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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Today we do without the dada paragraph. I have been sick as a dog (an expression I don't understand, or which seems insufficiently nuanceable to be useful), with recovery coming only very slowly. Beff got a slightly liter version of what I had, so we are out of phase, meaning I must be a bit more recovered. My symptoms included a return to the classic vertigo, in varying manifestations -- at times if I laid straight back, I would get so dizzy as to be very nauseous, have to sit up straight, and take several minutes to recover. A few times lying on my right side would cause dizziness after a while, and if I were dreaming, the dizziness would be part of the dream. Weird. Another manifestation was a persistent cough with unbelievable coughing fits. And -- I'm not sure if this is a symptom or a benefit -- occasionally I could see the future. For those of you wondering -- Rush Limbaugh stays fat. I had to accomplish and do much in the intervening two weeks, however, despite my time of infirm, so I scheduled it in between sickly manifestations. All my grades got sent in, and I did go to the faculty/staff appreciation thing where teaching award recipients were feted. When Dan feted me, the entire semester of hijinks was conflated into "the first day of class", but that's okay. In response, I used my Perrier bottle to demonstrate how the size of the resonating chamber affects the pitch it resonates. Thankfully, I did not also demonstrate overblowing. Thankfully for them, that is. And so Beff hadda be in Maine for various academic stuff part of the time, and I hadda mow the lawn twice. The new bit of lawn sprouted up nice and green, but some seems to be fading or even dying due to the lack of rain. Well, you can only do so much. But lawn mowing is a nice bit of exercise when bike rides are impossible because of infirmity, and our lawn takes an hour and three quarters to mow. Ipso facto! I did manage a few bike rides on the warm days, but mostly short ones. Once the cold abated sufficiently, I started doing the longer ones, including the one that goes through Stow toward Hudson, goes beside apple orchards and comes back to the Assabet rail trail thing. And my legs have recovered to the point that the hills don't wind me no mo'. Meanwhile, we did make our sojourn to Northampton, right at the beginning of the worst part of the cold, and we did fine. We saw David Sanford and had a great time at the Brewery, and the sum total of my purchases there was mortarboards and two rubber balls. I got the Buffalo wings and David didn't, and neither did Beff. But the beer was nice. So there. The cute thing about the drive back was programming our house on the Garmin GPS and going NORTH out of there on Route 91 to Route 2. The Garmin would have none of that, and wanted us to turn around and go south, and it kept trying to get us to exit, turn around, and change direction. So our original arrival time of 5:34 kept getting later as we ignored it ... and it was at 5:57 by the time we got onto Route 2, and it STILL wanted us to turn around. Finally we went through the traffic light on Route 2, and it got that we could do Route 2, and revised the arrival time to 5:14. Meaning we chose the faster route in the first place, so there. And on the 17th, I did commencement duty. Using our stripy Princeton robe and a rented mortarboard, I went to the Brandeis graduation, hung out in a stuffy room with important people (such as Marilyn Horne and James Conlon) for a while, marched onto the dais with the important people, sat there for a long time while it was very hot, and got out of there after a ceremony that was about 40 minutes longer than last year's. I stood up and was visible on the jumbotron when my name was announced as the recipient of a teaching award, and then I could do what I wanted to do, as long as that involved sitting down for a very long time. And then I became free, at least until late August. I celebrated my freedom by being free. Except I wasn't. Because... I had been summoned for jury duty in Woburn -- where they had moved the Cambridge office to -- and I put it off until the day after commencement. Last jury duty I did was in 2005 in Framingham, and got picked from a pool of about 40 for a counterfeiting trial. Here, there were about 150 jurors just a-hangin' out, a bailiff telling funny stories ("those of you who brought letters from your place of employment testifying to how essential you are to the business, put them away. Bring them back out when you are up for promotion" -- a joke he must tell every day). There were two trials needing jurors, and I had been assigned number 132. Numbers 1-80 got summoned for one jury, and a sigh of relief was breathed by me. Then 81-150, which would include me, got summoned for another one. So while we were asked about various reasons for being excused, a guy with a voice that could melt bricks asked questions, and a judge spoke in a little voice. Then the jurors were summoned sequentially starting with #81, the jury box was filled, summary exclusions were made by lawyers, and little by little the numbers encroached toward mine. The jury was finally seated at number 118, and I felt probably like one of those kids during the Vietnam war that got a high draft number. I was safe, and by 14 slots. So, no duty for me this year, and I got to call Beff from the road and say, HERE I COME! It looked like a pretty dull trial anyway, and would have taken until Friday. Speaking of which, on that Friday was the BMOP concert, and it was a mixed bag. No names being named here, but there was plenty of music by composers who don't much write for orchestra, some music that Beff described as "Whoosh! Spacy. Whoosh! Spacy" or something of that ilk. One piece used a bouncing basketball in rhythm, which was cool. And Lisa Bielawa's piece was expertly written, as you would expect from a composer in residence with an orchestra -- plus both movements started with the same music. If I were European, I'd stand up and yell "I did it first." Instead, I will say, and for no apparent reason, "MWA ha ha." And since classes were done, I ran out of excuses not to write music. It was kind of hard to continue to Pierrot Plus movement I'd started during April vacation, and it was fine with me to leave that holding. I had had a long complicated dream involving moving from place to place outdoors through pickup volleyball games, among other things, and for no apparent reason there was a background ostinato in that dream of a pickup eighth to a long note a major second lower, over and over, in a Fender Rhodes sound. Since I always use dream music when I can remember it, I discovered that the notes were F-Eflat, and resolved to write a movement of this piece with the unyielding ostinato. Something I have never done! So to keep the ostinato going and to get as much variety as possible -- well, see the "Ostinato Movement" link over to the left. It repeats almost a hundred times, which is not a record by any means, but it shatters my own standard by about ninety. It also quotes that same Brahms Liebeslieder waltz from the first paragraph of this update. Because I can. When I finished the movement and finished keying it in, I went outside for fresh air, and heard chickadees doing the same interval and same ostinato, except a fourth lower. Turns out chickadees are a dominant species around here. And finally I ran out of excuses not to continue the first movement. So I have been adding to it, and durned if the actual process of writing doesn't actually give ya ideas about how it should go. So ... I have a concept! Which will eventually be expanded into a process, and finally into an occurrence. Because it is what I do. And so next thing we knew, it was Memorial Day weekend, which it isn't any more.Corinne was in town and came to visit Saturday evening and stayed overnight, and spent the bulk of Sunday here. We picked her up at the Sout' Acton train station and had dinner at the Cast Iron Kitchen, as is our wont, and it was good. I had the ribs, which made up for in tastinessositudinousness what they lacked in sheer volume. For Sunday, we went out to get stuff for barbecue (shishkebabs, dontcha know), Corinne made beet salad, and all was good. We also took a nice trip to the Delaney Refuge for a walk, and saw plenty of pink lady's slippers (flowers) in the forested part, and went to the Minuteman Airport for pictures, and then to various uglyass McMansions so Corinne could take pictures for a possible pending publication. There was hammock time and gazebo time and cooking time, and finally trip to the airport time, which was cool -- it rained to the east of Route 128, but not here, so it was all splashy on the road and stuff. Solar glare made it impossible to read the Airport Exit signs, so I felt my way out, and luckily traffic was light. And yesterday, for actual Memorial Day, we did a pub beer and returned to discover a baby robin fallen from a nest aimlessly hopping around, and too big to be carried back up by parental units, who were hovering. It chirps about once every eight seconds, and at one point I saw it had gone into the road, so I tried to scare it back onto the grass, and its first instinct was to open its mouth so I could feed it. Aww. Anyway, we of course didn't let the cats out, and later Beff said the bird was, by now, toast (a strange metaphor, really). This morning, 9:30 am, the bird is still out there in the way-back yard a-chirpin', looking a little stronger and almost flying, but ... time to stop thinking about it. So on Thursday we up and go to Hayes's and linger until after the concert at Merkin on Saturday night. Gunther Schuller will be there holding forth, and apparently so will I. And directly after, we will drive back home, perhaps landing at 2. And taking a late afternoon flight to France soon thereafter. Oh, the fun we will have! So there we will be, and back we will come. Beff has been practicing her parts, and many of them are what you call "hard". Today's pictures include the obligatory seasonal dam picture, cooked asparagus from our own yard, Cammy and Sunny in the wild, a closeup of a pickle I sliced, Corinne and Beff in the gazebo, Sunny and Cammy in captivity, and some pink lady's slippers. Bye. JUNE 11 Breakfast this morning was grapefruit, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was marinated chicken, broccoli/asparagus, and salad. Lunch was Spaghetti-Os. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 38.8 and 81.5. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS the third movement of Stolen Moments. LARGE EXPENSES SINCE LAST UPDATE Full size keyboard with weighted keys, stand, and pedal $650, Avis car rental $279.79, Toyota Corolla $thousands. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: During the leaner years of grad school, I was ecstatic to get asked by Peter Westergaard to drive into New York, pick up some books, and drive them back to Princeton for the then-princely sum of 50 bucks. Alas, while driving down Seventh Ave, I hit the mother of all potholes. But all seemed well. A few weeks later I took the car (which was,by the way, a "Rallye Green" 1975 VW Rabbit) to Princeton Volkswagen for service. When I went to pick it up, it was no charge, with simply the words, in all caps, on the invoice: THIS IS A DANGEROUS CAR. DO NOT DRIVE THIS CAR. Shortly thereafter I dropped it off at Hans Kimm Small Cars on Route 1, signed it over to them, and exited. Lesson learned: don't pick up books in New York. Or perhaps don't accept money from Peter Westergaard. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Sunny has been doing some squeaky meowing since we returned from France. Obviously he never wants to see us leave again. UPDATED ON THIS SITE THIS WEEK: This page, Performances, Reviews 4. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: droohey, a fake Irish-sounding word briefly used in Switzerland to denote the act of turning your car off and on again immediately. The word eventually fell into disuse, replaced by "turning your car off and on again immediately." RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST TWO WEEKS: 0 (big woo hoo there, pardner). FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE ELSE I can crack my thumbs pretty much at will. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: Leftovers ALWAYS taste better the second time. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 13,462. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE RECENTLY $2.39 in Maynard and $2.70 on the Merritt Parkway. THINGS THAT YOU DON'T EAT WITH TRUFFLES my head, ladybugs, a tree trunk, manhole covers, 'Round Midnight. I sure have been out and about, with a strong emphasis on the "out". Well, "about", too. Just try parsing THAT sentence. So much must be reported that I will leave much of it out. And eventually, dear reader, you will thank me. I'm already thanking me right now, and as we all know, that rhymes with spanking me. Already we have lost the thread, so I will return to the first person singular and start again. I learned recently that parking can be dangerous, as we shift to third person singular: Beff also learned that parking can be dangerous. So I will back up a little. Soon after the last update, I mowed all the lawns, on Wednesday. As rolling-eye readers will be aware, that's and hour and three quarters of work and more than a tank of gas. But it is what I do. For you see, we were about to be out and about for more than a coupla weeks. And there was a rehearsal of "Stolen Moments" in New York on Thursday afternoon I was going to go to, and that meant embarking in the Corolla early Thursday morning. And on that Wednesday morning, I got a strange frantic e-mail from Jen, the flute player in the group, ending with "Sent from my iPhone" with "we want you to conduct this piece" in the body. I called her while she was still rehearsing and found out that Greg, the director of Merkin Hall, had agreed to step in and conduct the piece (which I had asked him to hire a conductor for, several times. Well, twice). Nonetheless, I produced a big score in case I had to conduct it when I got there. And by the way, Stolen Moments is the name of the piece I have been calling "responds-to-jazz" for nigh on a year now, for woodwind quintet, string quartet, and piano that I wrote at Civitella and in Vermont last year, and it was a real challenge as well as occasionally fun to write. So there. The players were the Lark Quartet, the Zephyros Winds, and Tony de Mare, and you, dear reader, may hear the performance AND see the score by clicking on the various "SM" links to the left and below. In any case. We were staying with Hayes, so we got there, parked, and I went into the city on the train for my rehearsal. Things sounded good, tempi were slow, players liked the piece, etc. We resolved to meet at Manhattan School the next morning at 9 for the next rehearsal -- then was the show, Saturday night. Meanwhile, Beff went into Chelsea for a gallery hop and I joined her. Then we bar hopped a bit, came back on the train and around 8 passed where we had parked the car and saw an empty spot with some broken plastic, glass, and chrome in its place. Immediately I cellphoned 911, who referred me to the Yonkers police, who referred me to an impound lot, but of course I got its answering service. I called Yonkers police back, who said I was misinformed. I had to go to the police station to get a release form for my car. And why? Whoa, dear reader. Some dude driving on Palmer Avenue had a seizure and plowed right into my car and the one in front of us (and two others, it turns out). Mine was pushed onto the sidewalk, thus it had to be towed. And thus began a bureaucratic adventure not even of our own making, and it being bureaucratic, was vast beyond reason. And, by the way, we STILL have no info on who hit us, except that an eyewitness said he had been taken to the hospital, and he had the maroon car still parked on the street with NY plate 520524 -- if you are reading this and know who that is, feel free to contact me, etc. So Hayes and Susan graciously drove us to the Yonkers police station, and ... wouldn'tcha know, the cop on duty said that to see our car we had to produce the title and the registration -- given that one was actually IN the car and the other back in Maynard, that would have been pretty hard, and we were kinda pressed for time. So eventually he figured out that Motor Vehicle records told him the names of the car's owners, and it turned out to be us (well I'll be!). So we got the release form to take to the tow truck people. And, of course, still no information on why-on-earth-was-he-still-allowed-to-drive guy. So ... next morning, instead of going to my rehearsal, I was treated to a trip to Dan-Glo service and towing in Yonkers, where we got driven to see our car in the impound lot -- pic below. With the rear left tire at an angle, it looks like all one could do was drive it in circles, but that's silly. In Yonkers they are called doughnuts. So we retrieved all our STUFF from the car, which made really funny noises when the trunk or doors were opened, and then Hayes graciously drove us to Scarsdale to get an Avis rental car (we got a Camry). And we drove to Bronxville and parked. In a slightly different place, in front of a Cooper Mini. Well, and then there was eating out, and driving on Saturday to the actual gig, where we parked the Camry. And had Japanese, and went to the gig. All the performers were onstage for the pre-concert spiel, which featured Gunther Schuller holding forth, distinctions between jazz and classical playing, and so on, and then the gig itself. There was just one little train wreck in the first movement, and the tempos were still on the slow side, but it happened. And Gunther liked the piece, and reception was very positive. BUT ...we had to drive RIGHT back to Maynard in order to go to France the next afternoon, so ... we left at about 11 pm and got into Maynard just after 2:30 am. Wow. And then on Sunday, our Franceward day, we did the usual house-ready stuff, drove to the airport and parked, had beer and burgers in the airport, boarded, and went Franceward. Now me being me, when I booked these flights I went only to the Air France site, thinking that for a backwater like Toulouse -- our destination -- only Air France would have flights there. Silly me. And what Air France offered were flights to DeGaulle Airport with connecting flights at Orly Airport -- about a 40 minute bus ride away. No problem, thought I -- I've done flights where I fly to Reagan and transfer to Dulles, and it was unpainful (a new standard for double negatives!). But of course, the extra work was to go through Douane, get the luggage, carry it on the transfer bus (19 Euros per person, by the way, almost 30 bucks) and check in again. Since Beff had to play two pieces with bass clarinet, that meant a) insuring it and b) bringing it. Which was extra work, etc. But durned if everything didn't go off without a hitch. So we made it to Toulouse on a hot clear day, got picked up by the local VCCA director Lucy Anderton, and got to the VCCA property in Auvillar. By the way, Toulouse, being the fourth largest city in France, isn't a backwater, and lots of airlines fly to it. Crap. Auvillar is a small village in the Bordeaux region of southwestern France that is on a well-traveled pilgrimaga (pelerinage) route, and the several buildings used and owned by VCCA are right on it -- we saw many walking by with faux ski poles daily -- apparently it's a package deal for pilgrims. Meanwhile, there were five performers playing on this Etchings Festival for which we were contracted, as well as seven composers ranging from very green to retired. The setting was quite rustic -- indeed, we were near a river, yet very close to a nuclear power plant, and it was a short walk up a VERY steep hill into town -- and the table clearing and washing up was handled in part by the performers and participants. Most meals were prepared by Lucy, and they were very, very good, and Rose and Burgundy wines were served with the meals. Plus -- there was lots and lots and lots and lots of cheese. And it was light until a bit after ten o'clock every night. So on most days there were rehearsals as well as lessons with the resident composers -- John "John" Aylward and James "James" Wizenerowicz representing ECCE, and me. We all met with every participant at least once, and there were master classes where work-sharing was done. So there were two string players from the UK -- Florence and James -- and Maria the bassoonist, MJ the saxophonist, and Beff the clarinetist. And stylistically the composers were pretty wide-ranging, and all of them got superb performances -- including recordings of a dress rehearsal and TWO concert recordings, as every concert was repeated. There were three concerts, two of them in town at the "mayor's house" and one at the VCCA property -- first and last being completely full, and the second less so because it came after a big rainstorm. In free time we tended to walk into town or have a meal out, and did I mention we had a lot of cheese? Indeed, there were receptions at a local bar after the first two concerts in which we paid for a cheese smorgasbord and wine. And they were good, but think of the cholesterol. Meanwhile, there was also a yearly festival going on in the town of Auvillar while we were there, so obviously there were no concerts those days -- the Festival of St. Noe, tied to a lunar cycle of some sort, celebrating the day that the wine grapes stop being "cultivated" and let to grow as they will. That was a two-day affair, for which on the first night we were given a meal stipend and let loose in this little town. So Beff and I got skewered stuff, and some chicken, and some fries, and of course, plenty of Burgundy. As did all the other participants, who mostly returned to the home front in the afternoon the next day instead of the morning. And of course, there was progressively more rambunctious celebrating happening in the streets. For you see, there was this festival ... One interesting feature of the landscape was a big air cannon in the distance pointed straight up. During sprinkles, or larger bits of rain, we would hear it go off sporadically, apparently with the hope of dispersing the rain clouds. It was explained to us that it was there to "stress" the grapes and make their wine taste better by depriving them of too much nourishing rain. Talk about getting it down to a science. Do composers, similarly, become better composers by having bad performances? So after the festival was over, the global VCCA director Suny Monk, who was there for four days of this festival, drove us to the Toulouse Airport -- at 4 in the morning, since one of the Fellows had a 6 am flight, and ours, at 8:15, was next in line, and this was done in the name of efficiency. Suny drove us in a rented van, and it was dark. Eventlessly, though tiredly, we made it back to Paris, onto the bus, and back to Boston, with everything intact, or so far as we could tell -- the only hitch being that Beff ALMOST forgot her clarinets on the transfer bus. Amazingly, no screwups by Air France! Though apparently Janine, who took care of the cats a few of the days we were gone, was worried we might have been on that Air France flight that exploded near Brazil. And of course I had to drive the Subaru (no more Corolla, see above) through the very beginnings of Boston rush hour, but we made it back in time to get our held mail from the Post Office, and the first thing I ate was -- a dill pouch pickle. We stayed up as late as we could stand, and by the next morning there wasn't much sign of jet lag. And that was yesterday, whose main event was ... buying a new car, of course. While we were in France, we got updates from our insurance company over the process on our claim. Where I was informed by e-mail that the assessor declared the car a total loss and we would be hearing from the total loss department. And we got a settlement offer, the amount of which we were able to use as a down payment on a new car. Beff had researched cars on line, and we narrowed it to Hondas and Toyotas, so we used the internets to find the closest Honda dealer, found its webpage, and took note if its location via the Map Quest attached to its home page. It was a bit of a distance and a rather complicated drive, and I was already thinking of what it would be like just to go in and make that drive for routine service, and ... we got to the point that Map Quest had pointed as its location, where we found ... NOTHING. We looked in every direction and drove quite some way on Route 9, and still found no Honda ... though Acura was strangely well represented. So, screw these Honda people who can't even give you a decent map, we drove to Acton Toyota, a MUCH easier slog from Maynard, test-drove a Scion XD and a Corolla, and settled on the Corolla. We made the down payment, sat through the obligatory sales pitch for sexy-extras-nobody-really-needs, and we will pick up the car today at three. Big woo hoo there, pardner. I own another blue Corolla. But a lighter shade of blue. Download 2.79 Mb. Share with your friends:
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