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

I am back from a lovely stay in Italy at the Bogliasco Foundation, and I brought with me the Italian cold. So while I am quite happy about the time I had there and the work I got done, Beff will report that I have been sniffing and coughing -- especially at night -- and it bums me out because this is only the second cold I have had since the millennium break. So pardon my whining.

So I made it to the airport just fine, while Geoff was staying at the house for a Musica Viva gig, and the flights to Paris and then to Genoa went without much of a hitch. Though there's this asinine thing at DeGaulle Airport when you change planes -- you have to go through security again, and there are few signs directing you to the terminal you need to find. "Check-In required" was on my ticket stubs, so when I found the sub-terminal where the Genoa flight was leaving from, I put my ticket through the "express check-in" machine, and got a "cannot read ticket. You are not checked in" message. Finally I figured out where to go (I was actually already checked in), to an express security area (I was the only one in line), and got to an extremely featureless waiting area to get on the People Mover that would take us to our plane, a CanAir 700 waiting out on the Tarmac in a different time zone. The flight to Genoa was hitchless, though I was surprised to be flying over snow-capped mountains -- I guess the Alps go farther east than I thought. The plane did a big spiral into Genoa, which is a pretty small airport with two pretty short runways, and I can report that a CanAir 700 can go from 300 mph to 0 in about 5 seconds (the passengers were able to do so in about 7). After going through the customs line (I was 2nd in line, but the agent started with the person 5th in line -- those Europeans), I encountered a man holding a sign saying "Liguria Study Center. David Rakowsy", and even though it wasn't strictly true, I uttered my first Italian in Italy to that man: "Eccomi". For comparison's sake, my first Italian in Rome was "Non sono in coda", though I think I should have said "fila" in place of "coda".

So I got a lovely ride in a tiny hatchback from the airport to the Bogliasco Foundation -- just barely east of Genoa and on the coast -- which involved going through exactly nine tunnels, some of them two miles long or more. Fighting through the haze of jet lag, I tried to have a basic Italian conversation with the driver (Danilo, who was to serve us at dinner more than two dozen times), and I remember that gas (benzina) is expensive, cars are small, and people are easygoing. The haze of jet lag prevented more from seeping in. Meanwhile, I got driven in Bogliasco through what seemed like little mazes just barely wide enough for cars, my luggage was carried into a spacious villa, and there were people having lunch that said Hi. In English. I was shown my room (actually, roomS), came downstairs to have lunch, did my best to stay awake, ate, talked, and went back to my bedroom. At which point I discovered my suitcase was ticking. The last jolt of my suitcase being put down in my room caused my electronic metronome to turn on, and I was pretty glad that didn't happen in the airport. 'Cause, like, Italy isn't the best place to buy new clothes, metronome, score paper, valigia, etc. I napped until 6:30, showered, got all fancily dressed up, and walked down to the main building of the foundation with the other Fellow in my villa, Daniele, who spoke nearly no English.

So here is the poop. The Bogliasco Foundation is on the Ligurian coastline, which is a very hilly area, and those hills are steep. There are two large buildings at "street" level that contain offices and housing and studios for four fellows/couples. A second parcel is 200 or 300 feet up one of those steep hills straddling a long staircase, and there are two sizable villas in that parcel, each of which houses two Fellows. Fellows learn a password to open the electronic gates to get into any of the parcels. It seemed that those of us in the upper villas each got three rooms: a bedroom, a study, and a veranda. My veranda was particularly large and scenic. In addition, the visual artist gets one level of a small villa where there is a studio, and the musician (that would be me) gets a separate structure even farther up the hill with a piano and (unlike Bellagio) a bathroom. Every villa and studio has wireless internet access, and since my studio was the farthest up, I got the biggest view. Dude, of the Mediterranean. I was also right next to a tennis court which the Fellows don't get to use -- unless, like Robert Frost, you like playing tennis without a net.

The structure of the day is as follows: breakfast runs from 7:45 to 9, and stuff is left out for you in whichever villa you stay. Lunch is 12:45 to 1:30 -- in the street-level villa if your room is there or in the Orbiana villa if your room is up the hill. Drinks before dinner are at the street-level building at 7:15 and dinner is at 7:45, which is served in a formal manner. So you must dress for dinner (my poor jacket survived 26 wearings and is none the worse for wear). Afterwards there are teas and apperetifs and a drink closet available. And sometimes some of the assembled would venture to a bar for some birra alla spina. There were, in all, nine there as Fellows -- one more than the eight you would expect because two of them are a married couple and both Fellows. There was me; Paul, a filmmaker from Ireland and living in Brooklyn whose studio was in the upper area; Cristina, an art critic and curator and translator from Milan also living in the upper area; Daniele, a sculptor from Italy living in the same villa as me; Gennady, a dictionary-maker from Moscow; William, a wearer of many hats including philosopher from Vanderbilt University; Michael, a well-known mystery novelist and TV writer; Maureen, an historian and wearer of many hats from Duke University; and Gurchuran, a writer and columnist from Delhi. Italian and English and snippets of French and Spanish were spoken at the formal meals, and occasionally (due to my influence, no doubt) we got silly.

For four and a half weeks, the food was unfailingly excellent, and at least one local dish is worth noting: pansotti, a ravioli in a nut cream sauce (I have pictures...). Though by three weeks into the residency some of us (especially me) were getting stir crazy over the lack of strong-tasting food -- so when Paul's S.E. Quoc came from New York, he was implored to bring hot sauces. I managed to consume all of the small vial of Frank's Hot Sauce he brought within 24 hours. The Sciracca hot sauce, meanwhile, sated us for days and days. Gurchuran's wife Bunu was able to visit for a week also, but those are all the spouses etc. that were able to make it. Though on the second day when I realized just how gorgeous the whole area and experience were, I tried to convince Beff to carve out a time for a visit. But the time was short and transportation too expensive to justify doing it.

There was plenty of exercise to be had -- we just had to get onto the staircase that separated the two upper villas and go up, up, up, and up, and we got to see many interesting things from hill culture. The San Ilario Church was a nice strenuous hike that Paul and Cristina and I did on occasion, and once Paul and I tried to see how high we could get. We encountered a virtual forest of rosemary bushes and stone terrace fences where the trail petered out that kept us from going any higher, but the view from that high up was pretty spectacular. And did I mention -- the view from just about anywhere was of the Mediterranean sea. Also discovered eventually was the Grimaldi Park in Nervi close by, and the sea walk connecting our "Irish Pub" (the Pub Duca) to the village of Nervi, about 3 miles in length and threading over several rocky beach areas. The town of Bogliasco itself was small and dominated by a gigantic railroad bridge, which also had beaches. And a supermarket called "Basko". And a few nice shops that cater to tourists. Apparently the tourist season is big there, and it was just getting under way as our time there was ending. What did I buy in Bogliasco? Some fruits and amaro at Basko, and a necklace for Beff at Longines Gioelleria. No, really.

So I worked very, very hard to finish my piece, and did just that. Thanks to our lunch conversations -- Paul, who had an annoyingly good command of Italian, Cristina, who IS Italian, and Daniele -- I got to invent a new musical term, "Va scimiamerda", or go apeshit. Cristina approved. I never asked about "anziani scoreggi", or old farts. The va scimiamerda section is for a little Rick Wakeman moment when the soloist plays both the piano and a toy piano. I also extracted one buttstick in the fourth movement: there is a passage with BOXES in which the strings improvise around a few pitches. There goes all my uptown cred. And I wrote a 3-minute cadenza while at the same time encouraging the soloist to do his/her own. So the piece times out at 33 minutes, approximately, probably more like 35. And it's tight.

In the time after finishing the piece, I started work on a piano quintet, which oddly started doing bird-in-flight gestures. That got me to listening more closely to the birds at Bogliasco, and since I also have to write a piece for flute/piccolo and two pianos, I took time to transcribe the birdsongs I was hearing. Click on the green "Birdsongs" link on the left to see what I got. At this point I have to go back to the piano quintet and rewrite what I have to make it, um, easier. A little easier, anyway.

On my last full weekend Klaus came to visit, and it was a welcome interruption, though I got a little blistery from all the walking we had to do. Klaus being around gave us a good excuse to frequent the tourist dives on the sea walk, and I got to have a real Italian pizza (or what seemed like one) as well as some crappy beer. Both nights he was there, we ended at the Duca Pub with the mostly Belgian beers they had, and it was quite welcome. Klaus's hotel was on the Viale delle Palme, and it was just like being back on Palm Drive at Stanford -- except that there was culture nearby. Klaus brought an Australian hot sauce, which certainly made my last week there.

Since most of the fellows arrived within a day or two of each other, there was plenty of opportunity for conversation, and strong bonds were formed -- especially those of us who lunched in the upper villa. We tossed breadsticks into each other's mouths (actually never succeeding) and invented silly cross-lingual expressions (for instance, "rompere vento", or break wind, has no meaning in Italian). And there were also the hikes up the staircase into the hills, trips into town, etc. Since Beff is thinking about doing a video piece on trains, I took quite a few train movies with my digital camera, and you, dear reader, can see one of them by clicking on the "Trainbridge" link in yellow above and on the left -- we both remarked that the landscape reminds one of the Triplets of Belleville.

On one day in our first week, Alessandra, the Assistant Director of the Foundation, organized a trip for us into Genoa proper, where we saw the site of Columbus's house, the old gate to the city, old churches, old ducal palaces, relics, and the port, and it was a fabulous trip all around. This was the only time I was to go this far away from Bogliasco, as I was satisfied to be doing my work and to take lots and lots of walks. There was a big overcrowded flower show to shun and also a big and vastly overcrowded mass fish fry in a neighboring town to shun, and shun I did. In 32 days, I never tired of the view from my bedroom window, of the view from my studio, or the sea walk. I probably would have eventually.

Paul and Cristina left the day before I did, which was a little sad, especially as our numbers were diminished at dinner that night. On the morning of my last day, I started coming down with the cold which I now hold. As usual, I got up early, and took the opportunity to walk into town one last time, and stand by the train bridge that goes UNDER the Foundation to try and take a movie of a train emerging -- and was successful. But you can't see it, so there. I got a cab to the airport, and it was uneventful. The flight to Paris was uneventful, though it was windy and bumpy on the way down, and I had a mere 55 minutes to make my connection. Here is where the fun begins. As the clock to my 3:55 connection ticked, the plane landed at 3:05. We got into the people mover by 3:25. We got let into the terminal at 3:35, where there were NO signs pointing to the E terminal where my connection was (the "transfer desk" and "shuttle" mentioned while we were on the plane were both nonexistent). Meanwhile, my throat was getting dry from the cold. Finally I found a sign pointing to Terminal E, which was a VAST distance, and when I entered it, there was a vast array of check-in desks with nothing pointing to departure gates. By 3:50 I found the door to the departure gates and it was preceded by -- about 75 people in line for passport control. After which there were a grand total of TWO security stations we had to pass through. About 50 people said "my flight leaves in 5 minutes!" to no reaction from security (as they were French). Throat getting dryer. People started cutting in line, so I did, too. And made it to my gate at 4:10. There was still a people mover waiting there, so I did not miss the flight. Meanwhile, I stood on the mover for a good 35 minutes, all the while watching people scurry back in the terminal for other flights. So luckily my flight was an hour late. Otherwise I would have been a day late. And a dollar short.

And on this flight, I was seated close to a lavatory and next to a Russian. Who changed seats, saying in broken English "I'm not too interested in toilet sound". Excellent, I thought, more leg room for a 7-hour flight! So about an hour into the flight an old man with many age spots and a Brooklynite-moved-to-Florida accent declared "I'm comin' in", sat in the Russian's seat, asked if I wanted his wife's seat because the video thing didn't work, asked the flight attendants to tell his wife that they were changing seats (the flight attendants smiled and did nothing). And during the dinner, he nudged me several times and pointed to food on his plate to ask me if I wanted it. You know, if I ever write a book on airline passenger etiquette, I think there will be a large section in the very first chapter with advice such as "Don't Nudge the Person in the Seat Next To You", "Don't Offer Food You Don't Want to Other Passengers" and "Ask Before Taking An Empty Seat". After the detritus from the meals got collected, the guy's wife came down, he announced that they were changing seats, and I was glad to see that his wife had a suppressed British accent. And said, "Don't shout. Take your headphones off." She then went back to her proper seat. Half an hour later, so did age spot guy. And I got my leg room back.

So the flight was an hour late, but the landing in Boston was smooth, the customs was fast, and my bag was right there after I did the passport control. I got my limo, and Christy was still in the house, where we shared some beers and spoke of the big rains here that I missed and the Mediterranean climate that she missed. And I methodically had small portions of all the food I missed: hot sauce (by the spoonful), dill pickles, Cajun olives, pepperoncinis. Meanwhile, I have this cold, and have coughed the night away a few times. Hate it when that happens.

The day after I got back, Beff got back from Maine with the cats, where they had been for about six or seven weeks. The cats are VERY happy to be back, and VERY needy. We took Christy out to dinner the other night, and for once the cats were not so skittish about a stranger. And now they are learning about the outdoors again.

So THIS weekend Beff and I drive a rental car to her 25th Oberlin reunion. If that's not fun, what is? Geoffy is here for a BMOP thing, and Christy will be back in her accustomed hammock. And finally it is forecast to warm up. 'cause this Typing With Really Cold Fingers is just weird. And then ... two pieces to write this summer.

For the benefit of the other Bogliasco fellows, I put hundreds of pictures online, which I invite you, dear reader, to view. Click on the "Pix" link up to the left for many of those, and the "Genoa Pix" for file lists. You may also see three QuickTime movies: Bastabasta is a silliness at lunch movie, while Cimaview is a panorama from our very high climb, and Trainbridge that movie of a train on the bridge in the town of Bogliasco. The green links are to PDFs of the four movements of my concerto, in case you are interested. The first two pictures below were taken from my room: the town of Bogliasco and Portofino coast very early in the morning; and the full moon over the Mediterranean. The small pics are of most of the group at dinner (L to R William's hands, Gurchuran, Paul, Maureen, Michael, Daniele, Cristina), and then of the tired stone lions in front of the main building set in relief to one of the dogs that lives on the grounds.

MAY 31. Breakfast this morning was meatless sausage patties with 2% milk cheese, orange juice, and coffee. Dinner last night was grilled chicken and steamed asparagus. Lunch was pizza at Village Pizzeria with an onion rings chaser. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES THIS LAST WEEK: 41.2 and 86.4. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS C'est la Vie"by Robbie Nevil. LARGE EXPENSES this last week include rental car (Mitsubishi Galant: in the future, just say no), amount unknown, and toner cartridge/Norton AntiVirus 10/DiskWarrior from J&R, $274. Ant traps at CVS, $15. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: The first piece I ever wrote -- February, 1974 during vacation, a 7-minute monstrosity for concert band -- quite obviously copped all the groovy licks in the band music I played at All-State and All-New England. My particular favorite was a trumpet melody accompanied by parallel sharp-9 chords. Terry Colburn was the lone person to identify from what piece I had stolen. There was also a big tutti near the end that had a pair of parallel 12-note chords in the middle of it. And "pair of parallel" is a fun turn of phrase. Unless you're stupid. COMPANIES WHO HAVE NOT COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY THIS WEEK are Mitsubishi/Avis (boy, we could have used cruise control) and the Feve (atrocious service). COMPANIES WHO HAVE COVERED THEMSELVES IN GLORY is J&R Music (incredibly fast service). THIS WEEK'S COSMIC QUANDARY: Who invented the word "tendentious"? THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: climp. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF include reading about the Democrats' "lack of ideas" and various televised renditions of Taps. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS: Santa Barbara pepperoncinis, olives of various kinds, hamburger dills. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Oberlin has a Frank Lloyd Wright house. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 1. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: Lexicon, this page. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT TODAY: 0. FRAGILE THINGS DESTROYED BY THE CATS THIS LAST WEEK is none. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 9, dagnabbit. DAVY'S BAROMETER FOR THE FUTURE OF MUSIC this week is 56 out of 100. WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: elephants that fit in the palm of your hand. THIS WEEK'S FEATURED FAKE SENDER NAME IN A SPAM: Peso I. Fainthearted. SUBJECT OF THAT SPAM: Software. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 9,486. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.98, $2.98, $2.73, $2.67, $2.98 and $2.94. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE pipistrello in uscita dal inferno, the magnetic stripe on the inside of a DVD package, tweezers, any ant caught in an ant trap.

The preceding week was dominated in no small part by pretty nasty summer colds we both got. Mine started my last day in Italy, and as I type this, it hangs on tenaciously. Beff's is about four days behind mine, and she has asked about the progress of mine because of that. this cold is characterized by consistent coughing, occasional sneezing and running nose, and especially lengthy coughing jags at night that just won't quit. Mine is substantially better than it was four days ago, but the coughing won't quit -- though it is considerably less frequent. Menthol throat drops and the requisite smelliness have become de rigeur.

But around all the coldiness (thank you Stephen Colbert) was a big trip over the big Memorial Day weekend, and preceding all of that was a guest turn by our favorite guest, His Geoffiness. His Geoffiness was here for an Antheil-Gershwin turn with BMOP, and he copped a little hammock time in his down time. Infatto, he was here when we left for Oberlin on Friday. Meanwhile, Christy was back for another star turn as catsitter, and she did an enormously good deed: she shortened the outtake pipe for the washing machine. I had tried to do that months ago -- the washing machine tells you, only once you get it home, that the outtake pipe should be no more than 3 feet off the ground, and ours was about 6, and we can't control that -- but my hacksaw skills leave much to be desired. Leave it to a specialist in kinetic sculpture to save the day (it's now about 5-1/4 feet). The washing machine also has tended to move around the palette when spinning a large load, occasionally moving far enough to unplug itself -- and Christy found a sweet spot (her word, and ours, too) wherein it no longer migrates. Now that is awesome.

So besides a little lawnmowing and hammock time, and MANY, MANY letters written for composers applying for Fromm Foundation commissions (sigh), my activities consisted of more teeny revisions to my piece, fretting about having to restart my piano quintet, playing with tunes in iTunes, and getting to know "Mr. Trampoline Man". The last of that is the title of the second of my solo hand drum pieces. Michael Lipsey, who commissioned them, e-mailed an mp3 and sent a CD of a home recording of that piece. Dear reader, you yourself may hear the live performance by clicking on the yellow "Trampoline Man" link below. It is a passacaglia, whose theme is carried by the talking drum, with variants provided by the tabla. No, really. And since my webspace ran out of room, I deleted all my Bogliasco pictures. So now you'll have to rely on your memory.

So on Friday very early in the morning we set off for Oberlin for Beff's 25th reunion. The drive there was about 660 miles, and it was mostly uneventful -- despite being at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend. Leave it up to Oberlin to start a reunion on what we heard on the radio was the "third heaviest travel day of the year". The drive there was mostly uneventful, save about four hours through various heaviness of rain -- from hardly to really, really -- and an infuriating 40-minute delay southeast of Cleveland due to two lanes being blocked by a traffic accident. How dare they demolish their car on the day I'm driving through! The scenery for the first hour and a half past Albany was pretty nice, as it follows the old Erie Canal, and the somewhat depressed industrial cities were actually cool to look at -- even the large Beech Nut factory seemed quaintly nostalgic (I used to chew Beech Nut gum that was striped). Oh, and gas is way cheaper in Ohio than it is here.

Oberlin itself is a college town, flat, pretty, and full of things to do that seem interesting as long as you know you don't have to live there. We searched a long time for a parking spot before going to Reunion Central, where we found out that we were assigned a room in a dorm that Beff always wanted to live in, but didn't get the luck of the draw. For you see, this dorm has a turret room. We didn't get the turret, but we did get to relive dorm chic -- single beds on opposite sides of the room, a walk-in closet half the size of the room, and modular desks and dressers. Not to mention, undressing in front of naked men in the bathroom in the morning. It was at the end of a hallway, which made it seemingly fairly quiet. A buffet of usual buffet suspects was available to us in the common room, so we did what we could with it -- why, some of it was almost food-like. Beff reconnected with several people from her dorm and external apartment days, and it became somewhat of a clique. Indeed, if there is anything to describe our corner of the reunion, it is Chickfest. Plenty of graduates from the college came to the reunion, but Beff was one of a very few graduates of the Con (conservatory) to come. One of the few non-chicks encountered was the husband of Teresa McCollough, a noted Davy interpreter, but Teresa herself was not there. In fact, this thing about the spouse coming along with the reunioner was not too common. The men's room was on our floor, and ladies rooms on other floors. Ah, the long walk to the bathroom sure brought back memories -- very, very dim ones.