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

As this writer (call me third person guy -- or, whoops, um, first person guy) is now on leave, don't expect regularity in days of the week for these updates. I type now because we got back from our three weeks in Virginia yesterday and the unpacking and computer-sync'ing is just about finished, as well as the shopping for staples, etc. We had planned to drive back tomorrow, but that would have left precious little time before Beff had to drive yet further, to Maine, so we settled on a day earlier -- but the forecast of buckets of rain caused to shove yet a day earlier. So now let me skip around (or as third person guy would say, let him skip around) in the events of the last three weeks.

First, Beff got back from Maine in the middle of the day on the Thursday before Christmas (a holiday we acknowledge and celebrate despite being liberals -- take THAT, O'Reilly), we packed, and made double sure that everything that was needed to be brought was brought -- indeed, this turned out to be the first such trip where we did not leave behind something very important (such as, during my last Virginia visit, the power cord to my iMac). We set up Seung Ah, Big Mike, and Justin in the saddle for the catsitting, and shoved off around 6:45 on Friday. An eventless drive down the Merritt, NJ turnpike, Delaware and Maryland turnpikes, etc. -- including a stop at one of the two giant rest areas in Maryland -- got us to Chez Colburn by about a quarter after two, where we decompressed naturally (no steroids), and stayed inside for quite some time. We got served some nice taco-style chili (as in, add what you want, and that included cayenne pepper, which I had never seen before) and, of course, overate -- hey, we were at a Lieutenant Colonel's house. In the evening, we watched a film about music of gypsies, done in a Hollywoodish fashion with faint narratives and very high production values -- it was fascinating as the music moved from east to west to hear how the music became more triadic and functionally tonal. The underlying narrative, meanwhile, either made no sense, or were left out entirely. I mean, bricking over a doorway to signify the nomadic existence? How film school.

So anyway, we shoved off at 7 on Christmas eve day and got to the VCCA by 10, where it was brightly sunny and somewhat cold. Nonetheless, little ground snow was in evidence (we left Maynard with a foot -- of snow, that is. Or as third person guy would say, THEY left Maynard). We filled the tank, bought a car wash, and were denied both the car wash AND the refund. The car wash finally happened several days later. We stopped at the Food Lion supermarket to get some snacky things four our studios, and then made for the VCCA. The traffice pattern was a little different, but not troubling, until I noticed that the entrance to the VCCA was neither within a mile and a half of Amherst or -- 13 miles of it. In a mild panic, I asked Beff to read the driving directions, and we followed them. So as an experiment, we turned around at the exit for Natural Bridge, drove back to Amherst, and set off onto BUSINESS 29 instead -- where the VCCA entrance now is. Turns out the bypass is now open, the old Route 29 is now Business 29, and the VCCA didn't bother to tell anyone driving there about that. So we arrived, there was plenty of slippery ice around that resulted from an earlier ice storm -- as well as some piled up branches -- and we set up our stuff in our respective studios (Beff: C2, moi: C3) and unpacked in our little room. VCCA has two rooms for couples, and we found out later that there were THREE couples there. So we got the couples room with two single beds -- last time we were there together we got the king size bed.

My working habits included filling an extremely large plastic Coke-themed glass with ice and water and squirting key lime juice into it and drinking it as I worked, as well as various places of rest for pickles, pepperoncini, and olives. Naturally, I was a regular at the rest room. Lunch and dinner was served in the main residence, and lunch was done buffet-style in the barn complex where the studios are. In both our cases, since it had been so long since we had had real time for work, we dutifully traipsed studiowards after dinner and did even more work. And I didn't watch TV once, except to glance at a little of the Redskins playoff game.

And we worked on Christmas day -- we did presents and stuff before we left. At that time, I finally finished all the music for the Bacchae, emailed it off, and sent a printed copy to the quartet. The very last cue -- a sort of dirge -- is the one that sounds the most like me. Unless you hear it played by the computer. It was easy to send the cues by e-mail, as there were two wireless hot spots on the compound. Both were powered by satellite, and failed in rainy weather. And for some odd reason, there were plenty of signs all over the place imploring us colonists not to download music files -- as if web pages nowadays weren't as big as music files. Slowly we settled in and got to know the writers, composers and visual artists there, and dealt with the very quick turnover that happens there. As is usual for such places, the inhabitants were at various points in their careers, and some were intensely focused on their work while others were not. The median age of artists went way down after the new year and then back up a little, whereas the median age of composers increased very slightly (since we aged three weeks there). My old friend Dan Sonenberg was there when we got there, and Tom Cipullo came a little later, and both were essential to the larger existence. Whatever that would mean. Tom is working on an opera (isn't he always?) and Dan on a flute and harp piece (isn't he never?).

Meanwhile, Beff got plenty done in the residence: a whole piece for flute, clarinet and video (featuring our cats), a 2-marimba piece, 2 songs, and some orchestration on HER opera. As to me, after finishing up the Bacchae, I retrieved all my hand drum stuff -- pictures, digital camera movies, and some pictures from the internet, studied them as closely as I could (not very), and dashed off three movements: the first is for frame drum, the second for talking drum and tabla, and the third for canning jar and bongos. Since Beff and I continued our tradition of afternoon walks at VCCA, we used that time for titles, and as usual, Beff had the funnier ones. The hand drum piece was finished on New Years Day and I called it "Snaggle". The first movement is called "Framer's Intent", and Beff titled the other two: Mr. Trampoline Man and Preserved. I e-mailed scores to Michael Lipsey -- who commissioned them -- and hit the ground running.

The next piece was for Barbara Haney, about to retire as the Marine Band's bass clarinetist, for solo bass clarinet. The idea was (yawn) different characters for the music on different sides of the break (having a clarinetist as a wife certainly ingrains the break into you), and also to ape some of the TEN OF A KIND licks Barb had to wail on in a most exposed way. That one turned out to be six minutes, and I called it LIVING LARGE. Really. After those pieces were done, I started thinking about etudes that Don Berman asked for, but those didn't come right away. So I finished my time in residence with two etudes specifically written to finish Book VII (which I can now send to the publisher, etc.): #69 is a slow and pretty, understated cluster etude (I try to go against type sometimes) and #70 turned out to be one of the hardest etudes of all 70: in name, on sharp dynamic contrasts. In feel, really fast be-bop with a bit of attention deficit disorder (hence the crazy extreme dynamics that change very fast). Beff named both of them: Palm de Terre (as most of the clusters are supposed to be played by the palms) and Stutter Stab (stabbed chords, etc.).

There were plenty of social things to do at the VCCA, including a pizza party on New Year's Eve. For this, we had to use the kitchen in the barn complex, and I had to buy pizza pans, knives, a rolling pin, a cup measure, and all the ingredients. It took quite a while to put it all together (I made a quadruple recipe, and there was enough left over to serve as lunch the next day). The serving of the pizza was followed by a dance party that really fizzled once some inferior music was chosen (you would think that one person dancing instead of eight would be a sign to put on different music). Friday night was poker night (nickel ante, maximum bet a quarter), and usually I didn't do poker there (because I lost so much the first time), but I joined in. The first Friday night I won 15 cents, and the second one I won two big pots, putting me ahead by $4.30 for the evening. Indeed, in one hand on the "midnight baseball" variation, I ended up with a hand with SIX aces. Not that easy to beat.

There were a few drives to Sweet Briar College, just across BUSINESS 29, to take hikes and see horses, and two drives into Lynchburg to buy stuff (including pizza ingredients), but otherwise we mostly stayed put. The VCCA is right next to railroad tracks, and the freight business has picked up considerably since the last time I was there. Many, MANY trains passed at all hours, and Beff decided to take a movie of one. So she waited on the train bridge for an hour and nothing happened. One of the other couples, Lynda and Hal (writers), said that on their 1:00 walks there was always a train -- so we both waited on the train bridge after lunch and both got movies (me with the digital camera, Beff with the camcorder).

And besides the composers I already knew, there were several familiar faces that I was glad to see again -- Hal and Lynda, for instance, Anthony and (from an earlier MacDowell sojourn) Eunice. The core staff is exactly as it was back in 1990: Robert, Dorothy, and Cora. One of the stars of the "Colony" video (Amy) is still the resident artist, though with longer hair. And the office staff, meanwhile, was busy forgetting to update the driving directions.

So yesterday we drove back. We set the travel alarm at 5 to shove off at 6, but it failed to go off: I woke us up at 5:09, and we were on the road at 5:41. The weather had been very warm -- 65 on Thursday (on our walk I was in a t-shirt) -- and the low temp was forecast as 45. So all our delicate stuff went into the car for overnight (contact lenses and computers being delicate stuff). But when we got to the car there was a thin sheet of ice on the windshields and I --- gasp! --- had to use the scraper. We took the inland route in order to avoid all the Maryland and NJ Turnpike traffic (and especially to avoid the Washington beltway at rush hour), and that meant the first hour was spent snaking up and over the Blue Ridge mountains. And it was cool, not to mention twisty. The rest was a drive very full of large trucks -- especially in Pennsylvania -- and what had been a beautiful sunny day turned, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, into a pea soupy fogfest. Hearing on 1010 WINS that the approach to the Tappan Zee bridge was very slow AND there was construction on the Merritt Parkway, we changed routes midstream, and went up 87 to 84 rather than across the Tappan Zee. On the way there, we lunched at the Sloatsburg (I think) rest area, and then gunned it all the way back to Maynard. We got onto Route 117 at about 4:15 and decided to hop right over to the post office to pick up our mail, then check with Maynard Door and Window as to what they did while we were gone (waterproofed the porch roof and probably plowed the driveway once), and THEN we pulled in, unpacked, etc. -- that was four trips each. After which we shopped at Shaws, I made dinner, and we washed the sheets. And Beff vacuumed.

The cats emerged immediately, and were REALLY glad to see us. Our parade of catsitters apparently didn't read the part of our (admittedly very long) directions noting that they only liked the Friskies chicken and salmon entrees, and fed them canned 9 Lives, which the cats shunned. We rectified the situation, and gave them lots of treats, and they were happy. They have, meanwhile, acted very needy, following us from room to room, and especially, after it is dark, following us into the kitchen in expectation of treats. Today, in the absence of the really heavy rain that was forecast (on the weather radar, the heavy rain was in bands that missed us to the west and the east), I drove for errands: a haircut, dollhouse wine at Colonia Wine and Spirits, food at Trader Joes, mailing bags at Staples, and more food (as well as two very nice rice bowls) at the Joyce Chen oriental market. I made some lovely tom yum for lunch, and dinner will be chicken sammiches. And Boston lettuce, which I got at Trader Joe's.

So now the future? Don Berman's etudes, and then finally several big pieces to follow. Tuesday I have a doctor's appointment (prep for surgery), and will pop into Brandeis to see if any of the five incompletes are complete. I am in Chicago Wednesday to Saturday (shout out to my homeys). Meanwhile, Beff will let Dunn Oil in on Friday for the yearly furnace maintenance thing for which we have a contract. After that, other things happen, and I will try to keep the gentle reader apprised, if not actually appraised (because you know you have value).

SANDSTORM!

The incredible mildness of the winter continues, as many shake their heads in disbelief to a point where I get dizzy just watching. Last year in this calendar month, Boston had its snowiest (calendar) month ever, and Letters to the Editor writers universally credited global warming for the phenomenon. This January seems to be running at least 10 degrees above normal, and the same letter writers will be writing the same things. And this is what music is like: the same thing means different things, and different things mean the same thing. Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.

SANDSTORM!

There is no snow to be found anywhere in Maynard except at the fringes of commercial parking lots; furthermore, the ground is not soggy. If there's a point to that observation, it eludes me, too. So naturally, we are all losing our winter driving skills. But gaining a friend. This freaky warmth extends at least to Chicago, where I experienced it first hand this week -- that and rain, sleet, freezing rain and snow. The richness of the experience amazes.

SANDSTORM!

But early in the week (Tuesday) I had to organize all the end-of-semester paperwork and grading from the fall into packets to return to students in the second semester of first year theory, and take it into work to Seung Ah (ka-ching!), who was to return it. My new endowed chair stationery had arrived, and I got to bring it with me. At Brandeis I saw Caro(ka-ching!)lyn, Mark, Marty, Eric Chafe, and many other colleagues, where I jawed about until I had to leave for my doctor's appointment -- which was, I thought, a pro forma thing to prepare me for the operation, and it mostly was -- except my blood work and EKG were officially outdated. So I got both done, and it was comical as the (male) nurse kept reattaching the electrodes to various parts of me, asking me to scoot up, scoot down, raise my legs, lower my legs, and then finally bring in a dred-locked nurse, who first asked me, "Are you alive?" She then looked at the monitor, said, "the readings are fine," and exited. You always wonder what's wrong with you when they have to readjust your electrodes to get the desirable result. And those are words by which to live.

Nonetheless. I packed for Chicago, got a ride to the airport, and it was incredibly warm and incredibly windy on Wednesday -- Beff said when she returned that the barbecue on the back porch had been blown a few feet such that it blocked the door. And I was worried that I wouldn't get out before they closed the airport -- "gusts to 60" sometimes does that. As it was, we got out on time, though many flights coming in from places to the near west were cancelled -- as that was where the storm was. We had the bumpiest takeoff I've ever experienced, which is not good for those of us who don't like to fly. Incredibly, a half hour after that, I was nodding off just fine. And we landed on time.