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

JUNE 6. Breakfast this morning was coffee and Morningside Farms meatless breakfast patties. Dinner was chicken and vegetable stir fry. Lunch was Lean Pocket pepperoni pizza. Breakfast yesterday was nonexistent. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST THREE WEEKS 41.6 and 90.5 (Maynard) and about 71 and 95 (New Smyrna Beach, Florida) LARGE EXPENSES this last three weeks include three rides to and from Logan Airport, $299, and the rest of the cost of two new basement windows and two new second floor storm windows, $512. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Crowded House's "Always Take the Weather With You." POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: "Lonnie" was a worker in the office of the Stanford music department, and he left mid-year for a better job in San Francisco. On his last day there was a party, and testimonials were given. As I shook his hand to bid him well, he made some sort of sarcastic and vaguely insulting comment, to which I replied, smiling, "You have no dick." The laughter in the office rang on for nearly 15 minutes, it seemed. No one got that I was channeling Bill Murray from Ghostbusters. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: St. Augustine. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: How many puns can you REALLY make on "manatee"? RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Bubbies Pickles, hot sauce, Tobasco hot olives, ice tea mixed with lemonade. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST THREE WEEKS at least one -- a double-sided frame holding pictures of Beff and Martler at the Corn Palace and of Alvin, me and David Keberle. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a dead spider, two dead spiders, three dead spiders, four dead spiders. Four dead spiders make a bunch (and so do many more).

Okay, so I (we) took the weather with me (us). Three weeks in Florida in the upper 80s and low 90s while there was a stalled storm here keeping it damp, windy, and in the 40s. Boys and girls, can you say "schadenfreude"? Yesterday we got back to Massachusetts to be greeted by 90 degree weather while I saw 75 as the temperature in Florida where we just left. Hence the Crowded House, above. But perhaps I am getting a little ahead of myself.

Okay. So. Okay. I was in Florida for three weeks and I got paid too much money. Okay. So. Okay. There I got to be called a Master Artist, along with the writer Jessica Hagedorn and the visual artist Jane Hammond. And in a very loosely structured environment I was some sort of mentor (spelled L-I-K-E-A-G-O-D) to eight composers, all of them rather good, and quite different from one another. So far, so good. Amy D came along for the ride for the first week, and I actually imposed a structure: let's all write a beginning of a piano piece (homework! I immediately got a reputation as a badass), we'll then talk about them all after Amy plays them ... AND ... a different composer has to write what comes next. Hey, it was the Walk A Mile In Someone Else's Shoes Thing, and as far as I know that never works. Except this time. It was such a collegial bunch of composers, despite their aesthetic differences, that it worked, and there was plenty to say about everything. If anything, this was a group that liked to talk.

After Amy left (she got bronchitis, scheduled and then cancelled a recital of tangos, and had to go to NYC for recording sessions), it became less structured (which made me a goodass), and everyone presented their work for the benefit and scrutiny of the others. This was, too, collegial, with only a few ill-tempered outbursts -- never for ill-tempered reasons. Meanwhile, I did at least one hour-long private meeting with each composer each week (I said not to call them "lessons" since several of the composers were now out in the real world having actual careers -- one composer suggested "play dates," which became the norm, at least in my head) in the remaining time. I calculated that between group and private meetings I met with them 54 hours while there, which is probably not a record, but it IS a multiple of 3. It was only after I got there that I realized I was expected to be doing my own work, too. Jessica spoke in the first week of having a "breakthrough" in her new novel (at which time my sketches were still in the computer bag, folded in half -- which made them six inches).

So this work thing presented a slight problem. There were more composers there than available working pianos, and I had to yield my piano to Amy for practicing while she was there. But given the obscene amount I was being paid (there were several actual obscenities on the check -- I lied, just the amount itself was an obscenity), I didn't feel at all guilty about not doing my own work. Cool. Thank you. But once I figured out that my piano trio was, in a way, about my cats, then the drama was pretty easy to figure out -- the chords, not as easy. (the rhythm of purring is easy, the chords not so much so, especially when in counterpoint to the petting of the cats, which has its own speed and harmony)

So let me backtrack a little. Actually, you don't have a choice, since I technically backtracked long before you read this. So there, smarty pants. BEFORE I went off to Florida to take on the mantle of "Master Artist," our Thank You Rewards from Citibank arrived -- two $100 Staples gift cards and a $50 gift card. I believe this information was in the May 13 update. That weekend I looked at the Staples circular online, and the color laser printer about which we'd been drooling was $200 off that week, and the Laser Jet (black and white) 1012 was half price. So with our gift cards we went out and got ONE OF EACH -- meaning the 1012 laser printer was a hunnert bucks, and the color printer, once the gift cards were applied, was fitty bucks. Amazement and shock. Awe, too. Both are still in boxes, unopened. But soon they will be in use, Oscar, soon. The color LaserJet will be for home, and the 1012 a traveling (artist colony) printer.

And then there became an acting Chair. Yes, Doctor Keiler filled in for me while I was gone, though it didn't seem as if there was a lot for him to do after commencement. Commencement! I missed the department degree meeting where Honors are awarded and voted on! So I don't even know who graduated with honors, etc. And the commencement itself was on the first of, I guess, six consecutive cold and rainy days in this area (I was in Florida with a box of schedenfreude for all of my friends), at which people froze almost literally. I might mention here that where I was it was 89, not too humid yet, with a forecast of scattered lizards. I brought way too many socks and long pants, as stretch shorts and flip flops were my preferred wardrobe milieu. And I hardly every get a chance to use that many vowels in a row. Neither did Cardinal Richilieu. But anyway: I gladly renounced, for a short time, the Chairman cloak in favor of the Master Artist one. The second one requires a nonrefundable deposit, which was okay because of all the lizards. But of course I am not making sense.

On Monday the 16th (Milton Babbitt's 89th birthday, as if you cared) we got up early so I could catch a limo to the airport for a noonish flight -- but at 7:30 Maynard Door and Window called to ask if it was okay for our long-ordered storm windows and basement windows to be installed that day. Which was cool, because the owner came over to instruct his workers, and I got to be all pompous-ass and reveal that I was about to go to Florida for three weeks to "work." And the black town car pulled up while the windows were being pulled out of the truck. And there I went.

I took Delta Song flight 2018 to Orlando, and Delta Song flight 2018 back -- since it's a cut rate airline, they apparently save money by doubling up on flight numbers. I went on the 16th, Beff on the 21st, at which time I picked her up using the morceau de merde Ford Focus that the Atlantic Center rented for me (as I was, after all, a Master Artist). Delta Song gives you 24 channels of TV on monitors on the seat back in front of you, as well as pay per view movies (including Beach Blanket Bingo -- you'd PAY to see that???), pay games, and a trivia game that kept score of everyone in the plane playing. The old lady sitting next to me did quite well, but the one game I played all the way through I was the winner, and had the highest score for the whole trip. And just because I knew such useless facts as Coco Chanel's first name. Amy and David Smooke (old friend, also a composer Associate) and I hooked up at the American baggage claim in the airport and we figured out which one was Jessica Hagedorn -- the writer master artist -- and got in a van driven by Jim Frost. I had a three-year history of e-mailing and talking on the phone to Jim, and based on his job and his voice I pegged him for a Wally Cox type. Wrong, kimosabe. He looks more like the crew chief than Underdog. And he flung all of our heavy suitcases way high over the back seat of the van. Insert "heavy lifting" pun of your choice here.

On the first night all the Associates and Master Artists got together in the Commons for dinner, introductions were made, I found all the composers I had accepted except for Del and Aaron, we set a schedule, and introductions were made. That night and the next afternoon everyone and his grandma presented something of their work (I played DVD movies of Amy playing Martler and Fists o' Fury), and it was a wide swath of aesthetics represented indeed. I'm sure I liked just about everything, though remembering 21 names was a bit much for me that night. To make matters more complicated, the Associates started giving code names to each other, only a few of which stuck in my newly pea-sized brain: Fabio for Felipe and Stu for Aaron, among the composers.

With Amy around the first week, I actually assigned homework (the whispering about that was vast and I almost slipped on it once) -- write a piano miniature beginning. After Amy played through the beginnings and we talked about what was there, I made them trade beginnings and assigned continuations which were played the following Monday. The one started by Jenny and finished by Fabio ended up being the most talked about, as its composers were from different ends of the aesthetic see-saw (here I insert the obvious upcoming pun about how they balanced). Meanwhile, the composers were working on other things, too, and needed pianos. Of which there weren't enough. So with a lot of harassment, Nick Conroy managed to spread some pianos out over several buildings and people seemed to get LOTS of work done. Amy, meanwhile, needed a piano, too, for her tango recording coming up, so she had my cottage when I wasn't teaching in it. And teach I did, seeing two of the Associates four times each, and the others on average three times each.

I was charged to do outreach twice -- once with Jessica at a gallery in New Smyrna Beach (the locals give "Smyrna" three syllables, confirmed by the prosody in a jingle we heard on TV: "Suh Mirn Ah.") and once with Jane at a private home with a lot of valuable art in it on a lake in Orlando. Otherwise the only times we got out -- did I mention a lot of teaching? -- were a beach party at the home of Ines, a foray through the Merrit Island Preserve, a dinner at a famed seafood restaurant near the beach, and an afternoon trip to St. Augustine (founded 1565, they say). The Master Artist cottages were connected to the other buildings of the Center by a long and occasionally slippery boardwalk, across which many lizards scurried as humans approached. (the lizards were mating, so occasionally you'd see one stuck there bobbing his head as if pumping his body, and his neck ballooning way out, and being red. Not for a minute did I ever wish I could do that). Some were chameleon like, with bits of blue or red, and some were uglyass, like frogs. I made it an obsession a few times to get pictures of some, and apparently I was one of the few who succeeded in that task.

On weekends we had to fend for ourselves for meals, so the two Sundays included big composer parties at my cottage -- Fabio made salmon (he didn't treat the "l" as silent) in the first one, and James made spaghetti in the second one. Jessica's Associates also were at her cottage both of those times, so the parties intermingled. And I learned more names.

So at the end there was the usual presentation of work for each other and for an invited general public they called Inside Out -- as if the patrons were going to get to see my stomach and pancreas but not my belly button or kneecaps -- and several composers had work to present: James's Night Music was played by Stu and Beff, Stu (Aaron Einbond) played a couple of piano "microtures," and Suzanne played the Jenny-Fabio piece. Various writers read parts of screenplays, plays and novels. I played a tape of a Violin Song. And then we got to go to the visual artist studios to see what people had been working on. At the end of it all, Jessica held the farewell party at her cottage, and Beff and I exited casually about three and three quarter hours before we were slated to awaken. Much wine was had, especially as everyone brought their last surviving alochol from the residencies. And we looked at the closets in the music and writer cottages, which had been signed by most of the Master Artists who had passed through.

All in all, it was a very fun gig, I was still paid obscenely after giving Amy a quarter of my "honorarium," the weather was really humid (which I like) and occasionally rainy (which I don't like), the very different composers seemed to have bonded rather nicely, and I got to use the bathroom whenever I wanted. All in all a big success.

We set the alarm for 3:16 on Sunday morning, and left with Smooke at 4:15 for the airport. We were ready in plenty of time, and I remarked that we could have slept all the way to 3:20. The flight was eventless, we got back here around quarter to noon, and the lawns were very, very unmowed. After unpacking, I went out and did all the lawns except the back yard -- that's an hour and twenty minutes -- and couldn't help noticing that it was about 90 degrees outside (ironically, it was 75 in New Smyrna Beach at the time, according to Earthlink) and sunny, sunny, sunny! All the windows were opened for air (especially the new two storm windows), Beff cleaned the whole house, and the cats were slow to emerge from the attic. Since their emergence, the cats have been very needy, following us everywhere and occasionally issuing long and plaintive meows. Both of us have been heard to utter "What?" a lot in response. Ken and Hillary left a family of five's worth of leftovers in the fridge, and I can't wait for them to take it back with them -- they are coming over tonight for seafood, so they better not leave empty-handed. I believe they left a large bowl of fava beans, which I have been snacking on liberally.

Already, Chair stuff has intruded, but I try to keep a straight face about it. I know who the next Chair is going to be, but nearly no one else in the department does. I drove in to Brandeis for Chair stuff, and there was very little of it. I spoke to the Fred C. Hecht Professor of Economics briefly, and came back. Now it's blogging time, as we say in New Suhmyrna Beach.

This coming weekend is a multifaceted one: a concert of me in Princeton Friday night, Take Jazz Chords Make Strange at the Chelsea (NYC) Art Museum on Saturday and then at the Dia:Beacon on Sunday. Meanwhile, Beff has a performance in Manhattan on Sunday. And we drive back to Massachusetts on Monday, which also happens to be my birthday (I am 329 dog years old that day, though I don't feel a day over 328). And next Thursday I begin jury duty. Joy of all joys.

I'm sure that this week's readership will be almost nineteen -- regular readers plus the eight ACA Associates, so I'll list their names here because it might actually give them a thrill: Suzanne Sorkin (working on a piano trio, soon to move to Philadelphia), Jenny Olivia Johnson (writing a Pierrot plus percussion piece, is at NYU), Aaron Einbond (writing a two percussion piece and piano microtures, enrolled at UC Berkeley), David Smooke (in Chicago finally finishing his U Chicago dissertation), Felipe Lara (writing an orchestra piece, hails from Brazil and enters NYU in the fall), Del Case (teaching at Eastern Nazarene College and BC), James Wiznerowicz (writing clarinet and piano piece, starts on the tenure track at VCU in the fall), and John Aylward (writing a piece for Wellesley, is enrolled at Brandeis). The "here's you" thing I do with John became quite popular amongst the composers -- as did A Certain Quietness and a few other things. Eventually we became quite the wacky bunch.

Today's picture collection is legion, as it represents highlights of three weeks. We being with ACA flora: a passion flower closeup, and red lichen that was on some of the trees. Next, Amy in the van in the trip from the airport, and Amy with David Smooke doing Kilroy. Then the composer cohort except Del at the first group meal, and me with Jessica during the intermingled party which followed. Then, a lizard shot, and shot of the "road tattoo" done by one of the Associates, Steed, in a road just outside the ACA. Next, a circular we encountered on Sunset Drive, Fabio pouring Ines the "girly" Brazilian drink that would eventually make him barfmachen, the seafood from the seafood dinner, the six of us eating the seafood (shown: Aaron, James, Beff (hidden), Felipe, and David Smooke), a bunch of people sitting outdoors at the seafood restaurant, two pics from St. Augustine, and a picture of the beach. Yowza.

JUNE 20. Breakfast this morning was Shaw's toaster waffles with real maple syrup, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner was grilled swordfish puttanesca with corn and salad. Lunch was Chunky Chicken soup and blackberries. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK 48.7 and 91.8. LARGE EXPENSES this last are none. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Fiona Apple's "Red, Red, Red." POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: When I was in sixth grade, it was decided that I would play in the second trombone section at the District Music Festival -- a high school festival in the BFA gym that year. I kept my parts and got a reel-to-reel of the entire concert, and used to entertain myself by playing the tape and playing along on the second trombone part. Which, now that I think of it, gives me an added sense of my parents' tolerance for such things. That tolerance reached the breaking point in high school when I wrote a pretentious piano piece that had a right-hand ostinato in parallel fifths and when I was practicing it, my mother finally asked me to stop. THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Why did Ainsley have to leave West Wing for CSI Miami? RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Smuttynose hefeweizen, Porino's antipasto salad (comes in a jar), homemade no-cook gazpacho. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK are none, but Cammy knocks Beff's glasses -- in their case -- onto the floor at least once each morning. INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE the length of your lips, two of that other thing, a can of lawnmower oil, cheese from Amsterdam.

My special day (boithday, compleanno, anniversaire -- I am SO-O-O multilingual) last Monday ended with Ken and Hillary arriving with a bag o' spices and a bag o' ribs. While Ken made a speecy spicy barbecue sauce, from scratch -- even using honey -- we had a conversation about...well, I forget. Ken stuck two racks of ribs on the upper racks of the grill, Hillary shucked and foiled some corn on the cob, and the grill got started. Soon we lighted and took an OFF thingamabob out to the picnic table, where the OFF thingamabob failed to deter even one mosquito from our area, brought out the corn, and ate it right then and there. Meanwhile, grease fires ranged rampant on the grill, as the ribs dripped grease pretty liberally, and Ken and I spent plenty of time blowing them out -- my lower brass training came quite a bit in handy there. And Ken seemed to be able to blow pretty well, too, even though he was a guitarist, not a wind player. He blew in short bursts, and I tended to actually get a note when I tried to blow. In any case -- we had to keep going back to the grill to blow, blow, BLOW and eventually the ribs got a bit charred, and cooked much faster than was the original forecast. So we served the ribs and Bubbies pickles in the dining room, and they were magnificent. It was the LARGE jar of Bubbies pickles, and they disappeared in what seemed to be a heartbeat. Ken kept mumbling that the ribs were burnt (at least I think that's what he was saying), but I thought they were great. Later the combo of the ribs and the pickles gave me a nice long ride on the porcelain pony.

And they even brought a 329th birthday present -- cheap plastic flamingoes, which we immediately installed on the front lawn midst the hostas. They have to moved when the lawn is mowed (to use the passive voice cheaply, but effectively), but that rings true for the hammock, Adirondack chairs and picnic table, too, and they carry a similar value. Well, maybe a sentimental value. I made sure to put a picture of them, below.

On Tuesday I had to go into Brandeis for real Chair stuff. Well, I lie. I didn't go in because I am Chair, but because I am on the committee to hire a new academic administrator for the department. Which I am on because I am Chair -- two degrees of separation. The weather had been hot and sticky and generally unbearable for almost a week (going from the air conditioned bedroom to the bathroom at night through the hall introduced a big jolt that was bound to resuscitate), but a back door cold from came through on Tuesday while we were doing the interviews. There was, indeed, about a 35-degree temperature swing from when we started the interviews (noonish) to when we finished (4ish). Lower 90s to upper 50s, for those playing along at home. The interviews came down to two favorites and some haggling in the future, but there are yet two more to interview this week. Oh joy. My favorite. After the interviews, Carolyn and I rather dramatically imbibed some beer I gave her long ago (BF -- Before Florida), and I came home and made dinner. Which was, I think, just a frozen pizza I stuck in the oven.

The weather has been stuck in early spring mode since that backdoor cold front. This global warming thing sucks big ones. Them What Make, however, have routinely been off by about ten degrees each day in their high temperature predictions. Tough weather pattern and all that. Wednesday's high was about 51(!), just a day after Tuesday's 92. How 'bout that! Way too hot for a bike ride, and then way too cold for one. Them what make had predicted 78 for yesterday, and it didn't make it past 63.

For those of you playing the Home Version of our game -- as of today, ten days left of the Heaven on Earth I like to call My Chairmanship. Next week I will give the numbers in hours -- perhaps, if I am feeling whimsical, in dog-hours. Incidentally, there was a time in this space when I mentioned that a job in Santa Barbara may possibly offer an escape from my Heaven on Earth -- it was someone named Clarence Barlow that they hired. In the meantime, I got a day-late-and-a-dollar-short e-mail from at least one administrator thanking me for my Heaven on Earth. Rather than press the point, I responded "Thank you." I forgot to say "Cool" first. But then again, I don't follow protocol with administration types.

The pollen count has been high. So sayeth the Them What Make page in a scrolling banner every day for the last several weeks. Usually, that place is reserved for Special Weather Statements, like it may get cold tonight or somebody saw a person standing next to a river get wet. But in this case, and in this area, it's been somewhat like a scrolling banner stating that most people expect it to get dark tonight. When we returned from Florida (that's in the southern United States in the Eastern Time Zone), I drew a Kilroy on the trunk of Beff's car -- in the pollen which had accumulated in rather a thick blanket. In fact, the pollen is everywhere -- on our bike rides through the Assabet train path, all the former puddles have yellow outlines where water used to be, and every single leaf of every single tree in the area has yellow spots. Not from malaria, but from clumped pollen (malaria would just be silly). I am accustomed to thick pollen at this time of year, but this year is especially thick. In fact, on Tuesday morning before I went into Brandeis, the wind was blowing and it looked like a sand storm in the stand of pine trees. Thankfully, I think the pollen is no longer being manufactured anew in those volumes. Instead, the horseflies are now active on the Assabet path.