Beff's semester finishes today, and she is due home after dark tonight. Tomorrow night we take Big Mike out for Chinese buffet

Spring springs nicely here -- the last piece of the puzzle happened Monday when I brought the lawnmower out of the basement, added oil, and made sure it started -- the very slight smell of gasoline mixed with old grass brought back summer memories -- and put it into the storage shed. Sure signs of spring abound -- from the crocuses going by to the daffodils being ready to emerge and violets coming up, the lawn getting greener, the proliferation of bird songs in the morning, the emergence of the rhubarb, and especially the tedium of me writing about it all in this space. It was mild here Tuesday through Thursday, with gradually warming temps until yesterday's 73 degrees. I did some quality hammock time, did a lot of cutting of vines and the like in various spots in our yard, did some raking of ailunthus detritus (say that five times fast), and facilitated the melting of the LAST bit of snow which was by the front porch. As of Tuesday, all the snow was finally gone.

While surveying all that we own, I encountered a large slate roof tile on the ground in the side yard on the west side of the house. It's big -- about a foot by a foot and a half -- and was a little broken in one corner. I looked up onto the roof to find a space where a tile once was but now wasn't. So I asked the people at Maynard door and window if they knew someone who did slate roofs (the last time we called someone about it, four places never returned the call, and the fifth that did scheduled a visit but didn't show up), and they gave me a number. Got the guy right away -- who was driving and pulled over in order to take my info. He's to show up later today to look at it. Meanwhile, there was a half-sized tile on the south-facing roof that had fallen off before we bought the house -- it's been on the edge of the roof over the mud room all this time -- and I ventured out yesterday morning to retrieve it. Heavy!

The Marine Band sent the final version of Sibling Revelry as it will be made available to Midwest Clinic types who bought the concert -- it seems to be all the 6:45 performance except for the very end of Moody's Blues, where there is a pretty obvious splice where the crotales are hit. Meanwhile, in orchestration I first talked about various things regarding notation, then talked about the wind band. They all have to write for it this week. I played them the beginning of Schwantner's "Mountains Rising Nowhere" thing that made his reputation, and what makes it a successful band piece is that it doesn't actually use the band at all -- it's all piano stuff and wine glass chords and the band singing notes. How precious. There wasn't much of a lesson in how to score for winds from that piece....

As this is being typed, I am doing laundry for the third time since Beff went Costa Ricawards. I hope she will be proud of me. Soon roof guy comes. Tomorrow my picture is being taken for an upcoming story on me for Signal to Noise magazine, which is being written by Christian Carey. I am considering the options of what would make the coolest shot without being pretentious. On the big slabs by the Ben Smith Dam? By the parking garage structure at the mill? At the opening to the old railroad tracks nearby? At the old ice house area where there's a granite slab with a quote from Thoreau about River Towns? By the nice view in Harvard or by the town green there? It will be a black and white photo, and the guy coming out to do it is really into fonts and so he knows me that way. Wow.

The local rivers are no longer flooding, but the stupid Weather Bug thing still chirps at me all day because rivers 80 miles away are flooding. I wish it would just shut up.

I made a few trips to BJs, mostly to get more cat food and cat litter, but also got bigass jars of hamburger dill pickles, campari tomatoes, DVD-Rs, DVD storage packs, and such other things as I deemed necessary. BJ's is a fun place to shop because there is so much of everything. Hey, I now even have extra Worcestershire sauce because it came free with my 2-pack of hot sauce.

Next Friday, the Daylong Celebration of Creativity. This update will be a day late. Deal with it.

Today's pictures begin with my gratuitous yearly picture of myself holding a beer on the hammock. This be followed by a picture of the large tile that fell from the roof this winter, on permanent display. Note canoe in background. These are followed by tedious closeups of signs of spring: the veiny crocuses, a nascent rhododendron, a nascent rhubarb, a nascent bumch of daffodils, nascent violets, and a terribly cute picture of Sunny asleep in the computer room.

APRIL 16. Breakfast this morning is coffee and pineapple-orange juice. Dinner was a chicken cutlet and macaroni and cheese microwave concoction. Lunch, in New Bedford, was a roast beef sammich, apple, potato chips, and ice tea. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THE LAST WEEK 26.3 and 70.5. LARGE EXPENSES this last week a down payment on a third of the cost of roof work: $3500. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS "I Don't Want a Pickle -- I Just Wanna Ride My Motor-Sickle". POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Jon Lang and I were expert belchers-on-demand in high school, and normally we used this talent to gross people out (can you think of a better use?). But our talent, collectively, was finally put to good use when the music department put on a production of "Oliver." Sam Newton, who played Mr. Bumble, has a scene where he has to belch and a woman utters the groaner, "Are you going to sit there all day snoring?" Sam couldn't belch on demand, so Jon and I stood in the wings, Sam acted out a belch, and the two of us let it rip. Worked every time. RECOMMENDATION/ PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK 3. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Downtown New Bedford. Pretty buildings. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDRY: How did we get the word "daffodil"? RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Hamburger dill pickles, sugar free popsicles, and a new kind of weirdo sammich: jalapeno peppers in a folded-over slice of fat-free cheese. BIRDS HEARD OR SEEN THIS WEEK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A WHILE Phoebe (heard, lots). Also, peepers have been around for several weeks. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS WEEK 0. FULL NIGHTS OF SLEEP THE LAST WEEK: 8. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE Ms. Potato Head, the notion that I'd like to know where you got, seven bags of peat moss, a slinky.

The vertigo of which I wrote last week precisely here was, thankfully, short-lived -- only about a day or so. That echinacea stuff apparently helps, since that was the first episode in about 21 months. Currently, the cold that went around here may be making its way into me, but I have been successful so far at keeping it away.

The last week of school is upon us, and that brings with it many things. The "Leonard Bernstein Festival of Creative Arts" is going on on campus this weekend, and I have to introduce two of the acts tomorrow. And I have to do my favorite chairman task of the year, salary recommendations that will be overruled anyway. At the end of the week the second-year grad students start their general exams. And only one more day of orchestration. A week from Wednesday I am having lunch with the President of Brandeis, and I don't know why.

This is a Saturday update instead of a Friday one because of the "Symposium on Creativity" in which I was a participant happened yesterday, in an old building in downtown New Bedford owned by the UMass Dartmouth campus. I got up plenty early, as it IS an hour and a half drive and I expected rush hour traffic to suck. Nonetheless, I got there early enough to have my own breakfast as well as the one that was provided. I explored a little bit of downtown New Bedford, which has lots of nice art deco buildings and facades and a mish mash of different businesses, and many empty storefronts. My jaunts were brief, as it was 30 degrees and I just had my suit on. There were also a lot of old mills that looked very stylish, if empty. And a whaling museum, which was not open at the time I was walking around. While walking around, I got some hot sauce and teeth-brushing thingies at Brooks drugs. And then it was to the symposium. Where one of the first things I did was to brush my teeth with one of those thingies -- a thing you wrap on your finger and rub your teeth with, and it was minty fresh. Which means that I, too, was minty fresh. Both words of which have five letters. Oh, why can't someone out there be named Minty Fresh? Any volunteers, almost eleven?

Since I had CDs and DVDs -- and since other presenters were projecting Power Point presentations from their own computers -- there was a long early morning span of getting the technology to work. And I'm glad to say I figured out the projector for them, which was crucial -- after all, Amy Dissanayake was going to be on that white wall, much larger than life. The Dean who popped into my colloquium at UMass Dartmouth back in October was the emcee, and said effusive things about each presenter -- he's also the kind of guy that grabs your shoulder before he begins talking to you. So the event started with a new alumni award, and the winner gave a sterling presentation about how design can change the world (you had to be there). My part in this was to press PLAY on the DVD player to play a performance of John Lennon's "Imagine" sung by someone else. He was followed by a biologist who detailed the mechanics of the brain and their relation to creativity. Unsurprisingly from a doctor, eating right, exercising, and meditating were his recommendations for the best creativity. And then I got my own effusive introduction, used my buzzwords (metaphor, association and intuition), and played stuff, much to the surprise and amazement of them what were in attendance. Actually, I think I forgot to say anything about intuition.

Then we were directed to a building two blocks away to view art by students and to get free bag lunches. Timmy Melbinger, who teaches at Dartmouth, came to my part of the show, as did current student Jon "Jon" Yoken, with his mother, and we all ambled to this free lunch building. The art was VERY impressive, and it's clear that at least for artistic stuff this University must be a prime destination. As to the food, I wouldn't make it a destination. I then ambled back to catch the first part of the afternoon events -- boy, I amble a lot, don't I? Here UMassD faculty in art talked about what they are doing -- students doing virtual reality simulations (they all looked like video games because they use a video game building program to make them), a graduate doing site-specific art in North Carolina, making slides available digitally (how often have I heard that quandary?), students proposing projects to comment on or revitalize the New Bedford area. By this time, I'd had enough, and skipped about before the last two presentation, paid ten bucks at a parking garage, and made the drive home -- and what a dull one it was as well.

And during that drive I found out that the music department is now most definitely without an academic administrator, as Nancy Redgate died in her sleep yesterday morning. We knew for a while that it was coming, but it still came as a bit of a shock. The last time I saw her was with Beff during February vacation, and she wasn't with it very much, was very tired, and her usual cranky self. We will most certainly miss her, a lot.

Them what make tell us that a blocking high has been over Hudson Bay keeping precipitation away from us -- except for some snow showers that backed in Monday night, not at all surprising anyone -- and that we spent most of the week on the cold side of it. So it has gotten below freezing most nights this week and only into the 40s and 50s during the day, a pattern we are told will change this week. Today, 62. Tomorrow, 70. Every day next week over 70, and upper 70s on Wednesday. Big woo hoo there, pardner. Spring continues to spring, and I project about a week and a half to two weeks will be my first abbreviated lawn mowing -- the grass in the apple tree part of the yard is taking hold. Lots of yellow right in front of the Adirondack chairs, but the comeback is coming there, too. The grape-y nuisancy things are starting to sprout in the way back, and I am uprooting them when I can, and the nettle-grass (that stings if you touch it) is coming up, too. Forsythias at Brandeis are in bloom, but ours are a ways away from blooming. Spring sprang enough by Sunday for me to find out how out of shape the winter made me -- I had my first bike ride, the shortest possible one (4 miles), and I was durn winded when it was over. Legs are fine, though. I presume more are to follow, and longer ones. I also FINALLY took the last snow shovel and stored it in the garage.

It is 8 am Saturday morning as I type this, and I hear a lawnmower, but do not know exactly where it is. Cool.

So on Friday, the roof guy came, as predicted. My Medieval specialist friends (we all have them) will be impressed to know that his company is called the Twelfth Century Slate Roofing Company, and that he specializes in slate roofs (which must have been invented in the 1100s, or I didn't get the joke). He was recommended by the Maynard Door and Window people (who have our four new windows and are ready to put them in, too), showed up at 9 after doing a full traversal of the house. He pointed to some botched repairs done by previous owners (tarring chimneys instead of surrounding them with metal), and gave us two quotes: to replace the two fallen tiles and slather up the attic dormer that leaks a bit, a grand. To do a really good job and replace the flaked slate with copper and do the chimneys proper, $10,555. At first I said just do the patches, but I talked about it with Beff, and we decided to go for the whole magilla. Replacing the whole roof would be $80,000, which is kind of out of the question. The guy did say that the house was really sturdily built and was a gem, and that you couldn't get anything like it for a million bucks nowadays (built new, I presume he meant). But there is the issue of the 95-year old roof. And we have PENNSYLVANIA slate, he says, the only kind that flakes with age (we have plenty of them in the back yard).

So meanwhile, I look outside and see green. Ahh. A composerly lesson in the value of delaying the real recapitulation.

Meals this week include dinner TONIGHT with the Chafes and lunch Thursday with Anny Jones, who won lunch with me at a raffle at a music department party. Everything else is just a light.

I didn't have much time to enjoy my house and yark this week, as teaching and events piled up -- including Yoko Nakatani's dissertation defense (good to see Kathy Alexander, who was the outside reader, again) and a colloquium by Peter Child. There were also the Open Houses for students accepted to Brandeis who haven't made up their minds, so I did several of those events. And got to hear, "well I'm really interested in music but I don't know if I want to MAJOR in it..." the usual thousand or so times.

My fame continues to spread far and wide, or near and thin -- I don't remember which one exactly. On the online Sequenza21, my etudes are listed as one of the 111 most influential pieces since 1970. I don't know what that means, or even if I should show up for the ceremony (on which I could stand -- rim shot) if there is one, but I suppose I shouldn't want to be part of a list that would have me as part of a list. Gotta work on the delivery of that joke.

The DVD and CD of the Marine band stuff from the Midwest Conference arrived Monday night, just in time for me to waste time in orchestration playing them. The students were impressed as I named performers as they flashed by (Cynthia ... Barbara, oh she played the crap out of that bass clarinet stuff in Ten of a Kind ... Lisa ... Gail, Betsy, Elizabeth -- she's new -- Barbara again ... Jay ... the hornist is actually named Amy Horn ... oh what's his name?). And in the second performance of Moody's Blues, you actually see the vibraslap played -- in this case by being hit against the timpanist's right leg. We watched quite a bit of the Schwantner percussion concerto -- in order to get a feel for the percussion instruments discussed in class -- and the class was all over the music: "What 70s TV theme is this?" "Uh oh, Captain Kirk is in real trouble now!" "The desert was ... parched." The student appreciated the row of tuned almglockens in the front battery which was there just to recapitulate the already-forgotten ostinato of the first movement, and I got to reminisce about being in the mountains of Switzerland and hearing all those almglocks hung on distant cows a-tollin'. For dessert we watched a bunch of Boulez conducting the Rite of Spring. And Rick B. kept piping in with "...and just when you thought he'd run out of great ideas..."

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

Today's pictures start with a couple of closeup flora shots from the garden immediately behind the grill. Next we see the current state (as of Tuesday) of the rhubarb coming up, Cammy's tail poking out as he hides out under the grill, the current state of our canoe and the back yard, and the west-facing roof with missing tile circled ever so artistically.

APRIL 22. Breakfast this morning coffee, orange juice, coffee again, and a red danish. Dinner last night was a tuna burger and a salmon burger. Lunch was salmon on a bed of rice with vegetables at the Quarterdeck restaurant, and an appetizer of steamers. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 26.6 and (woo hoo!) 86.5. LARGE EXPENSES this last week were none. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS The band version of Strident. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: Here is a story that actually appeared in the regular text of this page, now reduced to nostalgia. In Theory 2 -- a mere 15 months ago -- when Variations was the topic, I was playing one student's them and remarked that it sounded a bit like a jazz tune, and he said it was transcribed from a banjo recording. I said, "Bela Fleck?" He said yes -- "what other banjo player is there beside Bela Fleck?" Without missing a beat, I said, "Well, there's always Popeye." Mass look of confusion from the students. "Oh, not THAT Popeye -- I mean this other Popeye. You know, the banjo playing Popeye." RECOMMENDATION/ PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS WEEK 6. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK the little sprinkler attachment for the hose, long forgotten in the garage. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDRY: Why is the chemical symbol for Potassium "K"? (I actually know the answer) RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Hamburger dill pickles, sugar free popsicles, olives in various configuration. BIRDS HEARD OR SEEN THIS WEEK FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A WHILE Whatever one goes "churr" a lot. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS WEEK 0. FULL NIGHTS OF SLEEP THE LAST WEEK: 5 (of 6). INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the feeling of pointlessness, a kewpie doll, tweezers, next year's calendar.

Yesterday a student e-mailed to ask the difference between an overlap and an elision. Whatever I answered he said I was wrong. So I stopped answering. So now there's an overlap/elision happening here: the last day of classes elided/overlapped with the first day of work on our roof. First, I feel very fortunate to have found a contractor who starts the work within a week of the contract for the work being signed and the down payment being made. I found out about it as I retrieved messages from my cell phone on the drive home from work this morning -- and, lo and behold, there was a truck in the driveway, some large copper sheets next to it, and two large ladders against the house. Amazing.

Maybe the more amazing thing was the old tiles they ripped out in order to cover with copper -- one zoomed right down and landed at an angle, stuck in the ground. I took a picture, dontcha know. And of course the cats are more than a bit spooked by the sound of hammering coming from the highest reaches of their living space. I believe Cammy will spend the next three weeks under the couch, including the times when there are no such sounds coming from up there. Sunny files nervously into the computer room for a reassuring petting, then exits again, looking very worried. And that's the truth.

Beff continues her Costa Rican sojourn, and is beginning her last full week there -- it will be good to have her back here, 10:15 pm next Saturday night, flight from Dallas, Terminal B. Near as I can tell, a field trip to the Caribbean coast was cancelled due to wind and a field trip to the equidistant Pacific coast substituted. I'm sure I'll get the full story and pictures -- some of which may show up in this space, naturally.

I turned the heat in the house off on Monday morning, and so far it is still off -- though it's getting a bit nippy inside today, having gone down to freezing overnight. It was July here on Wednesday, making it up to 87 with a dewpoint of 41 -- very, very dry heat, Arizona-like, they tell me -- and there was an extremely elevated fire danger warning for the whole area. It was odd being in the middle of summer with still-bare trees everywhere and grass not yet ready to mow. Shonuff spent a little time on the hammock, though. After my five hours of teaching, that is. We have much rain and cold predicted for the weekend, so I presume I'll have to relent and turn back on the heat. It had gotten so dry that I actually took a sprinkler to the lawn -- what with so much yellow in what are usually the greenest places. The sprinkler attachment was grody from 3 years unused in the garage, so I ungrodied it.

On Saturday, as predicted in this very space, the Chafes came over, we had some expensive beer while sitting in the Adirondack chairs, and then went to the Quarterdeck. For the first time I had neither the Cajun combo nor the clam roll, and instead I had a grilled salmon with a wine sauce. It was exquisite, even moreso than the beer was. Eric got the cajun combo and I forget what Pat got. When all was said and done, we were fatandhappy.

On Sunday I had to make my several appearances to introduce the acts at the Leonard Bernstein Festival of Creative Arts, and it turned out to be a gloriously sunny day, warm and stuff. In between my service, I ambled up to in front of the Shapiro Student Center and partook of the competing Braunstein Festival -- where there were free hamburgers if you stood in line a long time, inflatable carnival type things (a bouncy one and an obstacle course), a kissing booth, and a sex olympics (or so they said). I just dug the sunny and warm weather and the black t-shirt I was wearing. I had to announce the Early Music Ensemble and the organist Jason Cloen (see page 1) and had cue cards with my introduction already written. The EME card contained the howler "Sephardic polyphony" and Jason's wanted me to call him "organic," but I had my way with both introductions. And Sarah Mead shonuff made sure I said the right stuff. EME was very impressive, as everyone sang and played one, two, or three instruments. Ah, the recorder.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox vaulted into first place by shutting out the Orioles twice.

I must say that I taught unimpeachably this week (because I did), and was grateful that Jeff Roberts took up a large portion of my orchestration class with his dissertation topic. I was also grateful to get home and start what I hope will finally be a near-daily bike ride regimen. Six miles Tuesday and Nine miles Wednesday -- alas, only three miles yesterday as it got cold again. I'm shooting for ten today with the West Acton ride -- later when it warms up a bit more.

I went into work this morning expecting to take all day to write a report. It was finished at 9:30. Good thing, too, because it meant I could get back here and experience the pounding of my roof and share it with the cats. Yesterday afternoon I pruned a whole buttload of the cedars out in the "L" part of the yard, near the apple tree, and I'm not sure why. Except for the feeling of accomplishment. There I noticed that the grass is getting somewhat long out there -- I may MOW a bit later today, too, woo hoo.

Boy, this was a boring update. More of the same next week, I am sure. Next Thursday I drive to New York and meet with a Brandeis alum interested in making a donation. I love doing that. Meanwhile, the May 3 Yaddo event sent me more e-mails, and we will be staying with Hayes and Susan when in New York. Three snaps for that. Tomorrow the Corolla goes in for its 45,000 mile service, which they tell me will take two hours. So, walking around in the cold and rain will be my lot for the morning. Wish me luck.