on the Assabet rail trail path. When Mike arrived, convertible (metaphorically) in hand, we went to the Blue Coyote so Mary could have some clam chowder, then did the sightseeing drive -- including Bolton Farms, where I got me some spicy pickles, and they got apple pie, etc. We saw scenic things in Harvard, looked at graveyards, and came home, after which we walked to downtown Maynard for Thai. And Beff got home late that night. Yesterday was another day, and Mike did some practicing on the Klavinova, Mary ran on the bike path, we had some light lunch, and then they went to do the Transcendentalist tourism day -- the Alcott House, Concord burial ground, Walden Pond, Emerson's house, Hawthorne house, and all that stuff. When they came back, they took the bikes for a short ride, and then had salmon and asparagus and salad and apple pie for dinner. And meanwhile, it has been rather hot. Yes, hot. Yes, yes, HOT. Today is their last full day here, and the morning is spent with them practicing at Brandeis. I went in to make more movies of Mary -- I had some questions about tongue rams and double tonguing and slap tonguing, and we made movies in Slosberg Hall, Slosberg 212 and Slosberg 227. Later today Beff and I are meeting them in the North End at Forno Antico, where we plan on dinner. We also plan on buying some Amaro in one of the liquor stores, so there, nosy. Tomorrow Mike and Mary leave, and it's on to the next big things. Details shortly. So check out the green "Mary's Demos" link for some excerpts from the movies we made. Ah. And later this week, some pieces at Mannes, so I'm going back to NYC where I'm bound to bind with the five-letter cats again, as well as their five-letter owners. As I drive back from NYC I will turn fifty. And then there's a big party for Ken's hiring on Saturday, and I go to Italy the following Tuesday. All of which is totally nutty. And meanwhile, it is now known that I am writing for the North Country Chamber Players, a kid's piece, in Franconia, New Hampshire. Not sure how that's going to take shape, but everything is now in place. Now it's time to think of responding to jazz (Beff thinks it just consists of saying, in an Ed Norton voice, "Hello, jazz!", and so far that's all I've got. But as I point out each of the three or so times per day Beff tells that joke, that's addressing jazz, not responding to it). Ah, to go to Italy to respond to jazz. It's what we do. Oh yes. I just bicycled to Maynard Door and Window in the HOT to give them the down payment for our new siding, colored Pelican, to be installed in August. We're on our way. Today's pix begin with an extreme closeup of the some of our pitiful lilac bush from before I went Chicagowards -- all the rest relate to the NYC recording sessions. First, the mike and piano placements, me and Judy Sherman wearing each other on our t-shirts on Tuesday, three shots of Amy in the hall, and the recording setup with Jeanne "d'Arc Nouvelle" Velonis in the green room. Bye. JUNE 16 update missing JULY 30. Breakfast was Boca meatless breakfast sausages, orange juice, and candy-flavored coffee ick. Dinner last night was airplane food ( "vegetarian pasta" concoction that seemed to be macaroni and cheese with mushy zucchini skins). Lunch was airplane food (come to think of it, nothing counted as lunch -- I turned down a Swiss Air ice cream packlet). TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 50.2 and 98.8 (about 52 and 102 in Italy). MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The MIDI of the first movement of "Stolen Moments". LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST SIX WEEKS Service fees on Italian ATMs, 1 percent plus $5, service fee to convert Euros to dollars, scrummy Italian foodstuffs and ceramics, $$variable. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: In art class in eighth grade, I was a slightly better-than-average student -- Steve Salerno, who was to go into a career in art, always was the cool guy -- but I totally nailed one assignment, which was a drawing of a face in profile. Apparently I did a good nose -- because my grade on the assignment (how can you grade an eighth grader on art??) was A+ double weight -- as in, it was so good it counted twice towards the final grade. That's the only time I ever got that grade, and I have so far resisted the temptation to give that grade to the best of my own students. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They were very glad to see us, and snuggled in bed. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: Agrippaly. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST SIXWEEKS: 2 (e-mailed from Italy, of course). FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I never got braces. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Conductors perform for free. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 12, 067. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $0, but I did have to pay 30 Euro cents per kilometer when using the Civitella car, or share it; and the cost of gas there now is 1.54 Euros per liter, or around $8 a gallon. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a digital stopwatch that doesn't go beyond one minute, a two and two-thirds foot organ stop, Swiss cheese without holes in it, a disembodied voice that only speaks in riddles. No nonsense paragraph to begin this update. Flageolet! I am back from a glorious and glamorous six-week stay at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbertide, Italy. I am quite pressed for time, since there is much to accomplish -- including mowing all the lawns -- before I head to Vermont for the month of August this afternoon. So I will be uncharacteristically brief. Civitilla is a one-group-at-a-time residency, meaning everyone comes in at once and leaves at once. In the case of this place, that puts a lot of burden on the staff and the interns to fetch people at airports and bus stations. Indeed, after a 12-hour flying odyssey, it was up to me to a) find Chika Unigwe at the airport, who was also a Fellow (she found me), b) wait two and a half hours for the bus to Perugia, c) find the bus, d) get on the bus, and e) stay on the bus for three and three-quarter hours before being picked up by THE MAN, Diego. Because of the remoteness of the location, others had similarly complicated travel things to sort out. But there we were, in a very beautiful location anchored around a locally well-known 16th century castle with nothing but time to work and time to get over jet lag. It did help that the food was pretty great -- certainly the best among all the (26) residencies I have done, and considering it's competing with the glory days of Bellagio and Bogliasco, that's saying a lot. In 42 dinners there were no repeats, and the last meal was --- rabbit. Which I found out I don't dislike as much as I thought. There were 5 writers, 3 visual artists and 3 composers, and as soon as we learned each other's names, we did the king of bonding that happens naturally from sharing meals and trips. Oh yes, trips. The Foundation organized several day trips and half-day trips for us to tour parts of Umbria and Tuscany, and the ones I went on included Spello (Pinturicchio exhibit), Bevagna (medieval festival including dinner outside at picnic tables), Deruta (the ceramics capital of Italy), Norcia (truffles, sausage, cheese), Castelluccio (the pian' grande and a big valley of poppies, saffron and violets), and the southern Tuscany trip including Montepulciano, Pienza, and the Barbi winery in Montalcino (free wine tasting including the 2003 Brunello, nothing about which to write home). Klaus came for a weekend, with car, so we also did Assisi and San Marino -- San Marino being a micro-country within Italy, very scenic (I saw the Mediterranean!), and a good chance to get a good pizza. More importantly, after settling down, everyone seems to have accomplished quite a bit of their own work -- thought the Scrabble contingent was long on influence and short on the ability to get ME to join in. I was on a strict measures-per-day regimen given my deadline (a "responds to jazz" piece for Merkin Hall for next May 30), and some days that took me till dinner and even after dinner. There were also various presentations, and I believe every fellow did one (mine was July 17, and it was the abbreviated piano concerto spiel); they made the end of the work day 5 pm, since they included cocktail receptions and invitations to the locals to come. So I got there and took two days to get over the jet lag -- arriving Toozday night, and sleeping in on Thursday till noon -- after which point I finally had to start my Merkin Hall piece -- string quartet, woodwind quintet and piano. I had been so busy doing other stuff in June that I hadn't thought of a thing for this piece, and when it was time, I settled down in my studio (the former piggery, which had a bedroom and kitchen as well, and was remote from the castle) and promptly used my head to remove plaster from the walls while I racked (wracked?) my brain for things to do in this piece. So as is my custom, I took the opportunity to write a piano etude, instead (see link below), on a little fading repeated note idea that had been rattling around for a while. That I wrote in two days, and while I was just walking from one end of the studio to another, finally a few ideas for the Merkin Hall piece were in evidence. And on Sunday I started that piece in earnest. So while there I cranked out 3 movements lasting 18 minutes (fast, slow, tango) and 120 bars of a finale (be-bop, sorta). See the links below. I plan on working on the finale while in Vermont, but there is precious little time to do that there, given my schedule (to Utah Sunday to Thursday) and our entertaining schedule (Hayes and Susan, five days, woo hoo!), etc. And we settled into a routine. Occasional walks into Umbertide for the Wednesday open air markets -- that walk was a half hour, through fields and stuff, and there was precious little shade, and occasional drives to the Co-Op for groceries. Gotta say, the Gouda cheese was quite good, as well as the green plums and the pre-ripe versions of the red plums. Also, I tried out some wine that comes in plastic containers that went for about 2 dollars a liter, and it all sucked. Lunch was at 1 and served in stacked tin containers that we had to clean out ourselves after eating -- it was called the one thing they did to humble us. And so it did. The other composers were Beth Custer -- who wrote a terrific film score for a 1928 silent film from Georgia (then in the Soviet Union) and was a blonde clarinet player besides (just like another Beth I know) -- and Norio Fukushi, a senior eminence from Japan who nonetheless got into being silly with the rest of us. Norio spoke no English or Italian, so we communicated with our high school French with him -- and he played 3 really cool pieces in his presentation, very nicely scored. Norio also learned how to clap with one hand and to stick things to his forehead (a lot of people learn that when I'm around, it would appear). In the last week of the residency, spouses and partners were allowed, at their own expense (Civitella paid all my travel. Woo hoo!) and Beff came last Tuesday, getting right into the swing of things. She came on the southern Tuscany wine tour, and then had a combo heat rash with allergy and broke out into some hives on her arms and legs, so we had to stay out of the sun for the last several days. I used that development to stay in the studio and actually work on that finale thing, so we both got plenty of work done. And the last Sunday night, the two Beths played clarinet duets before dinner to rousing applause and scenic surroundings. We got back after a fairly eventless trip back -- though the really tall thunderstorm packages we flew around were a wonder to behold from 39,000 feet -- and Beff lost her parking voucher in the Rome airport (we think), which meant we paid for 7 days parking instead of 8. We got in last night around 8:45, and I immediately indulged one of the things I missed in Italy -- by getting cheeseburgers at MacDonalds. Which doesn't count as dinner. I then wolfed down some dill pickles. And we did laundry, and showered, and, and ... Time has run out, as it's time for the post office, pharmacy, mowing, etc. Next update is late August. Be good, and don't eat anything that says "I am random" on it. The pix are from the Civitella experience, as follows. My studio; the tourist's-eye view of the Civitella castle; the castle viewed from afar (it's at the far left); big fields of sunflowers nearby; a scene from the top of a church in Montepulciano; the piano grande; Chika and Gabeba posing in Norcia; the Tuscany group listening to a talk about Pienza by Nick and Jessica; chicken jugs; and a big church in the main square of Montepulciano. Bye. AUGUST 26. Breakfast was Boca meatless breakfast wraps (now squarely placed in the eww-why'd-I-buy-these folder), orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was delivery "rustic" pizza from Papa Gino's (Domino's left the buildin'). Lunch was half a Subway roast beef sub. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 47.8 and 86.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS First edit of "Crazy Eights", a white key/black key, all-in-octaves etude. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST FOUR WEEKS Gasoline, cost of renovations in Maine, anniversary dinner with Hayes and Susan ($250) and a bottle of 2001 Brunello ($70). POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I spent just a few weeks on the track team in high school my sophomore year, having worked a bit on the high jump (I sucked, but so did everyone else in my high school) and the 100-yard dash. I competed in precisely one race in a heat of the 100-yard dash, and came in third in my heat, clocking in at 12.3 seconds. Good for a football player, not as good for a short-distance runner. I didn't do the high jump. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 1. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: They didn't sleep on the bed much in Vermont, but certainly do here in Maynard. And Cammy had a proclivity for sitting on the music I was writing, while I was trying to write it. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Home, Compositions, Bio. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: Pisenello, an obscure northern Italian word referring to pea-shaped objects that lack a soul but have purpleness to spare. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST FOUR WEEKS: 6. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I got my first drivers license in graduate school, and took the test in a Karmann Ghia. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: "Respectful" political campaigns. Ooh, ooh, and CNN and Fox News never got off the drawing board. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 12,400. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS MONTH: $3.99 in Maynard, $3.82 in Burlington, $3.59 in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the white space in both O's of the word "BOO" wherever it is found in graffiti, the last bite of a popsicle that is about to melt off the stick, the abstract quality of purpleness, four of the things that you said you'd never pay for. Without mustard, the world would turn in the other direction, and you know what that would do for the angst deeply rooted in squirrels. Yes, and in fact, without a doubt, flashlight humor is making a comeback wherever Woody Woodpecker memorabilia are sold -- so we took a side trip to some tree bark. But of course, when I say that, what I really mean is the opposite of the same thing as the opposite of a cigarette. So when duty calls, my head goes in every direction at once. As I am wont to say, I am back! Between June 17 and yesterday I had spent no more than 18 hours in this house (which is now a different color -- look at "Our House" on this site in a few days for new pictures), 45 minutes of it typing right here, dear reader, for your reading pleasure, or the opposite of it. And it's what they call in Italy "fresca" outside -- kinda makes me want to drink a grapefruit and lemony fizzy beverage. I am resisting the urge to do so. So at the last update Beff and I had just returned from Italy and were Vermont-bound and gagged. Beff actually had to go to U Maine first to do her "I am Beff and I play the clarinet, tee hee" show for the U Maine summer high school camp, so I took the cats and my stuff and established a beachhead at the place in Vermont, and I only say "beachhead" because I love words with double h's in them that aren't onomatopeoia. The cats were glad that when they were released from their confinement, they were in a familiar place, and they immediately lobbied -- and lobbied hard -- for cat treats. Which they got Oscar, they got. I set up my computer, verified the wi-fi network, and got a-crackin'. Actually, I didn't -- for I was near the beginning of the finale of my responds-to-jazz piece (wherein the strings had just entered after a long opening piano solo -- ooohh, I do SO rock) and there was no piano keyboard on which to write. Beff had to fetch it from the house in Bangor. So in the first few days I did some bike rides, gave treats to the cats, and jumped up, down, and sideways. Soon Beff was to arrive with all the requisite accoutrements, and it got juicy and rainy -- which was just depressing, BUT -- I got to work on my piece, and soon I wrote a rockout fugato for the strings. And then I had to go to Utah. For you see, I am beginning a five-year term on the Advisory Board of the Barlow Foundation, and they meet for 3-1/2 days every year at the beginning of August to award the Barlow Prize in Composition and the Barlow Foundation commissions. I pledged secrecy for the deliberations and the process, so none of that will go here. But I can testify that all those involved in the (very grueling) days of meetings were put up at a ski resort outside of Provo called Snowbird, we were given one-bedroom apartments (two rooms each -- I had 703 and 704 -- since some of the grunt work was done in the rooms, the large amount of space was necessary), and we were fed at the resort's restaurants 3 meals a day. Which got to be a bit much, since there was always lots of food no matter where we went. In any case -- I did not know that the last-day meeting was so short. And since I had chosen Jet Blue as my carrier (it goes to Burlington AND to Salt Lake City -- did I mention Utah?), which had no afternoon departures to New York, just a redeye, I ended up with a lot of time to kill after the last meeting. So I took a tram up from the lodge (elevation 7900 feet) to the top mountain (elevation 11,000 feet), got nice views, had lunch, walked around, took a shuttle to the airport, and killed seven hours there. Wow. Being that Snowbird is at high altitude, I had the usual sorts of altitude things that we sea-levelers get, especially sinus headaches and mild vertigo. All was well after I left. The flying itself on Jet Blue was fine, no bad turbulence or nuthin', and some of the views were spectacular -- and it was quite impressive that, given how much rain there's been in these parts this summer, I spied no cloud between Pennsylvania and the Utah-Colorado border. Jet Blue itself, though, was a different story. Apparently they are building a new terminal for themselves, but for now an old terminal is being used that screams "the year is 1972!" which is far too small for the number of people using it, and -- get this -- some of the flights leave from a remote location that screams "the year is 1962 and this is where we load all the cargo!" to which you have to take a shuttle bus from the, um, main terminal. Add to it that it takes 45 minutes from leaving the gate to takeoff (JFK, dontcha k now), and I was pretty much ready never to return to this abysmal airline. Though since they said a brand new sparkling terminal of their own was to be in evidence by October, I might do them once more again. Unless, of course, they stop flying to Burlington. Nonetheless -- it was raining when I left Burlington and raining when I returned. By then Beff was in full swing at the Vermont Youth Orchestra Summer Spectacular, and I had a Burger King lunch on my drive back from the airport. The two are not related. So our Vermont time began in earnest, and I got back to work on my piece. As a sidebar, the flutist (flautist if you are a snobberitiousness) for my responds-to-jazz piece was teaching at the VYO camp (and she has a name! Jennifer Grim!) and came to the place one night and I made chicken. And then Hayes and Susan came for five lovely days, much of it spent saying "bummer about the rain, huh?". Hayes had just finished a piece for an August 23 performance, and he spent the beginning of his residency chez DavyBeff extracting and printing parts (and drinking orange juice) -- after which we went Stapleswards, had parts and scores printed, and off we went post officeward for the Express Mail part of our program. After which we bought chicken. It wasn't all beezness, though --- we did do a shopping trip in downtown Burlington followed by dinner at Leunig's (our treat), another dinner at Smokejack's (their treat), and a field trip to Middlebury for the Morgan Horse farm run by the U of Vermont -- which included a visit to the Otter Creek Brewery (I got a t-shirt, and so did Hayes) and lunch in downtown Middlebury, and the Visit To The Crafts Store That Would Not End. We also took a sunset cruise on Lake Champlain, on which we rode on the outdoor part and got waitress service for dinner, etc. Ironically, there were spectacular sunsets nearly every night where we were ensconced, but the sunset on sunset cruise night was quite ordinary. Try saying that five times fast. Also, there were some scenic bike rides that did not include me -- since there were only 3 usable bikes in evidence. And then I went back to work on my piece, with my composing board and my "Mikey paper", on the single bed in the lower level of the summer place. And when Cammy felt needy, he would up and sit on my piece. What a catty thing to do. I was on a strict 32-bar-per-day regimen (with half note at 132-144, that was actually not all that much music, unless you're silly), and I mostly stuck to it. MEANWHILE -- Beff finally got appointed -- after several false upbeats -- interim Chair of her department, which carries a ball and chain for a two-year sentence, and that meant a trip to Maine for Chair stuff and a Chairs "retreat" (I guess Chairs are expected to act French -- rim shot), and it also means that as I type, she is on her way there to meet with new students AS THEY ARRIVE rather than after. So finally it dried up for the last week, and many bike rides were in evidence after Beff got back, and we didn't leave the compound (or the simple) very much. And finally last Saturday I finished the piece, gave it a few final touches, backed it up, jumped up, down, and sideways, and ... started doing the parts. My favorite part of finishing a piece. That continues right now -- three done, seven to go. But of course, the day job is shortly to kick in as well, and two short days from now I'll be imparting the Brandeis experience to at least 41 students. For those looking on, I'm not only the Piano Etude guy, I'm also the Balances Piano Bench On Head guy. But not till it's been earned. As to the responds-to-jazz piece, it is called Stolen Moments, and you, dear reader, may view all 4 movements of its 25-minutesness in the "SM" links leftwards, and hear MIDI of 3 of the movements just below them. Oh yes, and as I forgetted to have been mentioning -- the first edits to Etudes Vol. 3 are already in. They arrived while I was ensconced in a begins-with-vowel state (the first thing to be delivered to that place's mailbox by the USPS in 2 years), and I spent rather a long time listening to the edits for mistakes and the like (my list is about 55 of them), and Amy hasn't heard them yet because she's Down Under until the beginning of next month. I'm not offering any of them up here because, well, because I'm just not. Meantime, while we were gone those four weeks, our house was getting a new look. We got tired of the old green and white aluminum siding that looked dirty and was impossible to clean in the front, so we got MDAW to take the old siding off and install new siding while we were gone. Due to the "bummer about the rain" nature of this summer, the siding did not get put on fully until the end of last week, and now they are painting the trim (hence my pictures would include ladders and scaffolds and painters, oh my), so it's the "Our House" link that will be updated when appropriate. MWA ha ha, even though the situation doesn't at all call for diabolical laughter. Now by our third day in Vermont, the answering machine stopped picking up, so we wondered if a big thunderstorm had killed the electricity, so we asked the MDAW to check, and all was normal. So we figgered the answering machine was verplunkt and Verizon voice mail was picking up messages -- which we had no idea how to retrieve. Beff came through here for an eye appointment a week ago yesterday, and confirmed a suspicion that dawned on me just before she left: when the old siding was removed, a wire may have been cut, thus there was no phone service, hence no answering machine picking up. Currently I am waiting for Verizon to ficks it, and the window for when they may arrive just began. Do windows have beginnings and endings? This morning I produced a full size score of Stolen Moments to send to Yehudi, since it's dedicated to him at 80 (not till next June 1), went to Great Cuts for a haircut, got breakfast stuff at Donelan's, got mailing bags at Staples, got limes at Trader Joe's because I forgot to do that at Donelan's, and mailed the package to Yehudi. Wow! And even before all of that happened, the painters arrived, and have been at elevated locations speaking to each other in French. The irony may just be that neither of them speaks French, and they are just doing it for fun. Or perhaps they are trying to have a retreat. Non sequitur and potpourri paragraph: Beff heard at the VYO camp a viola joke that I'd never heard before. There's a change for the better. Oh, and our last full day in Vermont featured a cameo appearance by my 60-yr-old brother, his wife, and his son. I grilled stuff. For the salmon, I used an aioli that I learned to make on the internet, and that I made for the very first time. Our quince bush has usually only produced 2 or 3 fruits per year, but it's got like 100 of them. Global warming? Or rainy summer? Travel for me this upcoming academic year? New York, New Haven, Cleveland, Fredonia (NY), Champaign/Urbana. So there. Lots of pictures today, including some more from Italy, which predates this update. ITALY: the valley below Assisi, viewed from Assisi; animals in Montepulciano; a church ceiling outside Montepulciano; old Roman amphitheater in Gubbio; "Barrels" of wine at the Barbi winery in Montalcino; Mt. Etna viewed from Pienza; medieval church stuff in Pienza. UTAH: valley in which Salt Lake City lies viewed from the Snowbird tram. VERMONT: typical sunset; Morgan horse riding demo; Beff n Susan n Hayes on the sunset cruise, way before sunset; Cammy being needy on my responds-to-jazz piece. MAYNARD: our house in its underwear. SEPTEMBER 9. Breakfast was Boca breakfast sausages, coffee, and orange juice. Dinner last night was macaroni and cheese microwave edition. Lunch was a 2-slice special at Cappy's. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 53.2 and 86.2. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "Pedal to the Metal", the pedaling etude. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST FOUR WEEKS The balance for the work putting on new siding. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: I blossomed early enough as a trombonist (now there's a metaphor I never want to use again) to be sent, in sixth grade, to the high school district music festival at BFA. I played second trombone parts, and never gave them back. Somehow I obtained a reel-to-reel of the final concert, and I delighted in playing it back and playing along on second trombone. I'm sure it drove my mother crazy. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Not so much cute as gross. Sunny threw up on the kitchen floor last night and in the master bedroom this morning. Time to change their water. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: Bio, Performances, Recordings, Home, Bio. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: crink -- not the foreshortened version of the word "crinkle", as many would presume (watch your false cognates, people), and not onomatopoeia, either. It's a Norse word and no one has any idea what it meant, or even if that's the right spelling. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 7. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I once owned a 1976 VW Rabbit in a color we called "puke green". WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Voters are not stupid. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 12,411. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS MONTH: $3.59 in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a small bit of fake transsubstantiation, a gravy train lacking wheels, the thirst that only those who are thirsty will ever know, an old recording of "The Miraculous Mandarin" on vinyl that's being reused as a peanut serving tray. We only spell "insouicance" that way because of the cartoon. If I were to start mesmerizing, there would normally be a plate in the destiny of hopelessness, and when five of us accumulate in that direction, there can't be any bicycles without refrigeration. So of course we dance. After the pallbearers have passed through, remind me to give my opinion of the grass on my back, because then we'll have to make pie. The ground has been hit running, to put that old tired phrase in the passive voice. When last we virtually spoke, finishing touches had been put on the new siding, painters were a-painting, and I was extracting parts to Stolen Moments. Which we all know and love as Davy's responds-to-jazz piece that was my summer project. I'm pleased to report that the parts all got extracted, printed and bound, and were sent to Merkin Hall the Friday of Labor Day weekend, and it was just in time to be frolicsome with Beff for the weekend. In the context of a couple of political conventions, of course. All that was choresome for me to do over that week (choresome?) was mowing of the lawn, and of course exercising by riding the bike (after several months of no use, my tires needed inflating, but oddly, Beff's did not). And, of course, cooking. Lurching spectacularly, I return to the last coupla weeks of our time in Vermont, where we normally got marinated salmon about every third day for me to grill for dinner. But we had discovered a garlic aioli (apparently, since aioli is a combination of words that mean garlic and oil, that would be redundant, but that's okay, because I delight in long parenthetical digressions) at Stop and Shop nearby that was really tasty on salmon. And so my quest to find said aioli in Burlington was thwarted. Uh, by the, uh, lack of there being any of that ... well, you get the idea (here's another pointless parenthetical digression). So, to create a verb where none previously existed, I internetted, and found a few recipes online. Which contradicted each other. So I went for the one that prescribed an egg, a cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of dijon mustard, and thou. I whipped it up good (I must whip it), and kept adding stuff -- salt, pepper, more dijon mustard, more dijon mustard, more dijon mustard, more dijon mustard -- and eventually I got enough tastiness to fill a 16-ounce jar that once held hamburger dill pickles. And it lasted a week, and didn't cost 6 bucks like it does at Stop and Shop. And as you may have guessed, we had plenty of salmon that week. Including that last Sunday when my bro', sis-in-law, and nephew came for dinner. By the way, my nephew is on the football team of my high school. Bitchin. So that week before Labor Day, Beff was in Maine yet again, a-chairin' and a-greetin' the incoming students, while I was busy carpal tunneling my parts. The piano part has so much STUFF in it that I decided to make it an 11x14 part -- thus adding the burden of trimming tabloid paper, AND doing a fancy schmancy binding combo. And then just when doing the parts bored me (and you) out of my mind ... in walked Beff. And we weekended -- which included the first time we'd seen Big Mike (ka-ching!) since last May. Yes, and lurching non sequiturwards once again, Mike came over that Saturday night, and we walked to the Cast Iron Kitchen restaurant -- which has taken the place of the now defunct Quarterdeck. Big Mike is a beezy bee over at WPI, with plenty of impressive-sounding responsibility (eww, I say). And he got the macaroni and cheese. I got the ziti, thus pulling ahead in the shortest-food-name competition. And I forget what Beff got, because obviously I won the shortest-name competition. As well as the latest-in-the-alphabet competition. And then Beff returned to Maine on Labor Day, noting the tremendous traffic in Maine going in the not direction of her. But here I lurch once more because -- yes, on the Thursday before Labor Day we had school, and my body readjusted to the 6:00 alarm by wide-awaking me at 5:45. I drove to the 'deis and parked legally, got a parking ticket (the parking gestapo is clueless on the first week of school), held a session of Fundamentals by giving a "test you should fail to stay in this class", went to the first Faculty Senate meeting, and then finally made it to the meet-and-greet first music dept. gathering of the year in the courtyard next to Slosberg. And there they all were -- the new, old, and slightly tarnished graduate students! And two of the incoming composers actually studied with me last year (I wanted to put scare quotes around "studied" (like I just did (right there)), but I resisted, dear reader). So I told my Italy stories (well, not stories, just .. "Oh, Italy. It was fun."), and Michele -- who is from Italy -- made fun of my Italian accent. So lurching, lurching. The day after Labor Day was spent first with a teeth cleaning, and then making a buttload of handouts and uploading them to various webspaces for the classes I'm teaching. And the whole department started getting stressed by the explosion of students taking music courses. To wit. Theory 1 had 34 last fall, and I taught them all. It had 51 enrolled. Fundamentals, which I am teaching, and which had 34 last time I taught it, AND which had 25 last year, had 45. Intro to Composition had 6 last year and 19 this year. So the wondering of if we can ask for adjuncts was a-goin' on, and meanwhile, the beezness of teaching happened. I started the official teaching of fundamentals while there were too few desk chairs in the classroom, and got all cosmic in Theory 2 (only 12 students) about K. 488. Hegelian dialectic, people. On Wednesday there were 45 enrolled for Fundamentals. On Thursday there were 55 (it must have gotten around that I played a vibraslap in class). So on that day we split the class into 3 sections for TAs to teach rhythm and ear training, and the small classrooms into which the sections went ... were, of course, too small. So the old arguments from upstairs about how music courses attract too few students -- got dusted. Meantime, of course, Beff got back Thursday night, and we relaxed as much as possible. Friday we did a bike ride and a downtown walk, where we stopped in at Door and Window with dog bones (and left without them) -- Steve came over for the job-done-walkthrough, and we showed him what was still undone: utilities boxes not connected to the house, two broken windows, pencil marks still on the corner PVC, a strange place where some indoor porch siding was taken off but not replaced -- and we asked for a new door on the porch. What we DIDN'T expect was for workmen to show up at 7:59 Saturday morning -- on a day Tropical Storm Hanna was forecast to pass through -- to do some of that work. Sigh. So, bathrobed, I pointed to what had to be fixed, they borrowed some bleach (not a non sequitur), I went to Stop and Shop for salmon for dinner (now THAT was a non sequitur), and ... well, it was very, very juicy that day. So we stayed in the air conditioned rooms and internetted. And had salmon with (commercial) lemon pepper aioli for dinner. Sunday we bike rode, walked a bit, watched the Monster road race go by, and Beff went back to Maine. Meanwhile, we acted out the saga of the iPod Touch. This is long, so either skip a few paragraphs, dear reader, or get a beer. Welcome back. Beff, by the way, has an iPod Touch as a perk of her chairmanship, and that means it's no longer necessary for her to get an iPhone when our Verizon contracts are up next month -- since the Touch does wi-fi, and whatever new phone she gets will only need to access e-mail on a G3 network, whatever the heck that is. Same here, I think. Plus, it appears Verizon is way better in Maine than is AT&T, which you have to get to use the iPhone. Well, so ... the Touch had been acting up a little this summer, when I used it. It was too complicated to get it to work on the Civitella wi-fi, which had a slew of passwords and proxies to use (Diego had to make appointments with all of us to set up our internet access, and multiple times because of a big hail storm), so I only looked at a few pictures, etc. But I did notice that once in a while it would just be dead when I tried to wake it up, even though I hadn't used it. It charged it fine, though. I had it with me in the Salt Lake City airport, and given that I had 7 hours to kill, I took it out once in a while and did some of the "free" wi-fi they have there. At one point, though, the iPod simply froze, and after about five minutes I cold-restarted it. When it came back up, there was no wi-fi -- in "Settings" wi-fi was grayed out, with the words "No Wi-Fi." Hmm. Back in Vermont, I charged it fully, and by the next morning, with my not having used it, it was dead. Charged again, dead again the next morning. SO, since it was still under warranty, I waited till we got back to Maynard to find the original receipt for repair. And the day before classes started, Beff found me the "2007 taxes" box from the attic, which I spent a long time searching through -- twice -- to no avail for the receipt. Much too late, I had a d'oh! moment -- these were the 2006 taxe receipts, for the return filed in 2007. There was ANOTHER box in the attic labeled "2007 taxes" which was correctly for the 2007 tax year, and ... found it. Went to the Apple repair place in West Concord, who said look online since we don't do iPods. Sigh. Online I went. I had registered the iPod, so it knew about it, I explained "no wifi, goes dead in a day", and then it needed my credit card to charge $31. Which was odd, considering it was STILL UNDER WARRANTY. So I called Apple, and was told it's free to return a defective iPod after six months, but shipping charges apply for the next six months of the warranty. WTF? WTF? Instead, I registered it under AppleCare, got a free box next day to send it to Apple, got an e-mail very quickly -- actually, got three of them spaced 62 minutes apart -- saying "Your 'dead' iPod is fine. Nothing wrong. Reinstalled system software, are returning it." It came the next day while I was out, and I had to wait until the day after Labor Day for another delivery. So I charged it, and ... huh, wi-fi was just fine. And it held a charge for more than a week while I using it sporadically. So ... lesson is that something in the iPod Touch software can cause it to lose wifi and drain the battery. Be careful! Over this last weekend, Beff and I were both using our Touches with our wifi, and now that there is an "App Store" on the Touch, we downloaded some free applications -- NONE of which worked on the iPod Touch. So, why bother? And the users manual is now one of the bookmarks in Safari, so I used it to find out how to delete applications. When you do that, all the icons shimmy, and that may be the first time I've used that verb in one of these updates. And then yesterday. Back to the routine. Played the piano with an orange in Fundamentals, and got even more cosmic in Theory 2. Meantime: I got back on Facebook after a 9-month hiatus, and all my stuff was still there. Rediscovered how very addictive it is. And today, well, today, I have to remember how to teach mode mixture in theory, and find a few good examples to pass out. Because it is what I do. Meantime, I noticed that the Marine Band had posted mp3s of their premiere of "Cantina" from last march. See the magenta link to the left. I had also noticed that Bridge's "Americans in Rome" 4-CD spectacularanza was posted on their site, sans ordering info, but you know, there it is. And then I finally flipped over the "performances" thing and put in what I know about this coming year. I confirmed that I'd be doing a colloquium at Yale next month, and will probably go to NYC the weekend before that, and blah blah blah and exactly two cats named Sunset and Camden. And of course, I got worked up over the Republicans, etc., so I am trying, with little success, not to get more worked up about them. Both names of the VP candidate have five letters. This Thursday the School of Creative Arts barbecue happens right on schedule, and as usual I am a guest burger-flipper. I have brought my chefs hat and "Two Fat Ladies" apron to school to be used for said occasion, which will be one of two things bringing me to the 'deis on Thursday. The other is a faculty meeting. Also during my time at Brandeis I was reminded that I am on the docket to write some incidental music for the April production of Hecuba, and I finally was given a copy of the play to read. Who reads plays? Why isn't it on YouTube? But that's something entirely different. As with The Bacchae, faculty and students are giving the play a new translation, and as before, the sound design grad student who was in one of my classes will be recording the music and using it in the production. On top of all that -- I'll also be thinking about the flute etudes for the former Mary Fukushima, now Mary Kirkendoll, and about a piece for the North Country Chamber Players in New Hampshire; here I will be working with Marie Harris, whom I have so far only met on e-mail. That one can't be started until I know for what instruments I'm writing. So there. And this weekend, the cats get their rabies booster shots, always a fun thing both for us and for them. I had a few pictures on my camera that I thought might go below here, but this morning in my morning stupor after copying the folder from the card to the computer, I mistakenly dragged the folder into the trash instead of the card icon. Hmm, Apple has to work on that "trash dragging" metaphor. Carp. So instead, some house pictures and some pictures from Vermont. So we have a sunset viewed through a glass, that same Morgan horse picture, Cammy viewing from his perch, the back yard, the new steps, and the house number before it was reattached. Bye. SEPTEMBER 23. Breakfast was Boca breakfast sausages, coffee, and orange juice. Dinner last night was a hot dog and a Boca sausage thing -- to get rid of the hot dog buns, after scraping off a little blue. Lunch was the 2-slice special at Cappy's. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 37.8 and 78.3. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The Schumann setting of Mondnacht. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST FOUR WEEKS Two bottles of Brunello, $115. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: After getting German measles my junior year in high school, I couldn't eat anything for about a month and a half. I remember going to a holiday party and being given half a tomato sandwich. I took one bite, and was full. By the time I started eating again, I weighed less than a hundred pounds. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: With the down quilt back on the bed, Cammy now sleeps right next to my shoulder. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: Home, Performances, Recordings, Reviews 4. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: slitch -- one of them in time only saves seven, so apparently it was version 0.8 of "stitch". RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 5. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE My eighth grade basketball coach called me "Rake". WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Free money for rich people who gambled and lost other people's money on bad mortgages. Oh wait, that's already a trend. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 12,476. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS MONTH: $3.49 and $3.53 in Maynard. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE any quantity of igneous rock, a Post-It with the phone number of a person long since fogotten, the place where you put your happy thoughts, a proton that suddenly got big enough to be seen with the naked eye. The fence, if literally interpreted, could bring down fire and marshmallows on the cat that saved his chicken for a tree. But without it, I wouldn't suspect that twelve of them would have had any iron. Of course, though, if we use a double sharp, we may have to reserve the barbecue for the gerbil run in 1972, which would be hilarious. And it's not just battery life I'm talking about here. More of the ground being hit running has happened, and this time in the passive voice. The unusually and spectacularly large classes now operating in the music department continue to be unusually and spectacularly large, with the thankful exception of Theory 2, which is at an even dozen. Fundamentals, though, has 56 students. Now that the first three assigned homeworks for Fundamentals have come in, I can verify without self-doubt that doing all that grading is mind-numbing and head-exploding. Not as bad as last year when I had to grade species counterpoint exercises for Theory 1 from 34 students, spent from 9 to 3 in the gazebo grading them and realized I'd hardly made a dent, but still ... as I actually tell the class, I grade 15 assignments, my head explodes, I put it back together, do another 15, etc. Counting up and listening through the many versions of major and minor scales in every homework is fairly boring, but it's what I do in order to have the experience. Of head explodingness, that is. The much grading now required of me has forced an improvement in time management over here, and so far I'm a-stickin' to the plan: do grading as soon as I get home from work, and have it all done as soon as possible so that the rest of the day is free for working or for squandering. Squander is a funny word. I mean, just look at it. Besides the muchness of grading -- and muchness of repetition of grading -- plenty of things have happened here, and not all of them use the letter "f". But don't think less of them because of that. As I brought up in the last update, I rejoined Facebook and found it addictive. It was like grabbing the brass ring, or not, since all my old files and list of friends from last November were still there. And I decided to play it cool, mostly, and not issue new Friend Invites -- except to a few of the Civitella Ranieri people. Nonetheless, I have doubled my number of friends in the last two weeks, which is not impressive, since several of said friends have as many as five times as many friends as I currently do. Facebook also has a popup chat mode, and I conversed with Amy B (fka Amy D) about her upcomings, including the tango project, the light at the end of the tunnel of which is visible. Also on Facebook, I uploaded Civitella photae, Bogliasco photae, and ACA photae. I believe said photo albums may even be public, dunno. So THIS morning I finished all my grading, for both courses, by about 10:45, so I was able to get to this computer to write this dull as nails prose in plenty of time. My plan for this afternoon now that it is totally free: squander it. Because it's such a funny word. In fact, this may turn into an afternoon of funny words. But don't ... snitch ... on me, okay? Hee hee hee. Much else besides Facebooking, and turning nouns into verbs, has happened in the last coupla weeks. First, Beff was in Maine for all of last weekend due to her Cadenzato obligatoriationnesses, not to mention a bit of Chairy stuff, and she left early the weekend prior so that she could -- at least once -- observe the marching band in full battle array. She actually Skyped me from that event, and was far enough away from a wi-fi source that the display updated 0.20 frames per second, but it was cute. I did actually hear music that sounded underwater. Yesterday was Beff's birthday, and it was even splayed on New Music Box (she shares the date with Mark "Mark" Kilstofte). My contribution to the whole affair was to Flip Video both of my classes wishing her happy birthday and e-mail her the video. Both of them came off as silly, as well you might expect. Beff's imminent return is not as imminent as usual -- Saturday instead of Thursday -- but I plan doing a red wine worthy dinner accompanied by some Brunello from very good years. After which we will go to sleep. And then, many hours later, wake up. One thing of surpassing silliness that happened was my discovery, via John Mackey's blog, of yearbookyourself.com. It puts your face from a photo you supply onto stock yearbook type images from 1956 to 2000. It was recommended you don't do it with your cat, so I did it with a kitten picture of Cammy. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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