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

These may be meaningless to you, but I assure you, they are equally meaningless to me. On the right, though -- the most viewed page is the Home page, but the second most viewed page (usually not even on the chart) is the Buttstix page. Hmm.

When last we spoke (I speak figuratively now), I was still in the throes of teaching fourth species counterpoint and was about to move on to fifth. Which I did, Oscar, I did. The time spent grading the homework declined nicely, and I probably only spent about five hours grading homework, instead of what had become the customary thirteen, last week. I also enforced a discipline of starting to grade sooner than later. It didn't last.

Meanwhile the Needy Season arrived, and enough students wanted advice and so on that I scheduled some lessons and stuff for some no longer enrolled but going towards dissertation during my office hours, and of course I managed to corral some more new majors and minors. Plus, I went to a faculty senate meeting that actually concluded in less than the allotted time. What I least like about Faculty Senate meetings is that a large part is spent assigning people to committees, a chore I dislike. So I spend a great deal of time trying to will myself into invisibility. So far it seems to have worked. One of these days it won't work any more.

Then the piano concerto event ramped up, and ramped up pretty quickly. On the Tuesday following the last update, I was scheduled by BMOP's publicist for a live radio appearance on the MIT radio station, to be interviewed by the estimable Ken Field. And if you were to ask me, I couldn't come up with a workable definition of "estimable", so I'll leave it up to the context to explain it, and that usually suffices. On that date, then, I figured I would try to park at a local commuter rail station and take a train in. Plus, I was scheduled within the nth degree to meet with Gil Rose beforehand to go over particulars on the CD that BMOP is making -- I had already factored in that he would be late by 15 to 25 minutes. So I drove to South Acton station, and there was no parking. Thus I drove to West Concord and found ONE spot, and was on time for the 11:07 train, which actually arrived at 11:32. Fine, since I wasn't due for any appointment until 1:45. I ate lunch at the Cambridge Common, where I had "sliders" -- apparently the new cool thing at some restaurants. Basically White Castle burgers, except more complicated (with counterpoint and a definite urlinie).

At 1:45 I got a call on my cell phone from Gil saying he was just finishing lunch and would be right there -- which by now was Kendall Square. At 2:14 we met and at 2:30 I had to amble to the station, and the weather was gorgeous, if airy. The interview was personable and mellow -- as one would expect -- and it was odd being the guy who writes skittery, fast music on the program of a guy who obviously leans toward mellow jazz. So he played some of my slow music. Which isn't mellow, but by definition is slow. We finished early enough that I could get the 4:05 out of Porter back to West Concord and not have to wait till the 5:00. Heck, there was even enough time for me to purchase some commuter rail tickets in the new automated machines!

The next big event had to do with getting the toy piano from Marilyn's office at NYU to Boston, and that problem wasn't getting solved by the BMOP office -- which was, of course, swamped with stuff to do for the first concert of the season. So on Friday morning I up and started to drive New Yorkwards. And just a few hundred feet short of the toll booths in Worcester, I heard the sound of my muffler dragging on the road. Sigh. I pulled over, called 911 (this is why we get cell phones), had a police car with flashing lights in back of me for 25 minutes, and then a nice, really big tow truck guy showed up with a flatbed. He looked at the muffler and said, "how'd you like for me to fix it right now? You could just drive off". I said okay, and he pulled a bunch of wire clothes hangers out of his truck and a wire cutter. He spent maybe ten minutes under the car, occasionally coming out to cut another piece of hanger, and said "that'll be 15 bucks. It'll last for weeks, maybe months." I was grateful. I had, meanwhile, called Marilyn to let her know I couldn't make it, and she started making plans to get a driver for the piano (she doesn't drive) and her, and I was able to call her back a half hour later to let her know I was on my way. Of course, I was extremely cognizant of every single bump for the first 20 miles or so, before I loosened up a bit.

I made it to Marilyn's office a little after 11, she handed over the contraband, and I drove right back. Getting from the east side to the west side took 25 minutes, whereas west to east took 5. Remember that, kimosabe. At the first rest stop in Connecticut I looked at the jerryrigged setup, and the muffler was still in place, though the clamp part was a-swingin' free. Which I sort of reattached. Success! But of course I couldn't bring the toy piano to rehearsal, so Gil Rose -- who seems to be able to do just about anything -- arranged for Tony D'Amico (who lives not so far away) to pick it up from my back porch Saturday night and bring it to the first rehearsal. He was like a thief in the night, except we WANTED him to take our stuff. Meanwhile, as my "payment" for doing the toy piano run, I wheedled a bunch of free tickets from BMOP -- 10 for students who had to ask for tix for "Amanda Lovankiss" and 3 for friends (Rick Scott, a ka-ching twin, and Seunghee) who had to ask for tix for "Super Malibu Barbie". David Sanford only had to ask for the unusual name of "David Rakowski".

On the weekend, the RAKING portion of our autumn began in earnest. Saturday -- on which day I took the car to the Toyota dealer to be fixed, and was told I also needed new tires (the tailpipe was cracked, also -- which must have been from that piece of sidewalk that I drove over several weeks back) -- it rained a whole mess. Nonetheless, we got stuff at Trader Joes (which is near the Toyota Dealer) and had good stuff to eat. Really. Sunday it cleared up and there were big piles of leaves on the driveway (the border of driveway and yard was not discernible), so we cleared those as a start. The leaves were so heavy from the rain that we broke not one, but TWO rakes barreling them and discarding them. In all, we took care of about ten barrels of them. To continue the narrative here -- the following Tuesday I raked the northwest portion of the front yard, then the rest of the yard and most of the driveway last Sunday. The current total taken care of now numbers 39 barrels plus eight barrels of fallen apples from a particularly fecund year for them (boy do I want to get rid of that tree NOW). PLUS I took care of some of the branches from yet another ailanthus tree that fell from the neighbor's yard into ours -- the neighbor took care of the actual tree part. For you see, it had been windy that Friday. And on Sunday I spilled ice tea on my little Sony camera, thus making it inoperative. So I bought another one, 8 megapixels instead of 5, and for less money. So there.

Back to the master narrative. Which will entitle The Glamour of Being A Living Classical Composer. Note the European spelling of "glamour". Note the American spelling of "composer". Note the universal definition of "being". Rehearsals began last Tuesday, in the basement of a Masonic Hall in Cambridge, and again my nefarious plan was to take the commuter rail in. I happened to be unlucky enough for the first rehearsal to coincide with the day Boston was giving a parade to celebrate the Red Sox World Series victory, and this time there was no parking at South Acton OR West Concord, so I connived to park in a neighborhood nearby, all the while willing my car to be invisible (it was still evident when I got back, so it must have worked). And the train -- late by 25 minutes again. Too bad there isn't 25 minutes worth of stuff to do in West Concord. SO, the train was loaded with lots of Red Sox people talking about how they never go into Boston or take the train, and was SO full that it was ... free! Life's small consolations.

So in Cambridge, at the Masonic Hall, all were present, and even the toy piano made it. The first rehearsal went swimmingly (I may be all wet when I say that ... sorry, that one was too easy, plus it's not even funny), and things sounded surprisingly good (given that I wrote them). The wind playing in particular was splendiforous, and I made a few rough recordings for the sake of reference. The piano was something that Marilyn lovingly called "kindling", but all 88 keys worked. After this rehearsal, Marilyn and I dinnered with John Aylward at the Cambridge Common (wouldn't you?), and I got a nice commuter rail back. I got the rehearsal files and made a CD for reference sake for Marilyn.

And then was Monday, a normal teaching day except that Marilyn and I were to lead Eric Chasalow's American music class at noon. Which we did, though I got a call on my cell while teaching theory from Marilyn that she got off at the wrong stop. A cab brought her in in the nick of time (the class was particularly impressed with the quality of wind playing for a first rehearsal). And fun we had. After my next 3 hours of teaching, we came back to Maynard, had seafood, and Marilyn went back to her hotel.

Thursday was another one of those days morning rehearsal, and gorgeous weather. I got into Cambridge early, thus discovering that during rush hour the worst traffic is near Concord, and near where Route 2 goes to the Alewife Parkway. The morning rehearsal went extremely well, I got more reference recordings, and a violinist collapsed and was rushed away by EMT's. A strange situation that was the first time for me, and Gil Rose handled it expertly. Then, after I fed my meter a few times, we drove to Brandeis using the route I used to use when I subletted in Cambridge. It's prettier during the daylight. And I was ONLY ten minutes late to my usual Thursday teaching. Which was followed by a faculty meeting and a colloquium by Marilyn, which was very well received. After dinner with the faculty, back home came I. Just about ten minutes before Beff got in.

Friday was the concert, of course. Beff had to go to a conference of "telling our assessment stories" at Holy Cross College, and I went into Boston in order to park for the overnight, and got a nice lunch at Pizzeria Uno, and it was an excellent dress rehearsal, which again I made reference recordings of (see "Concerto 1 dress" link in green above -- for the other movements, substitute the number 2, 3 and 4 for "1") and even a little Flip Video of the first five minutes before I got tired of holding the thing (see "Concerto Opening" link). Right as my dress rehearsal ended, Beff called -- she was in our room at the Colonnade Hotel, so timing was exquisite. After meeting her there and relaxing a bit, we dinnered at Betty's Wok and Noodle (used to be Ann's Restaurant, 89 cents for a burger and fries, what happened to my youth, etc.) and convened in time for the pre-concert thing with Lisa Bielawa, who, as always, was in fine form. When Michael Colgrass brought up how sometimes in writing, the piece starts to talk to you, and I was asked to comment about that, and being literal instead of all metaphorical, I noted that recreational drugs often helps with such things. Because my pieces often have unibrows.

Then there was the concert. Excellent, excellent, playing all around, and so much music! My piece started at 9:56 and ended at 10:32. Frank Oteri sat right in back of us and Richard Buell right in back of him, and Marilyn was amazing. The toy piano plus piano excerpt was probably conceived as something funny and ironic, but given the tempo at that time, I noticed people staring gape-mouthed at that moment, and the funny one toy piano note in the cadenza got no laughs (gape mouths were still in evidence, and I think I noticed myself drooling out of mine by this point). There were lots of curtain calls (five, I think), and it was fun being backstage watching the monitor during Marilyn's solo curtain call -- when she tried to get the orchestra to stand, but they wouldn't.

But wait, there's more! Reception afterwards, much champagne, driving back on Saturday just before the remnants of a hurricane were set to pass over -- we stopped at Whole Foods for staples on the way. And on Sunday after the wind and rain was done, Beff had to leave early, and I raked 19 barrels of leaves. And went to a student composers concert at Brandeis featuring several people from my piano concerto. But then ....

Yesterday was the recording session, in the Great Hall of Mechanics Hall in Worcester. 10-1 and 2-4:30. I drove in fairly early to get all-day parking, and boy is Worcester a strange-looking town. At least the downtown part. Definitely had its prime in about 1880. The good thing was getting parking within 2 blocks of the gig for eight bucks for the whole day. And the recording went extremely well -- we were able to fix everything that had tended to rush and boy did it sound hot! For lunch, I met Droolie at Spoodles on Main Street (a lot of the orchestra had the same idea, as did Gil), and was reminded that technically she was my supervisor at Black Achievers of the YMCA back in 1986-88. Wow. Now she's a lawyer, working downtown on auto insurance stuff, and has a gorgeous big ol' house. And two kids. And she's not my supervisor any more. But I still let her tell me what to do (for instance, "let's sit here" and "leave the plates there"). I paid. After the orchestral part was done (we finished ten minutes early), Marilyn recorded the cadenza in bits, and off we went. And there I was, carrying a toy piano down Main Street in Worcester. And it's now situated back in our dining room. Whew. The review appeared today in the Globe and should already be in my Reviews 4.

Meantime. I didn't learn my already learned lesson and still have grading to do today. Plus I have to go into the 'Deis today for a rehearsal of "Disparate Measures", which the Lyds and Steve Drury are performing Saturday (this Glamorous Being of a Classical Composer never ends), and on top of all that, Beff and I are going to the BSO Friday night. Berg Violin Concerto! Mahler 9! We'll be there like forever! And what else is up? Raking, raking, raking. Teaching, teaching, teaching (at least it's not counterpoint any more). Chicago for Thanksgiving. This semester has, as usual, gone really fast and really slow at the same time. Plus it looks like more willing myself into invisibility in the next few weeks. Oh yeah, and Linda Reichert is doing a couple of etudes in Philly with Network for New Music this weekend, and I can't make it (raking, Disparate Measures, etc.) But she's plugging the concert on YouTube -- see red "Linda Reichert" link up there.

And pictures! Beff has the new little camera in Maine, so the dress rehersal pictures I have will have to wait for the next update. But there are some RECORDING SESSION shots I took yesterday with the old Nikon. What we have here is Slosberg Music Center -- first picture I took with the new camera -- backyard with fewer leaves on trees, Cammy trying to be cute, the jerryrig of the muffler, Marilyn contextualized in the gazebo, the recording session, the control room, and Marilyn at the recording session. Bye.
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NOVEMBER 20. Breakfast today was rice link sausages with 2% milk cheese, grapefruit juice (slightly fizzy), and coffee. Lunch was Buffalo wings from Neighborhood Pizzeria. Dinner last night was a Red Baron Deluxe Frozen Pizza. TEMPERATURE EXTREMES SINCE LAST UPDATE 21.7 and 64.8. MUSIC GOING THROUGH MY HEAD AS I TYPE THIS Fourth movement of the Rakowski Piano Concerto. LARGE EXPENSES THIS LAST TWO WEEKS iPod Touch, unknown. Christmas present for Beff, tell you later. POINTLESS NOSTALGIC REMINISCENCE: One of my spare time leisure activities when I was in fourth grade was drawing maps -- of states, the USA, and of the world. I had tons of them discarded and lying around, as we had unlimited cardboard that my father had pilfered from his job at a paper mill. At Christmastime, when it's time to give the suck-up gift to the teacher, my parents got me something to give her (I didn't know in advance what it was) and used my discarded maps as padding within the wrapping. Naturally, the teacher, upon unwrapping, was programmed to ooh and aah about how nice the maps I'd drawn were. But she had a bigger surprise ahead of her -- the actual gift. I don't remember what it was. THIS WEEK'S MADE-UP WORD: Sloosky. THINGS I HAVE GROWN WEARY OF The little ol' TMJ thing, Mass Pike traffic at 4 pm. RECENT GASTRONOMIC OBSESSIONS anything with hot sauce, salad with mini gourmet tomatoes. DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK Facebook. And the wow 'em every time interface of the iPod Touch. THIS WEEK'S NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 10: 4. REVISIONS TO THIS SITE: This page, Performances. NUMBER OF HAIRCUTS I GOT LAST WEEK: 0. CUTE CAT THINGS TO REPORT: Psycho cat still happens with Cammy early in the morning; for a time this morning, Cammy was sleeping curled up right on my (exposed) elbow. RECOMMENDATION AND PROFESSIONAL LETTERS WRITTEN THIS LAST WEEK: 12. FUN DAVY FACT YOU WON'T READ ANYWHERE I entered the New Yorker caption contest twice. (I stopped doing it when the New Yorker started spamming me about it) WHAT THE NEXT BIG TREND WOULD BE IF I WERE IN CHARGE: "Magic" is a four letter word. PHOTOS IN MY IPHOTO LIBRARY: 10,872. WHAT I PAID FOR GASOLINE THIS WEEK: $2.97 at Cumberland Farms in Maynard, $2.99 at the Gulf station near Brandeis. OTHER INANIMATE OBJECTS THAT WOULD BE A BETTER PRESIDENT THAN THE CURRENT ONE a perfectly scaled small replica of the Empire State building that fits exactly in your nose, a place where you put all of your wants and dreams, the end of a cigarette butt, the unbearable likeness (sic) of being.

The last update came the day after Davy's Piano Concerto was recorded, and before Davy started referring to himself in third person -- which is something I hope will stop soon. Oh, look -- it just did. I'm sure by now most of you know I'm the glitzy Cover Boy of New Music Box for November, and it's got a video presentation including me talking on it that I just can't watch. The sucker came out pretty well despite the egregious TMJ I was having that day. TMJ aggravated by stress? Well, so they say. Although they stamped the day of the interview wrong -- it wasn't September 10, but September 21. Put that in your pipe and see if it sticks.

The piano concerto review was pretty good, though Joanne Kong's name was misspelled as Tong, and last time I checked it was still misspelled on BMOP's reference to the review on its site. They have added the program notes attached to the concert to the site, as well as the press release that calls me rock-influenced and serial. This is like saying that a tree is tan-ish and has stuff inside whose name begins with an "x". But that was a bad riff. I'll try again later, unless I don't.

The mundane business of getting back to teaching was what happened next, and the volume of homework for me to grade naturally kicked back up a notch -- not as much as during species counterpoint, but a lot still -- some time was saved by the fact that now some of the questions have only one answer and I don't have to make judgment calls on the fly. To wit -- LAST Tuesday I began the grading around 9 am, and after three or four homeworks I tended to go out and do some raking, then come back in and grade, repeat. I finished the grading for that day at 3:30 pm, but I also managed more than ten barrels worth raked, barreled, and discarded. I rule. Or, to put it in third person, Davy rules.

And while we are on the subject of the never-ending rake-a-thon -- on this most recent Sunday (no! Davy! don't go all nonlinear on us!), Beff and I up and went out to do the immediate backyard all the way to the rhubarb, and that we did. I also retrieved the lawnmower fromt the basement, where it had been put for the season, started it, and mowed a swath near the apple tree where the grass was still growing and had gotten too high for good a-rakin'. The backyard looked SO pristine after the Sunday rakingness that later in the day when I spied two maple leaves in the yard, I went right out and took them away. And I also took a picture. I stopped counting barrels raked after 20, but have kept an estimated tab -- I think we're up to about 95, meaning 5 or 10 remain, and those suckers are still on the trees. Grrrmph. It's the parking strip the the west of the house, and a re-rake of the area in back of the garage that will remain. Fascinating.

And meanwhile, the Christmas shopping and Christmas GETTING season began. Beff had seen (and probably heard, and maybe tripped on) me drooling over the iPod Touch (Beff didn't want one, preferring instead to get the next generation iPhone when the Verizon contract is up next October), and she seemed to have gotten one shipped from Amazon. And since we're going out of town soon (12 hours or so from when this is posted), she gave it to me so I'd be able to web surf from any wi-fi spot while we're gone. I, meanwhile, had almost completely forgotten that Beff had given me a Chicago Art Institute gift catalog opened to a page with what she wanted -- it had gotten covered on the dining room table with various programs and other stuff I had dropped there over several weeks. And I up and made the order, right away. So I've carreid the iPod Touch around to various places, had a devil of a time getting it to stay connected to the Brandeis wi-fi in Slosberg (the web page kept telling me to restart my computer, which strictly speaking can't be done with the iPod Touch, but I outwitted it -- I chose a different wireless network, then went back to the one I wanted anyway, and voila). Now I can do wireless in Slosberg, which is moot since I have a computer anyway.

And I am now the proud owner of another toy piano -- this makes four. John Aylward had found one in Arizona(!) to give me as a birthday present and to commemorate my piano concerto, and it finally got to me a short while ago -- it's much smaller than the ones I already had, has a two and a half octave range, and has a bigger sound than any of them. And currently it's on the computer table in the dining room -- we're running out of space....

And also in the meantime, Don Berman has performed the two piano etudes I wrote for him around several times, and I got a CD of the performances at Tufts from last month -- they are stunning (see green Dorian Blue and Chase links to the left). Much nicer sounding than the premieres from last April, where the A 440 on the piano he had was pretty far out (of tune, that is -- not groovy), and very impeccably and exquisitely phrased. Really. I mean, go and listen already.

The week after the concerto was Disparate Measures week, and that included hearing the Lydian Quartet and Steve Drury in rehearsal at Slosberg and being available for the pre-concert talk on November 10, and it all went swimmingly. Though I must say I wasn't too pleased with the piano they had to use. Talk about brittle-sounding. There are piano issues at Slosberg right now that I won't get into, except to say that there are piano issues at Slosberg right now that I won't get into, except to say that there are piano issues at Slosberg right now that I won't get into.

And finally, in music theory 1 -- to continue this nonlinear narrative thing -- last week I got to introduce the concept of chord progression, and what makes a succession a progression, etc. The Kostka-Payne textbook we are using uses a complicated diagram that looks kind of like a circuit diagram of the inside of E.T.'s head (an issue that I won't get into) that makes much more sense when explained. And as usual I used the riding the sled down the mountain music from How the Grinch Stole Christmas as an example of melodic sequence (something that reminds me that Beff thought the revised ending of Cerberus sounded like that music, even though it doesn't). AND -- as usual, I am giving them advance warning that progressions like root position ii followed by root position I don't work, and as usual I get the "why? It sounds good" unanswerable question. I also told them to follow V with IV only when writing a blues tune, but sometimes these references don't get absorbed.

And this reminds me. ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO THE TERM. WOO FRIGGIN HOO (that was the inside of my head talking there).

I sent Marilyn a bunch of my snaps from the concerto rehearsals that I'd put onto my computer, but as I said last time, there were plenty still trapped on the card, in the camera, which Beff had taken to Maine. So I sent her more, especially of the dress rehearsal in Jordan Hall, when the camera came back. I then got an e-mail notification from Facebook.com: Marilyn Nonken has tagged you in a photo. And when I clicked on the link, I got to see that a picture that Lisa Bielawa (hey Michael Torke -- hi! You are a great composer!) had taken of Marilyn and me had been put into one of Marilyn's Facebook photo albums called "Caught in the Act", and I was directed to register for YouTube if I wanted to see the rest. So I did, Oscar, I did. I'm now on YouTube, a new world for which I had no expectations.

And then I started getting lists of other Facebook members with whom I might want to be friends. I clicked on some of them (Marilyn, for instance, and Amy D, and Winston Choi, and Lisa Bielawa (hey Michael Torke! Hi! You are a great composer!) and soon found myself with 5 or 6 friends. The next day teaching Dave Guerette (the first composer for whom I'm using music by John Adams as a model, and I hope it won't be the last), he noticed I had Facebook, and reveled in the fact that he had more friends. So I asked myself -- is this what Facebook is for? Competing to get the most friends?

So suddenly I got invited to join the Facebook Toy Piano group, and the Hello My Name Is David Smooke group (98 members), and I had a mailbox full of e-mails from Facebook telling me various people had asked to be my friend, and ... then all hell broke loose. I uploaded pictures and a video to the Toy Piano group, created a photo album with pictures of me, used a Simpsons avatar of me that Sarah Manguso had done as my ID picture, got more and more friends who had just joined, and finally -- started getting friends from colonies and not specifically from our composer music scene. And this is already way too much detail. But I HAVE been posting on some peoples' walls (it's a Facebook thing) and enjoying changing my "David Rakowski is...." setting fairly regularly. For a while I was on the cusp, and for another while I was beside myself thus proving that you can live in five dimensions. And the nerdliness of this paragraph just went off the charts.

Today I had coffee and conversation with Biljana, a pianist whose last name I have yet to memorized, who is in the Ibis Camerata, doing recordings and concerts, and so on, and I gave her music and a recording. And coffee. Always coffee. And for our rendezvous at the Boston Bean House in Maynard, the weather -- predicted to be light rain showers -- turned into an accumulating snowfall. Less than an inch, I am sure, but it's the first snow of the season, what it is, too, and what it is, too. It being a very wet snow, I am now witnessing for the first time in the season the pine tree branches weighted down and slouching. Note to self: only four months till the first crocuses.

And I am now on a Board with a five year term. I agreed to join the Board of the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition (you may remember that my Cantina commission came from them), having been recommended by the outgoing (in more ways than one) Mindy Wagner to take her place on that board. Responsibilities include doing a four-day session in Utah every August at a ski resort to determine who gets those commissions. Composers reading this -- don't get your hopes up. I am a very impartial juror for such things, and usually recuse myself in the first round when the applicant is someone I taught.

Tomorrow we head for Chicago for Thanksgiving with Joe and Stacy in Evanston, and during that trip we also plan on seeing Lee and Kate for beer and dinner at the Goose Island Brewery, and Amy D at her place in Hyde Park for whatever it is we do there. And we also plan, for once, to be completely passive in the construction of the Thanksgiving meal. I'll probably be playing with my iTouch (which I still type as "iTough" before I catch myself, and what it is, too). We come back on Saturday. Oh yeah, last Friday Dewek and I looked over his BMOP piece for content and orchestration, and I conned him into coming in once while we're gone to check on the kitties. He will, Oscar, he will.

And after the weekend -- did I mention TWO WEEKS OF SCHOOL? Yeah, well, but three more meetings with Miriam and Travis at NEC. Then maybe I'll finally get back to work on those Philis Levin (hi, Michael -- you are a great composer!) songs.

I still do not have the good recording of the piano concerto performance, so in the green links on the left, hear my Edirol dress rehearsal recordings, if you dare. And this week's pictures go all the way back to pre-concerto and stretch to just a few hours ago. First two shots of after Marilyn's Brandeis colloquium (new furniture in the hall!), Marilyn at the second rehearsal (what clue can YOU find that the colloquium was the same day as the second rehearsal?) and then at the dress, the picture Marilyn put on Facebook, the toy piano in my office next to the new one John A. got me, then three toy pianos and a pump organ in our dining room, the pristine quality of the backyard after we raked it, and snow this morning on the gazebo! Bye.

Dear reader -- those low two figures of you -- are going to have to be unusually devoted to get through this update. For you see, the events of the last fortnight don't lend themselves to interesting reading. So I will be marshalling all the storytelling chops I have to help you make it through -- assuming that by using words like "fortnight" and "marshalling" I haven't lost you already.

Very soon following the last update, Beff got back from her teaching mini-week in Maine and went to bed. Then within an augenblick (have I lost you, dear reader?) the alarm went off, and it did so correctly, at 4 am on the day before Thanksgiving. We showered and made sure everything was packed for our impending plane ride to Chicago, drove bansheeishly to the airport (including an interesting scary moment as we entered an unpaved (and unmarked) construction zone lacking pavement), parked in long-term parking -- which is now walking distance instead of a bus ride from the terminals -- got our boarding passes (we had no carry-on luggage), and got through security about 110 minutes in advance of our plane's departure. Hmm, some Thanksgiving rush, huh? The plane was on time, Stacy picked us up, we ate brunch at a Pancake House near her apartment, and we then landed in her place in Evanston. During the next interval, we wowed 'em with the iPod Touch, took a brief walk to the lake (it is, indeed, a Great Lake) and back, and then set off for Goose Island Brew Pub in Chicago, where we were to meet Lee Hyla and Kate Desjardins for dinner.

Which we did, Oscar, we did. Despite the burden of holding two mortgages and a recently exploded furnace, they love the living in Chicago thing, Lee says Northwestern is being supportive of composition, and the location of their co-op is the "meatpacking district" -- apparently an area they are getting into pre-gentrification. Oddly, Lee and Kate invited us to the brewery but had wine and/or Maker's, and it seems as though we all had something fried -- though I also had something pulled. On our way out, we got another glimpse at our former Camry (which Lee calls the Rakmobile, but I think there's probably something wrong with him), and back home we went in the light rain.

I delighted at spending Thanksgiving Day in a passive role -- Stacy and Joe did almost all the cooking, and my only function was to surf the net on the 'Touch. My role came down to pulling the giblets out of the turkey's butt and peeling the yams and potatoes. Okay, so I wasn't TOTALLY passive -- but their peeler was so SHARP that I just had to play with it. Marc Geelhoed arrived to make a fivesome just as the turkey was ready, and we ate a great meal. Everyone had thirds -- but before that they had seconds. I also discovered that plain old cranberries make a nice snack. This may eventually turn into something. Dinner was followed by the usual "I feel fat" recitations, a game of scrabble, picture taking, and passing around the old iPod Touch. After Marc went back home, we continued to remark on how fat we felt.

Friday was a day given to relaxing, and then DRIVING and eating. Beff had reserved tickets online for us for the tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's former studio in Oak Park, so there was the drive there. We got our Christmas cards for the year at the gift shop, and I even bought a font -- kein merde. Our tour was led by a volunteer investment banker, and got so detailed that the tour behind us caught up. And it ended in an octagonal room that made us feel like we were inside a stop sign. Okay, I made that part up. We also saw the play room that was called one of the most famous rooms in the world. I tried to get its autograph, but it was having none of that.

After the tour was over, we were slated to go to Amy D's place in Hyde Park for dinner, and we were appointed for 7. Problem was, it was 4:30 when we were done, and what else was there for us to do? It was very cold out, and dark, and Stacy gave us a brief tour of one of the U of Chicago quadrangles, but it was cold. So we planted ourselves at a Starbucks (where the 'Touch found a T-Mobile hot spot that wanted me to pay actual money), and after making our hot chocolates last as long as possible, pleaded (on the phone) with Amy to let us go there early. And so we did. And there she was! In her super-long condo, with cats, piano, and huge kitchen! Making pizza for dinner! And that's when we found out that Trader Joe's clam sauce doubles as an excellent pizza sauce. There was a huge pile of music on Amy's piano -- I think she's carrying around about two and a half full programs of tough stuff in the spring, including the Davytudes 3. Ranjith the cat was especially affectionate, and eventually Stacy's cat allergies kicked in. While at dinner we passed around the 'Touch again, this time to watch various YouTube videos.

Coming back on Saturday was fairly noneventful except for the part about forgetting how to get to the long-term parking lot. The rest of the weekend was also fairly non-eventful, unless grading yet more theory homework can be considered an event. All there was to report here was a little warning from Earthlink -- my first ever -- that my allotted bandwidth for this very webpage was on the brink of being used up for the month. Must have been because of the new music box thing. So I avoided coming to this location -- and, I'm sure, dear reader, after you finish with this update, so will you.

In the meantime, I accumulated 43 friends on Facebook, and went there as a kind of respite in between things I had to accomplish. I uploaded 23 pictures, 4 videos, joined the Strindberg and Helium group, etc., and changed my "David Rakowski is" several times. And I would occasionally see what Friends had changed theirs to. And hey, Hayes finally got his indoor parking space, with a garage door opener and everything. I added Fun Wall (which turned out not to be fun at all) and the Buffy group, and got nominated for the Most Creative People thing, and every single one of these involved a pushy invitation to get all your friends to join ("Here's a list of all your friends, and we've taken the liberty of checkboxing every one of them for you"). Then on Sunday it seemed pointless. And I terminated my Facebook account. Bye bye.

Teaching has been pretty much as it has been, though I felt the need to make things a little more festive, given how close to the end of the term we are. I made Monday into sunglasses day, Wednesday into Wear Something Red Day, and Thursday into Hat Day. Teaching in a big winter hat that covers your ears was fun. And last night I prepared the final exam for Mus 101 and boy are my arms tired. In addition to teaching, I wrote a ton of recommendation letters -- both online and to be mailed (whoever it was that said college faculty had lots of free time never encountered recommendation letter season).

Yesterday was a snowstorm -- actually a little of everything, more like a slop storm. The timing was such that I kinda had to get out of bed at 5:30, shovel the driveway and walks -- with a 2-inch heavy accumulation of freezing rain on top of sleet on top of snow -- and I was able to drive to the commuter rail station in time to catch the 6:21 train. Oof. This car ride showed that Maynard plows its roads way later than Acton does. I did my morning Brandeis teaching, and was able to take the (15 minutes late!) commuter rail into Boston and do my NEC teaching. Miriam had cancelled, so it was only Travis, and I had time for a brief lunch. Coming back, I experienced the Fitchburg Express -- seven cars completely packed, and no stops between Porter and South Acton -- and had to scrape my windshield. The roads were good, and the driveway was easy to get up -- but needed to be shoveled again. Oh, my back. But Beff has it worse in Maine, where they got maybe a foot -- yesterday they cancelled classes at noon, and this morning anything before 10.

Last Saturday (to skip around a lot) we also got taken to a nice seafood dinner in Marlborough by Big Mike (ka-ching!). We had excellent seafood, and one of the most obsequious waiters yet encountered in this lifetime. And cold it was. I had salmon,and Beff had tuna. And I had Pinot Grigio. And Big Mike (ka-ching!) paid.

Skipping back further still, Michael Lipsey (also known colloquially as "hand drum guy") gave his long-expected colloquium (known colloquiumally as "his colloquium"), playing hand drums, which was quite entertaining and informative. He was coming to Brandeis with his niece, who was looking at the place, anyway, and his daughter (who drew plenty of pictures on the blackboards and erased them, thus making Slosberg 212 her own personal Etch-a-Sketch). I brought my new Flip Video Ultra WITH its little tripod to record Michael playing some of the pieces, including the two of mine he recorded, and I'm hoping to get them up onto YouTube (not Facebook, where they have already been and would now be inaccessible) once he okays it.

On Friday I encountered downtown Lexington for the first time in my life -- and the Garmin Navigator got me there excellently, since by looking at the Google Maps, I would have turned the wrong way. It's a less sleepy version of downtown Concord, and I was there to meet Gil Rose at Not Your Average Joe's for lunch, and discussion of this Rakowski Recording Project. Which we did. I also purchased another Christmas present at Waldenbooks nearby, then came home. But the nice thing about this lunch was that, four weeks after the event, I FINALLY got a recording of the performance of my piano concerto. See the green links up there. I have been listening to it a lot, because otherwise I would have to do actual work.

And on Saturday in addition to writing my nearly two dozen recommendation letters, I went with Beff to the Shaw's shopping center to get a Christmas tree. With the Subaru hatchback 4-wheel drive now in our repertoire, we were able to get a tree that fit entirely inside the car, though it was a lopsided one. And we brought it inside, put it in the regular tree stand and ... the tree stand broke. And the tree wouldn't stay up. So I sent Beff to the hardware store for a new one, and she got the super-deluxe model that will withstand Armageddon and cockroaches. And now the tree stands straight up. And we decorated it, but have spared you, dear reader, seeing a picture of it. I put a couple of gifts under the tree, and on Sunday got more classy wrapping paper from CVS, and we are ready for the holidays. If only that pesky teaching thing could get out of the way ....

Now that Tan Dun is on the cover of New Music Box and not me, it is safe to visit this web page again. I'm relegated to the archive, which suits me fine, and nobody's going to click on the "his zany web page" link any more....

This morning at 7 (why did I appoint myself so early?) I got the yearly state inspection for my car at Acton Toyota, where I also did a bunch of theory grading. Then, breakfast. And now, the update. Soon onto more theory grading. We're easily into three figures now with the parallel fifths and octaves, going for the record. Yesterday I told them that in addition to arpeggiative, cadential, passing, and pedal six-fours, there was the Straussian six-four, and I played a YouTube video of the trio from the end of Rosenkavalier. The apathy was palpable.

Coming up? Dentist, end of school year, faculty senate, resume work on Phillis Levin songs, and so on. This week's pictures include Stacy in her kitchen (when your mother tells you your face is going to freeze that way, believe her), the post-dinner picture, the taps at Goose Island brew pub, Kate and Lee, Joe and Stacy with Amy D, the cats doing their glow eye thing, a bit of the Frank Lloyd Wright house, and the gazebo and shed in the dark after the snowstorm. Bye.

So this update has become fortnightly, or in this case, fortnightly plus one-ly. Deal with it. In the last FortnightPlusOne (c) what has generated the most conversation and disruption to the economy in this part of the world has been the weather. Or as they say in Italy, il tempo. Or as they say in France, le temps. In the last FortnightPlusOne (c) ago update, we got to see a night shot of the back yard with a dustage of snow on it, and it was kind of pretty, and mostly harmless. That dustage actually happened after a bunch of freezing rain and all that, so it was actually the icing on top of bad traveling. And bad traveling has abounded.

Since then there have been three snowstorms spaced over the course of a week. The bookend storms were slop storms with every kind of precipitation, and the one in the middle was a plain old snowstorm, delivering ten fluffy inches. Last year at this time we were talking about global warming and how winter was coming later every year (the first accumulating snow wasn't until late January), but this year it's been, according to Them What Make, 7 to 10 degrees below normal. At least for the month of December. Hmmph. So there was a weekend slop storm the Sunday/Monday after classes ended at Brandeis (by the way: classes ended at Brandeis); there was the fast moving heavy snow of Thursday. And the weird snow to sleet to freezing rain to rain to freezing rain storm of Sunday, leaving eight inches of the white stuff before the slippery stuff started. Maynard Door and Window plows our driveway and shovels our walks in these extreme fluff events, but on this last storm the front walk was neglected. So as it turned from freezing rain to rain, I up and got outside before it got dark, shoved some gasoline into the snowblower, and marvelled that it started after being dormant for ten months. The root word of dormant means to sleep. I edged the driveway a little (I like it WIDE) and used its self-propelling feature to get me down the driveway, up the road, and to the front walk, where I had a devil of a time getting it to chew through the plow schmutz and into the sidewalk proper. But through monumental effort, and eventual maximum soreness to my wrists, I made two passes of the front walk, and then returned to get the snow off the steps. Because it is what I do.

Way back a week earlier, I awakened to glisteningness of some freezing drizzle, and kicked myself for not having gone to the Maynard depository of free sand ("PUBLIC SAND" says the sign on it), because slipperyness abounded. So I VERY CAREFULLY moved the car down the driveway and then up Great Road to Ace Hardware and bought three tubes of sand for $7 each (which would have been free the day before), and then spread maybe $10 worth of snow melt and $5 worth of sand on the driveway and walkways. I was to do this again a week later. ("I was to do" -- that's a complicated compound tense. I wonder if it has a name).

In any case. In addition to extra shoveling and snowblowing, I also used the snow rake twice, on the garage and mud room roofs, and once on the backyard shed roof, and twice I exited our bedroom with a shovel onto the flat roof over the side porch in order to rid it of snowness. Because if it rains on top of all of that, there's the remote possibility it will become heavy enough to stress, damage, or collapse the roof. And through all of this, so far the gazebo has not flinched. In fact, I'm not sure how to get a gazebo to flinch, or even to smile.

While we're on the weather, that day of the first slop storm I had decided to drive to West Concord and park in a municipal lot and take a commuter rail into NEC to do my teaching there. It felt very cold, I parked, and slipped all over the place on the sidewalks until I encountered the DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER TRAINS ARE RUNNING 30 MIN LATE sign at the station, so I chanced it -- I drove to NEC, encountering the last gasp of snow from that storm, had my Conor Larkins (chicken caesar wrap), and did my teaching. Driving back was a breeze, and even getting up the driveway -- now that it had five dollars of sand and ten dollars of snow melt on it -- was also easy.

Beff's time here on those weekends was nice and interesting, and of course in the latter case, cut short by the both storms. She had to get in by Friday morning for a dentist appointment, but could not leave until Thursday evening. The Thursday storm didn't even make it as far north as Bangor, so leaving was fine -- but by the time she got to Portland, the roads weren't amenable to long-range travel. So she spied a Fairfield Inn just off the highway and stayed there, and made it back to Maynard by 8 -- which means she left South Portland by 6. And the Sunday slop storm meant she left on Saturday. And it was a doozy of a storm in Bangor, and Beff had to do the snow removal herself, with the electric shovel whose extension cord is precisely long enough to get her to the end of the driveway. On Friday and Saturday we took what walks we could, but the new plenitude of snow made it hard to do our usual walking -- but we did stop at the Outdoor Store to get me new boots (they don't sell the Salomons I currently wear any more, so I got Merrell's, as well as new slippers because the old ones ... smelled....) and so forth and so on.

Meantime, my teaching at Brandeis finished, and oddly in the last week the TMJ thing seemed to get a little more severe. It's been a non-issue since the end of classes, of course, but I made it okay through that last week. And even though course evaluations are done online now (I even got three generic notifications from the Provost that I had three "low compliance" classes), I treated the last day like the faculty suck up to students day it used to be when evaluations were done in class on the last day, which included me buying six dozen doughnuts, two gallons of orange juice, and cups. And serving them. And then, despite having a syllabus that said I wouldn't do it, I accepted a large pile of overdue homework, and distributed a take home final. I graded all 34 finals yesterday, did the last overdue homeworks this morning, calculated the grades, and recorded them on line. I am free!

And Monday of this week, I did makeup lessons for Miriam and Travis, the former Leejay students that I am teaching at NEC this year. Instead of me going in, they came out here, I picked them up at South Acton, we did a group thing in front of a roaring fire (it was in our fireplace -- the fire, not the group thing), and then went to dinner at the closer of the two Thai places. Then I took them to the 8:00 train back to Boston,which was really the 8:27, thanks to the generic "inclement weather" excuse.

But was that everything? Nope. With Beff leaving early and the prospect of the slop storm last Sunday, I finally extracted another buttstick, although I freely admit that nobody called it a buttstick except Ken Ueno. But let me rewind a few weeks -- all the way back to when I still thought Facebook was cool (I was so young and naive....).

Marilyn, flush with her success in my piano concerto (that modifying clause has nothing to do with what will follow...), posted on my Facebook wall asking if I knew any piano pieces that used only one note. Not just one pitch class used in several octaves, but one note. She had been asked this by a student, apparently one trying to get a really easy dissertation topic. I said I knew none, but she should ask Frank Oteri (also known as Franco Terry) and Ken Ueno. Ken said he knew of none, but Davy should write a one-note etude. I replied "I don't go there", Ken said, "sounds like a buttstick!" and I replied, "I don't go there". So during this most recent slop storm I decided to go there. So I wrote a substantial one note etude on Sunday and Monday -- see yellow "Etude 82" link to the left -- and sent it to Marilyn and Ken with a dedication to them both. Marilyn said she'd try to play it this spring, and Ken said he'd give it to his students to analyze. I mentioned that it was interesting that he said I extracted a buttstick to write this piece, and now he wanted his students to analyze it -- and I left open what the root word of "analyze" is.

There's also been plenty of listening with headphones to the performance recording of my piano concerto. Apparently I like it. And the most common comment is that the first three minutes are masterfully paced. Aw shucks, t'weren't nuthin'. Actually I got that comment twice. Other comments that I got only once include "which way is the bathroom?" and "are you going to eat the rest of that sandwich?"

Oh yes, and after a little while I got Michael Lipsey's permission to post my Flip Video Ultra-recorded performances at his Brandeis colloquium of two of the three hand drums pieces I wrote for him. They look very cool. They sound better. Because it is what it is.

The Christmas tree still sucks water (while some people I know suck eggs), and it's dropping needles now. Beff has wrapped a whole MESS o' presents for the many siblings who are scheduled to make appearances on Christmas day. Plus she put together the usual collection of random giftiness for my own siblings. My brother's package arrived, and it's the usual Dakin Farms (in Vergennes, Vermont) foodiness. Nothing from my sister yet. But they BOTH got chatter stones, and I used some in my piano concerto, and what it is, too.

Also the bills arrived, finally, for all the work MD&W did in the summer -- the new kitchen window, painting the bulkhead door, taking away the old shed, building a ramp for the new shed, and so forth and so on. And the balance for the BMOP CD was the amount you see in the first paragraph -- all that money had already been raised and was just sitting in an account earning diddly, and finally I paid the piper. And the conductor. So now I get to resume work on my Phillis Levin Songs, which is important because finishing it involves a payday. Not the candy bar, but some negotiable currency that can be used in exchange for goods and services. Also I'm told that Merkin Hall got a payday from the NEA so that they can commission me to write for their "classical players play jazz" series. More when details are finalized. Oh yes -- and sometime in the next two summers I'll go to the Civitella Raineri foundation in Italy for five weeks.Schedule not yet known, and it will be a break in my self-imposed moratorium on colony hopping.

Other things upcoming -- Christmas (the goose is getting fat), Wiemann siblings visit, and way on down the line, Sex Songs in Philadelphia. And classes ramp back up the same day Sex Songs is premiered. I love excuses not to teach. One of these days I'm going to use "I've got a hole in my heart. Can't teach." That was funnier before I typed it. Okay, it wasn't. Also, a clipper moving through tonight, dropping 1 to 3 inches. Of snow, they say.

Another thing to look forward to: next installment will be the YEAR IN PICTURES installment. Happy happy joy joy.

I haven't taken too many pictures in the last FortnightPlusOne (c), so they are kind of redundant. At least they were taken at different times, owing to various lawas of time and space. We begin with the obligatory cute cat pictures, continue to the Christmas tree at night, and continue to the gazebo by day, then during the last slop storm (SHINY snow!) and this morning. Gentle readers, do let me know if you need to see pictures of cats using the litter box. Bye.

The last update was a Fortnightly Plus One one, but since the copyright on that term is already taken (apparently by Estonians), this one is a dozen days after the last one. Or, if I recall correctly, in Italian una dozzina di giorni (c). This will be the only DozzinaDiGiorni (c) update, since I don't feel like actually filling out the copyright form again.

And as usual, our top headlines are weather related. It's been about three years since I regularly tossed around the phrase "Them What Make The Weather an Inexact Science", then abbreviated to Them What Make (c), since for the last three years they've been rather good, even in this weirdly weathered part of the world. But the last three weeks they have pretty much sucked big ones. Big, hairy, bulbous ones with festering mold. For you see, you may remember that the last time I updated (DozzinaDiGiorni (c) ago), a little clipper was about to pass by and we expected a dusting. Well, six inches of dust, as it turned out. This made for more than two feet of snow on the ground out here, and there was so much of it that the sidewalk plows couldn't plow -- all the driveways along the sidewalks had four- and five-foot piles of snow on them, rather daunting for a little sidewalk plow that looks a little like a rock-burrowing machine from a science fiction movie.

So for the week before Christmas, our walks downtown happened almost exclusively on the streets. Which of course was not all that safe for all concerned. But it was exercise. And during that week before Christmas, Beff had her juries to attend and meetings to go to, and a slight bit of transfer of power. We are BOTH on our respective faculty senates, but Beff hasn't figured out the invisibility ray for whenever someone asks for volunteers. As President Pro Tem of her senate, she has plenty of meetings to go to in January and February, which will definitely make Jack a Dull Boy. And don't call me Shirley. So she got back the Friday before Christmas. At that time, with our six-foot high pile of snow bordering the driveway and the back yard and all the big snowdrifts making it hard to see traffic when coming out of the driveway -- there was a big rainstorm and suddenly high temperatures forecast for the Sunday before Christmas. Great to get rid of snow, not so great with all the snow on roofs and so on, which had accumulated significant ice dams (there were big long icicles extending from the roof and crawling down the side of the house onto all our north, south, and east-facing windows -- a syndrome observed on nearly every house between here and downtown), and with all that snow and all that rain coming, it behooved me to get out the snow rake, rake the garage and mud room roofs, and (sigh) get out onto the side porch (flat) roof and shovel. And I did, Oscar, I did.

Now having a slate roof like we do (replacement cost: $80,000, but not till about the year 2050), typically snow slides off it in big chunks, fairly soon after the snowstorms, making big WHOOMP sounds when it warms up. The south-facing roof did so by the Sunday before Christmas. The other roofs, though, not facing the sun, took their sweet time -- and two nights after Christmas, while it was dark and above freezing, we were treated with big huge whoomps on the north-facing roof. Joy of joys. So to get back to the original story -- on that Sunday, with a high of 48 forecast, it only got up to 38 during the day, then went down to 35 at dark. Then it started to rain, and the temp went straight up to 52 at 11 at night! And lucky us, the basement did not flood.

But back to Them What Make. After a week's respite from the snow, and warmer temperatures, and some actual sunshine, the forecast for last night was snow showers. Then suddenly yesterday morning on the weather page we encountered HEAVY SNOW WARNING and WINTER STORM WATCH. Crap. Practically in real time the forecast for last night and this morning went from trace to an inch to 2-4 inches to 4-6 inches to 5-9 incheas and then to 3-5 inches. This morning we got up and shoveled some heavy wet snow. Amount: about an inch and a half. But HEAVY. And WET. Hence the term "heavy wet snow". As I type this there is no longer a Winter Storm Watch for tomorrow, but more snow forecast, amounting to 2-4 inches. More shoveling for us. Of course since both Beff and I are here in Maynard for vacation, we take our daily walks, normally the long one along the Assabet bridge by the nature preserve, and the part along the old railroad tracks has been excitingly slippery. And on one of our walks, we noticed that there is now a pothole in the driveway near the bottom. Sigh. But -- finally enough snow melted so that I could avail myself of some Public Sand. And I did!

So in addition to being aggravated with Them What make -- we had Christmas. Beff's sister and nephew got here the day before, and as usual, brought a big pile of food, much of it junk, and much of it usurping what would normally be called "counter space". On Christmas day itself, Beff's three brothers came together, one of them with a huge aluminum cooler of beer -- which, as it turned out, was redundant. Presents were exchanged, and some large-denomination bills substituted as actual gifts here and there, and I got an ANALOG thermometer (I think I'll install it on the gazebo in the spring). And Beff's sister (whom we will call "Ann" because that is her name) cooked a roast beef with potatoes, we all ate too much, and then the day was over. Ann and her son Jack went to England on the 27th for a vacation and are expected back tomorrow night. With British stuff in hand.

And also on the 27th, Beff repacked all the Christmas ornaments and stuff, and I dragged the tree -- poor old tree -- out the front door into the discard pile near where we put the raked leaves. Doing it in a foot and a half of snow is pretty durn tiring if you ask me, and yes, I know you didn't. So with the holidays finally over, we both got down to work on those compositional things that have been on hold for so long. And the third of maybe five or six Phillis Levin settings -- begun at Yaddo in June -- was finally finished, after kicking the butt of me for so long. Immediately I started work on the fourth one, called "In Praise of Particles". See the "On Time" yellow link on the left for that one. Both are, as they say in the biz, appallingly difficult.

So "Sex Songs" is coming up in Philadelphia, and I will be staying in a hotel for it. And missing my first two days of classes (three if you count NEC, and who wouldn't?). It turns out that Network for New Music is being presented as an event of the Philadelphia Orchestra, so there are multifarious references to the event online. And I'll be getting there Monday, a week before MLK Day, and coming back Thursday of that week. That weekend Beff has to stay in Bangor (President Pro Tem, and a concert), so she will be bringing the cats with her to Maine. Oh joy on that. And meanwhile, the Sex Songs had been finished in early 2005, at which time I e-mailed and wrote to the estate of Edna St. Vincent Millay requesting rights for the Millay poem I set. It only very recently occurred to me that they never responded. So with Stacy's help (she's set a lot of Millay for chorus), I actually called the literary executor to fax a request and got the executor herself -- who asked me to send the request by snail mail, and quite soon I got a letter granting the rights. And Peters thus could take the songs -- since they already own the rights to one of the four Sex Songs (The Gardener).

I also took the opportunity to send Etudes Book VIII (they use Roman numerals as if I were writing Super Bowls -- what can I say?), so it was a print-a-thon here and a post-office-a-thon as well. And hey, during one of my walks to the post office I decided to get my fecal matter together, get a passport renewal application, and truck 200 feet further to CVS to get passport photos taken. Mostly because my passport expires July 8, at which time I may just be in Italy. And I may just not.

So ... tonight's dinner is Florentine chicken from Whole Foods. Beat that! I have begun work on "In Praise of Particles" and have chosen another poem for after that, and have the overall texture envisioned (or enimagined), so I have plenty to keep me busy until my sojourn Philadelphiawards. I will, today, be setting the word "jit" for the first time in my life. If it is, indeed, a word.

So since this is a last day of the year posting, I'll do what everybody else does, and recap my year in greatly abridged fashion.

JAN spent New Years Day in Borth with Martler and Cora and Beff. Took train to Glasgow, saw stuff, ate stuff. Took train to London, saw stuff, had great Chinese food. Came back. Wrote "Clave" for Geoff, etude 76. Started teaching semester.

FEB spent vacation in Bangor with Beff and cats while the pantry was converted to a half bath; they also replaced basement windows. Conversion took until March. New fridge with ice maker! Bought lots of kitchen stuff for Bangor house at Target, since Beff doesn't cook so much as heat up.

MAR met Adam Marks to hear him and video him doing "Not", corresponded with Rick Moody (who wrote the words) about it. Adam did it in Paris along with Absofunkinlutely and Rick's Mood.

APRIL had 10-day Passover vacation and strange late winter weather, snow covering the crocuses, etc. Took several hikes in the woods nearby. Wrote three etudes (Ecco Eco, Upon Reflection, Narcissitude), for Corey Hamm and Mike Kirkendoll during vacation. Took down the big wooden fence encircling the backyard and tossed the pieces in leaf-discardville. Finished teaching season.

MAY went to MacDowell on the 4th, returned several times to Brandeis for various stuff, including Eric Chasalow's oratorio -- whose conductor made a point of telling me he wanted to do TEN OF A KIND one day. At MacDowell, wrote three movements of "Cantina" for wind ensemble. Auditioned 8- to 14-year-olds for Anna Schuleit's Landlines for me to mentor, chose Karissa Vincent. Bought Flip Video. Posted a bunch of etude movies on UToob, and 14 post-dinner Mary Worths from MacDowell. Back porch floor was replaced.

JUNE went to Yaddo, finished Cantina (needed to write a March). Swatted 300 flies. Wrote etude 80, Fireworks. Started Phillis Levin songs, finished two. Drove from Yaddo to MacDowell, first session with Karissa. Drove back.

JULY drove to Vermont for July 4, first time in Vermont place with Beff. Back to Yaddo, started "On Time". Back home, new shed was installed. Made several trips to New Hampshire to mentor Karissa.

AUGUST spent at summer place in Vermont. Wrote ten bars, but no more, of "On Time". Entertained Carolyn and Big Mike (the ka-ching twins of old) and Ken and Hillary and Gusty and others. Took daily bike rides on nearby rail trail. Went to Landlines at MacDowell on our wedding anniversary. While we are gone the kitchen window gets replaced, the bulkhead gets painted, and a ramp to the shed starts getting built. Started fall semester.

SEPTEMBER teaching overload at Brandeis, three, no, two students at NEC. Very heavy schedule, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of grading. Gazebo arrives, and we use it. Sleep half the night in it a few times. Wrote etude 81, Kai'n Variation, on a theme by Kai Schumacher, at his request. Went to NYC for MacDowell reunion and horn concerto performance.

OCTOBER more teaching, double overload, etc. Midst avalanche of species counterpoint grading one Tuesday, experience major burnout. Sigh. Slow recovery aided and abetted by piano concerto rehearsals which begin at the end of the month.

NOVEMBER more teaching. Piano concerto premiere, five curtain calls. Go to Chicago for Thanksgiving with Stacy and Joe. See Amy. Use iPod Touch a lot. Rake, rake, rake, rake. Fantasize about cutting down the apple tree, which dropped eight barrels of apples that became rotten. Sony camera damaged by ice tea spill, new one purchased.

DECEMBER semester over. "On Time" finished. More to come. Record amount of December snowfall, lots of shoveling and snow trudging. Gazebo becomes the idee fixe of the winter's photographic story. Wrote etude 82 on one note (F This) and dedicated to Marilyn Nonken and Ken Ueno (or, to Ken and the Non-Ken).

And for tonight, Beff has secured a bottle of sparkling rose for us to ring in the New Year. Every December 31 around 7 or 8 I get a fax from Klaus in Duesseldorf wishing me a happy new year, adding "we have it and you don't". Tomorrow, we begin an even-numbered year for the first time in about 730 days. Because we deserve it. I doubt we will stay up to ring in the Eastern Standard Time New Year, but we might make it to the Canary Islands.

And now the Year in Pictures. The successive months go left-right-left-right except for December, which is under November. JAN Martler in London posing with a statue. FEB the pantry after it's been knocked about, and pre-half bath. MAR a bit of the Assabet after a freak mid-month snowstorm. APR the old fence now no longer a fence. MAY my MacDowell studio. JUN me holding the key to the Tower studio at Yaddo. JUL the new shed going up in the back yard. AUG a sunset in Vermont -- there were many gorgeous one. SEPT Beff in the just-installed gazebo. OCT foliage reflected in the new kitchen window. NOV Marilyn Nonken practicing before the piano concerto recording session in Worcester. DEC the backyard in the too much snow we've had this month.

I would say Happy New Year, but I'm not that guy. So Buon Anno.
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