New blogs coming

Obviously I have mostly abandoned this blog, I have had many other things happening in life which have put the blog thing on the back burner. So I am going to start 2 blogs soon, one just for music stuff, and another for other personal wierdness etc. for my friends, which I will pass out the URL to on a selective basis. I'm going to leave this blog up for a while yet. When I get the music blog up and running, I'll post the link here. This should be soon after we get the new desktop in here and get rid of this old 386/pentium cobbled-together-thing that keeps freezing on bootup. No more Windows 98!

Thanks, Patrick!

Regards

Forrest

Blog update

Sorry I haven't been posting, I've been quite busy. I have been debating whether to put a cap on this blog, now that I am otherwise occupied with various jobs. I am still thinking about it. Meanwhile I am scuttering around fixing my roof, and painting various things in need of attention, including the kitchen table and chair set. Turns out we have an Art Deco piece on our hands, so I am doing the most careful and precise strip and paint job that I can. People want $250 just for the chairs on Ebay! Who knew we were eating breakfast on a work of Art?

Now that the weather has broken somewhat, it is time to tune some pianos for the fall/winter season. That will bring in some handy grocery money as well. Then, firewood gathering time arrives.

I have found a poem I like for the third song in my set, it has the right meter, rhyme and image. It is in an old high school literary magazine I found in the attic, that I hadn't looked at in thirty years. Now I am trying to track down the author to get their permission to use it, which may be dicey, since they might be embarrassed about stuff they wrote in high school. I know I am a little embarrassed by most of the music I wrote in those days. We'll see.

I might also get some work as a teacher's assistant for music in the local schools. I like kids, although I have never dealt with a passle of them at once. It would be an interesting experience. I very much enjoyed teaching college level music theory at the University of Iowa, so I think I would enjoy teaching kids. All of this means less time for blogging, so I will have to think about how much time I want to devote to it.

Please help out the Katrina victims any way you can. Hurricane Fran came right over our heads in '96, and that's all the hurricane I want to ever deal with, thank you very much. We were lucky, and only lost part of the roof and the kitchen cieling, but others weren't so lucky. A house across the road was mostly destroyed by a tornado. I feel very badly for those folks in New Orleans, it was a beautiful and unique place.

It may be a while before I make any more posts.

How much is TOO much?

If you like coffee, tea, or soft drinks with caffeine, be sure and check this site out if you value your life! I know from here on out, I'll restrict my coffee intake to less than 150 cups.

Anyone reading the music blogs or the news knows that Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog Synthesizer, has died. The Moog was the first synth I ever used. I'll try to think of some remarks and a story or two about that in the next day or two.

Finally, a hit

Looking in Google, I found that Anagoge has been played on station KLCC in Eugene, Oregon. I got put in a slot with Philip Glass and Art of Noise, and a lady named Ann Dudley, a film composer I haven't heard of. I hope there are more radio plays than I can find on Google. Besides the gratification of being heard, I will get a few cents or something from BMI.

I have gotten some feedback about the piece, which is different from what happened to the Winter's Poem, which pretty much went unnoticed. Most people who have heard it and talked to me, find Anagoge to be likeable enough, but complicated, and requiring several hearings to appreciate. I find this ironic since the piece is pretty much melody-centered, and uses a modified rondo form which I thought would be readily accessible. But at least it is being heard.

Second image test 

Image test 

Things I never knew

"Spread butter on brown bread counter clockwise to avoid mysticism."

How true! I used to spread it clockwise, next thing I knew I was chanting Om while curled in a fetal position, and basing my life on the philosophy contained on the labels of Dr. Bronner's Soap bottles. Later I wised up and began spreading the butter in parallel, uniform strokes, which made me the sober rationalist I am today. In an attempt to further align my world view with the latest advances in particle physics, I am developing a device which deposits the butter on the bread in a fine mist of droplets no more than 5 microns in diameter, resulting in a butter coating exactly .016cm in thickness.

(My nephew and namesake has a sense of humor very similar to mine, except less biting and sarcastic, which means it will get him in a lot less trouble than I caused. He is also young ehough to have the cojones to post it. Ah, misspent youth!)

Back online

Sorry about the long gap there. Lightning or something wasted our modem, desktop, and network right as we were changing ISP's. Fortunately it didn't take out any of my ham radio equipment or the solar panel system I power it with, I leave the antennae disconnected. The techno spouse has everything reconfigured and the desktop rebuilt, so I am back online. (I am busy though, I may not be blogging quite as much for awhile.)

I have also been doing some long overdue cleaning, and I was appalled to see that the heat and humidity is causing mildew to grow in my 1911 Cable Grand piano I rebuilt a few years back. This is a problem because you can't just wash a piano's insides. I have to go in and physically brush it out, carefully use a heat lamp, and wait for better weather.

So blogging will be light, as I catch up with things.

Knocked offline

Due to the failure of our DSL modem, we are offline. A new modem is on the way but we may not be back online for a few days yet.

We stand with England

Battered but never bowed! 

Our thoughts and prayers are with Great Britain today. As they stood for civilization 60 years ago, so they do today.

Poet and painter

e.e.cummings self portrait 

Poet e.e.cummings was a painter as well as a writer, and probably spent more of his time painting than versifying. His paintings are somewhat derivative, as his verse was original.

There isn't much mention in the bios of him what kind of music he liked, although he mentions Verdi a couple times in his poems. His poems lend themselves to all kinds of possible musical settings, so I would be curious to find out if he was as influenced by the avante garde music of his day, as he was by the art.

Here is a link to an online version of his book, The Enormous Room, about his bad experience in a French jail during WW I.

Unmanifest Destiny

July 20, 1969 

I found this in an anthology. I hope you like it as much as I did.

**********

To what new fates, my country, far
And unforeseen of foe or friend,
Beneath what unexpected star
Compelled to what unchosen end.

Across the sea that knows no beach,
The Admiral of Nations guides
Thy blind obedient keels to reach
The harbor where thy future rides!

The guns that spoke at Lexington
Knew not that God was planning then
The trumpet word of Jefferson
To bugle forth the rights of men.

To them that wept and cursed Bull Run,
What was it but despair and shame?
Who saw behind the cloud the sun?
Who knew that God was in the flame?

Had not defeat upon defeat,
Disaster on disaster come,
The slave's emancipated feet
Had never marched behind the drum.

There is a Hand that bends our deeds
To mightier issues than we planned;
Each son that triumphs, each that bleeds,
My country, serves It's dark command.

I do not know beneath what sky
Nor on what seas shall be thy fate;
I only know it shall he high,
I only know it shall be great.


Richard Hovey (1864-1900) 


Have a safe and happy 4th of July!